I do think there's base-building done well and base-building done poorly.  I'd have to say in the case of Starcraft 2 that it comes down the middle, definitely inheriting the late-90's standards of its predecessor which (while definitely top-notch for its time) are kinda bare minimums by today's standards.

The problem with Starcraft II, and I think his primary concern, is that the first 2 minutes of the game are 90% base-building and build-order.  While there are a few tactics you can pull off (mostly cheesy gambits that will only work if you get lucky or your opponent is inexperienced), for the most part your early-game is just a 2-minute buildup to whatever primary army you intend to field.  It varies only slightly, so you're mostly doing the same thing every game.  That is, in my opinion, a tremendous waste of the first two minutes of the game where much more interesting things could be happening.  Base-building doesn't have to be this way, and many other games have shown how it can be streamlined and integrated in such a way as to not dominate other aspects of the game.

This is only made worse by the fact that SC2 is very much dominated by a race for industrial efficiency.  Good micro in battles means a lot, but at the end of the day if you can throw 20% more units down the enemy's throat it's going to take a lot more than 20% extra micro to overcome you.  While a lot of games have this issue, it's extremely noticable in Starcraft because it's economy and base is such high-maintenance that it forces you to pull attention away from other aspects of the game.  For a guy like me with over a decade of multiplayer RTS experience, I can multitask and handle it for the most part, but for people without that breadth of experience... Starcraft II is frustrating to play outside of singleplayer.

Anyways, I don't mean to rail against SC2, because it's really just indicative of a problem in lots of games in the genre.  It's not that base-building is bad, it's that they just don't do it as well as they could and let it dominate rather than just be one aspect of the game.  The first 2-3 minutes are often the worst for this since there's often nothing else to do except scout and build, and because scouting takes workers off of valuable resource acquisition, you won't have more than one of those in SC2... shame really...

I agree, it's very subjective. Personally, I don't like RTSs without base-building, but some people love them. It's just a matter of opinion.

I guess I'm on the other side of the fence.  I loved the integrated base building of DOW but hated the lack of it in DOW 2.

It's funny you mention DoW 2.

Because Company of Heroes, made two years before Dawn of War 2, by the same company, pretty much perfected base-building in an RTS in my opinion. You had your standard base blah-blah-blah, but then a lot of defenses with no real limit on them to really entrench yourself. Being able to build cover and pathing obstructions, and have it all work, pretty much makes Company of Heroes the best RTS I've ever played, far and away more interesting from the defensive side than stuff like SC and its ilk.

And then they went and made DoW 2, and I couldn't have been less thrilled. At first I was like "Omg, new engine, Company of Hero details, and 40k! I'm in heaven!" But then I saw they basically threw away most of the innovations they'd come up with in the last few years.

Putting the entire focus on troop movement and tactics demands that they're really deep enough to satisfy. But in DoW 2's case, it was the same basic squad setup all Relic fans are familiar with, combined with uber powerful hero characters ala Defense of the Ancients. The "tactics" therefore, revolve around dealing with the OPness of the heroes in comparison to your squishy (but completely necessary) troops while not getting flattened by the hero's support troops. Cue the kiting, Assault Squads, stuff with an AoE or knockback, long range weaponry, and of course, walkers.

It's a fun, spammy little mess...until the fight is over. Then there's nothing to do but go capture the next point, do some very minimal upgrades, and prepare to die some more.

In the end, that's why I don't like the ethos of removing base building, at least in DoW 2's case. DoW 2 games are static. They don't really change except based on player. In CoH, especially against the AI, the game could be drastically different just depending on if you chose to blow out a wall somewhere, or how you arranged your choke points (that's right, choke points YOU create, not that the map either has, or doesn't have.)

In a non-zerg game of Company of Heroes, the act of securing the map and your base slowed the game down...but it made for FUN when you or your enemy slowly rolled back the other's defenses. The pacing felt right.

In DoW 2, it's one engagement of small numbers of troops after another, or guys creeping in behind your base. There's less sense of escalation. If you really hurt someone early on in the game, it can be hard for them to come back from it. And there's rarely a grand, finale moment like assaulting a well defended base. The opposition just sort of trickles down to nothing while your guys shoot one super huge structure.

Or maybe they just skip the foreplay entirely, zerg your drop site the minute they get a half decent unit, and pretty much end the game right there. The pacing is frantic,, the combat is frantic...and I was just sort of left feeling hollow when games ended. When a game of CoH ends, I feel like I just had a feast, and the after dinner mint is going around looking at how FUCKED UP the battlefield is. DoW 2 barely managed to capture that sense of immersion. For all the DX10 shininess the Essence 2.0 engine delivers, it pretty much cut the physics and environmental detail down by half. Which were the best part of Relic games.

I would have enjoyed DoW 2 had I been prepared for how much like Defense of the Ancients it was going to be. I wasn't though. No one was. Even when they said base-building was out, we had no idea it was going to be quite like that.

As a result, I haven't been able to bring myself to even buy Chaos Rising. I should, being a 40k fan and all. I just can't bring myself to spend the money though.

To this day, I wonder what 40k would be like when done to Company of Heroes exacting standards. Sadly, I don't think I'll ever get to know, because Relic is convinced they've pioneered something better....which I'm obviously not in agreement with. And don't even get me started on the campaign. I couldn't believe how repetitive it was.

Yeah Kohan was my kind of RTS game. It had bases to build cool structures in but absolutely no peons to worry about (or at least I don't think it did).

One of the things I loved about DoW 1 was that it kind of had a more realistic sense of base building. I always had a problem with games where the entire invading force attacking a planet consists of 5 workers who build everything on site. If WW 2 was a RTS then D-day would have consisted of 5 guys landing on the beach and starting to mine, collect wood and build barracks to train troops on the spot. Somehow I don't think many wars start out that way. DoW 1 kept similar mechanics but used them in a much more realisitc way. You don't mine or collect materials in the middle of the battle field, instead you capture key points which justify more troops being commited to the battle ground. And you don't build tank factories right on the front line, you just build depots that are capable of servicing troops as they are flown in.

I can't imagine a RTS without base building., the last one that comes to my mind is Command and Conquer 4.., OMG what did they do to that game., why oh why..

DW2 is a diferent kind of game, as people above already said it, it's not exactly a RTS to me, it's a strategy game made for the masses., it's a good game, it's just not an rts.

I have to say I like RTS's that dont focus on base building. C&C is just a race to have the best base, and if you don't have a certain level within two minutes you're screwed. Supreme Commander is very fun and quite epic, but it still a (slower) rush to the experimentals and tech 3 units. Two of my favorite RTS are Sins of a Solar Empire (it does have base building, but not in a sense compared to conventional RTS games), and the Total War games, which when played against human opponents, are the best true "strategy" games one can play.

What i hate about the game companies these days is the fact that they're making RTS games short 'net games to allow people who cant learn to play,to play.

I LOVE the type of RTS games that take 1 or 2 hours of fingernail crunching to set up your base and infrastructure hoping to get it done before the AI's zerg you.  After that..  another 10 to 20 hours to beat the game.

I really enjoy being able to goto a friends place.. set up the computer and network and get a good 20 hours game going while nibbling on junk food.

Well playing RTS with or without building bases is a personal preference. I like bases. I really liked DoW, I hated DoW2.

I have played most good base building RTS games made so far (all the way from Dune 2).

At the moment Starcraft 2 is the best amongst them (for me). Both Singleplayer and multiplayer. Although those 2 minutes in the start seem like you do nothing that is not true. Many games you take some of those starting workers and build your buildings somewhere hidden, or you do drone rushes on really small maps. Or 6 pool rush, or proxy gateways and many similar tactics. With already built base many, many opening strategies would not work.

What base building RTS games simulate is supply lines that are a real problem in real wars. It is not about building troops, it is about being able to support them. This is simulated through max supply and different resources that are needed to be collected.

In baseless games you are free from this. And I find it less fun.

This somewhat eliminates importance of scouting. After the game starts you just enter his base and see right way the combination of buildings and know what is going to happen. In SC2 you need to stick around for a while (and it asks you to multitask which is the first difference in skill between players) and see the combination of buildings that are being placed, you look at their timings, you count the number or workers, you can harass. Or you can run into an empty base and the whole game changes after that.

No mention of Sins of a solar empire? whaa?

you got your civic structure, factories, and defencive structures, but, there isnt really base building.

I'd say that it's kinda true. Mostly because the planet management and structure deployment could be construed as base building, but it's really not.

You're right in that there's not really any base building, because there's not really a single 'base'. Infrastructure is scattered around the player's empire. Incidentally, this makes it more efficient; you can have 'research' worlds, 'trade'/'processing' worlds, and 'forge' worlds, where there's lots of research stations/trade ports/refineries/factories/shipyards and what-have-you, but there doesn't really tend to be an even mix of everything at every world.

For the OP's question, I agree with Darvin. There's games that can do both very well, or very poorly. Supreme Commander 1, Total Annihilation, the older/original Command and Conquer games, none of these have 'tedious' base-building.

Off the top of my head, there's not really a large number of strategy games that have no base building; there's Homeworld 1, Cataclysm, and HW2, which are almost entirely mobile-unit based (HW2 had a couple of turret systems that were deployed and then immobile), Sins of a Solar Empire, which I've noted above, Dawn of War 2&Xpacks.

I'll concede that Sins could be construed as having base-building, but it isn't something that on first appearance would look like it has base-building. Not in the conventional sense anyway. The Homeworld series had a profound lack of immobile units, let alone 'structures'; HW2's turrets are only marginally immovable structures because they zip off from the carrier/mothership that built them and then 'deploy' to the final position of the move.

Dawn of War 2 could also likely be construed as having some base-building, especially with what I've read/heard about the new Xpack, Retribution. This base-building would be in the form of tactical construction; turret/shrine/beacon deployment for example. And in DoW2:Retribution, one race has actual bunkers it can deploy.

On the general subject of Dawn of War 2: I see it's mentioned in the thread quite a bit, and the trend seems to be a love it or hate it kind of thing. However, I'd like to make the humble proposition that DoW2 isn't a strategy game per se, but a tactical game.

Namely because, while there does tend to be an overarching 'strategy', it focuses more on what military services term 'small-unit tactics'. Each unit is (fairly) small, and tends to be intended to either zip around solo or operate in concert with another unit.