Old/Obscure Strategy Games

[JemJar]

I could say "myth/myth2" but I fucking hated them and I don't see how Bungie was put on the map by a game that was "pick a formation and watch your troops win or lose if you picked the right one" because micro was impossible (or maybe I was just really really bad a long time ago).

I can't remember which Myth it was but if you didn't install it to the default directory, attempting to uninstall it would apparently wipe your entire hard drive. Happy times.


On topic: Sid Meier's Gettysburg and some F1 managment sims are about as obscure as my strategy line up gets.

 

[rokudan]

I was always fond of Homeworld.

 

[S.H.A.R.P.]

I enjoyed Total Annihilation.

I was waiting for someone to say that. What an amazing game, truly a classic.

Dune 2000, Emperor: Battle for Dune, Earth 2140, Earth 2150, and Earth 2160

Totally agree, though I haven't played Earth 2160.

Shogun: Total War and Warcraft II, both not really obscure, but quite old and really enjoyable.

 

[Dmatix]

Majesty and Seven Kingdoms.

 

[Jarc42]

RTT > RTS, IMO. Anybody have any RTT recommendations?

For convenience, we're mixing the two genres. Half the games mentioned here are RTTs.

Shogun: Total War and Warcraft II, both not really obscure, but quite old and really enjoyable.

Classics, definitely on any strategy gamers list!

 

[gibboss28]

Warlords 3: darklords rising

 

[KBKarma]

Got any old/not very popular strategy games you can recommend? Anything strategy related; RTS, RTT, 4X, Hybrid, etc.

Outpost 2, Master of Orion (1 and 2), Galactic Civilizations, Blitzkrieg, Sudden Strike (and Sudden Strike Forever), Warzone 2100, and Dark Reign: The Future of War.

What are yours?

I have Dark Reign, Warzone 2100, and Civ. I LOVED the first two, and rarely played the last. I had to find a copy of Dark Reign online, as my CD was horribly mutilated.

By the way, Warzone 2100 is now open-source. Go here [http://wz2100.net/] to get a copy for Windows, Linux or Mac. It's good.

Sacrifice was great and very original I thought. Sort of an RTS... sort of...

It was an RTS. If anyone tells you otherwise, rip out their soul and use it to summon a Manahore.

I also have TA.

Here's one: WarWind. Absolutely weird RTS.

Here's another: Age of Empires. Great fun.

And a third: Battlezone II. Hard as hell, since, like Sacrifice, you're in the first-person. Even harder, since it's otherwise a traditional RTS, with base-building and resource-gathering.

And finally, Starcraft. Which I really need to play more of.

 

[zakski]

Mech commander 2

 

[The Eupho Guy_v1legacy]

Codename: Panzers - Phase one.

 

[CD-R]

The business and trade sim genre used to be a lot livelier than it is now. Chase down Tropico, Railroad Tycoon 2, Capitalism 2, Sid Meier's SimGolf, and Patrician 3.

Troipco, heard it was good and sounds interesting. Capitolism 2 is great, although I'm not very good at business strategy.

Tropico 2 was pretty good. You had to build and run a pirate stronghold. Uprising was pretty good. You drove a futuristic tank and could build bases and call in air strikes.

 

[Lekonua]

Dark Colony. It's fairly old, and it kinda cheats. The AI isn't that sophisticated, so the computer pretty much Zerg rushes you at its earliest convenience. Pretty challenging if you don't have adequate base defenses.

Also annoying is that the computer doesn't seem to be as dependent on resources as you do. (I mined a map dry, yet it was still building 2 tanks in the time it took me to get one soldier.)

 

[solidstatemind]

Master of Magic (yes, it's MOO except fantasy with a civilization-esque game map)
Dark Reign 2 (I think it counts, if it doesn't, oh well)
Jagged Alliance and Jagged Alliance 2 are very good tactical games

Those are all full of win. I thought that MoM was sheer genius: it was an inspired variation of MoO that was just similar enough to almost completely remove the massive learning curve you have with most 4X games.

MechCommander 1&2 were pretty fun too, as someone else mentioned. In fact, I may have to dig them out again...

I could say "myth/myth2" but I fucking hated them and I don't see how Bungie was put on the map by a game that was "pick a formation and watch your troops win or lose if you picked the right one" because micro was impossible (or maybe I was just really really bad a long time ago).

Yeah, you should probably give it another go. I beat both games on legendary without ever losing even a single unit, so you clearly were missing out on a lot of the depth of micromanaging your troops: splitting formations, bait & ambush tactics, exploiting every inch of elevation, etc. etc. Oh those were good times.

...although, come to think of it, I don't think you can really say that Myth put them on the map-- I'd have to say Marathon or, even earlier, Pathways into Darkness brought them attention. Myth was only notable for them in the fact that it was their first PC release.

 

[Chickenlittle]

Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders. It was an excellent medieval/fantasy mix of RTS and gave you control of your character during melee. For the original X-Box.

It's really too bad the series abandoned its RTS roots when it came out on the 360.

 

[Calax]

Mech Commander, Take Command:______ (second mannassas/shiloh), Myth (if you like that story read Black Company by Glenn Cook), C&C95, Hearts Of Iron, Master of Orion 2 (3 had your biggest enemy as the UI)...

If you liked Rise of Nations, Age of Empires 2 and Age of Mythology would be right up your alley. They operate a tiny bit differently, but they're the same basic game.

Total Annihilation Kingdoms, Warcraft 1 (it's obscure... I mean most of the gameplay mechanics are unheard of now), Settlers, pretty much 90% of the older Strategy titles.

 

[szaleniec1000]

The business and trade sim genre used to be a lot livelier than it is now. Chase down Tropico, Railroad Tycoon 2, Capitalism 2, Sid Meier's SimGolf, and Patrician 3.

Troipco, heard it was good and sounds interesting.

Tropico is great. It's part of a consignment of my old games I'm recovering from storage soon, and looking forward to giving it another play. Also in there is Rise of Nations, also mentioned upthread - not too keen on the campaign mode but as an RTS it's one of the best.

 

[Jarc42]

Also in there is Rise of Nations, also mentioned upthread - not too keen on the campaign mode but as an RTS it's one of the best.

I was playing RoN literally minutes ago; I was the Persians (chose a 'random economic') with victory settings on 'conquer 90% of world'... probably should have gone with the Germans.

 

[S.H.A.R.P.]

Oh oh oh I remember another one! Anyone here remembers Metal Fatigue [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Fatigue]? In this game you controlled huge robots, which you could compose yourself out of a variety of legs, torso's and arms. I always made them with rocket boots, light saber right arm, rocket launcher left arm, and some kind of high armor torso. Man this game was cool, if anyone is bored, you should search it out, even just to build one of them bots and skewer the enemy base with dual light sabers!