Your favorite strategy games.

[Axioms]

It would be really nice to have a thread like this but the forum software would just exclude the top 100 most famous game titles after the user posted.

Do we really need 10000 people saying they liked Civ4 and MoM?

 

[flyingjohn]

Do we really need 10000 people saying they liked Civ4 and MoM?

Well the thread title is best " favorite strategy games" and not "best hidden gems/obscure/unknown strategy games."
I will make a list of stuff already mentioned in the first post tomorrow. But people should post whatever they like the most regardless of popularity or amount of times mentioned.

 

[Axioms]

Do we really need 10000 people saying they liked Civ4 and MoM?

Well the thread title is best " favorite strategy games" and not "best hidden gems/obscure/unknown strategy games."
I will make a list of stuff already mentioned in the first post tomorrow. But people should post whatever they like the most regardless of popularity or amount of times mentioned.

Sure which is why I was arguing for another, different thread. But I don't think there is much point to a thread that could be replaced by a random pc gaming top 100 strategy list made any time in the last 20 years.

Of course you can, and did, make a thread anyways. Codex is free speech after all.

 

[flyingjohn]

But I don't think there is much point to a thread that could be replaced by a random pc gaming top 100 strategy list made any time in the last 20 years.

Have you ever seen these lists before? Not one of them includes master of magic but includes stuff like civ 6 and marvel midnight sun's. And i specifically searched for best strategy games in incognito to find out what the algorithm gives first.
Plus, i listed all the mentioned games in this thread, the lists don't even cover 1/3 of the entries.

 

[man-erg]

The ones with most 100s of hours spent:

Civ 4
HOMM3
EU2
AI Wars
UFO Enemy Unknown
Panzer Corps 1 & 2

 

[Axioms]

But I don't think there is much point to a thread that could be replaced by a random pc gaming top 100 strategy list made any time in the last 20 years.

Have you ever seen these lists before? Not one of them includes master of magic but includes stuff like civ 6 and marvel midnight sun's. And i specifically searched for best strategy games in incognito to find out what the algorithm gives first.
Plus, i listed all the mentioned games in this thread, the lists don't even cover 1/3 of the entries.

RPS best 50 strategy games of all time list is a great example. But there's hundreds of others.

 

[Humanophage]

Civ5 is the Civ game for people who don't want to build an empire. That's the deal with the 'tall' play talking point. Of course, you can build large and powerful cities in other Civ games. The actual meaning is 'I can't be arsed to manage more than 5 cities'. Which is fair enough. But there are two problems with how Civ5 tries to create 'tall' play. You remove the usual source of conflict between players, the struggle to control land and resources. Also, more is better is essentailly a law of the universe. Trying to circumvent it requires hamfisted, degenerate and infuriating game mechanics like the global happiness counter and even worse the increase of tech/SP costs per city.

Conquest in Civ4 vs a skilled player is quite difficult and costly, btw. Moreover, city maintenance is quadratic in the number of cities. Even a successful conqueror needs time to digest the new lands which are unproductive initially and recover from the strain of war. This gives other players the opportunity to follow suit. End game is about conflict between large empires and players who couldn't obtain more land get eliminated. This is the proper order of the universe.

This is not the proper order of the universe. In reality, sprawly empires are nothing special and they tend to promptly collapse. The strong centres are the likes of China or India, which are generally "tall" rather than very sprawly. It is difficult to digest big foreign cities and the further you advance in time, the tougher it gets (as cities get bigger in absolute terms). Maintaining control over large colonized urban centres is almost impossible, especially if those are multinational empires (an aspect that is poorly controlled in Civ4). Expansion in Civ4 feels more like something that can happen at the level of a smallish country, not the world. Corporations in Civ4 annul any attempts to control sprawl. You can put a city in the arctic with a couple of corpos, and it will grow just fine, the geometric penalty is too weak. The amount of cities also tramples the quality of cities too much. The growth of unhappiness with time is realistic as it is a normal function of things like literacy which is addressed in e.g. Victoria with consciousness.

In any case, there are a ton of strategies where conquest is the only way forward. It is good to have one where there are several ways and the economy isn't just an excuse to build more units. Conquest is still powerful enough there and the winner usually ends up being a conqueror, but less a world conqueror like in a board game and more like the conqueror of neighbours, like in reality.

 

[civac2]

With late game tech you can have as many cities as you want. But that's not true for most of the game. Early on overexpanding absolutely is detrimental.

The core issue I have with Civ5 is not so much conquest-related. It's that it is often not worth settling empty quality land which is also completely ahistorical.

 

[Axioms]

With late game tech you can have as many cities as you want. But that's not true for most of the game. Early on overexpanding absolutely is detrimental.

The core issue I have with Civ5 is not so much conquest-related. It's that it is often not worth settling empty quality land which is also completely ahistorical.

Well Civ like most 4X games is in no way historical. Literally nothing about civ is historical. So complaints about history make little sense.

In fact I'd argue that by marketing so called "historical 4x games" as being more and more historical as more sequels come out, developers are straight up lying to players.

At least Paradox games, despite their many, many, many flaws, *try* to represent history. Civ and Civ-clones never did.

 

[adddeed]

My favotires:

Empires Dawn of the Modern World
Haegemonia
Imperium Galactica 2
Nexus
Ground Control 1
Myth 2
Age of Wonders series (mainly AoW1)
Disciples 1 and 2
Black and White 1
Sacrifice
Army Men 2
Maelstrom
Perimeter 1

 

[Kouvo]

Cossacks
Original War
Disciples 2
Settlers 3
Empire Earth
Age of wonders sm
Homm3

 

[G.O.D]

Hardly any mention of Eador Genesis + NH. Shame Codex. Shame.

No seriously, it is fantastic. One of my all-time favorites besides the ones everyone loves. Do try it (with New Horizons) if you have not.

 

[Axioms]

Hardly any mention of Eador Genesis + NH. Shame Codex. Shame.

No seriously, it is fantastic. One of my all-time favorites besides the ones everyone loves. Do try it (with New Horizons) if you have not.

Eador in the various versions was good. The problem was it was just so damn grindy.

 

[G.O.D]

Hardly any mention of Eador Genesis + NH. Shame Codex. Shame.

No seriously, it is fantastic. One of my all-time favorites besides the ones everyone loves. Do try it (with New Horizons) if you have not.

Eador in the various versions was good. The problem was it was just so damn grindy.

It's by no means perfect, but what game is. In return you do get tactical, and mechanical depth.

As far as for it being grindy. It does depend on the difficulty setting you choose to play (I wouldn't recommend the higher ones in that regard), and patience.
I can't say it feels that way for me tbh.

 

[Galdred]

Hardly any mention of Eador Genesis + NH. Shame Codex. Shame.

No seriously, it is fantastic. One of my all-time favorites besides the ones everyone loves. Do try it (with New Horizons) if you have not.

Eador in the various versions was good. The problem was it was just so damn grindy.

It worked in skirmish mode, but the campaign was very grindy indeed.

 

[Falksi]

• X-Com '94
• X-Com Apocalypse
• Rome: Total War
• Hard West
• Dune 2
• Langrisser 2
• Shining Force 2
• Civilization IV
• StarCraft 2
• Valkyria Chronicles

 

[wwsd]

Rise of Legends.

Never tried this one, which is a shame, because it seemed like an interesting and original sequel to Rise of Nations.

RoN I played quite a bit back in the day. I missed out on Empire Earth, but then the magazines promised RoN would be something even better in terms of strategy in all of human history. Like a real-time version of Civilization. Or, alternatively, Age of Empires but with borders and civics. The expansion campaigns were decent fun, as long as they had some set pieces or events or other gimmicks. But just the plain old "Conquest" map mode was kind of same-ey, and that was the most prevalent one. It probably doesn't hold up all that greatly today, but I still fire it up sometimes just for fun. I played it in multiplayer with friends from another forum a couple of times, I think that's more fun.

 

[flyingjohn]

No seriously, it is fantastic

Unfortunately what came after is just sad or disappointing.

 

[G.O.D]

Hardly any mention of Eador Genesis + NH. Shame Codex. Shame.

No seriously, it is fantastic. One of my all-time favorites besides the ones everyone loves. Do try it (with New Horizons) if you have not.

Eador in the various versions was good. The problem was it was just so damn grindy.

the campaign.

Wouldn't even bother with it. Didn't even come to mind when talking about it being grindy, as I automatically assumed the solo game was meant by that.

 

[Zoo]

Favourites

Age of Empires II
Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword
Command & Conquer: Red Alert - maybe mostly for nostalgia
Commandos
Crusader Kings - yes, I played mostly the first game, maybe a hidden gem, as it is more obscure than the latter games
Dungeon Keeper 1-2 - I love the first one more, but both are great
Heroes of Might and Magic II-V - 2-3 are excellent, the first one one was great for its time (and it is also fun for me nowadays), the 4th and 5th games have many problems, but I enjoyed them
Imperialism*
Incubation
Jagged Alliance 1-2
King's Bounty - mostly played The Legend and the Armoured Princess
Panzer General
People's General*
Sid Meier's: Colonization
StarCraft - with Brood War it is even better
Total War (I have played mainly Shogun 1-2, Medieval, Rome, Warhammer)
WarCraft II-III
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate* - it is the definitve WH40K video game experiance for me, but it has flaws and bugs
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
X-COM: UFO Defense (a.k.a. UFO Enemy Unknown)

*Maybe it also qualifies as a hidden gem for the uneducated mass.

I don't know certainly, Pirates!, Worms or some managerial games (Sim City, Theme Hospital) belongs to this thread or not.

Hidden gems

Fantasy Wars
Haegemonia
Warhammer 40,000: Rites of War

 

[oldmanpaco]

The Ancient Art of War
The Ancient Art of War at Sea
The Ancient Art of War in the Skies
Command HQ
Warlords (1990)
Civilization II
Master of Orion