Strategy gaming fans: A question
 

I know this is a broad subject but I'll ask anyway.

In the first place, I am a big fan of Strategy gaming especially Real TIme Strategy likes of Microsoft Age of Mythology (which is one of the best RTS I've played recently, seriously. In spite of its lack of depth, it's eminently playable and has great theme music :eek: ), Empire Earth and so on.

I've also tried to play Civilization: Call to Power, which is a really difficult turn-based strategy game.

The question I want to ask is simple. How do you play a turn based strategy game and win? I've tried so hard, but Civ: CTP is very difficult indeed because no matter how much you think there's alway a hundred things you need to worry about and inevitably you'll lose to the AI. It must be more a multi-player game, but I still feel that it's so hard to play a turn-based strategy game where you need to keep your finger on a hundred different aspects.

Personally I prefer strategy games that allow me to build a huge army and go to war fairly quickly. I like the feel of playing a battle with a large army of soldiers, tanks and other machines of war.

So why is Civ-type games so popular? I wonder how many of you play the Civ-type turn-based strategy games and for what reason? Also how many of you prefer a RTS to a TBS (turn-based strategy) game?

I haven't played Civ, but I've gotten into some RTS games (Warcraft, Starcraft) and am into turn-based board games like Risk and Axis & Allies. I think the level of complexity you like to have in your game determines what kind of game you'll like. Players who have built up a strong knowledge of strategy and are good at maintaining control of a lot of things at once will like the more complex games, while players (like you) who just want to build an army and attack would probably prefer simpler games.

I sort of like games that are in the middle-road of complexity; Risk is almost too simple, but Axis & Allies has enough variation to keep my interest (which is good, considering games run several hours in length). I prefer I don't think I'd like a game where I have to keep track of 100 different things, unless it was very well designed and did most of the maintenance work for me. Some people are into managing every aspect of their game, though.

NFS rules! :D

Other: FPS' and MMORPGs -- First-Person Shooters (like my fav Tribes) and Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (like my fav EverQuest.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_shooter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMORPG

I'm a big Civ fan (it's the main reason I keep Windows around) and one of the reasons I like it is because there are alternative ways to win that don't involve building a huge army and bashing the bejesus out of the neighbors.

However, you're right that in multiplayer mode, Civ really is a pain. If you play turn-based, then there are large stretches of time where you end up counting holes in the ceiling while everyone else does their turn and if you play in real-time, it is REAL easy to loose track of things. I'm sort of the opinion that strategy games like Civ are actually best played alone rather than in a multi-player mode.

Maybe because I'm such a gentle guy in real life ;) I like to destroy things in computer games, but not just shooting blindly.

The reason I like fairly easier-to-win war-based strategy games is that I can build as strong an army as I can and unleash the fury on a hapless opponent as quickly as possible rather than wait for a long involved in civilian operations. Mind you, it's not that I don't like the strategy element, but I hate the Microsoft Age Of Empires model of economics where I merely collect wood, gold and food without the "trading" or other aspects. It quickly becomes a chore to keep up the production of basic amenities just to build a single tank or an artillery truck.

I like the sound effect of metal on metal and bombs going off as I crash another building into oblivion and turn my wrath on my foes :p I'm a bit of a cyber Hitler. :D

Galactic Civ is fun. I like both RTS games and Turn based. Depends what I'm in the mood for. As for beating Civ, I think the best way is to start off quick in the beginning. The key is creating as many cities or conquering as many cities as possible. Later in the game when borders and areas are firmly established it becomes more difficult to expand.

first 20-30 turns in civilization are the foundation on which you place your victory. there are numerous tactics to use, but basically the key is to maximize efficiency in every situation. this means you build your cities to correct places, build in correct order, use workers in a wise manner and negotiate good trades of technology.
if and when you need to fight, the key is to fight, again, efficient war. you must pick your fights and force enemy to lose it´s picks.
go and learn more at http://www.civfanatics.com/ . it is a really great site devotet to make you a better civ player. actually i uninstalled civ after a month of intensive play. my life was getting messy :) so, i won´t play anymore.

I'm sorry, but Civ is a frustrating game to play for three reasons.

First of all, I'm not against intense strategy in general. Just that when the level of strategy goes beyond what a single human player can manage, it becomes increasingly unfair. The AI can perform a hundred thousand calculations at the same time, but the a human player simply cannot think of every different aspect especially in the later stages of the game.

Secondly it's like a game of chess with the odds becoming stacked more and more against the human player than the AI with each move. The more cities I build, the more difficult it becomes for me to manage every aspect of the city. I start neglecting some cities at the expense of others and the AI is very quick and much more efficient in taking advantage of my lapses when compared to my taking advantage of the AI's lapses. It becomes clunky and complicated and a chore: not fun.

Thirdly, the action is painfully slow. True, you might not always want speed in a game, but the controls are clunky and difficult when it's time for action. Moving troops or units from one region to another becomes a huge pain. Expanding is awfully difficult and painful because you need several moves just to move to a location and build a city.

Agreed, the building part of Civ is not the real pain. It's maintaining existing infrastructure and expanding while at the same time managing the development aspects and using individual cities to the maximum possible efficiency for your Civilization.

I read the Civ manual three or four times and while the concepts look great on paper, the implementation actually leaves a lot to be desired.

I'd second the suggestion of civfanatics, it is a good site to pick up tricks and tips. Civ is a complicated game, but it sounds like you aren't taking advantage of some of the automation that it has. For example, I tend to set my workers to Auto rather than directing every little thing they do. In general they do the right things and if I need something specific done, I just interrrupt a couple and set them to that task.

For the mililtary, nothing beats setting rally points. If you right click on a city producing a military unit, you'll get an option that allows you to choose a place on the map where the rally point will be. After that, every time the city produces a unit, that unit automatically moves to the rally point. Then if you use stacked moving, it makes hauling the army around much easier.

I agree, the pace can lag and the AI will gang up on you. Nothing can be done about either of those. However, the AI does rely on the fact that at higher levels, its only advantage is that it produces stuff faster than you. Beyond that, the AI can be profoundly dumb. I've found its military strategy to be exceedingly stupid and easy to defeat. For example, if you take an AI city, the AI will spend all its time trying to get it back, and largely ignore other threats elsewhere.

Ok. Thanks for the hints. But Civ can eat up a substantial portion of my life :) so I'll give it a try when I'm very bored and have nothing else to do.

Playing Civ can be quite addictive in spite of the flaws I mentioned simply because it is challenging in the extreme. But so far, I've had no luck with it even in the easiest difficulty level.

The problem with some of the RTS games are that the strategic elements like trading, diplomacy and military espionage are missing.

A game like Seven Kingdoms is very good in military and espionage aspects, but its actual gameplay is quite simple and easy.

Nooo! Now I have to play too :) I played freeciv in linux but I didn't get really used to it so I think I'll check the windows version again. Need to get in windows soon too to make an access assignment for ICT :(

I always take my time and watch those messages you get, especially the empty queues. Further I get some cities up soon at the start and once there's not much to build I start my army in those.

I've just installed CivCTP and played it once more in the lowest difficulty level. Certainly it is a great game, but a few points I noticed which frustrated me earlier came up.

This game has a few difficulties for those who want a quick victory. In the first place, building military units early on in the game becomes fairly meaningless for several reasons. First of all, moving troops can be really slow early on in the game and frustrating. Many units will move only the distance of one or two squares per move. Getting from one city to another can become fairly frustrating and long-winded and the paths taken will be quite meaningless.

Building roads will help, but these will take a long, long time because the public works will be zero initially and every unit of road you build will consume every bit of it almost every time. Besides, wasting your initial moves on military building will quickly drain your cities of their productivity which you must keep up to progress in the game.

Besides with rapid scientific progress model of the game, your old units will become slow sitting ducks when you finally manage to move towards your enemies.

The best way to approach the game is to build up your scientific progress very rapidly and start churning out more and more modern units. These units are not only faster in movement, but are also more effective against the ancient outdated ones. Building more cities is the best way because your productivity will increase a lot and gold output will also increase.

Initially one must target a weak enemy and bring him down fairly quick. I managed to take over quite a few of my AI opponent's cities fairly early in the game and this helped me increase my productivity. As far as diplomacy goes, I ruthless kept signing peace treaties and then broke them with disdain to take over yet another city and then again signed another peace treaty. Bribing your opponents will also help.

Finally in the modern era when I was on top of the world and all my opponents were still trapped in their middle ages, the damn game crashed on me and I lost my savegame...

When I played civ II (alot) I would go very heavy on science and making alot of cities. Also I would get as many alliances as possible. Then one I got seti defense I could spam nukes at will. Fun. :)

If you like turn based games but find them sometimes overwhelming, maybe you should try out Rome Total War. True, its a windows game and it needs a fairly powerful computer to run, but IMO its one of the best games ever. It has an almost perfect blending of high strategy on the turnbased strategy map and real time tactics in the battle engine.

Its turnbased strategy isnt as crazy deep as Civ, but the amazing real time battles more than make up for that.

MoO III
 

I see no one mentioned the great series of Master Of Orion. That game is almost PERFECT! Civilization (all versions) is closest to it, but still lacks some work in diplomacy, but is much easier to play. I saw someone complaining about the count of the cities you must manage in Civ, but in MoO you have to manage hundreds of planets with many cities on each :). Not too difficult to me. It's all about how good is UI. I saw some games, when building a building in the city was much more pain, than managing an entire empire.
Also I prefer to destroy an entire solar system with my gigantic space fleet, than just merely conquer the planet. :p

ahem.

Seeing as I am a moderator at CFC, I just have to chime in. ;)

I highly dislike the "clickfest" that RTS games turn into. It isn't "strategy", it's how fast you can click on the correct unit, make it do what you want, and click on the next, etc. A good "strategy" game gives you time to think, to ponder over your possible moves, to actually develop a "strategy". ;)

It's one of the things I pick on some of the "kids" at CFC about - Civ is *NOT* a "wargame". If you want a wargame, go play a wargame. Civ is a "civiliization-building simulation". :) Yes, there is warfare. That is because warfare is part of the tools needed to build a civilization. No it is not detailed/tactical. It is abstracted and strategic. Just like trade is abstracted and strategic. Just like diplomacy is abstracted ... well, you get the picture. ;)

As for being too hard, well, there is a certain amount of micromanagement that needs to be done to play on the higher levels. But Civ3 can be played and won on the first three levels with little or no MM, and many peole enjoy that. To move above "Regent" (the 3rd level, and the one that is "balanced" with the AI), you need to manage your civ more carefully, which means paying closer attention to *everything* that goes on. And there are a LOT of folks who play Civ3:Conquests on Sid level, and win!

But then, not everyone enjoys the same things, so if whoopin' on your enemies in AoM is your bag, have fun! :D


Edit: BTW: CivCTP is not Civ! It is a similar game, but Activision stole the "Civilization" name for their title. Sid sued, and won. You will notice CTP2 does not have the "Civ" in the title. ;)

And CTP was somewhat unbalanced. The folks over at Apolyton have some good mods that balance it much better. (CFC doesn't have much in the way of CTP stuff, simply because it *isn't* Civ.)

Ok, I didn't know that CivCTP was not Civ till now. Thanks.

I think I should give FreeCiv another go or get Civ III.

Mind you, I still believe that RTS are not all clickfests, but the fast-paced nature makes you think faster.

Also Age Of Empires-type of economic model is rather primitive with its collect "Food/Wood/Gold" principle. I prefer a model which allows me to think of resources as "abstract" and economics as more than just collecting raw materials.

Empire Earth is a very big disappointment.

When will there be an RTS game with enough strategic depth while also making the the action fast-paced and continuous?

Well, I dont know of any game that would have the kind of strategic depth you want thats in RTS action. The only one that comes somewhat close is Rome Total War. The strategy part is slow and can be carefully thought over, and the tactical part is past paced and requires thinking on your feet.

I agree on the EE comment. I was massively disapointed by it. And it looks like the new EE II they are making is going to be junk as well. Just the screenshots compared to AoE III's screenshots put me off.

I have played AoK and later, the ex-pack since their releases. I am not sure about you but for me its one of the those rare games that you can never give up.

Did you play singleplayer or multiplayer? because its in multiplayer were AoK truly stands out. I found that the more I played and the more I learned, the game kept getting deeper. I found that theres hundreds, maybe thousands of "little things" in the game that suddenly become important when playing vrs another human. You might not notice and explore them in the rather easy singleplayer mode.

Its one of those games thats easy to learn, but very very hard to master.

Could be , but the scope of your faster thinking tends to grow narrower , less versatile , the faster you have to think....

I agree with these problems.

That's why I think that the "chore" aspects of RTS must be weeded out. Certainly repetitive tasks which involve no thinking on my part should be automated.

For example, rather than having to build individual units one by one or in a queue, I should be able to select the composition of an army I wish to create (just like giving orders to my C-in-C) and allow the computer to work out the micro-details of the army.

That is rather than me clicking each unit I want to produce in turn, I should be allowed to create a whole army based on the parameters I choose (e.g. mechanized army (with more tanks), defensive, artillery or whatever). Again, individual troops or units should not be selectable but they should remain part of a division no matter what, avoiding the need to "group" units by selecting them (this is a real pain in RTS because you might accidentally select units you don't want).

Again, the civilian aspects can be automated to a degree. Rather than assigning each citizen to a task, I must be able to choose a percentage of population to work on the raw materials, while another percentage of the population to work in factories and another percentage to work in the military production and so on.

I should be free to concentrate on expansion, foriegn affairs (diplomacy), trade and overall governance rather than focus on "day-to-day" taks like collecting raw materials and concentrating on putting to work each and every civilian for production.

I like Civ 3
And I don't really like RTS because I hate when these small stupid soldiers run everywhere and get killed. :D

So Civ is better than CTP. There was a real civ for linux or not. I should practice before I start with Freeciv mp.

starcraft i think is the best RTS around .... not that its a good game, but because you can make little games like tag, or rpg with the custom maps, and then use em on multiplayer .... but beware of the lings!, those stupid critters couldn't find a path thru a hallway without crashing into a wall.

I had to vote turn based because I firmly believe that Sid Meyer is a god amongst game designers. I have been playing Civ since Civ I was released and of course Railroad Tycoon.
I dig the AOE line and much less so AOM, but Rise of Nations has had me glued to the screen for several months. I still find Civ to be a superior game, but these real-time games are a nice change of pace.

That's a fairly easy one to answer : Take your time.
My games of Civ used to take weeks to finish , simply because I took the time to consider as much as possible before I took a decision.
Turn-based WILL punish hasty behaviour.
That's why I love it.

Thorough thinking > quick thinking

I won a Civ game yesterday in one hour and found that gameplay is so customizable that it depends on the size of the map and the number of opponents you choose. On a small map in easy mode with just two AI opponents, I crushed the enemy with brute force.

What's frustrating about turn-based is not that it's slow but is that building units, improvements etc can eat up several turns and prevent you from doing anything else. It's linear nature can be quite annoying at times. You spend many turns when every city is producing something in the build queue and you simply cannot do anything but just keep clicking "end turn". That way I feel that I'm wasting a lot of moves doing nothing, but simply building units, improvements etc in the cities.

I'm still an amateur player in Civ, but am I missing something? All ideas welcome.

I don't think your missing much.....Civ does get that way some times. However, if it is happening a lot, it may mean your ignoring the diplomatic side of the game. When I've got those sorts of lax times, I usually try to wangle a trade or two or negotiate a treaty with the locals. Or maybe I need to take a more active role with the workers. If you always leave the workers on auto, they tend to forget to build strategic bits of road or leave a luxury/resource untapped. And I usually have a unit or two wandering around and exploring the world. Of course it does help to pay close attention to cities building Great Wonders. There is nothing more infuriating than loosing a critical wonder to the AI because the city is rioting.

Of course in the later stages of the game, there is all the espionage fun to be had.......

Diplomacy I've never had luck with. Anybody managed a successful alliance treaty? No, not me. My AI opponents accept lots of bribe from me but refuse to take the bait. ;)

Also I've always broken peace treaties in the game, so I guess I deserve it in a way..

Usually that means you've been a bad boy. ;)

Civ has the concept of reputation built in and the AI players are VERY sensitive to it. So a seemingly simple thing, like getting into an alliance against a player and then signing a peace treaty before the 20 turn alliance is up gives you a major ding. The AI players are really reluctant to trust you after that. Bribery helps repair your reputation, but it can take a long time and a lot of bribes.

I've won a few Diplomatic victories, but that usually means LOTS of trade treaties, a few mutal-defense treaties, a good helping of bribes (particularly technology) and squeaky-clean behavior. And it definitely works better in games where one of the war-mongering civs has become large and threatening.

I must say that another RTS war game (Seven Kingdoms) was really fun.

It had diplomacy, espionage and a easy-to-use interface that was very very addictive.

I wonder if anybody had played the original Seven Kingdoms. I've had hours, if not days of fun with it, simply because it frees you from the day-to-day aspects of the game, allowing you to concentrate on trade, diplomacy, espionage and of-course warfare.

Not too much depth in 7K, but extremely fun to play.

I want to ask members for recommendations between

Rise of Nations and Rome: Total War.

I'm planning to buy either of these two games and I've heard plenty of good about both. The thing is which of these two, in your opinion, is worth the buy?

THanks.

Well, since nobody recommended :( I got Rome: Total War.

I think, having read reviews of this game, it's supposed to be fantastic. I'll post my thoughts on this game here once I play it.

Rome is excellent. Good choice.

I really like Rome, you get the turn based stuff and the real time stuff which is rather cool.

It's just really really good.

I am playing Civ 2 at the moment, it's a classic

Bad news. The Rome: Total War CD 1 is corrupt. So I cannot try the game now. I'm going to get the replacement CD.

Just my luck :mad:

The first time I try to install a program in Windows in several months, I always get some problem like this.

I got the replacement CD and it still doesn't work. Installation keeps getting stuck at the exact same point :mad:

This is ridiculous. Brand new packaged CDs and I cannot install the game!

Anybody else have any problems installing this game? The coincidence of 2 bad CDs seems to be too much!

It's probably too much coincedence. Had that sometimes in windows too. And you're not going to like the way I fixed it ;) >Format C: reinstall windows. Don't know I had one thing that it didn't work for but it was a copy of the original CD (which I own as well)

since you don't know where the error is and what the error is you can also try another partition or another folder first.

I am utterly and totally surprised and hurt that no one even mentioned Alpha Centauri. This is perhaps the greatest TBS that has ever been released!

SMAC was good, but I think Civ3 is better. ;)

I got Civ III too. At least that works.

I guess I must return Rome: Total War for a full refund. Cannot get this wretched game to install on my system. Keeps getting stuck at about 30% and keeps reading the CD drive continuously. The only way I can abort the installation is to take the CD out of the drive. :(

I could never get into Alpha Centauri, it didn't help that it had all sorts of problems running on my computer (choppy sound). I much prefer the Civ games, I'm not a fan of the Call to Power ones though, they're not bad, just strike me as a cheap rip off.

Well I exchanged Rome: Total War for Axis and Allies. At least A & A has installed on my system properly :)

Anybody played Axis and Allies?

How is this game?

I can only speak for the table-top version : AWESOME!
I sincerely doubt , a comp-game can beat the original.

Disappointed with Axis and Allies. Expected more...

Also the game becomes *very slow* during the RTS battles involving many units. Close to unplayable. Maybe some DirectX issue.

Still not got into the concept of the game though.

axis and allies is available as open source, too. not as fancy as the commercial.