Kevin's Watch

Any turn-based strategy addicts?

I used to play nothing but real-time strategy, until around Rome: Total War. I began to notice a trend: I tended to play on the board/map, entirely focusing on micro-management; I'd skip the actual battles, always going for "auto-battle." I thought, "Hey, isn't there a game that focuses entirely on empire-building?" A year or so later and Civilization IV converted me. I doubt I'll ever play another real-time strategy game, unless StarCraft 2 comes out.

But really, talk about addictive stuff! I'm currently playing Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords, which is the current king of sci-fi, turn-based strategy. It has one heck of a steep learning curve, and the A.I. is the most challenging I've ever seen, but the extra effort you put in reaps great rewards. It's not near as intuitive as Civ IV, but this game is arguably deeper and more replayable. Also: GalCiv II allows you to make custom ships from a vast array of components (you get better parts as you research more technologies). Designing ships is not only fun but very crucial, as making the latest and greatest fighter could mean death or victory in your rush for conquest.

But yeah, nothing like a game of turn-based: founding a civilization, watching it grow, meeting other civs, making allies/starting wars/creating trade networks, researching technologies. Fun stuff. I still need to get the Warlords expansion for Civ IV.

I've been a fan of the civ series since the first one! Something about the epic scope of the game makes it wonderful.

Starting with one settler in 4000BC and going right through to a huge modern society in 2050AD, with almost infinite opportunities for conquest, diplomacy, trading, research and construction on the way through.

I also have R:TW. I found myself doing lots on the campaign map as well, but always played the battles myself (which were arguably too easy) because I got far fewer casualties than autoplaying them.

I have a special place in my heart for RTS games though. Command and conquer was my introduction to the genre, and I also loved red alert and tiberian sun. Once EA got their hands on the series they ruined it though. Generals and zero hour were crap. I hope for a return to the classic style of C&C games at some point.

By the way, Star wars Empires at war is a damn good strategy game. Again, it's a kind of mixture between RTS and TBS, with a galaxy map and planetary/orbital maps where the battles actually take place. Plus, it's star wars!

For some reason I didn't really get into Civ 4, but I've always been a fan of turn-based strategy. I don't have the micro-management ability to actually play RTS games strategically, so I've always preferred them. The Master of Orion games were really good too. I've got Gal Civ II on order, I'm hoping it's as good as it sounds.

There was a genesis RPG that was turned -based that I liked .... wha was it's name ... I have it on an emulator ....


AHHH


Shining Force and Shining Force 2 - fun games!!

I used to play Civ 2 like a crack addict.

Oh, and another AWESOME turn-based game - X-COM!

I love that game. I still play X-com:Apocalypse every once in a while when I'm bored.-jay

Me being a loser.

Turn-Based is stuff like Final Fantasy:Tactics and Vandal Hearts and Real-Time would be C&C:Generals and Warcraft because I like them all.

Agreed, Queeaq. I especially like online stuff for the advantage of human players, even when they're sometimes inferior to the compys.

I was more putting that like a question though I forgot to put question marks in.

kevins-watch wrote:I used to play Civ 2 like a crack addict.

Ah yes, crack addicts' notorious love of Civ 2.

I like the combination of the two that the Total War series gives. I've always found RTS in the style of Red Alert, Empire Earth, etc to be significantly lacking in the strategic, (and even more so in the tactical) aspects.

While turn-based games like Civ, (which I loved and played extensively), to have even less of them.

The Total War series combines the two superbly I think. I'm pretty much unable to play any other type of either now.

--A

Avatar wrote:

I like the combination of the two that the Total War series gives. I've always found RTS in the style of Red Alert, Empire Earth, etc to be significantly lacking in the strategic, (and even more so in the tactical) aspects.

While turn-based games like Civ, (which I loved and played extensively), to have even less of them.

The Total War series combines the two superbly I think. I'm pretty much unable to play any other type of either now.

--A

The only thing I find fun about Warcraft, CC, etc is the superfast microing you have to do to win battles, tough ones anyway.

However, that is enough for me to enjoy it, despite the lack of and sort of realism in the game itself.

I'm behind the times, since I still play Civ III, and apparently out of touch enough not to have noticed that Civ IV was out.

Even better than Civ is an old DOS game called Master of Magic. Now Abandonware, it is a Civ TBS set in a fantasy realm. As the controlling Wizard, you research and cast spells (instead of tech) and build armies (troop units plus spell-summoned creatures) to try to take over two realms by battling your opposing wizards. There is no head-to-head, and depending on the setting the AI is either infantile or an outrageous cheat. The VGA graphics are very painfully dated. Despite all that, MoM is still one of my favorite games of all time.

A few various MoM fan groups have tried to get a game-house to create an updated sequel, or tried to rewrite the game for Windows on their own. Neither effort has come to fruition, however.

Oh well. I don't have time any more to really play these kinds of games anyway - something to do with valuing my marriage...

DW

DukkhaWaynhim wrote:I'm behind the times, since I still play Civ III, and apparently out of touch enough not to have noticed that Civ IV was out.

Even better than Civ is an old DOS game called Master of Magic. Now Abandonware, it is a Civ TBS set in a fantasy realm. As the controlling Wizard, you research and cast spells (instead of tech) and build armies (troop units plus spell-summoned creatures) to try to take over two realms by battling your opposing wizards. There is no head-to-head, and depending on the setting the AI is either infantile or an outrageous cheat. The VGA graphics are very painfully dated. Despite all that, MoM is still one of my favorite games of all time.

A few various MoM fan groups have tried to get a game-house to create an updated sequel, or tried to rewrite the game for Windows on their own. Neither effort has come to fruition, however.

Oh well. I don't have time any more to really play these kinds of games anyway - something to do with valuing my marriage...

DW

Master of Magic....that was one of the [insert number in the triple or quadruple digits] games I played as a kid, on my old IBM compy. My bro would download shareware versions of the games and we'd spend our time playing them. The only one we ever bought was....jazz jackrabbit -_-

Actually was an ok game, but I think I'd make some different decisions at this point.

The shareware version of Master of Magic was one of the first more complex strat games I ever played, with the ability to found new colonies (as well as space restrictions) and stuff like that.

Another game I've played is Romance of the Three Kingdoms (dunno which number). All in all it's a pretty easy game, but it's fun to play the custom officers like guitaroo man, this guy from a rare PS2 game (you can also get jean d'arc, Sun Tzu, and whatnot). Actually, what's really fun is to make a country of entirely make your own officer characters with only one square of land, and then conquer the entire land on your own.

CovenantJr wrote:Ah yes, crack addicts' notorious love of Civ 2.

I know, I was shocked when I heard what Craig Charles was playing on his laptop.

I got GalCivII at the weekend, it's great fun! It plays a lot like Master of Orion III, except they have made it much more urgent. It took so long for your ships to get anywhere in MOO3 that you had to be really good at planning ahead, otherwise you would just run out of time without getting anything accomplished. In GalCiv it's much easier to move about, plus you can easily make your ships faster or improve their range.

I love designing my own ships too, I made a really scary looking fighter that was actually rubbish because of my poor weapons technology.