Recommendations for a TB Startegy Title

Pity about your non-futuristic slant, magerette - otherwise, I'd recommended the Battle Isle games.
 
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For sci-fi there's the great Galactic Civilizations series. I loved the first one, and I'm sure the second is excellent, but I'm just rarely in the mood for that sort of setting.
 
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Pity about your non-futuristic slant, magerette - otherwise, I'd recommended the Battle Isle games.

Jaz it's good to see you around, and with a snazzy new avvie, too :)
I'm not ditching futuristic completely-- if it's a really good game I'm interested. It's just I find guns and weapons trees difficult to get lost in--I would say it was my hippie pacifist roots:meditate:, but that doesn't prevent me from wasting continents through necromancy and heavy dependence on the Fireball spell, so it has to be something else. Is the game really old and really hard? (have mercy...I am a weak sister)

@ Gallifrey :We seem to be in agreement on GalCiv--I have all the games but I rarely play them.

I am presently printing out the seventeen page tutorial for Dominions. I find it quite well written and entertaining, so much so that I am putting a new quote in my sig.
 
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Ah yes, how could I forget? Battle for Wesnoth is a great game! Heartily recommend it.

Also, I've tried out Conquest of the New World, and it works fine with Dosbox, if you're interested. But, eh, Wesnoth is free, so I guess you'd probably want to try that one first. ;)
 
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Pity about your non-futuristic slant, magerette - otherwise, I'd recommended the Battle Isle games.

*Very* popular once here in Germany !

I bought the last game of this series a few months ago on a flea market here.
 
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Ah yes, how could I forget? Battle for Wesnoth is a great game! Heartily recommend it....
... But, eh, Wesnoth is free, so I guess you'd probably want to try that one first. ;)

That looks really interesting, and after i wade through my current assignments I'm on it.

Alrik, this looks like one you would like! Very cheerful. :)
 
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I've heard about it and it is on my radar for some time now. :)

I just wanted to wait until it is more polished. :)
 
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Been meaning to download this for a while ... well, now I did. Now there is the time aspect ...
 
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I am always amazed that you can even remember the games you play with your huge cross-platform "caseload", Mike. ;)

I look forward to playing this one someday too, but I have a feeling I'll be playing Dominions for a while. It's really really a big game, and so far just the tutorial in the demo has taken four or five hours, though it was more fun than work and well worth the research time to figure out how to play it :) Not that it's awkward or difficult, it's very simple and intuitive in many ways--there's just so much there (600 different magic spells, 7 schools of magic, four or five types of elemental spells within each school, hundreds of different, individualistic units, etc).

Many thanks to Cormac for turning me on to this one. And to everybody else for their excellent suggestions as well. :)
 
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I'd say Battle For Wesnoth is very nice. I played it for a month or two, I mostly like them multiplayer though. I'm waiting for their new version to be complete, the 1.3.x is still in development but you can play the 1.2.x perfectly. It's nice if you download some add-ons for the game too.

Conquest of the New World, like Vperic said is very nice and challenging too. It's been a while since I've played it though.

About the Civilizations, I preferred Civ 2 the most, I liked the way everything worked. Civ III was nice, but I thought it was Civ II all over again with just better graphics. Civ IV is very nice, I like all the new features. It's quite easy on the easier difficulties while in Civ II I could hardly survive on Chieftain I think.

I do believe they're all very good, but they can take a long time. If you like that then there's an option in the fourth game to make games last longer :)

Age of Wonders seemed very good, but I never bought it, I just played the demo.

The Heroes of Might and Magic series were quite nice too and if you have some friends over for like a few hours every day you can have even more fun.

Castles II isn't really TB but I thought and still think it's a great game, I don't think it works on XP though.

Risk is a very good game and very hard too.
Master of Orion II (I didn't like the third) is a very nice Space TBS. It has very nice features and it's a game that's easy to learn and hard to master, somewhat like Battle for Wesnoth I believe. It had a similar tech-tree to Civ except it's in space :)
Btw, there's freeciv, which is an open-source version of Civ II out there. It's free, so if you want to try out some kind of Civ II (they changed some features, added others...) it's a good place to start to see if you'll like the Civ series.

The Total War series are worth trying too. Lords of the Realm II (I think there's a third out there too though) is nice, battles are a bit cumbersome, but it's a nice game. Lords of Magic too. Both are TBS, Lords of Magic is in a fantasy realm though. I couldn't get it to run on XP though.

Quite a long post and I think that's all I know about TBSs so...

Oh, Gangsters : Organized Crime, great, great game.... Unlike anything you've ever seen and really, really difficult, at least for me.
 
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Oh, Gangsters : Organized Crime, great, great game.... Unlike anything you've ever seen and really, really difficult, at least for me.

I see organized crime every day on my TV - so why should I buy me such a game ?

(Sorry, couldn't resist. ;) I just don't like these types of games. ;) )

The only game in that direction I really want to try out is the famous (at least here) "Pizza Connection". ;)
 
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Lords of the Realm is a great game, heartily recommended. Get II, though - in III the gameplay was vastly changed, and I don't think it's for the better. Lords of Magic is interesting too - they describe it as a mix of HoMM 2 and Lords of the Realm 2, and I kinda agree with that. Gangsters is... less than interesting, at least for me. I'll agree that it's a very hard game, though (maybe that's why I didn't like it?).

Hmm, thinking back, I'd have to say the late 90's were the "golden age" of TBS games.
 
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I agree, Gangsters isn't for everyone, but I liked the concept a lot and found the challenge very nice. I also like all the options and the way the game worked. I had never played a game like that before and never have since. I would recommend trying it even you might not like it it's a nice experience, I believe. I had lost my copy so I bought the game bundled with Gangsters II a few years ago for €10, about $14.
I didn't really like GII (Gangsters II) though, it seemed oversimplified!

If you like very old TBS, the games from KOEI are very nice, all are about the same which makes them a bit repetitive after you played one of them.
I got Nobunaga I and II from Home of the Underdogs I think. Romance of the Three Kingdoms 1 through 7 or 8 are nice too. I only played one of them I think. Other good abandonware TBS include Centurion, The Sword of the Samurai and several others I forgot the name.
Europa Universalis II was a bit too sandboxy for me, but maybe you'll like it. I might have not liked it because I was expecting a superb game with a Civilization touch to it, but it's a TBS too.
 
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About the Civilizations, I preferred Civ 2 the most, I liked the way everything worked. Civ III was nice, but I thought it was Civ II all over again with just better graphics. Civ IV is very nice, I like all the new features. It's quite easy on the easier difficulties while in Civ II I could hardly survive on Chieftain I think.

The difficulty levels are dialed back a lot in CivIV I've noticed. I also don't like how quickly the ages advance, and the absence of a tech tree showing the research progress through each age is a step back as well.

Master of Orion II (I didn't like the third) is a very nice Space TBS. It has very nice features and it's a game that's easy to learn and hard to master, somewhat like Battle for Wesnoth I believe. It had a similar tech-tree to Civ except it's in space :)

Oh the time I've lost to MOOII! Such a great, great game. III was a complete disaster though, and I'll never forgive Atari for allowing Quicksilver to create that piece of crap and insult to the Master Of Orion name!
 
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It's really encouraging to see so many of you have played my favorite games. The very first game I ever played on the computer(besides Free Cell ;) ) was Master of Orion 2. I'll never forget the first time I defeated the Psilons, Humans, Sakkra and kicked the Antarrans out of the known universe. I still have it on my hard drive and play it monthly at least.
The second game I ever played, and the first game I bought and picked out myself, was HoMM II. Gem, the lovely Gem...and the green guy, Halok? or something. Many many hours there. I remember actually calling the 3DO office to order the expansion. :)
Lords of Magic was a great game also, (loved the Elves/Life faction) and I actually got it to run in XP, but the thrill was just gone--the graphics looked absolutely unreadable and pixellated on my widescreen...I may replay it again someday on my older computer. I will look out for Lords of the Realm 2--I have LoR III somewhere but never got around to playing it.

Have to agree about MOOIII--what a nightmare. I've had more fun with an excel spreadsheet than I ever had trying to play that game.

Thanks again for all the great suggestions. I've tried to follow all the links and bookmark them for eventual consumption. I guess if nobody makes any super games in the next few years, there will still be plenty of excellent time sinks like these to dive into. :)
 
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I'm going to throw another vote in for AoW: SM. By far the best TBS I've played on a comp. The tactical map really makes for some engrossing battles.

I'll also say how dull I find CivIV. Lots of pretty graphics and a pile 'o stuff jammed in (long list of techs, units, bldgs, etc.), but just not a lot of substance. It boils down to some very, very simple gameplay dressed up with a whole lot of "stuff" that doesn't really amount to much. And the combat is dreadfully simplistic. That's perhaps the biggest disappointment for me.

P.S. Thank the heavens! Jaz change her avatar!!!! :)
 
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P.S. Thank the heavens! Jaz change her avatar!!!!

I kind of miss the old pervert. :)
 
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I kind of miss the old pervert. :)
:lol:

Just thought of another: Axis & Allies, the old Hasbro version re-creating the fantastic board game on the comp, not the newer Timegate, RTS version. One of those "simple but deep" games that I can always come back to.
 
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I can't run A&A on Xp, nor Conquest of a New World, nor Castles II, nor Lords of Magic... I have no idea why...

Axis and Allies gets my vote too though, very nice game. Good difficulty too.
Hard is hard, easy is easy and normal is normal.

About Civ IV, I don't think it's a bad game, and there were very nice additions made to the game, but I find it boring after a while. I do think it's better than Civ III in that it innovated the game. Civ III to Civ II really didn't change anything except for the culture thing added to the game. I think I'll download Freeciv now :D

magerette, have fun.
 
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