Good game set in ancient Greece or simillar setting.

[BearBomber]

Can anybody recommend me a good game set in ancient Greece or ancient Rome or a fantasy setting that resembles that era? Something realistic and true to the spirit of that times not retarded "Cyclops and minotaurs are attacking the village, take this +1 sword and kill them!". I've tried Rome:Total War, but the AI is just fucking braindead.

EDIT: In b4 "Wait till Thursday"

 

[treave]

Why, Age of Decadence of course.

There's also the first Age of Empires and Caesar II

edit:

 

[laclongquan]

Caesar III is a true classic for that gaming period.

Pharaoh is good, and a bit different from C3.

Zeus is good in its own way, but its expansion Poseidon is not very.

Knight and Merchant is about Briton (roman name for Britain).

Not much RPG in that setting, I am afraid.

 

[Serious_Business]

There was that RPG from Vogel, you could play Romans or Celts... but he butchered his premise by inserting generic fantasy in it for the sake of not having to make something interesting (demands too much efforts after all). After the first 15 mins of gameplay, you were killing goblins with fireballs. OF COURSE

Oh yeah, Teudogar and the Alliance with Rome, more on the barbarian-side of things (vile creatures), but realistic and fairly interesting, might want to give it a shot.

 

[Monocause]

1. Get the "Europa Barbarorum" mod for Rome:Total War

2. Set the battle difficulty to "very hard". Why? If you use lower difficulties some of the AI routines are not used. RTW AI is far from being stellar but I found that most of the people I knew who complained about it were playing on lower difficulties. Also, EB improves the AI a bit.

 

[Fezzik]

Just wanted to say that the Peloponnesian war would be an awesome setting for an RPG or a strategy game. Imagine role-playing Alcibiades, Brasidas, or Demosthenes.

 

[cutterjohn]

1. Get the "Europa Barbarorum" mod for Rome:Total War

2. Set the battle difficulty to "very hard". Why? If you use lower difficulties some of the AI routines are not used. RTW AI is far from being stellar but I found that most of the people I knew who complained about it were playing on lower difficulties. Also, EB improves the AI a bit.

phpphht! RTW has NO "good" AI settings every battle degenerates into random mob scenes.

I find it especially annoying for Roman legions(which NEVR fought as mobs unless they were planning to lose), and slightly less so for greek style phalanxes...

BTW: to a greek period game, I think that gog.com has something in the strategy games section, but since it had only one review and not much about it elsewhere I still decided not to bite. They also have a few... hmmm... I'mm call them Roman... type of games, or at leats one. (The gfx are atrocious, not sure about the game play for that game(Praetorians maybe?) as I've never heard good things about the company that made it beyond the fanbois...)

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

There's a game called "Tin Soldiers: Alexander the Great" and "Tin Soldiers: Julius Caesar". I don't know if it's a good game, but it has an amusing gimmicks - all the units are represented by miniatures and they are moved (or taken away when they get destroyed, I don't remember precisely) by a human hand.