My two gaming passions are RPG's and strategy, specifically Turn based. My eyesight just isn't good enough for RTS.

Turn Based strategy hasn't gotten much attention over the years except in handheld consoles. However, many, many great games have come about on PC or console.

Final Fantasy Tactics, Panzer General, Battle for Wesnoth(a free online game where new campaigns/quests are created by players), the Shining Force series, the excellent Tactics Ogre or Ogre Battle series, and many others are to be discussed in this forum.

Feel free to mention any that have given you joy as I may go try to find a ROM or copy of it myself.

Personally I hate turn based strategy as it is too slow paced for me and you lose the factor of doing some cool things in a match against other players. Especially luring them into traps, a favorite tactic of mine Like retreating with only a few units left and them following your 'defeated' army, then destroying them with the army you sneaked in behind them while occupying them with the first force.
But one TBS I've played on PSP was really great, warhammer. Really fun game that. Another I enjoyed on PC, although I doubt it counts as TBS, was Lords of Magic.

The X-COM games (the strategy ones), as far as I'm concerned, are the best games ever made. Enemy Unknown and Terror from the Deep were turn-based and Apocalypse could either be played turn-based or real-time. I play Apocalypse once a year.

Heroes of Might and Magic 1 - 4 are brilliant turn-based strategy/RPG games and HoMM 5 was OK, if not a little too cartoony for my liking.

Ditto from me on the X-Com series! They were great fun, and delivered many hours of great gameplay (on a 386 processor, no less!)
Chryssaloids... damn, I HATED those things.

Well I still think (in my opinion) that Heroes of Might and Magic III was the best of all. I also liked Disciples (I had the gold edition) which was a lot like HOMM III.


Ahhhh....the good old times


Cheers

Maafiaman

I'm actually a keen lover of HOMM IV where you could control your hero on the battlefield. Loved the Magi campaign.

Well if you ask THE turn based strategy game, x-com it is... In fact I still play ufo enemy unknown (though I need to run several programs in the back to slow it down ) the HoMM series were good, Also there was this great Warhammer game, warhammer Chaos Gate, I still have it but cant get it working and dont know why...

Also there was this great TBS/RPG hybrid, jagged alliance series... Especially the second game, Unfinished Bussiness was great, the graphics were simple yet enjoying, the characters were fun (there were many to choose from)

Ohhhh...I really can't believe I forgot about Jagged Alliance II...damn now that was a cool game. Even if I was getting constantly killed in some mine (don't remember which one).

And also spending money on hiring more mercenaries until I got bankrupt and had to start the game again .

Nice game...kinda difficult but great!!!

Cheers

Maafiaman

I like TBS. My favorites are games from the Civilization and Age of Wonders II. I also liked the Ogre Battle game the created for the Nintendo 64, but that was the only game of the series that I played.

I am currently making a mod/scenario for Age of Wonders II: Shadow Magic based on TES3: Morrowind. If I ever manage to complete making unit retexed units and finishing the map, it will be Hlaalu and Imperial Empire vs. Redoran vs Telvanni vs Dagoth Ur. Good way to combine RPG and TBS.

Lol yea it was damn tough game, I never finished it on medium difficulty... There was one little trick thou, after you find night goggles, you would make operations at night, with a few flares, drop a flare near the enemies and take them out from afar

I still play the game from time to time, I just loved to hit a guy with a sniper and watch him fall from the roof or making a headshot and watch the guy's head pop up

I am emberrassed to forget the Sid Meier (God bless him) and his many turn based masterpieces, Civ series and Colonization

sid meier games were very good turn based and so was the heros of might and magic were great

Carth Onasi

There was one game M.A.X. I dont know if you played it, it was a great TBS and it was quite tough too...

Heroes of might and magic, Civlization, Age of wonders I & II. Lords of magic etc. Played them all at one point.

We might not like TBS too much (slow!), but I think older people with slower reflexes really do appreciate them. I'll never see an 80 year old tank rushing in command and conquer while screaming 'PWNAGE!' at the kid he's playing against. It's more likely I'll see him playing Civ, trying to decide for 15 minutes whether fishing or mining is more important for his economy.

i only really play them when i have alot of time on my hands.i'm not really good at them but i still enjoy them.right now i'm playing civilation 4 and heroes of might and magic 4.

Well, if you like playing them, you will eventually get good at them. It takes a while to adjust to figure out effective strategies for the individual game; the ones that mainly focus on combat are the easiest to figure out.

Aye. I think that neither my mum or me ever had diplomatic victory in civilization. She tries to be peaceful until she's like 'F*ck it' and nukes the persians just to see the special effects xD

i just now won the diplomatic victory for the first time on CIV4.i normally just attack everyone and that's why i'm not good at them.

Attacking, offence, and generally being a warmonger is always better and faster.
I can usually rush a player or two before we even reach the start of history (0 AD)

I achieved Diplomatic victory in Civ., but it was difficult. I only accomplished it through luck though for the following reasons: I was playing a Continents map and due to map generation, my coastal cities had too low production to produce ships quickly, I did not want to conquer a near by nation since they were consistently friendly and spread out to far to completely annihilate, and finally I failed to achieve domination victory by only a few percentage points and needed a several points before starting another war to heal my military.

I too usually eliminate a player by then, and if I had a good start I could eliminate another, but I chose to play it safe and spend a century or two to keep a technological advantage. The key to being a warmonger in the game is to focus on one nation at a time and make sure your "victim" will not be missed and will be completely eliminated and of course to make sure your military is top of the line.

Not one Master of Magic reference in the whole thread. *cries* The grandfather of 4X... Forgotten.

I like to play Civilization 4, but mostly beause it has nukes (Where are the massive exlosions they oughta have?). One of my favorite TBS games isn't on a computer, though. Anyone ever played Warhammer/ Warhammer 40,000? I also like the Dungeons and Dragons Quickstart Battle. But Warhammer's my favorite.

Oh, and Diplomatic victory, as well as building a space station, are the dumbest ways to win Civ. Build a massive army in secret, then surround your enemy (pick someone who looks at you funny), and CRUSH THEM! Works like a charm. That dork from Persia kept looking at me oddly, so I sent a nuke straight after him. Actually, several nukes. Okay, I lie, I built about 50 ICBMs and blew him off the Earth.

wow. I hadn't checked this thread I started in a while. After 3 or 4 weeks with nobody posting I assumed the subject was simply dead.

Finally, about 2 minutes ago, I got an email stating this topic finally had a response....3 pages of them. What the devil?

About the ongoing Civ discussion. Victory by any means is a victory. Some call a victory by war a failure of diplomacy.

Yeah, it's cool to crush your opponents, but it's also cool to crush them without them knowing it. Read some Machiavelli and you'll see where true power lies. However, you can't make others see your point while they're invading, so having a great military backing up your words puts the punctuation mark on it.

I do believe in Theodore Roosevelt's policy of "Speak softly but carry a big stick".

The only time I'm aggressive is when I'm short a resource that someone else has inside their borders. I then open up a can of whoopass on them...until the resource is securely mine! I then try for diplomatic solutions to end the war. Clever or nasty? you decide.


Just reading the first few posts I see there's some great suggestions that I need to do a little research on. By that, I mean find them, download them, and play them.lol

I've a quick question for all that have posted. Would you play an Oblivion Turn based strategy game?

It is only nasty if the peace agreement extorts gold or technologies from them. The spirit of Versailles is alive in Civ.

Of course, my policy is extremely Bismarckian. Isolate your enemy, crush them, then leave them either weak and isolated or completely crushed; nothing is worse than an adversary coming back for revenge or an unexpected ally joining in the war against you for that matter.



Not Oblivion since the only factions would be outlaws, Imperial Legion, and daedra. However, Morrowind would make an excellent turn based strategy game since it has plenty of factions: Imperial Legion, daedra (if the game's time frame continues into Oblivion), the five Dunmer great house, and House Dagoth. The Morrowind TBS is the idea of a mod that I mentioned earlier, and that I need to get back to working on.

Currently playing HOMM V Gold edition (Tribes of the east + Hammers of fate). It's great fun, but somehow still prefer HOMM VI.

One of my all time favourite TBS was Master of Magic. It was one of the first Turned based games I ever played, which led me to such classics as Colonization and of course the original Civilization.

midniteinc

Although Master of Magic is something like Magic, the Gathering, it indeed worked well as a TBS. I did like using Ariel, white magic may be deceptive (well, blue is the real deceptive, but...)... and her avatar kickass

As I commented in another thread, a TBS I wish I could rediscover (among the lost and no found games I have) it's CD (hoping it would work in the new machines) was Total Annihilation... a very interesting TBS unlike any other in it's time, and maybe even now.

Edit: correcting myself ... TA is a RTS, sorry, off topic

Seems to be a pattern here. You play one and it whets your appetite for more.

Has anyone ever played Battle for Wesnoth?

This is a turn based strategy where players can create campaigns or scenarios to add to it. There's hundreds of them made. If you are interested, don't get involved in their forums as it's been taken over by trolls for years now.

It's a fantasy based strategy btw.

Well as a Civ 4 freak, I once won a culture victory while I was chasing the space race... Space race is too lame to chase but AI loves to chase it... I dont really like to fight too much in Civ4 but the sad part is the scoring system is broken, the more land you gain, the more score you get... so late in the game you need to start a war with another nation...

I agree. I hate having to resort to the later war, but it's been almost necessary since Civ 2(I've never played the first one so I can't speak for it). I tend to rely on tanks, bomber/fighters, and even though in real life they'd be obsolete, battleships, with mech infantry doing the occupying. In the wars I fight, I tend to focus on coastal cities. Heck, you cut off a civilization from the water and they're as good as Mongolia(dead in other words) in the later years.

But you know coastal cities are invaluable if you run a SE there, with right wonders, coastal cities can become great person farms or just money bags That is why first civilizations are formed near water... so getting coastal cities from AI is a major blow, I remember I had a coastal town, which was popping out GP every 10 turns... get some great engineers and rush some GP point generating wonders and there you go, a GP farm or pick a financial leader and put in banks on coastal cities, get some cottages around the coastal cities, there you go, you have a money bag

My complaint is, later in the game you cant really do cultural flips, so taking over a city peacefully is harder... In order to grab more land you need to resort to violence, which I know Sid Meier is not fond of...

Oh btw did you see the "I am a civ addict" movies? I just love the old lady there

Don't even knew, you got me curious about this game. Searching now.

Edit: Better yet, cross platform GPL ... very worth a try, seems a absolute must have on Linux and at least a must have on the others OSes. Thanks for the hint.

http://www.wesnoth.org/ This is the download page. As you'll see, there's a stable version and a development version.

Extra campaigns are available simply using the Wesnoth game. THere's an option on it's main menu to DL from the site. For an earlier version there used to be a site where you could DL from that, but since it changes so often with new developments it's kind of silly to put one up. The campaigns range from great to ok, to "did a 5 year old make this" so be aware of that. The DL of the game itself has all the ones from the games creator, David White, plus favorites from the past few years among player created, but there's hundreds of others to choose from.

Even though you may be experienced with TBS, I do recommend trying one of their trial type campaigns. TWo brothers would be too easy probably but The South Guard can get you acquainted with a wider variety of different unit types. In effect, there are 6 factions(plus some player created ones that are considered "non lore") and each faction has tons of unit types. My favorite among the "core campaigns" is Northern Rebirth, a player created mod. This one requires you to have some knowledge or you'll get your rear handed to you on scenario one. You start as a peasant and can only recruit other peasants(level 0 characters) on the first scenario, with more options becoming available each scenario.

The units can go up to Level 4(only a handful are this level, most stop at 3 or 2). This is done so that the game doesn't gravitate towards the RPG rather than strategy. The game itself is easy to learn, but difficult to master. Be warned that the players on the multiplayer servers are pretty experienced for the most part so it's best to learn a lot before trying them.

The game runs on the KISS principle, short for Keep it simple, stupid. They do their best to keep the learning curve easy and the 6 main factions are well balanced and considered dogma. They won't change this no matter what evidence you provide.

Terrain also plays a major part in the game. Keep that in mind. Different factions call for different strategies, with Drakes(loosely based on Dragonlance draconians) being the hardest to master so save it for last. They require almost completely different tactics from all the others and can be difficult. They have no terrain advantages, but can fly. They hit hard but are in turn also hit very hard as their defense is low. You have to adopt a wierd hit and run and hope for water type strategy with them as all units but mermen and like creatures move crappily on water so it's a haven for Drakes.

We all known by now the strength of the community work

PS: Being open source, the user's content is limited just by imagination.

I added more to previous post including strategy tips. I just went ahead and posted it because I knew you had to still be "around" and wanted to get you the link.

Some of the scenarios can be very long and require long term strategy. Lucky, you can speed up the AI's turns if you so desire, but don't take away the whole thing or you'll be going "huh"? an awful lot. The end of Northern Rebirth, for example, involves you operating 4 separate large armies assaulting the main Northern factions(mostly orcs, trolls,etc.) castle where almost every square in the large structure is filled with troops. This battle alone can take days.

As you come through scenarios, often you can obtain other units(most times you buy and upgrade your own) that are hidden. Using Northern Rebirth again as a good example, there's a scenario that nets you 2 white mages and a shaman elf. These are the only "healer" type units you'll get in that entire campaign and are thus, good as gold.

A basic scenario plays out as your main character for the campaign is inside a structure where he can use his "starting gold" to purchase or recall units. Recall is using units from past scenarios that have presumably leveled up. The strict money situation forces you to be careful in what units you add. You gain more gold by occupying "villages" in the game. Each village nets you +1 gold per turn and also serves as a place where units can "stay" to "heal up" as they get a set 8 or 10 hp back per turn staying there. (white mages can heal this much to every unit surrounding him as your next turn begins so it's best to keep them safe, often surrounded by units needing healing). Usually the first 4 rounds of every scenario involves occupying villages or jockeying for position.

At the end of every scenario, the gold you have left is carried over to the next, but only 80% of it. The remaining 20% is called "upkeep" for maintaining your armies basic needs.

One thing that many feel needs to be changed is the ranged attacks. Your units have to be right next to the enemy to execute a ranged attack instead of 2 or more hexes away. IF the unit you're attacking doesn't have a ranged attack itself, then you simply shoot them while they stand there. If they DO have one, then they'll fire back. This requires ranged type units to take more advantage of terrain and proximity to melee type units.

Units also "control" the hexes around them so enemy units can't whiz by them. There is a handful that have the ability to ignore this, but only a handful. This is the "Skirmish" ability. 0 level units can't control the hexes around them due them being ..well...low level. These 0 level units don't pop up in most scenarios so it's not hard to learn this.

There are a lot of other abilities that units have similar to skirmish. Leader type units have the leadership ability that has units around them fight better is another example.

Got the Windows version, installed like a charm... uhh, maybe I'll reinstall because it did it in my native idiom and, maybe, will be better having it in English. I'll give it a run as soon I have a free time.

PS: Interesting it having an online list of user made content one can download directly from the main menu.

One last thing. LEvelling up your units.

Some units have different "trees" depending on which way you go. An example is the Level 1 spearman. Once it reaches level 2 you can choose either 1- swordsman 2-Javelineer(this one doesn't go past level 2 so it's technically a dead end but still useful) or 3-halberdier. 1 and 3 can move on to a level 3 extension but won't reach level 4. If I recall there are about 3 or 4 units total that can achieve level 4. The fire drake can eventually become a level 4 Armageddon drake(some campaigns don't allow this one) a red mage can become a Level 4 Archmage, a sergeant can eventually beome a Level 4 Marshall(this unit type is very rare in campaigns) and some undead campaigns allow a level 4 lich.