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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1051 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 20, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Do you have better strategy game recommendations?

Similar to Civ:

SMACx if you haven't played it, go play it. The graphics is a little rough but I think you can get used to it. The game itself is excellent, almost unsurpassed. Check if there aren't mods that fix AI, iirc there are some, the vanilla game has uneven AI that can be exploited. This mod is probably good.. Good writing & memorable leaders. Some quotes even made it into the real world iirc. Not the ones linked but I swear I saw certain phrases outside of the game context..

Endless Legend. It's kind of like Civ V/SmacX except it has quests and researching or even stealing a tech makes all further research more expensive. Units stack, are pretty customizable and battles are tactical but not that long. Factions are truly asymmetric, unlike in Civ with significant differences in playstyles due to different abilities. The only downside I know is that there's really no religion / cultural layer to the game. AI is good on normal difficulty, to lethal on higher difficulty settings due to cheating.

Less similar:

Age of Wonders 2 +(Shadow Magic DLC). Hard to describe it, it's like a mix between Heroes of Might & Magic and Civ. Supposedly a remake of the old Master of Magic games. Every player in the game controls a wizard, whose magic can affect the entire map. In addition to the classic 4x resources, there's mana. You don't have to control mana sources but it's massively beneficial, as it allows casting and maintaining enchantments of ..units, cities, or entire map regions. If you're a water-magic based swamp civ, you can turn your entire domain into a literal swamp, hindering everyone's movement but yours.. etc. In addition, there's 3 underground layers of the map and certain units can tunnel through soil (but not rock).

AoW 2 is notable for having a religious system that actually matters and it's not just a few % modifiers .. you have to take your God into consideration. IIRC you need to build a temple to do so, then it starts. So If you worship a War god, war & genocide gets you in his good graces. He will grant you war-related boons... it's not very deep but it wasn't all that deterministic and was a pretty nice touch. E.g. if a War God commands you to destroy a city, and you don't do so because your impious ass cares about diplomacy, well..

Master of Orion 2 -needs dosbox, only 640x480 is a classic 4x game. Pretty much like simpler Civ except tech are exclusive - in most research tiers you have to pick 1 of 3, so there are trade-offs to make and combat is godly because it's done using starships and these are designed using your known techs and then the fight itself is iirc initiative & turn based. Ship design is about twice as complex than Stellaris and the turn based combat is pretty fun. Even with it, it's nowhere near as time-intensive or tedious as Stellaris, even a huge map can be finished in ~12 hours.

Endless Space 2: the economic / research system is pretty similar to Endless Legend,but it's a space based game. The combat is a little disappointing bc you can't control it, only select tactic to be used. So it's like Stellaris. Very stylish game.. Also disappointing: the blurbs/concepts for various economy-related techs are seemingly very low effort and nonsensical on second look. Sseth has a video on it.

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