Turn Based Strategy PC Games

[cobainwasmurdered]

Of all the kinds of games I play I enjoy none more than turn based strategy games. I can't even begin to count the hours I've spent playing them. There have been so many time I've told myself I was going to play "just a few more turns" of Civ2 only to look up and realize 5 hours had passed.

I've got my favorites like Master of Orion II, Civilization II, and others but one of my favorites that isn't as well known is Star Trek Birth of the Federation.

You can play as one of the five major races on the Star Trek universe from the Next Generation era: Federation, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, and the Ferengi. there are also a large number of initially independent TNG Era minor races that you can you can assimilate peacefully or conquer. It's fun seeing them pop up if you're a fan of the series. The combat system is a lot of fun withe ability to create massive fleets and fight huge space battles that look pretty good for the time the game came out IMHO. All in all I really like this game and I still play it a ton to this day. It's worth trying to find online or wherever. I found a copy at a flea market years ago.

What about you guys?

 

[muzzington]

I've played every Civilization game to death. The first two hold a special place for me because 4 of us kids in the family played it.

The original Master of Orion was a lot of fun, and I loved the first three Heroes of Might and Magic, after those I just didn't get the same feeling playing the games. Number 2 especially took up a lot of my time.

 

[Red Baron]

Back as a kid my friends and I would used to play Warlords a lot, and Warloards II the Deluxe pack.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

I've played every Civilization game to death. The first two hold a special place for me because 4 of us kids in the family played it.

The original Master of Orion was a lot of fun, and I loved the first three Heroes of Might and Magic, after those I just didn't get the same feeling playing the games. Number 2 especially took up a lot of my time.

I still haven't played any of the Civ games after III though I do intend to at some point. I tried MoO3 and it wasn't any good. I just recently tried the Heroes games and I especially loved 2 and 3 with 3 personally being my favorite.

 

[The Metal Maniac]

Once I started playing Civ IV, I found it impossible to go back to III. Everything about it just seems so much better to me...plus Great People are fucking awesome. The expansions made it even better with the addition of corporations, which I thought were great. You need to play it, CWM.

Oh, and possibly the best thing about it; the ability to give workers orders like, build trade routes. They'll just build roads/railroads linking all your cities and available resources (and build the necessary thing to get the resource, like a mine or whatever) until you tell them to stop, or everything is linked. I think you could always make them improve terrain on their own, but this time you can set it so they won't change any improvements - they won't destroy a farm to build a cottage or what have you. I just like not having to worry about what every single worker is doing all the time, so I can focus on the bigger picture.

V I haven't played yet, but I'm interested to. I'm curious to see if "one unit per tile" actually translates well. I could see it giving you a damned good reason to actually put variety in your armies (like, having defensive units all over to protect your army, as opposed to one giant stack of tanks), but I could also see it being kind of a pain in the ass.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

My problem is that I'm easily confused/frustrated my having so many options in modern games. Some of the micro-management seems overboard to me. I do plan to check out 4. The time I tried my computer didnt really meet the requirements but I've upgraded some since then.

 

[The Metal Maniac]

One of the other things that's good about IV is that you don't *have* to micromanage. There's lots of ways to basically just tell the people what to do. Like, there's buttons in the city screen that are literally "Emphasize Growth", "Emphasize Great People", etc. Click on one of those, and the city will re-arrange itself to focus on whatever you selected. There's a number of game mechanics like that...I believe you can even tell a city to build whatever it advises you build, so you literally don't have to select the buildings.

I'll admit, the first time I played IV, I was fucking lost too, but play it on the easiest mode so it'll give you all the hints and stuff first, and you'll figure it out. Also, play it WITHOUT the expansions first. They add some new stuff too, and it'd be a lot to try to learn it all at once.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

In addition to Civilization, I have to mention X-Com: UFO Defense and X-Com: Terror from the Deep. I played both of those games to death and only stopped a few years ago.