Best Strategy Games are.....

[Brasidas]

Best RTS ever is Total Annihilation. An unobservant person will say the sides are basically identical, but that simply is not true. One side is plodding and firepower intensive, and the other is much quicker but with slightly better air superiority assets. I have never before played a game where quick thinking, multi-tasking, and prioritization are the most important aspects . Evil tricks I love (I play the original, no mods!) making insertion packets with at least three sets of two air transports carrying a jammer k-bot, and a level one construction vehicle, send each pair to a different section of the map behind enemy lines, and build a level one construction factory (self destruct the transports, you don't want telltales if you try to fly them out and they get seen), then proliferate ASAP, build up production, put up advanced radars and send details out. All this while engaging enemy defences frontally. Multi-axial offensives will eat your opponents' attention like a cancer and allow you to destroy key defensive installations while he/she is otherwise occupied. When they are able to get back to their other areas of concern, they are production attrited and no longer able to hold you off. Most people make the mistake of trying to go for metal resource extraction/production, it's the energy that's critical. Energy is the biggest chokepoint IMO, not metal. The slightest shortfall in energy hurts enemy defenses as well as production, whereas metal production will only damage production and you can scavenge enough metal if you have to. Also, energy assets are more expensive production wise and much harder to replace as well. One advantage about energy assets is they can be distributed in very defensible locations, ie reverse slopes, underwater, and so on so forth. I love that game.

 

Best single player turn based 4X strategy game would have to be Space Empires IV, very customizable, replayability out the wazoo, great unit design, civilization design, and total fun to play. If you have the right tech, you can custom design fighters that will be able to defend every major planet in your empire and they cost nothing to maintain (unlike ships)! Downsides, terrible AI even on impossible setting, too easy to just trade technology with a species (ie rock colonization for ice colonization) and then jump into system with a fleet and wipe em out so they don't compete with you for planets. Also, no IPX or TCP/IP protocols for multiplayer which are both desperately needed, play by e-mail does not allow for tactical combat tragically. Also, economic model is kind of flawed, as any planet with just one million in population can build a huge space battleship in nearly as much time as a planet with a population of four billion. Makes it pretty simple to spread out naval infrastructure without a realistic supporting population in place.

 

Best multiplayer turn based 4X strategy game ever is MOOII. Awesome fun with more than 2, however people will quit in droves when they realize that your spies have been inciting other species to fight war with them until you develop plasma cannons and wipe out all their fleets with one cruiser and two destroyers. Economy is all in this one, other species will do your bidding on the strength of your economy with a minimum of diplomatic overtures especially if you dangle the right technology before them. You don't even need a very big fleet, just a wel equipped one. Sometimes, random events can make or break a player, especially in the beginning with splinter colonies, asteroid strikes, and plagues. Might be best to turn that option off. Sometimes resource and planet distribution is not very even, many times game is very unplayable for one player and highly advantageous to another. Some like the challenge though.

 

Best tactical multi-player/single player 3D overhead real time combat game, it's gotta be Myth I. Ground breaking technology, awesome plot/story and terrific mission design, no game more fun, and more enjoyable. Awesome balance, and game mechanics, this game made Bungie, till then it was just a Mac niche player. Not much bad you can say about the game except maybe it should have supported D3D sooner, but then again, at the time D3D 3.0 wasn't ready for this level of gaming technology, so you either did software rendering or 3Dfx's Glide API.

 

More later, gotta work.

 

Regards,

 

Brasidas

[Guest Murph]

Brasidas, I'm going to disagree with you on MOO II. I found the micromanagement level made what was originally an excellent game with loads of replay value into just another boring game. The tech and space combat were nice, but the management was what made the game practically unplayable. Plus there was a bug that seemed to allow the other races to pull ahead of you in every catagory rapidly. I hope that MOO III is going to get rid of the micromanagement feature. I hate having to tell my colonies to build "X" building. I did like that fact that ships were somewhat more customizable, and that older ships could be upgraded to newer models. I really don't like the micromanagement level of game, and to some extent the EU series has this fault.

 

The Operational Art of War series was great, and add Baldur's Gate II as another great one.

[Brasidas]

Originally posted by Murph:

Brasidas, I'm going to disagree with you on MOO II. 

 

<snip>

 

The Operational Art of War series was great, and add Baldur's Gate II as another great one. 

 

It's ok Murph, I actually like micromanagement in my strategy games since I can't do it in real time so much. I do enjoy such minutiae. I try to keep up with progress on MOO III, but I had let it go without checking for about four months. I just checked up after you told me about it again, while I did like the idea of attention points, or whatever they call it, I really despise the fact that they are taking the meat out of ship design and giving tactical command over to the computer. This happened before in a previous game franchise handled by THQ (Pax Imperia II) and it went bust, I predicted that, and I'm gonna predict it again for MOO III, unless this hands off tactical approach is a big hit with all those strategy gamers out there, and somehow I don't think it will be. I mean if I plan and handle the logistics of my fleet's composition and OOB, I want to dust the enemy system personally, not some damn computer commodore that doesn't know which side of a plasma cannon to stick up the enemy's rear!

 

If the big publishers can't provide, I can always go to an indy developer and reward them for their hard work.

http://www.apezone.com/

 

Or even some retro shareware I remember from my college days.

http://www.necrobones.com/games.htm

 

SC III was so fun.

 

Oh yea, and here's a link that describes Pax Imperia in some detail and Pax Imperia II as well, but not quite as much of the latter, it was if anything more forgettable than Pax Imperia.

http://www.gamesoffame.com/space/pax_imperia.html

 

I was truly bummed about Pax Imperia II being so bad.

 

Anyway, I'll tell you what. All this thinking of just about every damn 4X space conquest game I ever played has given me several ideas. Man, I think a couple of them are pretty damn good myself, so I'll write em down before I think again and forget em. Anyway, I'll post em later.

 

Oh yea, totally agree on the Operational Art of War Series.

 

Regards,

 

Brasidas

[Guest Murph]

Brasidas: What did you think about Starflight? I rather enjoyed it on my old 8088. I agree with you on the combat, I build a fleet, then by George! I sure as heck want to command it.

 

BTW I'm not a fan of real time games, they resemble whack a mole just too much.

[Brasidas]

Originally posted by Murph:

Brasidas:  What did you think about Starflight?  I rather enjoyed it on my old 8088. I agree with you on the combat, I build a fleet, then by George! I sure as heck want to command it. 

 

BTW I'm not a fan of real time games, they resemble whack a mole just too much.

 

Did starflight II, it's still fun to play, especially if you run an Atari ST emulator and get a ROM image of the game. I play it from time to time, still fun as hell. Oh yea, and another good one, Sword of Aragon, awesome game in Basic. I understand what you mean about real time, but I thrive under time pressure and it's fun to plan ahead on production while you're directing a feint and building up long range bombardment on an unsuspecting enemy. I like multi-tasking.

 

Regards,

 

Brasidas

[Elliot Howard]

Has anyone heard or read about this game?

http://pc.ign.com/previews/17258.html

 

If it's based off of Homeworld, I'm hopping it will turn out well. I've been let down pretty regularly recently by the past couple of games I've bought, and need a new fix.