Strategy/War Games

[kahnovitch]

I'm a big fan and my fave (though a little old now) is Shogun- Total War.
I've seen the "Warlord Edition" which looks cool as there are new units and you also have to fend off the Barbarian Horde of Kublai Khan (no relation).

I know there is also a Medieval Total War which is high on my Christmas List of "Pressies for Me"

How many other RTS (real time strategy) fans are out there and... now you have an idea of the benchmark of stuff I like, any suggestions for great "must aquire" RTS games?

 

[fluffy bunny]

Medevil is well worth the upgrade price from shogun and the mongul invasion

Unfortunately, there's not that much comparible at the mo in the RTS camp- have a look at red alert 2 and warcraft 3

if u like turn based, I'd recommend

Civ 3
Master of Orion 3 looks promising (MOO2 is good anyway)

 

[milamber_reborn]

Medieval is a great choice.

Future releases:

Command & Conquer Generals (if you have a good enough pc for it)
Aquanox 2 (not sure if it's RTS though)
Black & White 2 (sort of RTS)
Impossible Creatures
Republic: The Revolution (has RTS elements)
Soldiers Of Anarchy
The Movies (looks brilliant - more like Sims)

 

[Stewart]

The Homeworld Series!!!

The first truely 3d space strategy game. It's awesome, imagine this, hundreds of tiny fighter, animated with painstaking detail going at it in glorious 3d as massive destroyers fire off their huge laser cannons and attempt to tear each other apart. Or an even more exciting situation. When you've just lost a huge section of your forces and the enemy hyperspaces right next to your mothership. You find yourself in a situation where you have to muster a massive amount of ships with no time to do it. Homeworld:Cataclysm was good but the first was much better as while fighters remain constantly useful in the first in the second they are useless the second you develop cap ships. A true gem.

 

[kahnovitch]

Thanks for that Stewart, I've got the first Homeworld game and I liked it a lot. There's a game called "Dominion Wars" set in the Deep Space 9 Star Trek world which is pretty good and similar to Homeworld. However there's no research and development side to it.
Instead you can choose you ships (ranging from Sabre to Galaxy class) as well as Klingon ships (which all have cloaks).
You choose the captain, ship modifications and personnel for your fleet. The battles are real time and you can beam aboard enemy ships (once you've disabled their shields) and take over.
You can be either side i.ee the Federation/Klingon alliance or the Jem Hadar/Cardassian rivals.
All the most popular characters from DS9 are there for hire like Worf, Sisko, Dax. And later on the Klingon emporer himself Gowron can be recruited.
Even if you're not a trekkie it's a good space strategy game.

I played a demo for two decent looking RTS games, One called Battle Realms and also Warrior Kings.
Warrior Kings is similar to the Total War games but on a slightly smaller scale.

 

[DarthV]

Warrior Kings ran pretty slow when I only had a geforce 2 video card... lots and lots of detail. I found the early missions were a little too slow and plodding...

 

[Bond]

I'm more into turn based strategy games. For that I still don't see anything superior to Civilization 2. That game was astounding. Great gameplay and wonderful presentation and execution of ideas. One could really see the strengths of a democracy over a monarchy as well as its weaknesses in action. Civ 3 seems just a bit overdone and belabored in comparison. I learned almost as much about history and politics in this game as I did in a history class.

Another newer game that is chalk full of history is Europa Universalis 2.

For those older perhaps someone remembers Clash of Steel.

Of course if anyone wants to play a good old fashioned game of chess I'm game.

 

[DarthV]

I've heard good things about Europa 1400: the Guild

 

[Stewart]

Imperium Galactica 2

I have this and enjoy it veyr much as well. It is an excellentspace empire building game, and although the diplomacy side of it is somewhat weak as eventually you will have to go to war with someone and another major flaw is that the other races are horribly violent and tend to kill each other off before you can form large alliances. Otherwise however it is excellent and quite cheap nowadays.