Favorite strategy game and why.

[A_Parked_Car]

I greatly enjoy the whole family of strategy games. I have two that hold a dear place in my heart:

Wargame: Red Dragon

The game combines my love of military history with the ability to command various nations during the Cold War and early '90s at the tactical level. My preferred nations to play are East Germany and China for RedFor and Japan and South Korea for BluFor.

Hearts of Iron III (With the Historical Plausibility Project Mod)

This game is about as difficult as they come. It is a full-blown, real-time WWII grand strategy game where you can play as any nation on Earth from 1936 to 1948. The HPP mod adds even more depth to the base game.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Age of Mythology, because I love Mythology. Greek, Egyptian, Roman, pretty much all great civilizations' Mythology. The game itself was pretty good, but the subject matter just had me bent over a barrel.

Runners up would be C&C Tiberian Sun, because it was my first strategy game.

Red Alert 2, because the soundtrack was amazing, it was colourful, and it was absurd.

XCOM: EU, because I'm still playing the shit out of it. I lose hours in that game.

FTL: Faster than light, because it was so different from any other strategy game I'd played before, and was super complex while retaining the accessibility.

Dungeon Keeper 2, because it had amazing narration and was just funny.

And Dota 2, because every game is different, the hero customization is incredibly deep and it gets absolutely insane during team fights. Plus I'm fairly good at it.

 

[Shadowfury333]

Zero-K [http://zero-k.info/]

Think Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander's projectile physics, at a scale where they actually matter to individual units, with Command & Conquer's emphasis on a single production structure ( you can build more than one, but the first is free and instant build, and you only need to to build more unit types), along with a flat tech tree. The emphasis of the game is on getting and maintaining territory control while, of course, fighting to destroy your opponent's army and their territory control. However, as I said, projectile physics count, and units can dodge shots. This leads to a lot of play focused on map-wide raiding, careful (but rapid) unit positioning and control, and smart choices of unit types (as transitioning is very quick).

If it seems overwhelming, don't worry, the UI is very powerful, and the unit AI is smart enough to handle basics (projectile dodging is automated, but not optimal without human intervention, and units will fight enemies they see depending on what you have set up for standing orders), and the economy is flow-based. Games also take usually 5-20 minutes for 1v1, though the game can be played up to 4v4 well, and up to any number of players if you don't care about team cohesion.

Oh yeah, it's also totally free.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

X-Com, even though it's been mentioned multiple times here, takes the cake for me.

It's well-paced, tense, loads of fun, very challenging, but what I love about it is how research and procurement is done. In most strategy games, research is one of two ways
A: Here's this big huge research tree, choose what you want to research
B: We're just going to randomly keep handing you new toys as the game goes on.

X-Com made it so you took an active role in facilitating the research by capturing aliens alive and weapons, and by avoiding destroying parts of UFOs so you could create new items and do research. And it did all this while still giving you lots of freedom with how and what to research and noticing a huge difference in how it affected how the game would play later on.

 

[michael87cn]

X-Com UFO Defense and X-Com Terror from the Deep.

Because... for old games that ran on dos and floppy disks, they had so much content. You could do MORE than you can in the recent remake. And these were DOS games! Simply amazing games with incredible depth, that I see myself playing every 5 years or so even until the day I die. Hopefully they still work on computers in 2080... I'll be 93 years old and still kicking alien ass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=437gc1Ho8kw&list=PL4F8F74A4ED041B2B&index=2

creepy TFTD soundtrack for teh funz!

 

[RicoADF]

*looks at my Avatar* hmmm, I wonder what it may be.....

Yeah C&C has always been my favorite, I am referring to the real C&C's (Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert 1 and Tiberian Sun, C&C3 is accepted but with some flaws). The story caught me when I was young and I always love playing as GDI taking on the Nod terrorists (this is before 9/11 mind). I also loved how you could play from both sides and see each factions point of view, too few games fail to show that yes the other side think their in the right as well and often there's some truth to what they believe.

 

[FPLOON]

Project X Zone... Because it was too easy to NOT mess up...

OT: Disgaea

It was the first strategy game I tried to take seriously and, despite not finishing it, I thoroughly enjoyed it, dood...

 

[The Eupho Guy_v1legacy]

I'm a fan of strategy games, so there's a log of them that I've played and a lot that I'm a big fan of, some of the ones mentioned above (Age of Empires 2, CKII, EUIV, etc.), but there's one strategy game that I've probably put more hours into than all of the others combined:

Spoiler

And it's freaking Slay.

This is the PC version, the mobile version has slightly more polished graphics and (paradoxically) is much cheaper; so that's the one that's really the time sink for me. It's an incredibly simple and incredibly "pure" strategy game.

Your goal is to take over the entire grid; each connected patch of territory of your color has its own pool of money. You buy the weakest units, peasants, combining units makes stronger units (Peasant + Peasant = Spearman, Spearman + Peasant = Knight, Knight + Peasant = Baron), but the cost of each unit goes up basically exponentially (they cost 2, 6, 16, 64), so to support a knight you need 16 connected tiles. You can't capture a tile if it's adjacent to (or occupied) by a unit of equal strength. If a territory doesn't have enough money to support its units at the beginning of the turn, all units in that territory die. So getting your territory split in half can be disastrous if you're not careful.

One downside of the game is that the difficulty really varies by level, and it's hard to know what levels are easy and what ones are hard. (There's AI level; but I always play on the hardest AI level, and the starting terrain has a huge impact on the difficulty) Some levels barely require thinking, where some I've attempted many many times but never managed.

So yeah, if you haven't played Slay, super recommend it.

Oh the nostalgia... I remember playing a demo of that game forever ago and I remember really quite enjoying it. Looks like I've got a new game to get for my tablet, thanks for reminding me!

OT: Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is hands down my favourite RTS. The original supcom was amazing, but FA managed to make a good game great, even if the new faction was pretty imba. I still mess around with the skirmish mode occasionally, and its always fun to go bot stomping with friends at a LAN.

 

[Verlander]

Total Annihilation
Supreme Commander
AoE


Could happily play those games forever

Oh my
Oh my Oh my

Question, Have you ever played Planetary Annihilation?
I ask because it is most definitely Total Annihilations better successor (I admit I enjoyed SupCom but I always found the scale of units to commander really jarring and that the unit swarm was faaaaar to big to be even the slightest micromanagable) And it the only game I've seen that does interplanetary warfare in a fluid fashion.
I suggest you at least give it a look, if you haven't already.

I've not yet, it caught my interest when it was a wee kickstarter, wasn't aware it was out in any way yet. I'll give it a shot, thanks!

 

[Jingle Fett]

One-two punch of Supreme Commander and Company of Heroes. Sins of a Solar Empire when I'm feeling spacey.

 

[Dimitriov]

Total War series because giant scale is awesome. Rome because they fought for the emperor before it was cool. Medieval 2 because its just such a solid, well made game. Empire because of the insane tech tree and I'm probably the only one who enjoyed the navy battles. Still not got round to playing the rest.

I can't believe I'm only the second person to say Empire: Total War. I also loved the naval battles. I mean c'mon! what other game let's you unload a 50+ gun broadside? To me it really captured the feel of massive wooden ships battering each other with cannons and the chaotic nature of a sea battle in that era (when a ship's arsenal can be hit and the entire ship simply disappears in a burst of fire).

Also my other favourite from that series is Shogun 2.

Never could get into Medieval II... don't know why. I love the Middle Ages (I am in fact in Uni studying medieval history), I played it right after the first Rome (so it's not an issue of going back to older graphics or anything), but somehow it just didn't click for me. I can see how it could be great, but I couldn't spend more than an hour or so playing it (something about it's controls bothered me as I recall).

By comparison I have spent more than 200 hours each playing Rome I, Empire, and Shogun 2

Honourable mentions go to Endless Space, StarDrive, Homeworld, Age of Empires II, Civ 4, Starcraft, and Warcraft 3. All of which I have spent many hours playing.

 

[Super Cyborg]

Project X Zone... Because it was too easy to NOT mess up...

OT: Disgaea

It was the first strategy game I tried to take seriously and, despite not finishing it, I thoroughly enjoyed it, dood...

Disgaea is a pretty good one, especially because you can sink 100's of hours to make one ultimate being, or even an entire team of ultimate beings that each could be the equivalent of Super Saiyan 4. I've never made an ultimate being, but I have played a number of the games, and they are a blast. Great comedy, nice little story, and lot's of customization for your team. It's also fun to either make the council vote for you, or if that doesn't work, beat the crap out of them, assuming you have done a lot of item world fighting and can take on the more insane fighters, or if you have to, get the super strong ones to like you so you don't have to fight them. I love the item world, because you can take advantage of the prisms, especially the invincible ones, and you can get lot's of stuff if you do everything right. Things can just get down right insane as well. I need to play one of them again, and actually attempt to make a super powerful character.

Never got Project X Zone, and I did see from a friend how easy it was.

 

[bjj hero]

Civilisation has robbed me of thousands of hours. Every game is different even if your strategy is the same. There are so many variables and its given me a long term hatred of ghandi the fucking warmonger.

I also play Bloodbowl on the pc and at tournament with minatures. Its great strategy game if very unforgiving if lord of the rings played american football. The rule set is super tight, 2 good players make it like chess with dice.

 

[themyrmidon]

Hours played on my Steam account would say Civilization V, but in reality I'd go with Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. Both are in my top 10 games of all time, but Civ 5 would be in the bottom half and SoaSE in the top. It wasn't long ago that Age of Empires II was in the list as well.

I think the big differential for me is the feeling of achievement in SoaSE is greater than that of any other game. Getting attacked by a former ally on a planet on the other side of your empire from where your fleet is and just trying to build defenses as fast and strategically as you can to hold the enemy off while your fleet makes the journey home is as tense an experience I've ever had while gaming.

 

[Treeberry]

Although Civilization tends to make an entire day pass in an hour I'm favouring Crusader Kings 2 at the moment.

I started with a custom female ruler who got married for the alliances, had an affair with her liege and the resulting child eventually assassinated his mother's husband in order to inherit the far off kingdom of Sweden. He also (largely successfully) assassinated his mother's enemies. 'Twas amazing. I actually found out the details by tinkering with the Debug and the fact that that character did all of that (and more!) on his own and completely changed the course of my game made me fall in love with it.

My current goal is to get Catharism to become a major religion but it ain't happening. ._.

I'm thinking of getting the Elder Kings mod at some point although I really want to just screw around and make my own nations with ca-ray-zee succession requirements and see what happens.

 

[Naeras]

I've always considered the MOBA games to be more akin to a fighting game than anything else. So much of the game is about psychology - the bluffing and counter bluffing - which is what tends to define high level fighting game play.

I'd say MOBAs (or action-RTSes or whatever you like to call them) still have more in common with the genre it was derived from than it has with fighting games. Setting the obvious points aside (control scheme, resource-based gameplay, game speed), MOBAs also have another really big difference from fighters: fog of war. In a fighting game, you always have complete overview of all the options your opponents have at any given time. MOBAs give you incomplete information on the options your opponents have. As such, much of the mindgames are of a very different nature: in fighters, you need to pick your options based on the information you have managed to collect, such habits of your opponents, the character match-up and the spacing you're at. In a MOBA, a lot of these things are done based on what information you don't have, much like an RTS.

That being said, I do agree that fighters and MOBAs have quite a lot in common: they're based around positional play, timing and mind games, you have a lot of options in terms of character choice and playstyles, knowing individual match-ups is incredibly important, and both genres are notorious for being incredibly tough on beginning players. However, both genres also share these similarities to RTSes. As such, I personally find it more natural to compare MOBAs to RTSes than to fighters.

 

[al4674]

Warcraft III Frozen Throne by far and really the only RTS game I ever bothered to play competitively. Four distinct races, each with 4 distinct heroes along with a bunch of neutral heroes, creeps and items made for a very interesting and a deep experience.

Was the game unbalanced? Sure, nobody disputes that, however the game was never unbalanced in a game breaking way. Each game was fun and since there was such a sheer emphasis on micro, rather than macro, the fights and the maneuvers were very impressive to watch. I still remember the human tri hero teleport staff juggling against the dk/lich nuke combo. Intense tier 2 towerrushes, the pain it was for undead to expand. I also liked the fringe strategies that caught the other player so off guard, that he didn't know how to adapt to a non-cookie cutter style, such as going paladin first against undead and opting for acolyte harass with boots of speed and a hit + lvl 2 holy light death combo. Or seeing a dread lord first + sleep in order to get a few surround kills.

God, just writing about it makes me want to play it again, but sadly the game is far beyond its prime and only a small dedicated base remains. On the pro league, the game has been completely subverted by Starcraft II, which I consider to be a vastly more boring game to both watch and play, but I guess it's just a matter of personal taste. I'm still keeping my hopes up for Warcraft IV.

 

[veloper]

I cannot pick 1, because variety is the spice.

Wargames and 4X games I really like: Master of Orion 2, Armada 2526 Gold, Civilization 4 BTS, UFO:EU, XCOM:EW, Jagged Alliance 2, Age of Wonders Shadow Magic.

 

[FliedLiverAttack]

Hmm that's a tie between
Civilization
Makes hours melt away like butter in an oven in death valley.
and
Age of Empires 2
First game I ever played. Just soo much nostalgia. Messing around in the editor. The games I played with my friends.

 

[AstaresPanda]

Total Annihilation. Used to spend so much time playing C&C and then when this was installed on the PC holy shit. Nukes did was nukes did, huge robots, loads of units huge maps. my 166Mhz would have a heart attack and the game would run slow as fuck after all my patrols were set up and the wrekage blocked any hope of a ground attack. Just everything i wanted from an RTS. Planetary Annihilation feels and looks great. I just dont like the space part. cant get used to it yet.

Dawn of War 2. I played the shit outta Dawn of War 1 but i feel more Dawn of War 2. over 2500 hours according to steam.....FOR THE EMPEROR !!!!