The real time strategy / turn based strategy / grand strategy thread

Cromulent

Cromulent

Cromulent

Soldato
Joined
1 Nov 2007
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England
I haven't really seen any threads here about strategy games. Most seem to be FPS, sports, racing, RPG threads so I thought I'd start a thread for people who are into strategy games whether that be real time strategy games or turn based strategy games all is welcome.

I'll start it off by saying that I have recently got into playing Hearts of Iron 3 (with all expansion packs) and WOW what a game. I'm still learning how to play it as it is very complicated but I'm really enjoying it so far. The only problem I've got with it is a lack of a printed manual which would really help but alas I bought it on Steam so all I have is a PDF version.

I'd highly recommend the game to any hardcore strategy fans out there. You can play out all your different World War 2 fantasies in it since you can play as any country you want. I'm starting off with Germany since that is meant to be a reasonably easy nation to start with as a newbie.

So what strategy games have you been playing recently?
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
Haven't seen any decent Ww2 ones that really excited me since Close Combat3, which I loved. More recently, I was directed to XCOM, which frankly is bloody brilliant and should be on anyone's shopping list. Particularly so as there's "long war" as a free mod available to extend the interest.
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For some strange reason I never got into the XCOM games. I think I played the originals when they came out and got put off for some reason (I can't really remember why I just have an unexplainable negative feeling whenever I hear about XCOM games).

Jim99 said:
I could spend an entire week on EU3 and then abandon the save because it all went pear-shaped.
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I got EU3 on a steam sale but haven't got around to playing it yet.

If you do find the time HoI3 is pretty fun. The planning for the game and what objectives you want to achieve for your chosen country is pretty fun in its own right and that's before you've even started playing :).

Having said that HoI4 is due out at some point reasonably soon so it might be worth holding out for that one instead.
 
Supreme Commander: FA is awesome. Reminds me of when I played the original Total Annihilation back in the day.

I never tried any mods with it though. I'll have to look into that as I'm sure that would increase the playability of it a lot.
 
lucky13 said:
I absolutely love CK 2 I have played loads lately.

Last night I had a quick blast with a new game. As Castille looking for a decent ally outside Spain accidentally married the Kaisers infertile daughter. So I decided to try make this work, seduced half the rulers in Spains wives. Accidentally had 4 heirs all legitimized forgetting that I was Gavel kind. Get assassinated by one of the other rulers whose wife I had tumbled, before I could change to Primogeniture.

Cue four children taking over my two duchies, ruler is only 2 years old. :D Great fun.

Has anyone had the spawn of satan event chain trigger? :)
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Sounds cool. I'll have to check it out.
 
Oh forgot to ask. Does anyone ever do any after action reports for their strategy games at all? I know its a bit geeky but I find them really interesting especially when you see a really hard fought battle / war in a strategy game.

I'm looking through the HoI3 ones at the moment in the hopes that it'll teach me more about the game since I only really started playing it recently.

Even though I obviously don't know everything about the game yet even just playing it through like this is great fun. It's at the slow stage before the start of the war and you can feel the tension building as time passes and countries build up their military strength.

I'll have to think about annexing Austria soon.
 
Eulogy said:
I did one of my Castille WC game on EU4:

https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/31mej5/castille_wc_aar/
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Cool. I'll read through that. Might make me want to get out EU3 which I believe I got for free for some reason (Paradox did a give away at some point if I remember correctly). If I get on with that I might get EU4.

Crimefighter said:
Civ V is normally my go-to strategy game, but I too am looking for something new.

Looking forward to XCOM 2 (delayed to Feb), and the new Creative Assembly Warhammer game (not sure when that one is expected).

I see EU4 being recommended in this thread - might give that a go.

Has anyone tried the new Gal Civ? (3?), any good? Reviews seem mixed.
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I never really got into Civ 5 to be honest. I didn't really enjoy it that much when compared to Civ 4 which I enjoyed much more.

As for the new Creative Assembly Total War games I think they ruined the series after Shogun 2. Rome 2: Total War and Attila: Total war didn't do anything for me. If I didn't have an annoying bug that stopped me changing the screen resolution in it I'd still be playing the original Rome Total War which is still my favourite game in the entire Total War series.
 
Eulogy said:
EU4 is quite different from 3 according to my friend, you can get the base game for about £5 from the keysites (Kinguin etc). I'd watch a few videos etc, and if you like it try that instead.

The DLC changes bits and pieces, I have most of it personally but I have sunk over 1k hours into that game :D
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Cool I didn't know about Kinguin at all. I see the whole EU4 collection is available for less than £15 which is awesome given the replayability of these type of games.

Sorry for the stupid question but are there any other sites like that that I can bookmark for cheap games? I try and keep all my games in Steam as it means I don't need to bother installing loads of stuff from CD and I can easily add and remove games as I want them.

Since my day job is as a programmer I've been thinking about getting into game development and I thought a great place to start would be making mods for these types of games. I've got some cool ideas for little scenarios that could play out into quite interesting battles and wars.
 
Old Man said:
For those who enjoyed Rome Total War (1 and 2), but looking for something more realistic, then you need to look at http://www.rometotalrealism.org/ ; a lot of work has gone in to making RTW to RTR (Rome Total Realism) and trust me, it's great.

Also check out: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?2054-Rome-II-Total-Realism mods here for all TW games.
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If I could get the original Rome Total War working at a higher game resolution I'd be playing it all the time but alas there seems to be some kind of bug on my system. I made a post on the main Total War forum but no one has responded to it yet so I guess I'll just have to see if it fixes itself (perhaps when I next upgrade my graphics drivers).
 
kieves1 said:
Gal civ3 is ok. Not as good as Galciv2 yet though and so far quite annoying with DLC that should just be in a patch really going off the galciv2 content
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Interesting. I've never heard of those games before.

They look good enough to go on my Steam wishlist just incase they go on sale at some point.
 
Well I bought Crusader Kings 2 for two reasons. The first one is that Paradox games are pretty awesome in general and the second one is that you can play out a game in Crusader Kings 2 and then import it into Europa Universalis 4 and continue playing there.

The only problem with CK2 is the amount of download content available for it. I got a really cheap deal on a DLC pack for it on Kinguin but I still needed to get another 3 expansions for it. Not sure if I should get the unit models and stuff as well. I guess I should if I want the game to look as good as possible.

I also got a cheap deal on EU4 with a couple of expansions but I'm going to hold off on getting the full download content of that game until I've played CK2 a bit.

Edit: This game is massive with all the expansion packs installed! 769 AD I think is the new starting date I can see I'm going to be spending a lot of time playing this over the going weeks.
 
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Bleek said:
I've only about 12 hours with CK2, about 8 of those just learning the basics. My kind of game though, loads of detail with all DLC.

Found the DLC situation offputting at first, but managed to get a bundle and fill gaps for ~£30.

Still only scratched the surface.

When it comes to space 4x it can only be Distant Worlds. Epic in every way - eats hours of you life with ease.
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Yeah there is a shed load of DLC for CK2. I managed to find a decent deal myself and got it all. Now I need to spend the time learning it. So far it seems much more difficult pick up that HoI3 which in comparison was quite easy.

I've got the basics down but I think I need to watch a few more YouTube tutorials on how to play the game before I can really get into it.

Problem I've found so far is that the tutorial seems to have not been updated for the changes that have taken place in newer expansions so some of the UI elements are a bit different from what it says in the tutorial text. Of course I might have missed something obvious.

I was also quite impressed with the fact that you can click a button a be taken to a Wikipedia page about the person in question. That is a nice little addition.
 
Bleek said:
Is EU4 very different to CK2, they look like they use the same map?
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I've watched a few tutorial videos on both (I only got the games yesterday) and I think I can safely say that CK2 is much harder than EU4.

I think its because the interface is so different from the other Paradox games. In HoI3 and EU4 there is a main window with a load of tabs along the top and that is basically what you use to manage your empire. In CK2 you always need to be aware of what the other characters are doing and the interface feels a little bit clunky. I'm sure I'll get used to it at some point but at the moment I'm concentrating on EU4.
 
Eulogy said:
Yep!

My offer on teaching some EU4 stuff still stands if you fancy trying that out too, I found it easier to get into than CK2 personally. Also, the host allows the joiners to have the same DLC during multiplayer so you only need the base game.
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That would be really cool. I'm just not sure what my schedule is over the next few days. Today is a total wipe out with a doctors appointment and a job meeting. But maybe later on this week?

How would we go about doing it? Skype call to each other for voice chat and then just a standard multiplayer game or some other way?
 
Eulogy said:
I have a mumble server we can use, you can just download the client and put in the relevant server details when I send them to you, pretty simple :)

For me the best time will be evening, probably after 20:00 - 20:30.
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Not sure I'll be able to make that to be honest at the moment. I have to get up quite early in the mornings at the moment and am generally in bed by about 20:00.
 
I've started a public Mumble server that anyone can join. I posted it on the Paradox forums but anyone here who wants to talk about HoI3, EU4 or CK2 is free to join as well. There is also a general chat channel so you can talk about different games if you like.

It'll be best if you use the latest Mumble client which at the time of writing is 1.2.10 to connect.

The server info is as follows:

IP Address: 46.101.12.120
Port: 64738

come along and chat about strategy games :).
 
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