Most challenging single player TB strategy game

So which one is it in your opinion?

Taking all the factors in mind:
Systems, options, AI which game is the most challenging (hopefully without being too "unfair")?

My mind went immediately to JA2 and GalCiv2 but I'm sure there are more out there!

 

Open TftD is challenging when you enable the sneaky AI settings ( which is a must for OpenXcom IMHO too bad most people are too pussy to play with it) but its in the Unfair due to how the game is balance.

I don't think Vanilla is that hard (Neither the games you mentioned are hard IMO), If a game is fair its probably easy and winnable there's so much you can do with AI to give them an advantage relative to the player without them outright cheating.

If you want a hardcore challenging TBS game that is fair play Microsoft Chess Titans.

 

Space rangers on 200% is impossible , unless you absolutely know what to do .

 

Vanilla JA 2 isn't challenging at all, once you get a grip. But why play vanilla when you can play 1.13? It's 100% customizable, so the challenge depends on your settings. It takes some kung-fu with .ini file, but it's totally possible to make this game unbeatable.

To the topic, I think the most challenging tbs strategy is original (2D) Eador. It takes a fucking eternity to finish the campaign - I am dead serious, 200h at the very least. You can't savescum (one strategical mistake at any point can lead you to restarting the game ALL OVER). And it fucks you again and again with difficulty daggers. One moment you think you've cracked the game ("knight+healer strategy beats everything, lolz"), but then you get a centaur rush from a guy who's allied with centaurs from turn 1. It's an autistic madness.

Also this

 

Eador. Thought considering bugs it can be ultimate challenge, you can experience bug on strategic map which makes it unwinnable.

 

Hmmm Eador eh? Can't say I know much about it. Does the AI actually play the game well to make it difficult or is it setup in a way that you will have problems regardless?
Sounds interesting anyway.

And yeah JA2 I meant with 1.13 of course

 

This is a low quality bait but I'm still triggered. Please stop.

 

Was hard for me back then in high difficulties. I'm not trying to trigger you, I honestly found it decently challenging at least until you have a full understanding of all the systems and know how to rush and grab planets properly in early game.

 

The question is wrong.

Almost every TBS can be hard and challenging on higher difficulty levels, only because most games have AI that can't play the game well and the devs resort to giving it more or less bonuses.
And from there it's a just a matter of learning the AI routines and devising one or more optimal strategies that will counter that "unfair" advantages (which most likely will result in a rush to certain objectives - terrain, research, early battles, whatever - due to the nature of those AI "crutches).
After some time beating JA 2 1.13 on Insane is doable without much frustration (but with much tedium).


If you are asking - which game is the most challenging to play without giving the AI bonuses that the player cannot have, my answer is - I simply don't know.
I've read that after this semi-official AI patch Pandora might be worth trying, but I haven't gotten to that yet.
I've read good things about GalCiv 2 and FreeCiv AI as well.

But playing ane game in Iron Man mode will immediately make it more challenging and enjoyable than usual; as you will have to stick to what the RNG Gods unleashed upon you - and there are games that can generate a "dead end" state for you from the get go.

 

Yeah you could say my question is that. Even if it's only for the first 100 hours it's good enough for me.
GalCiv2 indeed had good AI but as indeed you mention, eventually you'd find its weaknesses and exploit them.
I'm eager to try Eador, I've been reading its topic for a bit and people here seem to love it

 

TBS is a bit limiting.

If you can lower yourself to some RTwP game, UFO Afterlight at highest difficulty is absolutely delightful. Even if you know everything already, the change in difficulty bonus coupled with the change in enemy level can give you hard to adjust battles, mostly because you cant simply change gear fast enough. You have to find approriate tactics for approriate CURRENT gears to deal with the newest enemies. Sometimes you just have to throw up your hands in surrender, reload, accept your loss of that battle without fighting, and move on.

I mean, the knowledge that your next gun, currently inresearch and will be produce soon, will be of no help for at least 7 days more, around 2-3 battles. you may have to make a conscious decision to avoid an entire branch of research/production to concentrate on others, because it's so costly in time even if the gains might be enormous (robotics).

 

Eador's AI is real shitty. You just have low gold/crystals @ max difficulty and fight ZERGS of monsters that only MOVE FORWARD and attack something mostly at random, with some exceptions. That's why you can defeat armies 5 times bigger than yours without losses (or even more bigger if you have a solo hero).

In JA2 1.13 just solo slit everyone's throats at night on INSANE with a knife (stealth/night ops/athletics/thief/85+ agility) for the newer build, suppressed SMG/2x scope/AET ammo (machine gunner/night ops) 3-round burst to the torso with v.4870.

I'm sorry for you if you think GalCiv2 had good AI.

 

Hmm, the tactical AI is decent at least in the sequel/graphic remaster.

That's overrated. It;s more fun establishing killzones, using those support weapons and finally utilizing liberally suppressive power of MG's.

You shouldn't post more.

 

Ok, I take that back.

 

Original Eador does not have a brilliant tactical AI, true. What it does often have is strategical advantage. And your task is to find a way to outplay it, which isn't easy at all. Bottom line: winning tactical battles against comparable forces is easy; winning actual wars and the game itself is hard. I'm speaking higher difficulty levels, of course - never played it in normal. Max difficulty is impossible to beat, tho. Also, Eador's remake lacks some autistic hardcore elements of the original.

If you're looking for a tbs with good tactical AI - can't go wrong with Katauri's King's Bounty series. I found KB: Dark Side to be especially tricky if you play it on max difficulty level, mostly due to AI's advantage in number and quality of troops, but also because AI itself is genuinely gud.

Edit: strictly speaking, KB is not a strategy game. But whatever.

 

Master of Orion on Impossible, playing the Alkari or Mrrshans, is the most challenging TBS I've played. I still haven't beat the game with those settings.

 

Some of Civilization 5's scenarios are extremely difficulty on Deity, notably the Scramble for Africa (win as Ottomans, Afrikkaners) or the Mongols one (win in under 100 turns). There's actually a group who got the Mongol one down to a science so maybe not, but for the average player it's a very brutal scenario to do.

Also, JA2's 1.13 kicks my ass, but I was never that good at the game to begin with.

 

Do you have detail on what sneaky AI does?

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk

 

The AI Conserve reaction points for pot shots, the AI Scouts, and has a tendency to hide behind cover to set up ambushes.

Its awesome.

 

TFTD isn't that bad. Try the Piratez mod, it's fucking brutal.

 

Chess. GL reaching master/grandmaster level required to beat some modern programs.

 

Hammer & Sickle. Both the combat and the meta are ridiculously hard.

 

The AI in Eador is typical for this kind of game: completely hopeless in a fair fight but aggressive enough it will destroy you if it catches you unprepared. That's not really what makes the game difficult though:
- it has a forced ironman mode. You can go one turn back at most (which penalizes your score each time, which affects your world map resources in a roundabout way). Not that it's going to help you much if you're just in a bad overall position.
- there are missions where losing = campaign over. There are missions where losing (or losing without completing secondary objectives first) makes you unable to get one of the endings.
- combine the above two with the fact that the campaign takes dozens of missions and 100s of hours to complete.
- there is also a (hidden) turn limit on the world map. I've never seen it happen, but from what I've heard it's there. So you can't lose most missions and grind your way to victory.
- the economy is brutal unless you know exactly what you're doing, and it's still not easy then. If you want to use the best kind of troops from every tier (and you usually do), you'll be spending most of your income for army upkeep. You can get into negative income and gold reserves too. Often it's not "what I build first" but "I hope I won't lose that unit, I can't afford another one yet", especially early on.
- neutral armies are often much more powerful than the active AI player and unless your hero is a scout you don't know exactly what you're facing before a battle. 1 more powerful unit in a neutral squad often makes the difference between victory with no/minimal loses and total disaster because you face tier 2-3 units long before you have your own tier 2.
- sometimes you just get random events that take most of your gold or kill all guards in your province. If your capital city gets conquered it's over (you quickly develop a habit of leaving guards and one unit in the garrison there, but probably after losing a map after 3 hours because of a sudden undead uprising).

 

M.A.X. is quite good and has a surprisingly apt AI.

 

Nah, all the cool kids play AlphaGO now ;3