Greatest strategy games

[Kipru]

I love strategy games. However, my computer has been so slow that i have been left far behind on wht's currently hot in strategy games. Now that i have fairly new computer, I was wondering if you could recommend any good games. I begin with introducing my old favourites

Close Combat II

This is a great game. The first one on the series just looked crappy making it unplayable, and the later ones were either too unbalanced or trying to focus on a too large front. Here you can command a group that is roughly one platoon large in real time. The overhead camera shows you troops, who can become nervous or even surrender to the enemy. The campaign mode is exciting due to the spesific goals that each side has to complete during the game. The better you play you get more troops. My favourite game of all time.

Civilization II-IV

Everyone knows these. I have to be careful not to think this game too much or I end up playing them again. No more "just one more turn" for me - thank you.

Hearts of Iron I-II

A great realtime WW 2- simulators. You can basically take control of every country in the world and lead them trough second world war. You have to balance your resources, troops and your research to the political atmosphere. Only bad thing was the easiness of the unpatched version of the series one game- I ruled whole Scandinavia and major part of russia and whole south africa playing with Finland. Granted- invasion of Sweden was easy in the HOI 2 also, but that is just realism. Currently i'm stuck in front of Moscow with Rommel trying to break out in caucasus with germans. This game gives you a great overall look on what happened and what could have happened in the WW2

Age of empires 1-2

Although i'm not a great fan of these types of games, where you have to gather resources with peons and fight in real time, somehow these AOE games attract me. It gives a great history lesson and the campaigns are enjoyable.


Ok, now i would like to have somekind of recommendations about current strategy games. I have never tried a turn-based strategy games, and i would like to try. Should i try Panzer general or what? What other strategy games are out there, which aren't just point-and-click-as fast as you can type games. (Like C&C, Warcrafts and so on)

[Sample00]

Chess
Risk
Battleship

thinks I must be dating myself here!:confused:

[JohnnyFlame]

Rome Total War is my favorite. I add the additional challenge of conquering every single city before winning. You only need fifty and Rome to win the game. Very hard to keep the armies on the move and to keep the cities happy at the same time. Once you beat it with Roman Legions you move on to doing it with inferior groups.

The battles are also against time and the cities defenses so you have to move right along and it's great fun to control so many troops and to run good plan of attack.

The multiplayer battles are also dependant on strategy.

[Cain]

Put down alpha centauri as my vote for greatest strategy of all time. At least turn based/empire building.

RTS I am a huge fan of Total annihilation/starcraft as older games. Supreme commander (basically new TA) is a good new one, though I don't play RTS as much.

[Kipru]

That "Rome:total war" seems interesting. I have been interested on that time of history, maybe that will give some more insight on that matter also. I hope there is unbeatable Village (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix) in that game which I could conquer...

[Cain]

Asterix was the best comic ever. It's all I went looking for in the library as a little kid. Tintin too, but he wasn't half as cool.

[MolsonInBothHands]

Stratego!!

[jolinar of malkshor]

Stratego!!

Good game

[Ozy_Flame]

If you like Strategy, get a game called "Superpower 2". It's an obscure game that's not easy to find, but if you do, it's well worth it.

It's basically an overhead map of Earth, and you control any country on earth, manage their military, economy, and politics, and use them to either make world peace or conquer the planet.

My favorite part of the game is signing into an anti-nuclear pact, and then developing nukes covertly, of which I can then use as leverage to demand unfair trade deals! lol...

http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2004/reviews/914594_20041022_screen003.jpg

[CaramonLS]

The Civ Series. Just love those games.

Just recently though I started playing one of those browser games, probably the best analogy I can come up with is that it is like Civilization online against other players. City captures, city demolishing, wars, etc etc. It is addicting as hell and tons of fun, and lasts really long term, alliance vs. alliance, etc etc.

www.travian.com (http://www.travian.com)

[Kipru]

Yeah I played Travian for a while. But you have to get in early when the game starts, or you'll be trampled under foot. Basically I joined to an alliance where the leading players decided to leap into bigger alliance during big war, leaving us others defenceless.

Also the main problem for browser games is that those willing to pay extra usually gain an unfair advantage, like in this (http://s2.fi.gladiatus.com/game/c.php?uid=27131) game.

However, if you are soccer fans, hattrick kicks arse.
http://www.hattrick.org/Common/default.asp

[Teh_Bandwagoner]

www.handdrawngames.com (http://www.handdrawngames.com)

I just ruined your life.

[Flash Walken]

Axis and Allies

[Blaster86]

to say Warcraft is just "point and click" means you either never played the game, or were absolutely terrible at it.

[octothorp]

I'm sort of limited in my strategy games being on a Mac. It used to be that any strategy game that came out was ported to the Mac because the mac had a good strategy following, but I think now, there are just too many games out there and a lot of the good ones get passed over for porting. Anyway...

My favorites of the Civ series are 3 and alpha-centauri. Never could get into 4, just never had a fun feel to it. As far as the real-time games go, I enjoy Age of Mythology better than any of the Age of Empires series, though AoE 3 is just such a beautiful game visually. I also like the Victoria/Europa Universalis series.

For non empire-building strategy games, two that I love are Transport Tycoon Deluxe (and the cross-platform, open-source OpenTTD), and Tropico II, Pirate's Cove.

[Kipru]

www.handdrawngames.com (http://www.handdrawngames.com)

I just ruined your life.

Halifaxdrunk already ruined my life with that in this (http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthread.php?t=41283&highlight=Flash+addiction&page=4) thread.

MAybe point and click was too roughly said about warcrafts, but usually you could win those games by just few defence towers and gathering strong enough attacking army. Not much strategy involved. But i have never played those games against real people, because I just hate them.

[jolinar of malkshor]

I'm sort of limited in my strategy games being on a Mac. It used to be that any strategy game that came out was ported to the Mac because the mac had a good strategy following, but I think now, there are just too many games out there and a lot of the good ones get passed over for porting. Anyway...

My favorites of the Civ series are 3 and alpha-centauri. Never could get into 4, just never had a fun feel to it. As far as the real-time games go, I enjoy Age of Mythology better than any of the Age of Empires series, though AoE 3 is just such a beautiful game visually. I also like the Victoria/Europa Universalis series.

For non empire-building strategy games, two that I love are Transport Tycoon Deluxe (and the cross-platform, open-source OpenTTD), and Tropico II, Pirate's Cove.

Oh, speaking of Tycoons.....Railway tycoon was awsome when playing multiplayer. I would always play against my brother and he would sell shares to create capital. I would buy up those shares and after 3 or 4 hours of playing he would have this thriving rail line and I would make a a take over bid from my company....by then I would have the majority of shares I could vote to pass it and everything he had would be gone. Sucker.

[Cliche]

One of the less known turn based squad games was Jagged Alliance 2. (http://www.jaggedalliance.com/)

One of the last games before Sir-Tech closed it's doors, it does have a sequel in development. It's current rights are held by strategy-first. (http://www.strategyfirst.com/)


I'm also surprised no on mentioned Heroes of Might and Magic. (http://mightandmagic.us.ubi.com/)Sure it's got a fantasy aspect to it, but it also is a pretty good strategy game as well.

[CaptainCrunch]

If you like Strategy, get a game called "Superpower 2". It's an obscure game that's not easy to find, but if you do, it's well worth it.

It's basically an overhead map of Earth, and you control any country on earth, manage their military, economy, and politics, and use them to either make world peace or conquer the planet.

My favorite part of the game is signing into an anti-nuclear pact, and then developing nukes covertly, of which I can then use as leverage to demand unfair trade deals! lol...

I own this game, but it didn't really drive my socks because the AI was terrible and unrealistic. And once Canada developed its nuclear program, I had elements of the U.S. marines, the Red Army and the screaming Chinese attacking my shores.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned Master Of Orion 1 and 2, I was addicted to these games. You could design classes of ships, arm them however you want, fight to conquer or exterminate, and the Orions would appear from no where with unbeatable technology, not to conquer but to destroy.

Great great games.

[RyZ]

Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War series is easily my fav RTS series.

[Kipru]

Asterix was the best comic ever. It's all I went looking for in the library as a little kid. Tintin too, but he wasn't half as cool.

I have based whole my life on the eating habits of Obelix, drinking habits of captain Haddock, and shooting skills like lucky luke. And i'm doing great, i'm writing on calgarypuck in 4.15 in the morning.

Seems like there is no hardcore strategist on the forum who could recommend some heavy turn-based strategy game. I'm not so into magical mystery orcs or starmans of the future. A good turn-based or just realtime strategy game that is based on history is what I need. That rome total war is what I want for christmas, though.

[Cain]

I have based whole my life on the eating habits of Obelix, drinking habits of captain Haddock, and shooting skills like lucky luke. And i'm doing great, i'm writing on calgarypuck in 4.15 in the morning.

Seems like there is no hardcore strategist on the forum who could recommend some heavy turn-based strategy game. I'm not so into magical mystery orcs or starmans of the future. A good turn-based or just realtime strategy game that is based on history is what I need. That rome total war is what I want for christmas, though.

Truly, if this is what you are looking for, check out Alpha Centauri. Sure it isn't in the medieval timeline, nor historic in any sense...but it is a simply fantastic game, much better than the Civ games in my opinion.

I used to play fantasy general which was great, but no longer works with my version of windows (xp).

Edit: The Medieval total war series is also quite fun if you can handle the graphics and half turn based, half real time gameplay. I didn't like it as much because I am the empire building type with a big picture strategy as opposed to smaller warfare tactics.

[DAN0383]

Ogre Battle for the SNES was great.

[octothorp]

Populous! I had that one for the SNES, and it was my introduction to the god-game genre. I was just reading that there's a version coming out for Nintendo DS. I've been putting off getting a DS, but if they do a good update of Populous, I might be tempted to get one.

[Fozzie_DeBear]

I'm sort of limited in my strategy games being on a Mac.

Have you Rise of Nations? (http://www.macsoftgames.com/products/ron/index.html)

Its from the makers of Alpha Centauri...its kind like Civ meets RTS

[Aeneas]

I have few computer games, but I really enjoy Space Empires. Have version IV. Based on an old board game, Starfire. Build ships, explore, trade conquer, research bigger better ships (100's of technologies). Can play lots of different ways.

[GreenTeaFrapp]

Herzog Zwei!

[mrdeeds]

For some more old school computer games similar to that of Superpower would be a couple of my faves Balance of Power for the PC and Geopolitique for the Apple IIe. You could only play the US essentially vs Russia 80's Cold War style, but they were great!

[Deegee]

StarCraft will always be my favorite. The amount of nights where I lost sleep because I stayed up late playing it are enormous in numbers. Good game if your skill level was low, and the game got better as you learned how to actually play the damn game.

[CaptainCrunch]

StarCraft will always be my favorite. The amount of nights where I lost sleep because I stayed up late playing it are enormous in numbers. Good game if your skill level was low, and the game got better as you learned how to actually play the damn game.

Starcraft and Command and conquor were quite similar. Once you got to the point where you could set up 10 artillary units for defense, the battle was over.

I remember one mission on C+C 2 where if you set up your airship to bomb a specific place on the map, the enemy would continually run his units into that spot and you could build up your army relatively easily.

With Star Craft you could also win all of the maps by using the Colin Powell initiative which is also known as the tank rush.

[Deegee]

I have fallen out of the loop of StarCraft over the last few years, but when I stopped playing competitively, Terran had the advantage over Protoss, barely, and Zerg had the advantage over Terran, barely. You had to make very few mistakes as Toss to win with them, but people who were good with them could make you cry.

As a Toss player, the issue I had with Terran was the bloody Vulture, not the tanks, which could be overrun with good flanking.

[Jagger]

Just a quick scan of the thread as it is really late here (4:30am) but has anybody mentioned "Galactic Civilizations 2" yet? Fantastic game for anybody into strategy.

[QuadCityImages]

Anyone ever play M.A.X.? That and Civ2 are my favorite strategy games of all time. With a few exceptions, M.A.X. had no luck or chance involved, allowing you to calculate your turn's moves like a chess game.

[icarus]

I am not much of a gamer (unless it is Fireball Island), so I don't know most of the games mentioned here. The only one I play is Civ III and I love it. Just a lot of random elements: random terrain, random barbarians, random resources that pop up. Gives it infinite replay value.

[OBCT]

Oh wow, I am loving that someone mentioned Transport Tycoon Deluxe. That game absolutely owned. A modernized remake of that would be totally brilliant.

StarCraft\WarCraft were certainly entertaining. Looking forward to SC2.

Heroes of Might and Magic was mentioned as well... that provided many hours of entertainment for myself.

The Masters of Orion series was another gem. I played MOO2 for way more hours than I'd like to admit.

The Civilization series was absolutely brilliant... but for some reason I pretty much sucked at it, and getting owned by barbarian hordes gets really old. :P

X-Com was a series from way back that I've absolutely loved replaying over the years.

Command & Conquer was fun, but I didn't prefer it to StarCraft.

Age of Empires was a great series. Enjoyed it a lot.

Total Annihilation was another gooder... lots of fun.

[CaramonLS]

Rome Total War is my favorite. I add the additional challenge of conquering every single city before winning. You only need fifty and Rome to win the game. Very hard to keep the armies on the move and to keep the cities happy at the same time. Once you beat it with Roman Legions you move on to doing it with inferior groups.

The battles are also against time and the cities defenses so you have to move right along and it's great fun to control so many troops and to run good plan of attack.

The multiplayer battles are also dependant on strategy.

Just have to bring this up because I bought Rome Total war and Medieval II: Total war just recently because of this thread (They just released the gold pack last week so it has ME2 + crusades expansion) Only 34.99 for the package.

And holy crap is keeping the cities happy tough in Rome total war - ME2 is domestic easy mode. Ambushes are by far my favorite, because you absolutely destroy the other army (if they don't detect it). 700 troops (mostly cavalry) vs. a 1300 full army = 1000 of them dead and 28! of my soliders killed. The Army routs in seconds and you slaughter them.

Both these games are TONS of fun.

[Bobblehead]

I haven't fired up Rome: Total War in quite a while but I still think it is on of the best games in the past few years. A lot of replay value.

[peter12]

Rome: Total War and Medieval II are great games.