Need tips on Strategy games.

S

Starwars

Mildly Dipped
So lately I've been playing Civilization 4 quite a lot, and I enjoy the fact that it's a game I can really relax and take my time with.

Are there any similar games that you can recommend? I'm not generally a fan of RTS games as I often find them to hectic. I'm more interested in the "building" part of games, though I do enjoy the occasional war as well.
I'm think I'm gonna look into Medieval 2 or whatever that game is called again, but I felt the camera system during battles was quite clunky when I first tried it out at a friends house. Perhaps I just need to get used to it.

Even other games that you find relaxing to play for one reason or another (for example, I always found Pirates! to be quite a nice game to sort of play at "half speed" if you know what I mean) can be mentioned as well.
 
Ground Control 1 + exp (squad-level command, no basebuilding or resource crap)
Starcraft + Broodwars (classic)
Dark Reign 1 (an RTS far ahead of it's peers back then, with excellent atmosphere)
Starship Troopers (command of a single squad by microprose using both the movie and the book as references, not the FPS released a while back)
W40k: Dawn of War (& series)
 
Heroes of Might and Magic, Colonization (very old, from the time of Civ 1), Roller Coaster Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon, Sid Mieres Railroads! (it was only okay, but I'd consider it relaxing), Age of Wonders... That is all I can think of right now.
 
Other empire building games
Dominions 3
Master of Orion (1 or 2): far better than Galactiv Civ 2 IMO, probably abandonware by now
Master of Magic (abandonware)
Age of Wonder (1 or 2, although the campaigns play very differently)

Squad combat games
WH40K: Chaos Gate : very challenging turn based squad combat game in Mighty Hero mode. It is even emotionnal as you are denied the load/resurrect option
Jagged Alliance 2
Starship Troopers
Edit: forgot Fallout Tactics: although some elements of the combat system are lousy, the variety of the missions more or less makes up for it.
Edit: forgot Freedom Force: excellent and colorful RTwP superhero game

RTS
Kohan: Ahriman Gift macro focused, thus the pacing is slower than in most RTS, and it includes many traditionnal wargame elements like supplies, units, flanking.
Company of Heroes or WH40K:Dawn of War

Semi historical
Port Royale (the first one is probably better than the second one)
very good open ended game that lets you play a merchant, corsair or pirate.
the Total War series: I think it went downhill after Medieval Total War 1, but some people enjoy the last 2 episodes.
Knights of Honor: Better than MTW for the strategic component, it features less interesting tactical battles though.


Historical games
Strategic level
Paradox games that are 2 years old at least (it is the time it takes them to patch the things), like Europa Universalis 2 (some people prefer Hearts of Iron, but the amount of micromanagement was excessive for me)
Gary Grigsby's World at War


Operationnal level (these are wargames obviously)
Conquest of the Agean or Highway to the Reich
The operationnal Art of War 3


Tactical level (wargames again)
Combat Mission series
Close Combat : Barbarossa to Berlin, or the last one, Cross of Iron
 
uhm .. similar to Civ 4 : Sid Meyers Alpha Centauri

For the history nut:
Medieval 2 Total War (patched up and modded)
Rome Total War (patched up and modded)
see Totalwar.org

very slow but good: Europa Universalis 3 (www.europauniversalis3.com)

very fast but good:
Supreme Commander (tho its very hectic and demanding)

Building:
Roller Coaster Tycoons
RailRoad Tycoons
Sim City

WW2
Company of Heroes
Blitzkrieg (1)

Good single player cine-value
Starcraft
Warcraft 3
and expansions

oh yea ... Heroes of Might And Magic 3 & 5 :)
 
Starwars said:
Have anyone tried out the game called Space Rangers 2? I read the review on the Codex and it looks really interesting.
Click to expand...
Space Rangers 2 is an excellent hybrid game, I didn't put it there because it would be hard to determine its category (I think it is marketed as an RPG), as minigames are a core part of its design, but I had great fun playing it. The RTS part is somewhat frustrating because of the horrible AI, but it is completely optionnal.
 
Caesar 3 is pretty awesome, as is Rise of Nations.

I also liked Stronghold, but that was a bit more action oriented then either of those two.
 
Galdred said:
Starwars said:
Have anyone tried out the game called Space Rangers 2? I read the review on the Codex and it looks really interesting.
Click to expand...
Space Rangers 2 is an excellent hybrid game, I didn't put it there because it would be hard to determine its category (I think it is marketed as an RPG), as minigames are a core part of its design, but I had great fun playing it. The RTS part is somewhat frustrating because of the horrible AI, but it is completely optionnal.
Click to expand...

Naw, the box says it's "Action & Strategy". But, it can fully be considered an RTS, TBS, FPS/3rd Person Shooter, RPG, 4X (to a very limited extent), Adventure, Arcade shooter, and trading sim... all depending on where you are and what you're doing.

The RTS/FPS/3PS aspect can be difficult... but there are quite a number of ways to make it easier. You just have to find the "way of playing" that would suit the individual mission best.
 
If you're not totally sick of Civilization IV, try the Fall from Heaven 2 mod. A very well done fantasy setting mod that adds things like hero units and religions that are actually different from one another.
There's also the upcoming Beyond the Sword expansion.

As for other games, you can't go wrong with GalCiv II.
Master of Orion 2 is of course a classic, you can buy and download it from Atari if you're so inclined. But don't touch MoO 3 with a barge pole. Whatever bad things you may have heard about it, rest assured it's worse.
Space Rangers 2 is very, very good. You just need a little patience and have a tolerance for different play styles (it has everything from trading and turn based combat to text adventures, RTS land battles and arcady shooter sections.)
The only thing I dislike about SR2 is that if you want to be a pirate, soon every single faction hates you and eleventy-billion battleships come running after you as soon as you enter a system. But I got over it. :P
 
The Close Combat games, 1-5.

Hearts of Iron

Commander: Europe at War - New game, came out a few weeks ago, havent played it but it looked good.
 
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