recommend a noob to strategy game

[HeXen]

i love history, i love chess, why i have never previously got into strategy games is beyond me. I mostly prefer FPS games, but i want to venture back into different genre's. i want to give strategy a better try, but something not too deep and complex.
Was looking at heroes VI but i assume it will be complex, Warhammer may be the same...is there anything out there with fairly simple like rules and not too much menu messing?

I know years ago i really loved this SegaCD strategy game called Dark Wizard, it reminded me alot of Chess..anything similar?

 

[DaveSimmons]

You could try King's Bounty The Legend the next time it's on sale at Steam. It's a bit simpler and less rushed than the HOMM games since the enemy levels are fixed. I'd get the full platinum pack with Armored Princess and Crossworlds.

In HOMM the computer often starts with an unfair advantage that grows worse over time, so you have to move fast or the map / level becomes unwinnable.

For turn-based tactical there are also military games like Jagged Alliance 2, Fallout Tactics (both at Gog.com) and Silent Storm. JA2 is the best of the three but has the most dated graphics.

 

[Schadenfreude]

I'd say give Frozen Synapse a try. There's a 50% off sale going on in Steam (as evident by the link), there's a [thread=2176228]thread[/thread] about it here and you get a free copy to give to a friend on top of that, a win-win-win.

 

[HeXen]

i'll check them out. except synapse is definitly not what i'm lookin for style wise. hopefully kings bounty have a demo....i have a tendency in the past to quickly lose interest. I kinda want to tip toe into it and hoping i can get more involved.

*edit: i'm definitly liking the look of Kings Bounty. it seems to resemble Dark Wizard a little bit more thaan most others i have seen. no demo though but i'll buy it and see how it goes. thanks

if there are any others similar to it, let me know

 

[finglobes]

Defense Grid - easy to jump into and more engaging than it can seem without having played. I see meteor towers in my dreams.


http://store.steampowered.com/app/18500

 

[BladeVenom]

How about Blood Bowl Legendary Edition? It's turn based and a game can be played in an hour.

The tutorial doesn't explain the mechanics so download a pdf of the board game rules before you play. They're called the Blood Bowl Competition Rules. http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m780049a_Blood_Bowl_Competition_Rules.pdf

 

[zinfamous]

History and Chess? Total War series.

start with Rome if you don't mind something a little dated these days. You can get the Gold edition for relatively cheap (and it is often on sale for cheaper). If you can't get into it (campaigns can be quite long), then it's no big loss.

Empire is decent, too. I haven't played much of it, but it's good.

Shogun 2 is the newest one, and is quite amazing. It hasn't sold for less than $30 yet, though.

 

[zinfamous]

i'll check them out. except synapse is definitly not what i'm lookin for style wise. hopefully kings bounty have a demo....i have a tendency in the past to quickly lose interest. I kinda want to tip toe into it and hoping i can get more involved.

*edit: i'm definitly liking the look of Kings Bounty. it seems to resemble Dark Wizard a little bit more thaan most others i have seen. no demo though but i'll buy it and see how it goes. thanks

if there are any others similar to it, let me know

King's Bounty series is awesome. Very fun. may take a little patience, b/c it is deceptively difficult.

if you play wizard class, it will be quite difficult.

 

[paperfist]

You never played Civilization IV?!?

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/civilizationiv/index.html

Defense Grid - easy to jump into and more engaging than it can seem without having played. I see meteor towers in my dreams.


http://store.steampowered.com/app/18500

I second this suggestion. Misses out on the history aspect, but easy to get in to.

 

[you2]

What sort of strategy game are you looking for - real time; turn base; fantasy; war; ..

Its hard to give advice that will match your objective without more information. I can list games I have liked (or dislike) but no clue if you will feel the same way.
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Anyways I've enjoyed KB series (there is a demo; so give it a shot); civizliation 4 is great; age of wonders shadow magic (graphics are dated; but it is a fun turn base game); for real time I liked company of hero series. Anyways there are 100's of games out there - a few include (rise of nation, age of wonder, panzer corps, ....). A lot of them have demos so I would try a few of the demos until you find something that fits your style.
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Btw heroes vi will likely be a simple game. Most of the heroes game are not that complex; hopefully vi will end up better than v (some folks really like v but i did not). Anyways I would start with last year games; they are dirt cheap and many are still quite good.

 

[WelshBloke]

Anyone know of something like a turn based Dawn of War with good/modern graphics?

 

[HeXen]

ok ijust played a few hours of Kings Bounty: crossed worlds. I liked it decently enough, i found it seems to fair better on auto fight than i do myself which killed the strategy part of it, other than that it kinda feels more like an RPG without the management. I can see its repetitiveness so i'm doubting i'll play much of the entire expansion sets...i prolly should have just bought the main game.

I'm not feeling the military/future stuff in this genre...i want to stick to more historical.

What sort of strategy game are you looking for - real time; turn base; fantasy; war; ..

i really have no idea, i know very little of the strategy genre, only very briefly ever played a few. Dark Wizard on the SegaCD was all i ever really played here.
So i'm quite new to this genre...i just want to get into it, but not get overwhelmed just yet by micro management.
I did like Kings bounty enough though. i dont think i want real time. something where i use strategy to get troops in order to win a war..well like dark wizard, you had so many moves per group, like chess you had to get them on the map and strategically attack.

History and Chess? Total War series.

start with Rome if you don't mind something a little dated these days. You can get the Gold edition for relatively cheap (and it is often on sale for cheaper). If you can't get into it (campaigns can be quite long), then it's no big loss.

Empire is decent, too. I haven't played much of it, but it's good.

Shogun 2 is the newest one, and is quite amazing. It hasn't sold for less than $30 yet, though.

Are those micro management? i really don't want to do stuff like feed/train troops, build towns...etc. I just want to use strategy with basic rules like you would in chess.
I did try Medieval briefly, but its poor graphics was a big turn off, then for some reason i just sucked at it on top of the fact it just didnt feel very strategic to me, like it wasnt accurate or something? i dunno

this genre has always been very popular for some reason, so many strategy games, but unsure if i really have the time to play much...i'm kinda in limbo till some good FPS games come out, likely later this year.

 

[you2]

Another game i can recommend is King Arthur. It is sort of like total war series but has more quests. The only problem(s) is that it can be difficult and on a lot of systems it is unstable. But it is dirt cheap. I was able to finish it but had to deal with a lot of crashes; its not clear if they have fixed it since I played (my version hasn't been updated via steam; but the forum mods indicated that there were some 'quiet' fixes.
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I mention it because the style is similar to total war series (I played Rome and have shogun 2) but I found it more interesting (quests; which Rome lacked and such). I dont' remember much management per sey in Rome but there is a Morales factor (you have to keep your troops happy) - others will say more and it has been a while since I played. One thign is that the bugs in Total was series are very minor compared to King Arthur - yes they have a few glitches but having played both I think the issues with total war are blown out of perspective.
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Btw king bounty is a very long game and the battles can be a bit repetitious - esp if you don't enjoy them - there is more to the game than just fights (though that is the majority of it).

 

[zinfamous]

Are those micro management? i really don't want to do stuff like feed/train troops, build towns...etc. I just want to use strategy with basic rules like you would in chess.
I did try Medieval briefly, but its poor graphics was a big turn off, then for some reason i just sucked at it on top of the fact it just didnt feel very strategic to me, like it wasnt accurate or something? i dunno

this genre has always been very popular for some reason, so many strategy games, but unsure if i really have the time to play much...i'm kinda in limbo till some good FPS games come out, likely later this year.

you can set the economy to auto manage--at last in Shogun you can. You don't really establish towns as they exist in total before each game; but you do improve them.

SO there is a good bit of construction for military purposes and economy, but for the most part, you are fighting massive battles on field that involves a lot of great strategy--you can also auto-finish those, as they can take tons of time and after a while, you get the hang of it and things tend to become repetitive.

If you like figuring out ways to defeat armies 3 or 4 times your size by hiding and setting decoys and sneaking in behind front lines and watching them scatter, then you'll enjoy it. But it is very much history based, and I'd say you get more of that in these games than most others--Rome follows the actual timeline of history, starting back to 255 BC, I think for the long campaign, and you get missions to capture specific regions of Gaul, Carthage whatever--as well as the allied Roman provinces working together...until of course Julius Caesar shows up and fucks everything to hell (you play as the Julii house).

There is a demo of Shogun 2 on Steam--I highly recommend trying that out.

as for King's Bounty, I recommend trying out Legends, first. But yeah--much of the point of that game is the turn-based battle system. It does take some time to get used to, but it is most of the fun. I think it took me some 80+ hours to complete that campaign. Crossworlds is a bit harder, I think. Could be that I chose Wizard for that one, but you simply have to avoid most of the wandering armies for much of the early game--especially the 5 or so Islands after the main one--and pick the easiest targets, get items, level up.

 

[Karstein]

Check out the TBS thread, lots of good recommendations in there.

I hate to harp on about it but Poxnora reminds me of chess in some ways. It has an F2P model and you can even have a lot of fun with just the starter decks. I remember my friend who got me into it could win quite a few games with a largely common/uncommon deck.

As someone else mentioned, Bloodbowl is another great TBS that has chess-like elements. It is more random due to being based on dice rolls, but how you setup your formation and cover the opposing team means that you can get more dice to roll if you do it right, so you earn a better chance of winning in the on-the-field situations.

 

[zinfamous]

Oh, since you dig FPS--try out Sanctum. It is FPS + tower defense.

very little menu or micromanagement involved.

 

[HeXen]

sanctum looked confusing, but downloading demo to that and Shogun2 now. Poxnora also sounds intersting..though i suppose i should really get some playtime out of Kingsbounty for a while before i get too involved into another.

thanks guys. hopefully these titles will be the ones to get me out of that single genre rut i've been in for too long.

 

[zinfamous]

sanctum looked confusing, but downloading demo to that and Shogun2 now. Poxnora also sounds intersting..though i suppose i should really get some playtime out of Kingsbounty for a while before i get too involved into another.

thanks guys. hopefully these titles will be the ones to get me out of that single genre rut i've been in for too long.

sanctum is rather neat, I've only played it for a few minutes though (got owned on level 2 because I learned too late that I needed to upgrade my sniper and heavy attack guns).

Anomaly Warzone Earth is a reverse tower defense game, with some (though very limited) strategy. It's fun, but not much in the replay value department. Your team pretty much runs on autopilot, and you run around as a character trying to keep them from killing themselves.

It's been as cheap as $3 recently.

 

[zinfamous]

and ah, can't believe I didn't mention this, but probably my favorite RTS game is

Sins of a Solar Empire. Probably not your thing--because there is a large research tree and a rather crucial economy, base-building aspect, on top of a super steep learning curve, but it is highly satisfying if you're into epic spaceship fleets and battles and such.

Actually, I don't care so much about space ships or the whole space genre, but this game is preposterously good. It's beautiful to boot.

As far as history goes,

Company of Heroes is probably the best history-elated RTS series out there. Excellent unit balancing, resource management, cover system unit v unit strategies. I haven't finished any of them, actually, but these are an excellent series.

 

[HeXen]

space games look awesome, i remember X3 but all i did was explore till i got bored cause building and trading seemed a bit daunting.
Not really into the modern military stuff, beyond swords that is. at least not yet for this genre...i am finding out just how repetitive Kings Bounty battles are, i'm not really seeing the strategy as its faster to just click "Autocombat". grab loot, fight, grab loot fight..hope the game is going somewhere.

 

[zinfamous]

space games look awesome, i remember X3 but all i did was explore till i got bored cause building and trading seemed a bit daunting.
Not really into the modern military stuff, beyond swords that is. at least not yet for this genre...i am finding out just how repetitive Kings Bounty battles are, i'm not really seeing the strategy as its faster to just click "Autocombat". grab loot, fight, grab loot fight..hope the game is going somewhere.

heh. I was going to mention x3, but then thought that was as far from what you want as you can get. I only started playing it recently--Terran Conflict for $5 in the Steam sale--and I think I'm some 60 hours into it, and not having done any story/game missions past the opening mission.

as a trader, you start way the hell away from the main game, anyway, so you pretty much have to build your empire before starting anything. And it's incredibly daunting not having played any of those games before. Doing trade runs, saving to buy a better trade ship, restocking, buying trading stations...but I finally realized that the random missions are far more lucrative than building a trade empire, in TC, anyway.

I've had to read extensive amounts of info on the web to even begin to understand how this game works. It is fun, though.

A lot of the strategy with KB is keeping your units from dying, which you can't do with autoresolve. there are barriers, and also spells and buffs you can use for your army to control and change the field. I found that early on, and even a good bit later into the game (in Legends, anyway), King Snakes were awesome units to have.

especially with Crossworlds, it's important to keep your units from dying because they can be quite expensive, and in many cases you have limited pools with which to replenish them. Also, the story is pretty good, with great humor (in teh first one) I haven't picked up Crossworlds for some time because as I mentioned, it is very hard with Mage and I was already burned out from spending so much time in the first one just before starting Crossworlds/AP

 

[TehMac]

Good lord, Age of Empires (1&2) you can get on amazon for 10 bucks here

If you prefer something a little more modern, the total wars. Medieval 1, Rome Total War, and Shogun 2 are the ones I'd recommend but if you like retro (older computer) Shogun 1 and Medieval 1 (and maybe Rome) are the way to go.

 

[prism]

Dark Wizard was a masterpiece! Best music in a videogame, ever!!

 

[titan131]

and ah, can't believe I didn't mention this, but probably my favorite RTS game is

Sins of a Solar Empire. Probably not your thing--because there is a large research tree and a rather crucial economy, base-building aspect, on top of a super steep learning curve, but it is highly satisfying if you're into epic spaceship fleets and battles and such.

I played the demo of Sins of a Solar Empire and I thought it was bloody brilliant, but iirc the pirates were a pain in the bum. Was really addictive though. Atm I just have a netbook but when I get a semi decent pc up and running i'm definitely going to try it again. I would give it a try if I were you.

 

[you2]

If you want off the path strategy games; there is space rangers 2. It is cheap; long and very good. To be honest I'm not sure strategy game is the correct classification.

Then there are the 4x games like galatic civ 2.
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To be honest given your comment about using automagic resolution for KB; I think you want something simple. Heroes of might and magic 3 or 4 are fairly simple games and dirt cheap ($5 or $6 each at GOG). Another game I liked a lot was starcraft. It has a sort of fun campaign.