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I'm posting this here as I assume the hardcore DF fans don't mind learning curves, bad (or non-existing) manuals, and poor or no graphics.
Battlecruiser #1, #1 version 2, Millennium, and Universal Combat have been released for free. Gold/special editions with last-minute addons are still sold.
Infamous, ambitious, horribly complex. But the few people who play it seem to enjoy it for the complexity it allows. I'm going to try. Try. Why? This:
"If you ever wanted to command a starship, pilot a fighter and shuttlecraft, drive a planetary vehicle and lead a team of marines all at the same time, this the game for you."
"The most complex I've had it (so far) is, on a planet, having a naval group giving covering artillery fire to a detachment of infantry marines assaulting a planetary base backed up by armored cavalry whilst, at the same time, in space, having my carrier class ship attacking a starbase with support from two battlecruiser escorts and using its fighter wings as a guard against enemy reinforcements entering the system whilst my AE was using a shuttle to trade to raise some money and having a couple of drones on a planet doing some mining."
That and the X series of space sims just did not offer enough options. You could have my own monopoly on a product, and that's about as far as you can go in the X games. I get bored with simple games, hence I play DF.
If I like BC30K, I may buy the Universal Combat Collectors Edition, which contains every single one in the series for 30$. Worth it just for these alone though:
-Full 96-page printed manual
-Printed keyboard sheet with color galaxy map on reverse side
Any others that are worth it once you get the hang of them?
[ May 26, 2008: Message edited by: Idiom ]
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For me, strategy games are the way to go. Pretty much everyone has heard of the Civilization series, which doesn't have a steep learning curve but is at least harder than most games to master. Also, another great game (which I personally like more than Civilization) is the Space Empires series. Space Empires V is the newest and a great game. Takes a while to get used to it and really get yourself into the groove, but once you do you'll be wiping out your enemies in the furious light of their own star, ignited by your newly researched star destroying component. Or wipe them out with a series of plague bombardments, convert their star into a black hole, land invasion parties, etc... Whatever you're most comfortable with.
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You're forgetting the artificial planets! Don't forget the artificial planets!
As for BC. I've tried it a few times and got bored with the crappy controls and not having any idea how to use them even after an hour of experimentation. The demos never had decent tutorials either. Also, from what I've heard Derek Smart is a total asshole. The kind of person I'd avoid buying a game just to keep from supporting.
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I remember watching as Malfador Machinations, a group of a few college kids who took up programming games for their friends (and themselves, of course), rise to fame and fortune. It's one of the rare success stories you find on the web.
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I already mentioned Allegiance.
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I really do want to play Battlecruiser and Universal combat, but whenever I try to do it I feel like I'm putting in extra hours at work instead of having fun. I've read and re-read the manual, but it is really vague on some instructions. Is there a more user friendly Wiki, or strategy guide out there on tips for getting into these games?
By the way, what is the difference between BC and UC?
[ May 27, 2008: Message edited by: lumin ]
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I took about two hours, hunting and pecking across the keyboard and checking the hotkey guide, starting new game and new game, and I finally figured out how to play. Turns out, it's a sucktacular game.
Also, yes, every bad thing you hear about DEREK SMART is most likely true.
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Agreed. Universal Combat is an awful game.
Anyone play Uncharted Waters 2? (old sailing / trading / RPG game for PC / SNES) I recommend the hell outta that. First few time's you'll starve before you even get out of Europe, but man, is it worth it. I still remember that time I got caught in the mother of all storms during a gold run from Cuba to the Netherlands, and got blown massively off course to the arse-end of Africa. So what did I do?
Decide to circumnavigate the globe. Discovered New Zealand. Never found the north-west passage. And then died.
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I played Uncharted Waters 2 / New Horizons on the SNES! That game was fantastic in every single way. Always liked to play as Ernst, because his scenario was literally "Go wherever you want." -- Though he was easy prey for pirates early on. I must have played that for days at a time... finished his scenario *twice*!
Oh, and about Derek Smart... I'm pretty certain the whole "holier than thou" act is really... an act. When in an argument, nobody brings up the "I am in a higher caste / you do not have the right to speak to someone like me" arrogance sincerely. Think about it; his acts of arrogance actually drew huge amounts of attention to his games.
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Uncharted Waters 2 is/was a fantastic game. The game was completely open ended, and you could spend hours gaining cash to be the best ship so you could try to sail around the world or go in search of some lost civilization. I wish somebody would remake something like this. Instead we get kiddie crap like Sid Meyer's Pirates.
I kind of ruined the fun when I found out you could cheat on blackjack by using save states in an emulator. :(
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Star Wars Rebellion is another one that I think is totally worth learning, especially when playing against a friend. The game got only mediocre reviews and didn't sell very many copies, but this is definately a pretty gem in the "Lucasarts" rough.
SWR is similar to other 4x space strategy games out there, but the game runs in real time. I can't tell you how much fun it was racing to hunt down my friend's rebel base with the Death Star, and then suddenly see Coruscant get taken over by the rebels.
It's cool to have your special units like Jedi or assassins go on missions as well and try to upgrade their abilities.
The real-time space battles were pretty cool too. You can see your massive star destroyers pump out tie-fighters and change your tactics on the fly.
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quote:
Originally posted by lumin:
<STRONG>Instead we get kiddie crap like Sid Meyer's Pirates.</STRONG>
I'd agree if Pirates! wasn't a great game.
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Just looked up Rebellion, it looks pretty nice. Does anyone know whether or not it's Abandonware? I don't want to do eBay or anything, and I don't fall for that Steal-From-Greedy-Corporations Robin Hood bull. The law is the law, and it should only be broken when someone really needs to go away(Fred Phelps).
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It's not Abandonware yet. I bought mine off Ebay for like $10.00 a few years ago.
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Nuuuuu!
One day, you will be mine.
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If it's a good game, $10 is hardly anything. I bought a used disk-only copy of MoM off Ebay for $20 or so, and it was worth every cent. For a frame of reference, my spending income is less that $4 a week.
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MoM?
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DaD?
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SoN?
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(http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/ozzieharriet.jpg)
HappY FamilY?
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I was actually referring to Gigalith's purchase of a game call MoM.
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Mines of Moria fits the acronym. I think it's a LoTR Online expansion.
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I bet he means "Master of Magic"
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The problem with Derek Smarts games is that the learning curve is so steep that it's impossible to climb it and get to the fun part.
I recommend Dominions 3, once you figure it out it's a great way to waste an evening or ten.
I don't know if it's learning curve is step enough for you but Wizardry 8 is great too, Wizardry 7 is even better.
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Darklands. It's unbelievable. Very intimidating at first, but so worth it you'll spend hundreds of hours of your life playing it. It's abandonware and can be found on www.the-underdogs.info. You need DOSbox to play it on newer computers, but again... Worth it.
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quote:
Originally posted by lumin:
<STRONG>I bet he means "Master of Magic"</STRONG>
Yeah, that's it. Sorry for not being clear.
Also, Clonk. The controls are hideous, but there's a cool game beneath it all.
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The Egosoft X series.
It's a lot like Elite, WC Privateer, and so on, only with great graphics ... and you get to build your own space stations eventually. Dozens of them. You need those if you want to fly the huge Carriers, Battleships etc ...
It took me about a week to manage to learn the controls. One reason was the sucky tutorial ("Press the key for SINZA mode" - then you spend minutes looking up "Sinza" (game speed multiplier) and finding that key in the manual - then you press "j" and the tutorial say "now press the key to ...")
Another, well - it's a german game and I guess they keep overestimating the average game buyer, and deciding that a manual is enough :)
However, with X3 ... once you get into it, you'll stay glued for a half-year. (I did, while still working freelance. Just about went broke as a result. :)
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Are there any free, nice open-ended space games...like all those trading games, but with more than trading
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ASCII Sector kept me entertained for awhile. But if you're willing to shell out a little bit of cash, X2 by Egosoft is your best bet (it's part of the series that Trollvottel brought up). Seriously, the depth of it is staggering. It's got some sharp code - on my machine (which is 6 years old), it runs without a hitch on almost-full detail. Definitely a good example of what happens when you tighten up the graphics on level 3 :D
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You don't need to buy X2. It's free on Gametap, and it will be for an as of yet undetermined period.
But yeah, I can't recommend it enough, the depth is insane, graphics are beautiful, acting and textual grammar are a bit off, and the depth can be overwhelming at first, but if you play DF, you'll be good.
[ June 02, 2008: Message edited by: Cthulhu ]
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Is Gametap really to be trusted, though? It seems too good to be spyware-free. Oh well. Maybe I'll just use it on the free computers at my uni.
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The X series annoys me. Mostly because, after you play for a long time, it starts feeling pointless. You own all the ships you could ever want, have billions on the bank, dozens of factory complexes, fleets of ships trading for you ...
... and you still can't actually "take over" anything. I guess I want too much. It would be pretty cool to invade a system, tax the natives, negotiate (hah!) with governments. But I'm dreaming.
That said, it's a lot of fun to play the X games. I have X2 and X3, and, strange as it sounds, I prefer X2. Something about it feels more involving to me. X3 is a bit prettier, but doesn't have the flavor or immersion or X2.
Of course, X-BTF and X-Tension (the first of the series and the expansion for it) are still fun if you can find those dinosaurs anywhere.
The Battlecruiser games should have been perfect for me. I love that sort of stuff. Sadly, they all seem ... utterly stale to me. Oh, and Derek Smart will arrive shortly. I hear that if you call his name in even the darkest corner of the Internet, he'll hunt down your threads and post. That would be entertaining.
Other deep learning curve games for me that have turned out very nice are Incursion (already mentioned on these boards, the Roguelike DnD game) and Dominions III for a cool strategy fix. Designing a god and conquering the world? Yes, please. It was like $60 when I bought it, though.
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quote:
Originally posted by SeaBee:
<STRONG>Dominions III</STRONG>
QFT.
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quote:
Originally posted by Helmaroc:
<STRONG>Are there any free, nice open-ended space games...like all those trading games, but with more than trading</STRONG>
Frontier: Elite II.
(Find it here)
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quote:
Originally posted by SeaBee:
<STRONG> I hear that if you call his name in even the darkest corner of the Internet, he'll hunt down your threads and post.</STRONG>
It's quite true. I think he googles his name. He goes on and instead of addressing complaints he just tells you whatever's wrong with the game is part of his grandiose vision, and if you don't like it you're stupid and unworthy to lick his glorious boots.
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quote:
Originally posted by Helmaroc:
<STRONG>Are there any free, nice open-ended space games...like all those trading games, but with more than trading</STRONG>
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net
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Derek Smart = Hastur.
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Oh no you're right!!!
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www.the-underdogs.info. (http://www.the-underdogs.info.)
This is the most important website on the internet, as far as I am concerned. Also, yes, Darklands is excellent.
Um, NetHack is a pretty obvious selection but I will include it because frankly I still don't really know how to play it, but I can polymorph myself into a cockatrice, lay eggs, and use those eggs as petrification bombs so.... Good game.
Wasteland is another obvious one. Fallout being the spiritual sequel to Wasteland, if that's any indication. It's like if Oregon Trail was based on Road Warrior. Which means it's awesome.
Essentially, any DOS games are hard for me to figure out, haha. I've been pampered by tutorials.
SimEarth is hardly a game but it is immensely clumsy to figure out what everything does as every action you take can lead to a mass extinction. The payoff is that you can have sentient carnivorous plants that run the world. Then blow them up when they reach the height of civilization and gather their nanomachines and make THOSE sentient too.
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Home of the Underdogs is awesome, but I can't use them to download anything. I get a maximum of 10kbps on cable internet that can get over 1mbps on Filefront.
Attempting to download SimEarth now, Abandonia's been fighting me lately.
EDIT: Wow, this one's aggressive, I've never seen a DOS game fight this hard.
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Hey Cthulhu, I noticed something wrong in your sig. It should be 'give a DWARF a fish' and 'teach a DWARF to fish'.
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And I noticed something in YOUR sig, Helmaroc. Or should I say, "Elmaroc"?
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It took off the first letter of just about everybody's sigs.
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Micro-rant ahead
The mayor failing of ambitious strategy games is the excessive micromanagement they push into the player. Most if the time in very awkward ways. Not even reality is as complex as some strategy games seem to be. You don't have nation or army leaders choosing or tweaking every aspect of everything that's below of them.
The way in which DF almost succeeds (and eventually will) to handle such obscene amount of complexity is by allowing dwarves some amount of self control and governance. Granted, they are still very stupid and the game still requires a great deal of micro. But if it where a standard RTS without pruning any of it's details, it would be impossible to play.
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The worst game for unneeded complexity is Battlecruiser. Does Derek Smart honestly believe that thousands of years in the future we won't have developed a way to streamline these things? I feel more like I'm flying a Vietnam era helicopter than a super-advanced spaceship.
In addition OH MY GOODNESS. SimEarth may be one of the most ridiculously angry and rebellious games I have ever seen. It confounds me at every turn. First it wanted a disk. I remedied this by putting the files into a folder called ADrive and mounting A: to it. Then I went to install it and apparently none of my disks have enough room to install the twenty year old game, that's probably less than a megabyte.
EDIT: I got it to work, but it's late, so I didn't do much. I started at 1990 with modern human civilization in full swing, and within fifty years multicellular life was extinct. I turned off the sun, removed the clouds, and set continental drift on maximum overdrive. Within fifty years the Earth was completely covered in ice, and the only humans left were a few scattered tribes of bronze age nomads. Then life disappeared completely, and we went back to the geologic stage. Oddly, despite the complete lack of sunlight and warmth, the ice melted, revealing an alien world where the aforementioned high continental drift had torn our familiar continents to shreds, leaving hundreds of tiny island, which quickly filled with jungles. The heat continued to rise, and the jungles gave way to deserts. The single-cells stuck it out until the end, and lasted all the way to the sun's engulfing of the Earth.
It's a very melancholy game when I play it. I've always had the desire to watch a planet from a geologic scale, seeing species rise and fall. In fourth grade I had to have read The Time Machine at least five times, and I especially read the part where The Time Traveller continues into the future, and it's all crazy. I'd like to witness the twilight of a planet. It was almost depressing watching the Earth slowly die like that.
i think simearth is a pretty cool guy. eh lets you wipe out civilization and doesnt afraid of anything.
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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Helmaroc:
<STRONG>Are there any free, nice open-ended space games...like all those trading games, but with more than trading</STRONG><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Frontier: Elite II (http://http:/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier:_Elite_II).
(Find it here (http://jfturner.free.fr/telechargements/derniereversionpc.zip))
Oh god i loved that game, did you ever find the system where precious stones and metals were illegal and sold on the black market for a hug minus amount, it was infested with pirates and the risk of police catching you but 2 trips could double your money.
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Ah Simearth... I had one game where avians basically created civilization and plunged into a seemingly eternal world-war. I haven't really gotten a truly stable planet since then, either. Maybe I should start playing again. Hm...
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I haven't gotten any stable planets at all. I think I'm trying to overcorrect.
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Ah Simearth... I had one game where avians basically created civilization and plunged into a seemingly eternal world-war. I haven't really gotten a truly stable planet since then, either. Maybe I should start playing again. Hm...
I loved Sim Earth and used to play it a lot back when it was on the SNES. This is what I thought Spore was going to be. I wish someone would remake this game as it should be with updated graphics
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I found a fun thing to do with Simearth. Start a game on a random planet, at the Geologic Timescale, set it to fast, and just watch. Don't touch anything, just watch the world evolve. I'm hoping I'll see some weird civilizations, but right now I'm at almost 5 billion years and no major continents have formed and there are only a few small islands. The only abundant lifeforms are bacteria, monerans, and radiates. Arthropods are working on it, and everything else either doesn't exist or exists in tiny scattered populations.
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I ended simearth with a planet populated but robots only. In the end all robots committed exodus and the planet became empty.
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Oddly, despite the complete lack of sunlight and warmth, the ice melted, revealing an alien world where the aforementioned high continental drift had torn our familiar continents to shreds, leaving hundreds of tiny island, which quickly filled with jungles. The heat continued to rise,...
I had similar effect, it was caused by planet self-warming. I don't know if it was a bug or not, and what do you need to reproduce the thing.
By the way, Jupiter don't get enough of sun warmth, but it still has some heat due to internal energy.
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Well, I finally got sentient life, but I had to Monolith it. Let's see how long a race of sentient birds can last. This stuff got me thinking. What if there was another sentient race on Earth, that died out so long ago that its ruins and stuff are gone? Something geologically old. Something... Lovecraftian...
EDIT: My race of birds just had its first world war. They had reached the atomic age and I turned off Philosophy. The population was decimated by war, and when I turned philosophy back on about 30 seconds later, everything below atomic age had been wiped out, and there were only three or four cities left. They're slowly building themselves back up.
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Try to get the machine life Taxa to appear in your world and get them to be the next civilized species. Now that's hard as hell to do without cheats.
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I don't know, I've got mine pretty easy but I think it was somewhat random.
And mostly because other sentient species bombed each other with nuclear weapons too hard.
I've got a Matrix/terminator world without humans in the end.
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The Strogg come to mind, but I suppose you can't have stuff like that.
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The bird-men are all dead. They were making a huge comeback, but it kept saying that there wasn't enough energy being allocated for science, so I turned up the Atomic energy investment in the hopes of getting more energy for them. Cue DEFCON 1. The planet consisted of three major continents, with several smaller islands. The central continent was hit by a meteor shower(Definitely not something I did to haste their demise during The Avian World War), and the two outer continents went into a full-blown Nuclear War. When it finally stopped, civilization was intact, at the cost of nearly all of the planet's wildlife(Mostly dinosaurs. It was an awesome planet). However, a nuclear winter began. It turns out in SimEarth nuclear winter is a 1 degree drop in global temperature(If that). I decided that winter wasn't nuclear enough, so I helped it along. I inflated the clouds and turned down the sun to simulate dust in the air, and watched the world freeze. We're at the geologic stage now, and the birds have been gone for one billion years. I'm waiting for my mom to get done typing her report on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest so I can transfer the save there, and go to my Total Immersion Hideyhole and finish the game. I think I'll make dinosaurs sentient next. Something about dinosaurs fighting with guns just sounds awesome.
Also: How does one nurture a species to sentience? I used a monolith to make the birds sentient.
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Remember to get them working on fixed-wing aircraft and jet engine systems right away. The old T-Rex + F-14 combo.
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I have been looking around for Sim Earth "remakes" or similar games. I came across this (http://aiplanet.sourceforge.net/). Graphics look really funky, but according to the game description it seems to have a lot to offer.
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After watching you guys talk for a while, I decided to try SimEarth, and I have to say, that game it completely random! everything tends to happen, and no matter how good you are you can't guarantee anything happening quick (yes, I guess you can botch a world, but that almost needs effort to do). What does it have to do with SLCs?
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It has one. In order to really accomplish anything you need to know what you're doing.
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Anyone else tried the AI Planet thing Lumin posted? I've found it a little unstable, but I'm persevering. Does anyone know if there's a way to put the sun in geostationary orbit? I can move it around with the move command, and it's possible to throw it into some really odd orbits, but hard as I try to stop it it always has a slight velocity.
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/e clicks and downloads
I'll Throw in my review in a bit along with some gems I've found while mining puddingstone.
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I have to say, I do not like SimPlanet. I tried, guys, I really did, but after playing it for a while, things either move too fast to enjoy, or too slow to be entertaining. And you can't even see the entire landscape at the same time, to see the effects of a meteor falling.
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Hrm... I have to say, I care not for the ai planet, crashes every 5th button you press and old nintendo ds quality graphics. To me, it does not add up to SimEarth.
Space Empires V is cool and addictive once you figure out what the heck is actually going on. There is a similar game out on the market called galactic civilizations II, the best part of Galciv, you can customize how your ship looks like! GalCiv is from Staardock games which also produces Sins of a Solar Empire, it's a RTS Space game that I really could not get in to, felt a little bit like a command and conquer space ripoff. Of course, Galciv fells like a space empires ripoff, but what's original now a days?
As for MMO's, been there, done that, I keep coming back to City of Heroes. The game is pretty good, free and constant updates, bugs get fixed quickly, free swag for some player created contests (I got the entire comic line, 1st edition signed by all of the dev team for a contest I did). Another reason to play it, it's not WoW.
Dwarf Fortress, I keep coming back to it, of course, I'm really waiting for the next update from toady before I dwarf spelunk again.... -ahem ahem-
Other than that, I mainly chase my puppy around the house because he's trying to chew something that he isn't supposed to, that's incredibility fun!
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I wish I had a puppy, both of my dogs are adults, although my Boston Terrier still acts like a puppy.
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I wish I had a puppy. Both my dogs are dead.
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Hey, don't be knocking the DS.
That aside, I afree. Far too crashy to devote more attention to.
I like how on the web page the creator says "want a bug fixed? Donate something", because in the last several *years* only about three people have paid money for the game.
Maybe no-one pays because it's not yet playable?
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I like how on the web page the creator says "want a bug fixed? Donate something", because in the last several *years* only about three people have paid money for the game.
Maybe no-one pays because it's not yet playable?
QFT
As for the DS, that damned thing is crack to me.
Was gonna try out wurms, but the java installer is fubar, alas, I'm heading back to City of Heroes. If anyone else plays, my global name is @Hamenopi (Server Freedom).
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It has one. In order to really accomplish anything you need to know what you're doing.
hm... so you are saying that in order for this game to have a purpose it needs you to set you own goals (like DF), and then there will be a learning curve?
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Now if only I knew what QFT means.
It's a pity. I was so hoping to make a world with a sun in stationary orbit over each pole, and an icy mountain range along the equator...
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intreweb lingo for Quoted For Truth
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UFO-Afterlight had a learning curve that wasn't worth it.
The first hour or so you spend happily pootling around, zapping the odd robot.
Suddenly, portals appear everywhere, monsters pour out, then your old enemies appear and start zapping you, then, just as you begin to get a slippery grip on this monumental clusterfuck of lasers and killer robot aliens, the ancient Martians wake up and decide to join in.
Oh, and the AI has terrible pathfinding.
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Huh?
My experience with UFO:Afterlight wasn't as bad. The only part I disliked about it is the way it handles resources and research. And the story is silly. But other than that I enjoyed it almost as much as the original X-com.
Well, also some of the aliens encounters are way difficult and the difficulty level tends to ramp up pretty often. But that has nothing to do with learning curves. The original X-Com had the same problem. All you need to play UFO:A can be learn in the first three missions.
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Hello, I'm new here. Just downloaded DF (and am very confused right now). I've been playing Seven Kingdoms which happens to fit the topic nicely.
Seven Kingdoms 2 - The Fryhtan Wars, often less than ten dollars. Try amazon.
Came out in 1999 and it's still great fun to play. Works on XP. Don't know about the newer operating system.
Its like Age of Empires with lots of added depth.
You have the Romans, Persians, Greeks, Chinese and some others. The human races are penalized when they kill civilians, even if the civilians are rebellious and attacking. They start off weak. Then you have the Fryhtans, who are monsterous creatures that start off very strong and get stronger the more people they kill. There are resources to mine and factories that employ townspeople to make goods, but each person in the game has numbers for loyalty, combat ability, hit points, leadership and some have spy abilities. If your troop's loyalty falls below thirty, you run the risk of them defecting to other kingdoms. This can happen to generals too. You can adjust the loyalty of everyone by giving honors which cost money or you can keep them in your fort under the guidance of a good general of the same nationality. Your kingdom has a reputation number too. It can go up or down. It can plummet dramatically for a number of reasons, perhaps the most crucial being you've attacked civilians of your own nationality or someone you're at war with. When your reputation drops, it gets harder to bribe other generals and loyalty throughout the kingdom goes down. The most common problem with low loyalty is rebellions. Peasants will leave teh town and start attacking it or other buildings. This can start a chain reaction. It's very difficult to control a rebellion. Killing rebels counts as killing civilians and that makes your reputation go down which lowers loyalty throughout the kingdom causing even more rebellions.
Losing your king in battle causes a drop in reputation and so does losing an important fighter. Lack of work will lower loyalty. In the beginning of the game you'll try to convert independent towns to your kingdom. They have a resistance number which goes down if you connect a fort to the town and put in a general or king. If the general has high leadership and he's the same nationality, resistance will go down fast and soon they'll be part of your kingdom. At that point you can tax them or recruit from their ranks for your army. If you don't have a general of the same nationality, you can still bring the independent town on to your side by giving them grants of money or by giving them jobs in a science tower where they'll do research for you. Or you can put them to work in a factory or war factory, but that last one might get you on the dangerous kingdom list of the fryhtans and they'll attack.
Then there's spying. You can hire them at inns or build an espionage college where you train your own citizens to spy. Spies can change themselves to appear as other nationalities. They can go into enemy forts and show you the troops inside. With research and good spy skills, your spies can steal information about other kingdoms, steal technology, assassinate generals, counter spy in your own villages and forts, bribe and steal forts full of troops, create incidents between other kingdoms that turn them against each other and a few other things.
There's also diplomacy. You can form trade agreements with other kingdoms or reject proposals. You can ask for aid or military assisstance or a cease fire. You can form alliances or break them (breaking them is bad for the reputation). You can trade technology. You get the picture; there's a lot to think about.
You can improve your reputation by killing independent fryhtans or fryhtans from kingdoms. You can avoid breaking treaties or killing civilians. If you start losing money, your buildings will fall apart and if work places fall down, you'll lose loyalty of your subjects and they won't pay as much in tax. You can also hire townspeople to pray to gods and the gods have many different abilities and benefits as well as a general benefit. Some are destructive like earthquakes and some are beneficial like improving the leadership of targeted generals.
It's a huge headache when you start playing, but it's all very well thought out, an incredible game that makes AOE and most every other RTS look shallow. Single player games can easily last ten hours real time, much of it on pause, trying to figure out what to do or just catching your breath. One negative - the game won't tell you why things have gone wrong. It might look like a bug, but there's always a reason, like if your generals disappear - your forts are probably infested with spies. It can be frustrating, but eventually, you'll see the genius of Trevor Chan if you stick with it.
There is a campaign. I haven't finished it. You get choices during the campaign so that it's different every time you play it. It's not that long, but it's somewhat different. Not the most impressive thing about the game though. I've played games with more gripping stories.
There are some nice guides on the internet, but you'll have to look around.
the 1.20 patch and instructions on how to install...
http://www.the-underdogs.info/tech/techelp_s.html#sevenkingdoms2patchingtover120
The seven kingdoms forum at enlight...
http://59.148.144.50/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=63
I don't know if there's anyplace to play online. The game works well on XP. I've got the 1.20 patch. Some of the tutorials within the game don't work though; I hear it's a problem with service packs.
Video of gameplay at youtube. look up fryhtan wars. Kind of confusing to watch. The graphics are similar to AOE/AOK, but probably a little worse. The gameplay excels!
I had played through Mount and Blade a few times when I heard of the SOSE demo. Both made me long for the features of 7K which I played intensely about six years ago.
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Does anyone else find it strange that a Roman Spy just shows up out of nowhere claiming to be "new"?
What do we have that the Romans want, or have we angered them somehow?
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Relax man, I'm just here for information theft, perhaps sow a little dissent. Haven't researched bribery yet let alone assassination.
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The sky is falling!
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Maybe he's a demon in disguise. We should throw him into a magma pipe, and if he survives, he's a demon. If not, his pure blood goes to Toady... and Armok.
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Nobody's mentioned Alpha Centauri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri) yet? Or isn't that a steep learning curve by our standards?
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It's about as steep as the rest of Sid Meier's games, since you don't need to read an entire wiki to get the gist of it it's probably not steep enough.
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Civ 4.
Oh how dull that was.
Being an evil dictator just wasn't fun.
No different from being a left-liberal tree-hugging pansy.
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I wouldn't call Alpha Centauri a steep curve. Sure, the techs are a little mind-boggling at first, but that's what the manual is for...or just play on easy mode for a while. Besides, the "research a random tech in the categories of your choice" thing balances it out a whole lot, because it's very hard to get the ONE OPTIMAL PATH like in most games and thus expert players won't screw newbies over as completely. That game is a lot of fun at the beginning.
It's also the only Sid Meier game worth playing via PBEM.
So yeah. Not a steep learning curve but it IS worth it.
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I love Alpha Centauri. It was really cool because it didn't try to be funny.
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Actually the Alpha Centauri was dual.
At first glance it's not that hard and a mere player can play it on low levels of difficulty (I did it when I was a child).
On the other hand it has a lot of very nice details which are not that easy accessible, like wind/solar heights, east-west hill sides (one under wind has less nutrients), terraforming tricks, different combinations of "empire levers" such as politics + economy, climate changes and global warming.
A lot of nice tricks to do.
And fungus, yes, the living planet is just awesome.
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Not only did it not try to be funny, but you even got some high psychodrama by the end of it. The movie for the "Self-Aware Colony" wonder will make you drop a brick the first time you see it, and ask yourself "Should I really be meddling in this?" You end up not liking Miriam at first--She's a total screwball fundie who starts wars and gets in the way of progress--but by the end of the game, she's one of the most sane leaders left.
In case you're wondering how I can talk about a plot in a Civ-style game... Every technological advance is accompanied by a little descriptive blurb. Nobody reads those. Instead, they read the flavor text: Sometimes it's a historical quote from one of the leaders' historical libraries (Santiago and her 'Art of War'), but usually it's from one of the leaders' memoirs. They're spoken by that leader's voice actor too. They have very compelling personalities and neuroses.
Here's some of my favorite creepy ones from late game (not to threadjack or anything...)
The first living thing to go through the device was a small white rat. I still have him, in fact. As you can see, the damage was not so great as they say. -Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "See How They Run"
I loved my chosen. How then to face the day when she left me? So I took from her body a single cell, perhaps to love her again. -Commissioner Pravin Lal, "Time of Bereavement"
My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain? -Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"
( http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri )
Do yourself a favor. Play. :3 Getting the next tech has never been so compelling as when it gives you a little bit of the story, too. And unlike Civ 4, the different playstyles (evil dictator vs. economist vs. Planet freak) really do *feel* completely different. Playing a different faction is like playing a whole different game.
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I miss SMAC. I want to play it again but my CD is so scratched to hell it won't install.
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I kept getting those little plot interludes in the worng order, i always used to get the building your first nature preserve dream before i got the "first" dream confused me until i finnaly got them in the right order one time. what was you guys favourite faction for me it was either pirates or university.
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I always played the UN guys.
Oh, and I love this quote.
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
* Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
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Haha I just started up a new game for the first time in a while so I choose the pirates and the game decides to dump me in the freshwater sea! ::) The whole of planets oceans and I get dumped in a pond!
As for my favourite quote:
"A handsome young cyborg named Ace,
Wooed women at every base,
But once ladies glanced at,
His special enhancement
They vanished with nary a trace"
-- Barracks Graffiti
Sparta Command
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Pirates make the worst opponents in the game. They are very fond of building JUST offshore of your land bases, because the game doesn't let land bases claim water territory. Very cheap when the computer does it...also, pirate bases are worthless to capture, because the faction gets so many bonuses to ocean bases only when they control them.
My favorite faction is probably Miriam, or the Cyborgs if I feel cheap. Sometimes University.
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Recently I have discovered Crusader Kings (I was referred to it by someone one these forums, I think.). Grand Strategy set in the 'Crusader Kings' period, 1066 to around 1400.
Starting out it looks fairly simple but there is a lot going on 'under the hood'. Most of which is unknown to you since the manual and tooltips are terrible and out of date. I recommend reading the forums - I did this and it really helped my gameplay.
It can get a bit silly (Help! The Seljuks are invading Norway again!) so it might offend anyone with a refined sense of history. It isn't as polished as the other Paradox Interactive games but far more fun. In particular I like the fact that you are mostly playing a dynasty. This means that who you marry and how you raise your kids is just as important, if not more so, as that next captured territory.
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Funny thing is, Norway is currently being "invaded" by Pakistani immigrants.
Okay, so they're not exactly what one might call Seljuks... But all's fair in love and jokes.
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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by lumin:
<STRONG>Instead we get kiddie crap like Sid Meyer's Pirates.</STRONG><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>I'd agree if Pirates! wasn't a great game.
If you want a naval/trading experience that is very satisfying then try patrician 3 and its successor Port Royale 2. The intricacies of the trading system make it a very rewarding game. The ship combat is not that great, I usually just autocalc, but it doesn't take away from the game's other strong suits. In Patrician 3, you can send mercenary armies to raid cities as well as hire pirates. In Port Royale 2, I haven't had as much time to play with its features yet, but I believe the pirating system is better and I think you not only have the ability to raid towns, but to take them over completely which you couldn't do in patrician 3. Patrician 3 takes place in Hanseatic Northern Europe (Baltic Sea). Port Royale 2 takes place in the Caribbean.
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Jumping in WAY late on this, but I figured I'd add my 2c.
For me, strategy games are the way to go. Pretty much everyone has heard of the Civilization series, which doesn't have a steep learning curve but is at least harder than most games to master. Also, another great game (which I personally like more than Civilization) is the Space Empires (http://www.malfador.com/) series. Space Empires V (http://www.malfador.com/Se5.html) is the newest and a great game. Takes a while to get used to it and really get yourself into the groove, but once you do you'll be wiping out your enemies in the furious light of their own star, ignited by your newly researched star destroying component. Or wipe them out with a series of plague bombardments, convert their star into a black hole, land invasion parties, etc... Whatever you're most comfortable with.
The SE games for me were so complicated and detailed with such a level of micromanagement that I became unable to play without nearly ever minister turned on. The only thing I could do better was design ships, research new tech, and explore systems (SEV explore AI sucked balls, but I usually let it do it's thing anyway, as I didn't care enough to eck out those last two turns worth). I also did the politicing, even though I was probably terrible at it. I tried to make alliances with everyone because I hated combat on a tactical level, even though I was much better than the AI for the most part (for example, I once had the AI crush half of my own fleet with a baseship, oddly even though the baseship itself was essentially derelict and missing most of my other ships I still won the fight. I did have to quick-build and quick-fly a repair vessel in to fix the damage the AI caused (the baseship was SUPPOSED to have enough sheilds to tank anything as it had 3000 sheilds and could regen them all in 6 seconds, followed up by 10,000 points of organic armor which ALSO repaired itself) and then had 4 repair bays to take care of the rest of the fleet--however, colliding with 5 cruisers did a number on it, I think there was only a couple of inner-level components left: life support, crew quarters...had no movement, no shields, and no armor to speak of and I still managed to get a repair vessel in before my weakened fleet deep in enemy territory was attacked).
TL;DR: I dislike most of the SE series games in a number of aspects, but love tech, building ships, and duking it out, but games take too long (I actually won an SE3 game by conquest once: took me three months) and there are vital aspects to the game I don't enjoy doing.
I don't know if it's learning curve is step enough for you but Wizardry 8 is great too, Wizardry 7 is even better.
One of these days I'll get a group through 6, 7, and then 8 just to have done the whole trilogy (yes, all three are linked, story wise) but 6 is just too hard as a game (not learning curve wise either). 7 also annoyed the crap out of me when I played as I could never figure out what the F*ck I was supposed to be doing and frequently ended up in places where the monsters were too hard to kill. This happens in 6 as well, and only one place in 8, as the monsters outside the monastery are leveled for your return trip from Arnika, not your outbound one.
Oh, I also played about 6/10ths of the way through Wizardry 1. That was a b**ch. You played that game one room at a time: in, back, in back, in back, kill, in back, in kill, run to town, raise/recruit, in back in back....
(A room I define as a singular location, as it was tile-like and there was no inbetween anythings, if you ventured four tiles in before you saw a monster you were f***ed).
Galactic Civilization...
I remember playing the game. I don't remember a damn thing and I don't have it anymore. All I remember is building a ship or two and...nothing. I must have been so disappointed by the real game play that I up and uninstalled it within an hour of installing it.
Civ 4 likewise didn't challenge me, I played 3 games on increasing difficulty (I think) and always beat the clock for building a rocket ship (by at least a turn) and was always stomping all over my enemies with massively advanced tech (one game featured a climatic battle between my Apache Helicopters and....feudal Japanese Samurai...)
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Yeah GalCiv2 sucked in my opinion, just reinstalled it with the latest expansion <which has nice personalized tech trees for each race> but after a few hours it bored me to tears. just started dominion 3, it seems very nice, really complex while still being simple, i love the fact you have no control over battles once they start and the whole making a god system is amazing!
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I just have to chime in again to praise what in my opinion is the best strategy game ever.
Master of Magic...
Yeah, yeah. It started as a rip-off of civilization and it's full of game-crashing bugs and game-breaking balance problems (including extremely lame AI opponents). But it's so full of original details and concepts it's worth at least a minor praise. Also, since I played it first before civilization I could never get into civilization at all (even civ4 which I own) since I always find it lacking in comparison.
Things I like about MOM.
- Races: each race it's almost unique in every aspect. Each race had a unique combination of buildings and units that, even if shared with a couple of other races, got unique race bonuses. A unit of draconian spearmen is as different of a group of troll spearmen as their are different from hafling spearmen. Not to mention the overpowered dark-elf spearmen. In comparison, Civ's civilizations are all the same except for some minor bonuses and an unique unit per civ.
- Magic: The ability of customizing your own wizard and his/her spellbooks gave so much personality to your kingdom that, along with choosing a race and having unique summonable units tied to your brand of magic, gave each time you played a totally different experience. Unlike civ where, (with the exception of mods) once you play with any civ, you have played with all of them.
- Heroes: Each hero and magic item you found could totally change the way a game could turn. They sometimes where too powerful and could break the game. But this also brings it's own kind of awesome.
To bad MOM2 never came and probably will never will.
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Oh man, Master of Magic was an absolutely AWESOME game. I never got hit too hard by the bugs...but the balance issues really are atrocious. It's horrifically unbalanced, there's some strategies that are completely unfair, the difficulty -within- each game oscillates madly, some things just don't even make sense, but damn if it isn't a lot of fun anyway.
That is a game that really needs some next-gen love. I would LOVE to see an Alpha Centauri take on it. (Okay, so that's two generations past MoM, whatever.)
Edit: WHOA WHOA WHOA WAIT WAIT BACK THE TRAIN UP
http://www.masterofmagic2.com/ WHAT
WHAT
"It’s a turn-based game with tactical combat which is also turn-based. One could describe it as part Master of Magic, part Populous and part X-Com." WHAAAT
"2009 release date; public beta next year" (posted in 2007) WHAT WHAT WHAT
IN DEVELOPMENT BY STARDOCK, IE, GALCIV2
WHAT
Edit edit: Apparently they had a falling-out with Atari who owns the rights. Which, from what I can gather, means "That game we've been making? For the last couple years? NOOOooooo, it's not a sequel! Our game is called Master of Wagic! 2!"
(now I just want an official Erfworld game, AGAIN.)
But uh, lest you fear that it went nowhere and fell apart, here's a post (http://www.politicalmachine.com/article/315589/Master_of_magic_stardocks_next_fantasy_game) from one of the main Stardock people:
kryo Wrote:
On Jun 19, 2008
"We are working on a fantasy 4x strategy game, but it is not a MoM sequel. We haven't yet announced the name."
Yeah...eleven days ago. Sounds like they never stopped developing, and are still on track. And there's multiplayer.
WOW.
DO. WANT. HOLY WOW. I thought the next two games I was gonna buy were going to be Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, in spite of myself...I'm not a huge fan but it's impossible to not buy those. Now I see, however, that there's a third game I'm going to by: Whatever THIS is.
Last edit: OH MY GOD. Read this interview. (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1780/master_of_the_galaxy_stardocks_.php) These guys apparently think they're the new Bullfrog. Their MMO on page 3 is amazing me. And they're talking about Archon and Battle Chess and Loom. And they were trying to get actual rights to X-Com, too. I HAVE A NEW GOD.
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Diablo III I won't stop you from getting, but I ask that you hesitate before purchasing Starcraft II... Looking at the videos on YouTube, I am most certainly not impressed. Just look both ways before crossing the street.
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Pff, I'm just getting it for the plot.
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Diablo III I won't stop you from getting, but I ask that you hesitate before purchasing Starcraft II... Looking at the videos on YouTube, I am most certainly not impressed. Just look both ways before crossing the street.
I saw the announcement video, what others are there?
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Also, one game that hasnt been mentioned yet but most everyone knows, Dominions.
Great, great, great game. Hard as hell to actually win though.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30MBljXxg3M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etS9a-HOFbI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmJ9IbnrpAg
It may look cool, but lean back a bit and think about what the actual game experience would be like, how it would "feel".
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Reading that interview that Sowelu posted, it seems that Brad has the right idea about things. (Especially his comments on MOO3.)
I am going to try out some of those Civ mods linked in that Masterofmagic.com site and perhaps check out Age of Wonders.
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Age of Wonders is a beauty... I consider it to this day to be one of the greatest games I have ever played.
But I say that mostly for the atmosphere and the story. What little actual gaming I did was grand fun, but I don't know enough about it to really say how good it is in comparison to other games...
Ignore the later installments. Go for the original Age of Wonders. Just play the demo, see if it manages to enchant you as it did me.
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I liked real battle terrain and single units with personal habits.
But the gameplay was not perfect, there were details that need some work.
But the game was still very fun for me.
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Age of Wonders 2 was amazing. I never played the first, but I read a review of the second saying, "How could they really improve a Game of the Year game?" and, "Holy crap, they did." Which is why I got it. AoW:Shadow Magi was one I played some of, but didn't get as deeply into. Forget why.
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I played AoW 2 hoping for an improved-upon version of AoW. I didn't get one.
AoW2 is a nice game, don't get me wrong. It's just that AoW2's atmosphere would implode under the pressure of AoW's atmosphere. It was that good.
The demo's still floating around out there, and if you're into that sort of game the demo will give you good memories that you will carry with you for years to come. It is the only game where I have ever felt nostalgia for the demo, enough to look at a couple unit portraits that were changed in the full version.
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I thought about actually getting AoW1, but haven't because I know that combat maps start units way way far apart and it would bug the sh*t out of me.
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Things I like about MOM.
- Races: each race it's almost unique in every aspect. Each race had a unique combination of buildings and units that, even if shared with a couple of other races, got unique race bonuses. A unit of draconian spearmen is as different of a group of troll spearmen as their are different from hafling spearmen. Not to mention the overpowered dark-elf spearmen. In comparison, Civ's civilizations are all the same except for some minor bonuses and an unique unit per civ.
Master of Magic, and Master of Orion (1) were the only good XXXX games IMO.
And Myrran Adamantine Halflings FTW.
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oh come on, civ1 was pretty good for it's time (though I don't think anyone ever plays that anymore, unlike MoM)
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I still play Master of Orion 1 sometimes. It's something I pick up once or twice a year, play once through, and put it down. But something that consistently brings me back is still really good.
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Wow. My thread is still alive?
Well, I gave Derek Smart the benefit of the doubt. And regret it. Awesome in concept, yet hollow in execution. Terribly hollow. Tried way too hard to make something much larger than he probably can.
MOO1 was addictive. Empires was alright, and much more detailed than GalCiv, although GalCiv was much more comfortably streamlined. I have yet to find the god of all space RTS/RTT's, though I still have yet to play Sins of a Solar Empire.
The great space sims were all back in the day. Hated the X series. All it was good for was a simple trading simulator. Decent economy emulation. Horribly clunky controls though, which also helped kill the sluggish combat. I'm certain there are mods to fix some of it, but it will never support anything more than letting you dominate the virtual market. The warp gate choke points made using the capital ships, or commanding them, impossible.
Any good tactical squad based? XCOM finally burned out for me.
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Any good tactical squad based? XCOM finally burned out for me.
Jagged Alliance 2 - lead a group of mercenaries through a banana republic on a non-linear route to victory. Contains RPG and strategy elements.
Silent Storm - lead a group of special soldiers through a relatively linear sequence of missions during WWII with a few sci-fi twists. Contains full building destruction and RPG elements.
Jagged Alliance 3 on the Silent Storm engine (coming soon) - not sure how this'll play out yet, but it sounds like something between JA2 and SS.
WH40k: Chaos Gate - apparently the greatest challenge of the game is getting it to run without crashing when a freaking cultist shoots. Seemed pretty good to me during those few turns of the first mission before a cultist tried to shoot.
Other than that, not really. There are some RT tactical squad based games, but I've yet to encounter one where line formation didn't do wonders despite being a stupid tactic (especially agains't automatic weapons).
On a different note, there's UFO2000, sort of a UFO for multiplayer. My biggest gripe with it is the graphics, you can use some of theirs or the UFO ones if you've got the files, but they apply some crappy photoshop filter, which makes everything smudgy, real next-gen, just add bloom. There's also the issue of explosives galore - you wouldn't do this in UFO due to budget, here there's nothing after the battle, so you may as well go crazy (and it's super effective).
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Idiom, if you haven't played X-Com Apocalypse in real-time mode, you're missing out. Too many people dismiss Apocalypse as being untrue to the genre (it's not). Also, its turn based mode isn't nearly as fun... because you can't move while firing in it. X-Com Apocalypse is all about sending three soldiers walking slowly down a corridor towards the alien hordes, shoulder to shoulder, with their autocannons all blazing HE rounds on full-auto. Or two-fisting SMGs. The rest of the game besides the tactical isn't as amazing, but I think they nailed that part of gameplay.
Other than that...I wish I knew of another good tactical one!
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If you don't hate RTwP tactics then try E5 and 7.62. (Same combat engine but different graphics) There are issues but the degree of combat realism on highest difficulty is unchallenged and enemies' AI is pretty good. Do not expect more then lot of tactical combat from it though.
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If you don't hate RTwP tactics then try E5 and 7.62. (Same combat engine but different graphics) There are issues but the degree of combat realism on highest difficulty is unchallenged and enemies' AI is pretty good. Do not expect more then lot of tactical combat from it though.
Sorry...what exactly are you referring to? I just kinda stumbled upon this and I'm really bad at acronyms :(
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Brigade E5:New Jagged Union, published by Strategy First. Probably a Demo exists.
Unfortunately it looks like 7,62 is not yet translated to English :(. It is basically more of the same.
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Oh yeah! Close Combat III. The best of the whole series IMO. You control roughly 10 squads, but they're atomic (you can't split soldiers off from them at all, you give orders as a unit). It's great for feeling realistic, tactics-wise, and even better if you're a fan of WWII Germany vs Russia.
It's particularly notable because of how low the death rate can be sometimes. If your squads are in a house and in a trench, and their squads are hiding in a riverbed and behind a wall popping their heads up to shoot... you're not going to see many people die at all. Mostly you just keep firing to keep them pinned down, so they can't move away to flank your other squad...because your AT turret that you scavenged from a tank would SHRED their one light tank...but if they could sneak that tank past your gun somehow, they would blow your guys in that house away. In the meantime, you've got a scout unit crawling through tall grass past their tank, to get to their back lines, and try to find their mortars before one of those shots gets close enough to your AT turret to kill a few guys. And when I say "pinned down" by the way, I mean that your guys will often just plain refuse to move when being shot at. And if you ordered a squad to run, and they get caught by surprise machinegun fire...well, you'll wish you ordered them to crawl.
It's fun multiplayer, even though very often several *minutes* will pass with absolutely no apparent motion on either side. That's when your tank--which you thought was safe in the middle of that field--suddenly gets hit with molotov cocktails from their second-line team that's been slowly and incredibly dangerously advancing. But molotovs just didn't do the trick, and your tank backs up five meters and unloads at close range with machine guns, wiping out half the squad in an instant before the rest of them spontaneously surrender.
It's realtime, but trust me...reflexes just aren't a factor.
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Man, I remember having so much fun with Close Combat one at my friend's house.
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CC2 was my favorite of the series, though all of the 1st three were great.
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Also, its turn based mode isn't nearly as fun... because you can't move while firing in it.
The main reason it sucks is that brain suckers have enough move points to circle the entire map 5 times over each turn and interrupt fire just doesn't seem to do anything against them :P
Yet in real time mode they're pretty much harmless.
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Apocalypse was basically made for real-time and turn-based feels like an after-thought. I mean, ever looked at what the ranged enemies do during their turn in TB? They DODGE, they fidget around within a small area, because normally this would help evade shots in RT, but in TB it's senseless. And the game is a lot easier in RT, to the point where it feels like pest control rather than fighting aliens (in my last game, I never lost a unit in tactical). The only difficulty in RT is the viewpoint calculations, which are simply too slow.
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Tactical combat in Brigade E5 beats hands-on every other game, Jagged Alliance 2 included. Having played E5, I don't think I can ever come back to action point-based tactical combat games, unless for the loolz.
Sadly, the game was rather buggy and somewhat lacking in the plot/strategic map parts.
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Sorry...what exactly are you referring to? I just kinda stumbled upon this and I'm really bad at acronyms :(
Google tells me it's Real-Time-With-Pause.
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Apocalypse was basically made for real-time and turn-based feels like an after-thought. I mean, ever looked at what the ranged enemies do during their turn in TB? They DODGE, they fidget around within a small area, because normally this would help evade shots in RT, but in TB it's senseless. And the game is a lot easier in RT, to the point where it feels like pest control rather than fighting aliens (in my last game, I never lost a unit in tactical). The only difficulty in RT is the viewpoint calculations, which are simply too slow.
Sounds more like you just didn't know how to play, or played on the easiest difficulty.
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You would have to be good to lose no agents at all on the harder difficulties. Especially when thsy start showing up with the advanced alien weaponry of doom. Unless it was done by judiciously running away a lot.
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Oh yeah, good freaking luck when the aliens show up with those agent-seeking armor-melting missiles. I'm not joking--they home in and often one-hit kill.
Or when even the cultists get those damned hopping grenades that chase you around before blowing up. Yeah.
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Those entropy guns are nasty. However, your toxiguns and personal shields give you all kinds of advantage. The worst part of the game for me was the UFO combat. The hopping grenades were never too much problem for me, though.
Dammit, I still like Allegiance..
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I'm so terrible at X-COM, even on the easiest difficulty. It's hard as hell to get radar to do anything, too. I played through once abusing saved games, and still died. I played through again legitimately and it was a slaughter. I never researched more than two things... but it's an awesome game that I enjoyed even in failure.
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I'm playing a mid difficulty x-com:apoc game currently. Turn-based and I sure am glad that my fighters to take cover whent hey have points available and are set on defensive. I said the guy who commented didn't know how to play because if he set his squaddies to aggressive, they wont take cover with their reflex turns, they will shoot the hell out of aliens. Pretty good when you're set to full auto with any weapon, alien takes two steps, get shot to hell.