Ashes of the Singularity II: the RTS you win with logistics, not clicks

Everyone knows that RTS moment: you watch a squad fight on one side of the map while your base burns on the other, because you did not click fast enough.

Ashes of the Singularity II is the first RTS in a long while to say that is not the point.

Commander, not pilot

That is the game's philosophy, spelled out by Oxide Games: victory comes from planning and logistics, not speed or reflexes. You do not micromanage every soldier. You command armies of thousands of units, choose where to send them, decide what you defend and what you sacrifice.

Strategic Zoom makes it possible. One turn of the wheel takes you from the orbital view, where the map becomes a board of territories and arrows, down to the front line, where armour smashes into armour. It has been the series' great strength since the first game in 2016, and this sequel pushes the scale further, on battlefields the size of continents: frozen lakes, mountain passes, lava chasms.

The terrain changes under the fighting. Buildings collapse, the ground turns into Turinium, the resource at the heart of the conflict, or returns to its original state. By the end of a long match, the map literally bears the marks of what happened.

Three sides, one campaign

Three factions fight over the solar system: the United Earth Forces, the Post-Human Coalition, humans who have left their physical bodies behind, and the Substrate, a mechanical consciousness born from a program gone rogue. They play genuinely differently in skirmish and multiplayer, head to head or in co-op.

The campaign, though, is humanity only. The story is grounded in a near future, fairly serious, focused on survival and restoration rather than conquest. It does the job without leaving a mark. Stardock notes that some cinematics use AI to add post-processing effects and animation to illustrations made by its artists.

Worth knowing

It is a large-scale RTS: matches are long, and fans of tight twenty-minute skirmishes will not find what they want here.

For everyone else, people who think an RTS should feel like a war rather than a typing test, it is the best of the genre this year. Out tomorrow, 10 November.

Logistics or micro? Both schools fight it out on the InsertCoins Discord, come and pick a side.