What are some good turn-based strategy games?

[DemonKing]

I'm quite partial to Rome and Medieval 2: Total War...yes the combat is in real-time but can be autoresolved, but the turn-based empire building is where the real meat of the games are IMO.

 

[Fez]

That's ridiculous. The Total War games were always meant to be about the real time warfare, not the crappy Risk map tacked onto it - which was purely as an excuse for the player to get into the combat. To hear someone say that the turn-based empire building is the "real meat" only shows that they've either missed the point of the game completely or the series has went down the shitter. That's probably why the newer games are no where near as good as the earlier ones. They've spent too much time on the crappy map and frills and not enough on the real time strategy combats that made the series great.

If you're auto-resolving all the combat then there's no point playing it. The empire building part is awful and dull, dull, dull. Watching units inch across the map where once they'd jump to the next area and initiate the next great encounter is soul-destroying and mind-numbing. Like torture. The old map was simple and functional. It let you do a few tasks and then plan for the real meat: the real time combat. Now the player is forced into more map time and useless combats that achieve nothing just to do the same thing. The game has masses of worthless management tacked on to pad the game out, but there is less meat to it now. Eventually late on into the game you've so many boring tasks and units to hand-hold as they crawl for fifty turns and go through dozens of identical encounters to get the objective done that it's more a matter of sheer endurance for the boredom than tactical genius.

Shogun and Medieval 1 were the better games. They were the games that showed the developers' talent for making real time strategy/tactical games and made the name for the series. It's sad that the series has turned bad. Even old fans of the games that loved the RT combat are forced to auto-resolve just because of the poor design of the newer games.

 

[Jasede]

I find Chaos Gate a paind to get to run on modern operating systems.

Incubation is sweet; I didn't like it though (it's great though).

[I kept thinking: wow, X-Com is even better, why not play it again instead?]

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

That's ridiculous. The Total War games were always meant to be about the real time warfare, not the crappy Risk map tacked onto it - which was purely as an excuse for the player to get into the combat. To hear someone say that the turn-based empire building is the "real meat" only shows that they've either missed the point of the game completely or the series has went down the shitter. That's probably why the newer games are no where near as good as the earlier ones. They've spent too much time on the crappy map and frills and not enough on the real time strategy combats that made the series great.

If you're auto-resolving all the combat it then there's no point playing it. The empire building part is awful and dull, dull, dull. Watching units inch across the map where once they'd jump to the next area and initiate the next great encounter is soul-destroying and mind-numbing. Like torture. The old map was simple and functional. It let you do a few tasks and then plan for the real meat: the real time combat. Now the player is forced into more map time and useless combats that achieve nothing just to do the same thing. The game has masses of worthless management tacked on to pad the game out, but there is less meat to it now. Eventually late on into the game you've so many boring tasks and units to hand-hold as they crawl for fifty turns and go through dozens of identical encounters to get the objective done that it's more a matter of sheer endurance for the boredom than tactical genius.

Shogun and Medieval 1 were the better games. They were the games that showed the developers' talent for making real time strategy/tactical games and made the name for the series. It's sad that the series has turned bad. Even old fans of the games that loved the RT combat are forced to auto-resolve just because of the poor design of the newer games.

This post is so spot on that it deserves to be quoted again in its full glory without further comment

 

[Cray]

For short games, you might enjoy these two if they're you like the strategy games where you send armies around to conquer the map. Generally gets boring after a half hour or so and every match is the same-ish because they didn't bother to include different maps to play on...

Defender of the Crown (remake of the original, on wildgames.com)
Fantasy Empires (use google)

 

[Fat Dragon]

Finally got Incubation to work right on my computer after fooling around with it for a while. I'll try it out once I finish Master of Magic.

Thanks for the shitload of recommendations.

 

[Psycroptic]

M.A.X. (Mechanised Assault eXploration) is a great classic, it's kinda like a turn based Total Annihilation but with more depth.

Sounds interesting, I really enjoyed TA. Is it a DOS game? Shouldn't be too hard to find a download for it if it is.

Dos/Win95, more info here. Can probably find a torrent somewhere or Abandonia has a neutured version.

It doesn't play well with XP or DOSBox, sadly. I imagine that Vista may even be more troublesome. Personally, I think I'm going to set up a Win98 machine to play some of these Win9x games like this one.

M.A.X. 2 had always gotten pretty poor reviews, all of them stating that it was unfinished. Does anyone know if this was ever patched adequately -- and did that make it worth playing?

 

[Texas Red]

If I want some TB goodness HoMM-alike, should I get Age of Wonder or Disciples?

 

[Jasede]

HoMM isn't that good (and I love 2 and 3).

Age of Wonders is closer to Master of Magic than HoMM. This is a good thing.

Disciples is closer to HoMM, so you'll be off well with it.

Who am I kidding? What I meant to say was: -YOU- shouldn't play ei- *is jerked off the stage*

 

[Texas Red]

I'm playing the tutorial of Age of Wonder Wizard's Throne and I get these messages pop up telling me what to do. Then one comes up that gives info on units and nothing more. The tutorial messages stop. What?

 

[Baldr]

Age of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic is an incredible game. It's a stand-alone expansion that renders the original utterly obsolete and unnecessary unless you want to play the campaigns. There is a huge variety of civs (15 I believe) as well as many spells, summons and neutral units. There are a few lengthy campaigns that I've never bothered with, and a few nicely-made scenario maps. I love the random map generator, personally. If you try out the fan-made 1.4 patch, there's even more content.

Also, you can't go wrong with Panzer General. The DOS ones are easy to get, and the newer ones are pretty good as well. I loved PG 3: Scorched Earth. If anyone has played Pacific General, I'd love to hear if it's worth checking out.

 

[Elwro]

I played the demo of Pacific General at least 3 times (a single battle). I loved it, but I'm not sure whether the game was ever eventually released in Poland, so I never ended up buying it. Anyone tried People's General?

 

[someone else]

I have the vanilla MTW2, which mod would you recommend?

Fun = playing bowling with calvary and watching archers. But most of the combat are seiges(with me attacking), any mods to solve this? I love to play field battles.

 

[JarlFrank]

I have the vanilla MTW2, which mod would you recommend?

Fun = playing bowling with calvary and watching archers. But most of the combat are seiges(with me attacking), any mods to solve this? I love to play field battles.

Good mods are Broken Crescent and Stainless Steel. The newest SS version requires Kingdoms, the official expansion, as far as I know, but as Kingdoms adds 4 campaigns and enables you to play quite a lot more mods than vanilla it's worth it. Shouldn't be very expensive either.

Deus Lo Vult is good if you like realism and challenges. Pushes up the difficulty quite a bit and makes the game more fun. Also, try to search for some AI mods so you can play vanilla MTW2 with better AI instead of the retarded unmodded one.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Birth of America

American Civil War

Napoleon's Campaigns

Hi, another ageod fan here! Though not the most classical / typical turn based games, these are the best strategy games available atm.

I recommend American Civil War most of them all.

Another great tb game of our time is Galactic Civilizations 2.

 

[fleppy]

My favourite one is Colonization. Also Civ4-Col is announced. I am sure it will be a good example for an entertaining turn based game.

Also till Civ4-Col is published I will continue playing Invasion and FreeCol. These two examples are very entertaining like old Colonization. Maybe their graphics are not good enought but I think most important thing is game play at TBS games.

You can try these two games at
Invasion - http://www.ozangumus.com/demo.html
FreeCol - http://www.freecol.org

 

[Burning Bridges]

My favourite one is Colonization. Also Civ4-Col is announced. I am sure it will be a good example for an entertaining turn based game.

I am sure it will be a good example of how I got older.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Why is no one here playing games from Ageod? See the thread about Boa2 release:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24892

Their games are turn based and offer incredible gameplay and replayability. For me the best release of the year so far.

 

[Kos_Koa]

I tried getting into ageod games but I couldn't, I don't know why. Maybe it's the setting or that the same music loops every 30 seconds, but I find it not worth the effort. I played the demo of American Civil War and I couldn't force myself to sit through it, and I hear that ACW is the best one.

 

[ushdugery]

Fantasy wars is okay but can't recommend galactic civilisations enough if you want a taste of what it can be like this will give you a taste.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=161570&site=pcg
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=195920&site=pcg

 

[Kos_Koa]

I've played gal civ 2 up to dark avatar and I liked it for a while. I didn't get the second expansion pack since it didn't seem to add anything interesting, then shorty after its release I just lost interest in gal civ entirely.

For some reason I never got that much enjoyment out of the game. It just feels like it's lacking something. Maybe when they release version 2.0? or something I'll get back into it. I think they said they were going to redesign the espionage mechanics or diplomacy or something.

 

[Mefi]

Just wading through Ageod's ACW game now. I'm sure it's brilliant if you're into that particular time period. Sadly, I'm not and it's leaving me more and more cold the longer I play it. It's very deterministic with it's events and I'm getting increasingly fed up with building industry one turn to find it's not there the next. It's not helping that the game relies on you having knowledge of neutral states etc in order to play - I'm British ffs, it really is no concern of me that Kentucky was neutral and if the game doesn't tell me in advance, how the hell am I meant to know it's a bad idea to go charging in there.

 

[Shannow]

Fallout Tactics. It's no JA but it is fun enough, if you're not a rabid FO fan and start frothing at the mouth as soon as someone shits on canon by misspelling dogmeat... But since this is the Codex I'm sure you'll be ok.

Chaos Gate was fun (If you get it to run).

Also: What Fez said (Although I didn't play ME1 and Rome is my favorite in the series. Managing more than 20 regions and fighting 5 useless, piss easy battles against bad AI per round isn't fun.)

 

[Mefi]

The old HPS games are good fun. John Tiller is still flogging them for those who wish to buy them again.

 

[desocupado]

Warhammer Chaos Gate is loads of fun. Saved in the last mission and never finished, like I use to do.

Get the Microsoft Virtual PC, a windows 98se iso and you're set.

Just don't install the virtual machine addons, it made the game not run properly here.