Anyone know any good PC turn-based strategy games?

[The Tank]

Well, Christmas has come and gone. And since my dad is an old-school PC gamer, this year we got him a new LCD monitor for his computer. Now that would be fine and good, except all the games he plays are OLD AS HELL, and the new monitor makes them look terrible.

So, I figured the easiest thing to do would be to buy him a new game. Problem is.......I don't know of any good ones. Like the title says, he's mostly into turn-based strategy, the two games he mostly plays being Civilization 2 and Heroes of Might & Magic 3. (And before anyone tries the obvious route; I tried getting him the sequels to these games, and he doesn't like them. Which I can understand, Heroes 4 kinda sucks.)

So...any of y'all know any good ones out there?

[thwak is T.hawk]

the total war games have a good turn based strategy element to them, the real time strategy portions of those games aren't as good though.

you can get the rome total war complete pack for like 10 bucks on steam (the disc based version of the same thing will run you 40 bucks on amazon).

or you could shell out money for empire total war, or wait untill napoleon total war comes out (even though people are saying napoleon is just an expansion to empire). The thing about empire is that they've greatly improved every single aspect of it over the other total war games. Diplomacy between other nations is easier, you take over territories instead of just a fort that controls a large section of the map, you can figure out your economic situation much easier, and you have a ton of government controls that are extremely similar to civilization. The only downside is that you need some decent horse power to run it, and I don't know anything about your dad's current computer.

[Jay Peas 42]

Try Gametap. I think that had a decent selection of old turn based games, but you will have to understand. Turn based is a dying artform.

[elektro]

The only turn-based strategy game I know of is X-COM: UFO Defense, and that game is very, very old.

[Fundertaker]

Age Of Wonders (and its sequel) are also good options.

[Push R Truth]

If he doesn't already have Master of Orion 1 and 2.... get them for him.



Just not 3.

[bibboid]

Dec 27, 2009 11:10:11 GMT -5 elektro said:

The only turn-based strategy game I know of is X-COM: UFO Defense, and that game is very, very old.

Very, very old.....


...and VERY, VERY AWESOME.

I was always a fan of Sid Meyer's Colonization. I just saw a new version of it before Christmas (the same basic game but with better graphics).

[Psy]

Dec 28, 2009 11:21:50 GMT -5 bibboid said:

Dec 27, 2009 11:10:11 GMT -5 elektro said:

The only turn-based strategy game I know of is X-COM: UFO Defense, and that game is very, very old.

Very, very old.....


...and VERY, VERY AWESOME.

I was always a fan of Sid Meyer's Colonization. I just saw a new version of it before Christmas (the same basic game but with better graphics).

....I can't believe that two people have gotten to the 'X-Com' reply before I did. Kudos.

X-Com: UFO Defense (Enemy Unknown in the UK and elsewhere) is a great turn-based strategy game with important resource management segments (the resource management is separate from the turn-based strategy, but you need to utilize both to win). The AI is very good at high difficulty levels.

X-Com: Terror From the Deep is another good TB-Strategy game, but it is more of an expansion than a sequel to UFO Defense. It doesn't suck, but much of the research tree is just copied over with new names. There are some interesting twists in it as well as multi-level missions that raise the difficulty way up.

X-Com: Apocalypse is the third in the series and the last with a TB-strategy component unless you include the e-mail game which is pathetic. Apocalypse has the option to do missions in real-time or turn-based...which leads to some interesting AI differences between the two choices. I usually stuck to turn-based, but the one time I played through an entire game choosing the real-time element I found that the aliens often behaved completely differently and some of the ones that were easy to beat in the TB segments were much, much harder in the RT. Vice-versa for some of the others, though.

You can still pick up the trilogy at a variety of sources, I think GameTap even has some of the games if you go that route.

Some other good ones are the Disciples games. I think the first is "Disciples: Sacred Lands", but I could be wrong. Been a while since I played it.


Oh, Laser Squad Nemesis might be a good catch, too. I found it for $4 at Ollie's, but I didn't care for it too much personally.