Strategy Games Thread

[Primavera]

I couldn't find a general thread for strategy games here, so I thought I'd make one. I'm mainly interested in 4X grand strategies, but other games that involve a lot of planning, resource management, meticulous analysis of moves and tactics, and in general puts you in the seat of an "overseer" also count. Gameplay, screenshots, news, tactics, cheese, recommendations or even just what you like, everything is welcome. If something is not quite a strategy game in the conventional sense but loosely involves strategy-esque elements, they are also welcome since I'm not really too picky about what goes in here.

My personal favourites are Age of Wonders 4, Stellaris and Rimworld. I don't get time to play a lot but I last finished a playthrough of AOW4 with domination tactics using the Dominator ruler ambition and tier 2 nymph units to unlock that skill. It was a lot of fun since you can convert your enemy's units into your own and even keep them after battle, so you could be replenishing your army without needing to draft or summon units as much, and would also get a diverse arsenal of units that you wouldn't be able to access otherwise. This game is probably my all time favourite simply because of the magic heavy setting, because I absolutely love magic, and I haven't seen any other game do it this well. The variety of builds with all the different tomes is just delightful. Their recent changes with hero builds aren't my favourite though, but it seems they are still undecided about what to do with it and hopefully would refine it in the future. There's also a new DLC coming in August, and from what it appears, they'll be making another season after that.

Stellaris kinda went into a trainwreck with the new 4.0 update, so I'm still waiting for them to fix all the bugs before I play it again, otherwise it's amazing. Rimworld too is another game that I have hundreds of hours in, and there's a new DLC coming in July, so I'm really excited about that since it adds spaceflight and some other great features from community made mods, so much as it would probably cut down my current modlist by something between one third and a half.

Some other games that are on my list (stuff that I've only played a little or those I'm still to play): Oxygen Not Included, Darkest Dungeon, Spellforce: Conquest of Eo, Worshippers of Cthulhu (I might be missing some if my memory fails me at the moment). Honourable mention also goes to Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours, though they can be quite overwhelming. I'd go more in depth about particular topics if anyone's interested, but feel free to chime in with your thoughts regardless and what you like to play.

 

[Black Elk]

This is overall my favorite genre of computer game, but I also feel like I haven't really updated my 4X catalogue for about 10 years now. I guess it makes sense, since I'm used to clicking "end turn" while our technologies develop, wake up and somehow a whole century has gone by!?



I'm not super particular about the setting, though if it's set in Space I like it to vibe like either the Star Trek Dominion Wars or else I want it more Interstellar Piggy Muppets in Space, but not so much both. At the same time so I guess either a Stellaris sorta thing or a MOO sorta thing, but I feel like the comic relief has to be done just so in that case. Generally though a lot of that, and also WW2 or the MTW old CIVs for a historical game.

Things I particularly enjoy independent of the specific setting/genre of 4X game.

Good Maps! I suppose it goes without saying, but both the area tactical maps and the larger campaign map, as well as the UI which I also consider a map. I just love maps for some bizarro reason, even since I was a kid, nothing quite scratches the itch like a well executed map.

When it comes to maps, related to that would be having faction colors that strike a quality Roy G Biv balance throughout the campaign.

I can't say how many times a great map has been defeated by Faction Colors that I'm not feeling during the endgame. You know what I mean right, I spent all this time to create a Galactic Empire, but then I'm scanning the Galaxy and the only remaining factions are like Chartreuse, and Teal and Salmon Pink!? What happened!? hehe

This is why I enjoy when factions can reemerge in some weakened or also supped form by flying whatever colors have been otherwise eliminated from the board. I always enjoy a touch like that.

I also really enjoy a Throne Room or a Homeworld or something of that sort that can be decorated with campaign accomplishments, or something like a Trophy or Medal box that can be viewed in game.

For faction family trees or dynasties I love when we can manipulate that stuff and get a visualization and RPG type element going on there. Basically whatever espionage and poisoner's preference. I also like when I can choose the names or weigh in somehow with the titles awarded, little megalomaniacal things of that sort. Nothing says 4X RPG to me like marriage alliances falling apart or some sort of shadow diplomacy.

The best feel for me in a 4X, is not so much when I have painted the entire map my colors, but rather when I have widdled all the other factions down to a tiny but manageable size, where most of the colors are still being represented, but where it's obvious which faction is 'The Empire' hehe. So I always enjoy some method of delaying the direct conquest in favor of Tech Trees or Diplomacy and Trade antics. If there is some form of Victory that tallies up achievements and puts the race on that sort of footing. Always enjoyable, but I also need at least some structure, otherwise I get lost in a EU sorta maze of trying to decide who is winning or who has won, or what the goal is.

Anyway, first thought that came to my mind was that Faction colors need to cover the broad range of standard HEX colors, but when factions get X'd out I like a reimergent rainbow there. So for example, if the Cyan faction is eliminated, maybe the next emergent Rebellion uses Cyan as their color, that sort of thing. It's the little touches hehe

 

[Antimatter]

I'm a fan of strategy games, and there are so many subgenres of them, so it's good you've started a new thread.

Obviously, Heroes of Might & Magic games (TBS) stand out, we have a thread for them, https://tavernrpg.com/threads/heroes-of-might-and-magic-games.232/

Then, there are RTS games such as Age of Empires and Age of Mythology, https://tavernrpg.com/threads/your-favourite-rts-games.211/

But then, you have 4X games, and games like Rimworld... Also, war games. And probably many, many more.

Rimworld is a gift that keeps giving. I have 2 expansions, but I think the upcoming one is their best, to date. Looking forward to new biomes. Rimworld can easily provide entertainment for thousands of hours.

Haven't played too many 4X games myself. Humankind was fun for me. I tried Stellaris (the base game), it was promising, but I find their pricing and DLC system to be too expensive.

I enjoyed Crusader Kings III and sometimes revisit it. I'd say it's the closest strategy to an RPG.

Oxygen Not Included--> can recommend, but the game will require you to check numerous solutions for building. I guess, it's on the same territory as Satisfactory, so it's less of a strategy, more a building sim.

 

[Primavera]

The new Archon Prophecy DLC looks amazing!

I am especially excited about this. Hero class: Elementalist means they are overhauling the class system which is quite honestly in a gimped state right now with the player being forced to choose among certain skills that you used to be able to have together earlier. Hopefully this means heroes will be able to have more skills with mechanical synergy as well as thematic unity. I won't speculate much right now but I am really excited nonetheless.

Love this unit design. Very graceful and elegant.

This one is a bit goofy but I suppose that's the price paid for being a biblically accurate angel.

Lots of exciting reveals in the dev diary too. The new culture seems to be very versatile.

Age of Wonders 4 - Dev Diary #43 - Archon Prophecy: The Architects (Part 1) - Steam News

Welcome Godir one and all. I am Thomas Schuiten, Senior Designer at Triumph (I’ve gotten older) and on this day, as was foreseen by the Archons, we are going to be speaking of the newest culture emerging in the Realms: the Architects! Prepared to shape the realm to their designs. Architect who...

store.steampowered.com

 

[Primavera]

Rimworld new DLC releasing this Friday.

The previews look super exciting:

RimWorld - Odyssey preview #1: Map features, landmarks, and biomes - Steam News

New map features, landmarks, biomes, and weather

store.steampowered.com

RimWorld - Odyssey preview #2: Gravships and space - Steam News

A look at RimWorld’s new nomadic colonies, shuttles, and orbital locations

store.steampowered.com

RimWorld - Odyssey preview #3: Animals, training, and fishing - Steam News

New creatures, their trainables, and fishing up your next meal

store.steampowered.com

The previous DLC, Anomaly, was thematically quite dissonant from the game's main lore, and most folks, including me, didn't like it that much since it felt more like additional chores and it wasn't quite rewarding to complete its events, plus it didn't affect the core gameplay loop in a significant way. I'm glad they are now back on the right track with the new DLC.

 

[Skatan]

One of my favorite style of games too, but as said above, the genre is so diverse I'm not sure it's even a genre! For me personally, my go-to games are the TW series and PDX' games. Rome TW, M2 TW amd Imerial TW I have loads of hours in. Rome I likely clocked in thousands of hours in long before Steam and such started to keep track for you. Imperial TW as well since it was the newest game I had when I went to Uni and since I was broke for 4 years I played that one over and over. Couldn't afford a new comp or games back then, so had to use what I got until it broke down. So yea, I also like the turn based ones as mentioned above, taking my time, planning and then seeing what happens after. "Just one more turn, then I'll go to bed" is a phrase I've thought to myself thousands of times probably, hah! And I never do.

4X style games TBH I am not exactly sure which games fits into here. But I started playing MoM, MoO and Ascension back on my brother's computer before I had my own. Masters of Magic was cool but I was never good at it. Master of Orion though I was pretty good at. Ascension is the best scifi setting game I've ever played. Loved it! It's less known though it feels like. It's rare I hear ppl chatter about it.

But the last couple of years it's been all PDX for me. I got a free copy of EU3 somewhere, GoG I think, and tried it. Got hooked immediately. I was late to the party, I think it was given free even after EU4 was released. I played it and bought the DLCs. Then after some years (?) HumbleBundle sold all DLCs for EU4 cheap (pre-Origins) and bought it. I had a free copy in EGS I had a few hundred hours in and now I have 1700+ in Steam. Just purchased Imperator Rome the other day so will try it out. I think (finally?) i've gotten a bit bored of EU4, even all the mods I've played (Extended Timeline, Elder Scrolls, LOTR, Anbennar) that add so many new potential playthroughs.

EU5 is on the horizon and PDX's is rumoured to plan to release a much bigger game this time and not go down the excessive DLC route again as with Eu4 (fingers crossed). This time I won't wait 10 years before buying heh, I will get it early and I'm sure it will be fantastic. They have incorporated much if the things you needed mods for in the past, so it sounds like it will be great.

 

[Black Elk]

Totally!

Hehe ETW was so fantastic! I mean like I can remember it being so bugged that my entire strategy for the first 3 dozen or so campaigns was to build nothing but line infantry and a single cannon unit, and then (regardless of faction) sending it all either to India or the Americas to start some type of complete shit show there immediately. Then the eureka lightning bolt moment when I realize I could gift territories to my allies or colonies through diplomacy with no objections, so we can steam roll basically everything as far and fast as we can march. Even across Europe!? Love it! "Build more Roads!" heheh. As one of the big 3 this worked especially well, you know where like the 13 colonies or New Spain, or New France, they're just running Russia or Scandinavia or Egypt or wherever, mainly so I don't have to deal with all the rebellions lol. The moment of truth when, after completing the stated Imperial objectives and dynastically foot dragging for half a century, just hoping the game doesn't crash when all the territories revert to our direct control lol. What's best? Hard to choose. I especially enjoyed micromanaging the regional tax rates, with options to exempt or just capriciously crush, with the nice 3 tone color register Green, Yellow , Red + Gray. Randomly kicking around ministers hoping, as always, for someone with high management skills or the big acumen energy. Basically ignoring most of the military tactical stuff in favor of just strongarming the R&D path to victory hehe. So many great options! Alas no matter how many Revolutions and Counter Revolutions I wage, never quite able to produce a Dutch Queen to rule us all in perpetuity. In my head she looks like Katja and everyone agrees that it's super cool to have 4 Universities at the capital hehehe. Why do I go against all my better instincts, invariably opting for Constitutional Monarchy, purely so we still push our ministers around I guess lol. What a game though! Things I wish they'd have done up a bit more, a throne room and the awarding of titles. Making it slightly easier to recruit a squad of super merchants or trade ships without always having them all die at once, in some catastrophic turn. Like really? Every one of them? All at a go? Damn. Oh and definitely the thing I wanted most, an Expansion that wasn't Napoleon, but giving us the rest of the Globe. You know like each of the little theater trade maps, just going the whole way with it. All the Americas, the Far East, the South Pacific, just basically done up the way they did the 3 theater treatment, I think would have been fun, with some better AI. I liked the mods where they gave a few footholds here and there, like in India to jump start things in each theater so it wasn't too much of a blowout. For the longest time my standard for not spending too much on my new laptop was just whether it was good enough to play ETW. I held out for a long ass time before CTS and then BG3 persuaded me to upgrade. CTS sort of a letdown, but whatever I still justified the expenditure by saying that I needed to really hear the Hamill. BG3 a for sure rollercoaster, but ultimately I just had to bite the bullet, or the whole canon ball on that one. I wonder if they factored into quarterly sales when someone legit buys a whole new rig or system just to play that one game. Feels like it should could double or triple towards the totals but I guess then it would be hard to track who bundled what. It would be funny if they sold Laptops with a PC game like the Nintendo always does, just to see which ones flew off the shelves compared to the version with no game for a few bucks less. I think they would have thrown me off the roof in Madmen, but you know just to see.

 

[Skatan]

Hah, we have very different playstyles then it seems! except excessive line infantry then, it's of course the easiest vs AI. Though I prefer to add at least 4 cannons, late game up to 8, for the scatter shot that can take out any melee in one or two shots.

I totally agree on the Napoleon vs new theaters being a sad choice. Also, CA choosing to make the game hard to mod was a sad, sad choice. Had their engine been better, ETW would have stayed relevant for so much longer but sadly the map is basically unmoddable. Many have tried, but to my knowledge at least, all have failed. in for example the excellent mod E2TW (https://www.moddb.com/mods/empire-total-war-ii) they've added a city in the SEA region but it's bugged. I think they tried to add in the other theathres to like in SA. E2TW is still fantastic though and gives a fairly fresh experience, but despite all the changes they've done, battles vs AI still play out failry similar. Just have to mind your morale a bit more.

Europa Universalis with M2TW/ETW battles would be my dream game. That's the one thing PDX can't get right, the battles are just plain boring. You basically either always win or always loose as long as you know what you're doing. The boring part is that you can never turn a unbeatable battle into a win by player tactics like in Total War.

As a last note, seeing Creative Assembly going down the route they did with their company and choice of development is kinda sad as a historical TW player. All their games after Shogun 2 are boring.

 

[Nimran]

Age of Wonders 4 is pretty neat. I was a fan of the series since Shadow Magic, and I liked every iteration since that one came out. I also play Warhammer 3: Total War every so often. It’s another great option for a modern-ish strategy game that still receives updates.

That’s as far as I get for modern games these days. I got so burned out on DnD that I couldn’t get into BG3. Mostly I just old games. Battletech by Harebrained Schemes is probably the next strategy game I played in reverse-chronological order.

And then there’s the oldest game on my list: Lords of Magic. I still play it every now and then for some simple, old-school strategy.

EDIT: Also Jagged Alliance 2, which I haven’t played in a while. Maybe I should start it up again…

 

[mlnevese]

My pet peeve with many strategy games is when you issue a retreat order and your army dumbly turns their backs to the enemy and retreats without reacting to attacks...

 

[Nimran]

It’s called ‘retreat’, not ‘panic’!

 

[WarChiefZeke]

Map strategy games I have never gotten into. But I do enjoy a lot of Real-Time Strategies from the golden age of the genre.

Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 1 and 2. My favorite part about these ones is the fact that you can create a "hero" character who is essentially a super-unit that costs more than most squads of soldiers. You can customize their looks, stats, and abilities and you even get ogre, goblin, and orc options. Quite fun.

Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2 (especially 1): These take the classic DnD adventuring party and turn it on its head, this time you are the one building the dungeon, commanding and enticing creatures to your lair, eliminating rival Dungeon Keepers, and more. These are looked upon very fondly and for good reason. The atmosphere is incredible in the first game, and the challenge is definitely there. The hero units are more diverse and more powerful than your monster units as a general rule, but they can be converted via imprisonment and "coercive measures" or you can just slay them under your capture for a horde of undead.

Impossible Creatures- hard to describe but incredibly fun. You are in possession of forbidden technology to combine normal animals into freakish hybrids to use as an army in battle. The creature creator is very fun to use because there are so many ways to create units and all the different types matter. The AI is surprisingly good and they will use everything from stealth tactics to sniping your resource outposts to overwhelming force.

Disciples 1 and 2- Not an RTS but a Heroes of Might and Magic clone with single-player RPG elements. Take your one hero of three classes from the Human, Dwarf, Demon, or Undead faction to victory in a long story driven campaign where you are taking over towns and building up armies just like the HOMM inspiration. Recommended on the hardest setting since this one can be easier than the rest. But who doesn't want to have an undead dragon at their side?

 

[Skatan]

My pet peeve with many strategy games is when you issue a retreat order and your army dumbly turns their backs to the enemy and retreats without reacting to attacks...

It's funny how all the old total war games had this and they were otherwise trying quite hard to emulate actual combat (to the best of their abilities).

 

[Skatan]

Maybe we will get Empire 2 as a mod inside Shogun 2 engine. It sure looks promising.

 

[Primavera]

Got back into Stellaris a while ago and having a lot of fun with it. The new overhaul is making me relearn the game for the 4th time but it's pretty good other than some glaring bugs which I guess they'll iron out slowly. Still, it's playable with a few adjustments and mods, definitely in a better state than when 4.0 just released.

Also excited about the new AOW4 DLC, even though it's still about a month away, vampires will be fun.