Best strategy games?

[Sonic Screwdriver]

I would love to get into a tabletop wargame, but the minis are all soo expensive. Warhammer 40K looks awesome, flavour and setting, but from everything I've seen and heard the rules are too simplistic. Oh, and it costs entirely too much money for me to be allowed to spend hours and hours to paint and assemble. Maybe there's something of value out of Battletech, as I liked those rules and the number of minis you need is drastically lower.

I've enjoyed Axis & Allies a fair bit, but I lost my copy, and I don't think I can get enough fellow players into it to play it again.

[Pax]

'Stars!' (Note the '!') is a 4x strategy game that... well, isn't very graphically intensive. It's hard to describe. Follow these links and read up, I just wanna say I love the game.

OMG, I haven't met a fellow Stars! afficionado in a long long LOOOOOONG time!

Myself, I tend to like Turn-based games:

Civilisation (entire series)
Alpha Centauri (and expansion)
Space Empires IV and V
Age of Wonders
Master of Orion II (but not III ...!!)
Master of Magic
Galactic Civilisations (entire series)
... and of course, the aforementioned Stars!



There's only two RTS games I've truly enjoyed:

Halo Wars
Sins of A Solar Empire (and expansion)



Off the computer, I also like:

Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization
Star Fleet Battles

[jioan]

I would love to get into a tabletop wargame, but the minis are all soo expensive. Warhammer 40K looks awesome, flavour and setting, but from everything I've seen and heard the rules are too simplistic. Oh, and it costs entirely too much money for me to be allowed to spend hours and hours to paint and assemble. Maybe there's something of value out of Battletech, as I liked those rules and the number of minis you need is drastically lower.

I've enjoyed Axis & Allies a fair bit, but I lost my copy, and I don't think I can get enough fellow players into it to play it again.

40K isn't that simplistic. The base rules aren't complicated, but when every team starts bringing different abilities to the table the rules and the strategies start to get complex. An easy to understand game isn't always without depth. I do agree, however, that the price is way too high. I mean seriously I'm buying a mass produced plastic kit about 6 inches tall for $30. (In the case of a War Walker.) That's why my group usually only plays 1000 pt. games.

[Allandaros]

Ummm....I'm sorry, but I really have to make this point because it's a personal irritation of mine. What are generally called strategy games aren't. It's like using the word decimate to mean "reduce to 10%". Look it up. So-called real time strategy games are invariably tactical games. I have no idea why what should have been RTT (real time tactical) became RTS. All it would have taken would have been one person on the command and conquer design team to look up the word and I wouldn't have spent twenty years being vaguely irritated with the computer game industry. I did like the Dawn of War games though, although wild horses wouldn't get me to actually play Warhammer 40K.

Pfft. If you're going to play the pedant, choose your words more carefully. Most RTSes are more properly RTL/RTT hybrids - logistics, through base expansion and resource gathering, is what wins most games, and not direct tactical control.

[chrono]

I'm not sure if Space Empires V was mentioned, but it is one of the few strategy games that can totally blow your mind regardless of how hardcore you may think you are (and yes, it's a strategy game a lot more than it's a tactics game). One horrible flaw is that it's never been too popular so it's somewhat abandoned but the good news is that the community has churned out a few mods which fix what an official patch would have done in more popular games. That said, for me 'balance mod' is an essential part of playing SE5 (especially if you'd like more challenging play from the AI).

[Pax]

I'm not sure if Space Empires V was mentioned, but it is one of the few strategy games that can totally blow your mind regardless of how hardcore you may think you are (and yes, it's a strategy game a lot more than it's a tactics game). One horrible flaw is that it's never been too popular so it's somewhat abandoned but the good news is that the community has churned out a few mods which fix what an official patch would have done in more popular games. That said, for me 'balance mod' is an essential part of playing SE5 (especially if you'd like more challenging play from the AI).

... somewhat abandoned? Still thy tongue, Knave!

The majority of the SE community - both for SE4 and SE5 - can be found at SpaceEmpires.net, run by longtime fan and mod-creator Fyron (who I met online when he was still just a kid, years before SE5 came out; it's some of my ideas, which I never implemented, that fed directly into his idea to build the Adamant super-mod. And I also created the "mQNP", or "mount-based Quasi-Netonian Propulsion", concept used in several mods for SE4).

I'm not active in that community anymore, but ... SE5 is not abandoned. It's just produced by a small Indie company. as in, "It's really just the one guy."

[Kallisti]

Wesnoth is a fairly decent turn based game. Also free ( both kinds).

[Sandis]

Not much of a strategy guy, but a friend of mine got hooked on Warcraft III and twisted my ar-err, persuaded me to install it on my laptop. It's been pretty interesting so far. I'm only up to the first undead campaign, but the learning curve's pretty decent. My only major gripe is that losing all your buildings counts as a loss, even if you still have builders left. Of course, the main reason I found that to be an issue was because I decided to relocate my base and figured I might as well take advantage of the fact that tearing your buildings down gets back half of the resources spent building them.

[Pax]

If you like RTS - or even if you don't - you shoud check out Halo Wars. I love the resource-gathering model: functionally infinite resources, based solely on how much of your base you're willing to devote to gathering them. For a Turtle-inclined player like myself, it's a wonderful breath of fresh air: secure your base, scout the immediate area, and find an expansion-base location. Build up a force able to clear that expansion area, and go to town packing it with resource-gathering structures. Use your newly-improved income to establish strong defenses.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

IOW, it's a game that enables you to do things like pause expansion in order to consolidate your new acquisitions, something prior RTS games were sadly lacking in ...

[Lucilla]

Thanks for the lesson in pedantry Allandros!

On Warhammer 40K it's a game I've never been able to get to grips with. Friends of mine play it regularly but all I ever do is whine about the rules. I'm whining a bit less since I realised that it's not a science fiction game.
This took me a long time to work out because it *looks* like a science fiction game; it calls itself science fiction, it's got ray guns and robots and aliens. But once you strip off the veneer, it's a high fantasy game. In a real science fiction game, if you can see it you can turn it and anything else within a thirty metre radius to vapour and you never, ever, charge towards the enemy with a sword shouting WAAAAGHHHH! (Because if you do, you get turned to vapour, as mentioned above). In a high fantasy game, one person with a sword is able to, nay, is expected to, be able to stand up to an entire army (especially if they charge them shouting WAAAAGHHHH!).
With the realisation that 40k is a fantasy game in a science fiction setting my absolute objection to it is reduced, but I still don't much like it. Too much dice rolling and too commercial - Games Workshop may be the only company that's actually *worse* than Wizards of the Coast for constantly making the rules and miniatures you have obsolete, nerfing or ninja-ing entire armies with an article in their in house magazine (cue misty eyes and soft music for "White Dwarf when it was a good games magazine") and insisting that if you don't pay them for the miniatures you can't use them. There's probably a rule somewhere that says you can't use second hand figures.

Yours, grumpily

Lou

[jioan]

If you like RTS - or even if you don't - you shoud check out Halo Wars. I love the resource-gathering model: functionally infinite resources, based solely on how much of your base you're willing to devote to gathering them. For a Turtle-inclined player like myself, it's a wonderful breath of fresh air: secure your base, scout the immediate area, and find an expansion-base location. Build up a force able to clear that expansion area, and go to town packing it with resource-gathering structures. Use your newly-improved income to establish strong defenses.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

For a console RTS it was rather good. However, I found it to get repititive with only 2 playable teams and similar maps that involve the same strategy for most.

[Whet Lunkhoff]

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI is very good, but it has a rather clunky console interface.

Hearts of Iron 3 is out in August, it should be excellent. Delegating whole theatres to the AI will mean a lot less micromanagement.

[Drasha]

The best strategy game i have ever played was a mod for warcraft3 it was a 4 vs 4 game where you had 3 captains and 1 commander. Only the commander could see what the whole team was doing other wise each captain could only see what their units could. it was played on a map with 3 major bottle necks and a few smaller passes each captain would take a section of the map to defend and the commander would send his soldiers to reinforce who ever was being pushed. You had to set up scouts to defend each of the smaller passes and you had to have some fast units in reserve to block the pass if it came under attack. Every minute or so the commander would be given reinforcements that he got to give out to his 3 commanders. The goal of the game was to kill the enemy commander and if you got 2 good teams going against each other it was a lot of fun its just to bad vary few people ever played it and i can't host games

[Pax]

If you like RTS - or even if you don't - you shoud check out Halo Wars. I love the resource-gathering model: functionally infinite resources, based solely on how much of your base you're willing to devote to gathering them. For a Turtle-inclined player like myself, it's a wonderful breath of fresh air: secure your base, scout the immediate area, and find an expansion-base location. Build up a force able to clear that expansion area, and go to town packing it with resource-gathering structures. Use your newly-improved income to establish strong defenses.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

For a console RTS it was rather good. However, I found it to get repititive with only 2 playable teams and similar maps that involve the same strategy for most.

... maybe we can hope that a future DLC / expansion will give us the option to play as the Flood?

[Stable]

Go, the oldest strategy game still played. I love it because very simple rules lead rapidly to complex game play. If you want to learn to play I recommend http://playgo.to/interactive/index.html ! I play on KGS, if anyone's up for a game just shout me (same user name).

Settlers is good, I bought it last week! There is an online version too apparently.

[Zombie]

The Battle for Wesnoth is the best freeware strategy out there, hands down. It's turn-based and played on hexagonal territory with different bonuses for every type of unit.

You play with a team with custom-recruit able sides and factions that change to suit campaigns. The campaigns are great, with many more available to download.

There are multiplayer options with the option to set sides. The AI is good, the factions varied and again, countless more to download. If you like the multiplayer and have grasped the basic factions, 'Pick Your Own Recruits Era' adds another huge dimension in allowing you to custom-create a faction for one game only.

[TheForestAuro]

Civilization 4 is probably my favorite strategy game of all time.

[depricated]

Duh

Erfworld

[Limiate]

I can't believe no one has mentioned X-Com.

The X-com series is AMAZING... god I'm still hoping that some day the franchise is brought back and done well... there are a few knock off versions but no one has come close to the original or its sequel Terror from the Deep.

Steam has all of them available cheaply and bug free which is much better than anything you'll find out there with an eye patch.

Getting your troops, naming them whatever you want and watching them either get slaughtered by aliens or advance... new tech... god I have to open steam and start playing just from writing this!!!

[Prometheus]

Duh

Erfworld

Erfworld is not a game. You would know this if you had listened to the podcasts in the toolbox.