Construct Additional Pylons/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: In Real Time Strategy, you have to handle base-building instead of putting all your effort into... well, strategy.

  • Straight: The Architect Of War has you construct large bases right in the field - with powerplants, refineries, factories, and all.
  • Exaggerated: The Architect Of War is formally a military RTS, but actually it doubles as a city-state simulator.
  • Justified:
  • Inverted: A city-building game offers the capability to personally control police and SWAT when there's rioting.
  • Subverted: You are commanded to "move in and set up the base". It turns out you have to capture an airfield.
  • Double Subverted:
    • However, the airfield doesn't have enough power to run everything, so you have to build more power plants to bring everything online.
    • When you capture the airfield and the transport plane lands, several bulldozers roll out of it.
  • Parodied: In order to win you have to build a functioning base so big that it literally covers the entire game map so that your enemy has no room to move.
  • Deconstructed: One side gets clever and starts air-dropping units instead of building field bases for production. Two weeks later, they have won.
  • Alternatively, because You are too engulfed in building bases, you don't have time to set up all the defenses on your side and as a result, the enemy would have little trouble overwhelming your army.
  • Reconstructed: Other side also gets clever and starts building Anti-Air defenses all over the place.
  • Zig Zagged: The trope is played straight or averted depending on the faction. Powerhouse builds entire cities out in the field, Balanced uses only command vehicle and a few helipads, and Subversive requires no bases whatsoever.
  • Averted: In Rapid Response your units are delivered to you by airdrops - no bases required.
  • Enforced: "Alright, we are doing a classic RTS here - and what is a classic RTS without a base-building?"
  • Lampshaded: "Powerplants, factories, research labs... a bit excessive for a field base, don't you think?"
  • Invoked: The dev team wanted the game to simulate a war of attrition accurately.
  • Defied: The dev team wanted a very dynamic and fast-paced RTS so they made structures expendable and cheap.
  • Discussed: "Have you ever found the practice of building entire cities in a course of one battle... well, ridiculous?" "Maybe, but it works - so why shouldn't we?"
  • Conversed: "Why do I spend half my play time prospecting and zoning instead of looting and pillaging?"

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