A group of friends and I a couple times a week spend a couple hours playing video games. For about a year we played Civilization 4 and its various expansion packs, but eventually we moved on to something else for a little variety. We played Sins of a Solar Empire for about a month or two but it wasn't our cup of tea, then played a WW2 sim, IL2 Sturmovik, for a few months, and then this summer we switched to Age of Wonders Shadow Magic. AoWSM is still working fine, but I'm always on the lookout for new games to play.
Optimally we'd prefer to play a TURN-based strategy game, and it has to (obviously) support multiplayer. Other things that would be nice to have would be competent AI and various ways of winning (something besides killing everyone else). I looked through the last couple pages of this category on this board, but no games that people were playing really jumped out at me.
My friend has HoMM 5 but doesn't really like it, and someone on this board in a recent thread said the AI was pretty dumb in it, so we can probably scratch that game off the list of potential games.
Any input is appreciated.
Yes I did read the Death gate cycle a few time. Just loved Haplo and the rune magic. It was very different from what I was use to reading. Guess it still is. Very good story.
If you like different kinds of magic try out Melanie Rawns I think her name is. Sunrunners fire. It's very good too.
Space Empires V!
B'awwwwwwwww. ._. Umm, if you took the time you stop bitching, and looked in the options, you would of noticed that you can disable fullscreen, and tweak the graphics if they were "too much" for you to handle. About the speed, ehh, it's not bad. The games load times on a late marthon game using an almost GB mod are actually drasticly shorter than Civ 3 load times.
This site (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=134045) claims that it is not quite as easy as you claim.
They say:
1) Browse to C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4 -- or your Civ4 root directory. 2) Double-click "_Civ4Config" -- this will load CivilizationIV.ini, which is actually stored somewhere in your MyDocuments... _Civ4Config is a shortcut to it. 3) Find the line that reads "FullScreen = 1" 4) Change the 1 to either 0, or ask (ask will make a pop-up when loading the game that lets you choose each time) 5) Save and Exit 6) Reload Civ4.
Perhaps I did check the options but somehow the above wasn't obvious to me. Anyway, they continue:
Note: Two additional changes might be necessary to ensure the full window is visible. Either change the resolution in-game, or manually change it by the following:
And now we are nearly done. They explain:
7) load the same Config file as before 8) Find and change ScreenHeight from 0 to 768 9) Find and change ScreenWidth from 0 to 1024 10) Save and Exit. 11) Reload Civ4.
Does the same trick even work on a Mac? I don't know. But it doesn't seem to be quite as simple as you think. Perhaps you are working with a newer version of Civ 4? I bought it when it came out.
It was also a LOT slower on PowerPC than it was on Intel, simple because their PowerPC code was messed up.
Go ahead and dislike it, but use better reasons then you being too lazy to look around the options.
I actually did switch off whatever graphics I didn't need. I found the result too graphicy still.
Plus the game does require the DVD to play.
But I think my reasons are valid and good.
"Perhaps you are working with a newer version of Civ 4?" Ahh, you may be right. I was looking at BtS, thats why I was so shocked you "couldn't find it." I apologize, I should have checked Warlords, or Vanilla first..I thought it was that way in all of them.
About the DVD issue, I would suggest a NOCD crack. I do this with ALL of the games I own, unless they make a patch that removes the cd check(Like NWN or Sacred Gold)
I have a friend that will ONLY play TB games and Age of Wonders is one of his favorites. We all love Moonbase Commander, it's one of those "Best game you never heard of" types, I'd try that. Civ4 is good. The HoMMs are ok, but they don't have simultanious turns, so there can be a lot of waiting. We use to love Imperialism II and played it all the time, but we never got it working on Vista If GCII was MP, we be playing that all the time.
Dominions 3.
Seriously, it's a great turn based strategy game. It's 60 euros, although you can play it in hotseat as well. It's one of my favorite turn based strategy games, never played it multiplayer though, seeing how I *cough*found it* on the internet
Still, if you don't mind Alpha Centauri's graphics, then this game is for you
don't know if i'll get laughs or praise for metioning this, but:
Battle for Wesnoth.
havn't played online but i find it really enjoyable.
it's free btw.
Yeah. I downloaded a crack immediately. But then I applied a patch that finally made the game run a bit faster (on my iMac G5) and it broke the crack.
Then I gave up. I had spent 40 euros (I think) on the game and I didn't want to pay and have the hassle of fighting the copy "protection".
The same happened when I bought Sim City 4 and one of those Worms games. They all need the DVD in the drive and I really cannot be bothered to find and install cracked versions. If they don't want me to enjoy the games, they should say so on the box.
So anyway, I stopped buying games from that company. I am quite happy with SMAC, FreeCol, Blizzard games, iPhone games, and Nintendo (I have one of those portable timewasters).
I would still pay almost any amount of money for a new strategy game (turn-based, not too graphicy, runs in window, runs without DVD), but perhaps I'll just wait for StarCraft II (which of course isn't turn-based) and buy that (and a new computer, need two Intels for network play).
Sounds good. I'll look into it.
Too magicky. Need something more every-day-y.
Demigod!!!
Enough said
Isn't Demogid real time rather than turn-based?
This game is evolving and beta testers do get input check out the feature page for a better explanation.
http://www.demigodthegame.com/features.asp
Since you've already played and liked Age of Wonders Shadow Magic, why not download one of the newer mods for it? The newest version of Brave New World is out. It's up to version 3.0, and adds hundreds of new units and heroes as well as new maps created specifically for that mod. It basically turns AOWSM into a completely new game! Looking at new units alone with new animations using AOWSM's editor took out almost an hour of my time! Give it a try. I don't think there is any other game like it!
Sid Meier's Colonization!!!!!!!
And who said they didn't like Heroes of Might and Magic IV? It's the best in the series if you play vs humans. The AI is dumb as hell, but the game ideas are splendid indeed!
For Heroes V I wouldn't spend a penny. Heroes III, great atmosphere and great fun!
Dominions 3 is in my opinion the best TBS multiplayer game.
3 words: Master of Orion II
Okay, so that's 4 words
I second that. Colonization was one of the best games ever.
I recently downloaded and tried FreeCol.
http://www.freecol.org/
Works.
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