I’m a HUGE fan of the Civ series. I’ve played all of them, save the most recent.
While I’m waiting for Christmas and my birthday for Civ4 and the video card I need to play it.
In the meantime, recommend a Civ-type game for me.
I’m not a huge fan of AoE, or the multitude of games like it. Build the city and go to war with the city units is ok, but not great. I love to guide a culture, let it grow, etc.
So what do you think I would enjoy playing?
You might like something like Master of Orion 2 (which is old) or Galactic Civilizations. They’re sort of like “Civilization in Space”…explore the galaxy, colonize planets, research advances and trade, negotiate, and fight with alien species. Or, try Sid Meyer’s “Alpha Centauri”, which actually is “Civilization in Space” As one of seven factions involved in a colonization attempt at Alpha Centauri that went horribly wrong, you need to build cities and research new technology while at the same time defending yourself both from rival factions and the hostile native life forms.
Is Galactic Civilizations easy to find? That sounds promising.
I’ve played SMAC, and I liked it fine. I had some prblems with the colors on my old monitor, and the fact that I was playing without a manual was a bit of an issue.
Maybe I’ll dig it up again. Hmmmmm…
[QUOTE=Tristan]
Is Galactic Civilizations easy to find? That sounds promising./QUOTE]
Here it is, bundled with the expansion pack, on Amazon:
One neat function of the game is that it includes a moral component. For example, you might colonize a new planet and find that it already has intelligent, if technologically primitive, life on it. You can choose to just settle areas that are unsettled (which makes your colony much less productive), to move the native population to reservations (which makes it slightly less productive), or just slaughter all of them (which lets you use all the colony resources). Make enough good choices, or enough evil choices, and your civilization becomes good or evil, which affects what you can research, as well as your relationship with other civilizations.
The City Builder games from (variously) Impressions and its descendants are good, if you aren’t looking for head-to-head play against human opponents. Caesar III, Pharaoh and its expansion, Zeus and its expansion, and there was a Chinese one, as well.
You might enjoy Europa Universalis II.
Another recommendation here for Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. It’s a great game in melding an excellent sci-fi story with a Civ-like game structure. Not sure where you could find it these days, though.
You might like the Paradox line of strategy games. They all have roughly the same engine, which focuses on guiding a nation through a variety of historical events. Europa Universalis (II) has the largest scale, but the other ones are not bad. The emphasis leans more toward economic development and diplomacy than the Civ games (though diplomacy by other means is not neglected). The pace of development may seem glacially slow at first – you can only modify your country’s ‘core values’ a little at a time, and the advancements will never be ridiculously anachronistic. It often works better as a historical simulation (where you get to tinker with history, but not try to conquer the world as Mali by 1800[sup]*[/sup]). The diplomacy model can just as entangled as the historical thing (and historical events are included as well); it may or may not be something you’d like.
Still, the strategy six-pack is a good deal, as it contains almost all the games they make (from medieval times to WWII).
We had a thread about this very question just last month. You can read it here. Or you can read another one from July here.
I strongly recommend the Europa Universalis 2 game. That game, by the way, was put out for Xmas in 2001, and just two days ago, the newest version was put up on the official website for updating the game. Four years of active support is unheard of in the industry, 'til now. :eek:
For that reason alone I will always by Paradox games. Don’t get me wrong, I love the games (my favorite is Victoria), but their support is outstanding. On the messageboard for the game, the designers themselves are apart of it. So they personally will answer your questions.
True, but the flip side of that is that their games usually need a few patched before they can be played.
grr… patches
ALL games these days are released in a less-than-perfect state. You should read what they are saying about Civilization IV right now, and for goodness sake, Microsoft had an Age of Empires III patch up practically the same day it was released.
My experience hasn’t shown Paradox to be any worse, though to be fair, they haven’t been substantially better, either. <sigh>
I borrowed a copy of Galactic Civilizations, and so far I’m somewhat underwhelmed. It’s not bad, but the interface is a bit clunky. For example, if you accidentally launch a colony ship with no colonists there doesn’t seem to be a way to load it. Also, I accidentally blew up Earth because it didn’t ask me, “Dude, for real?” when I clicked on the Destroy Colony button. If you want something extremely deep, I’d go for Space Empires IV from Malfador Machinations. You can engage in space and ground combat, research hundreds of techs, design your own vessels, engage in diplomacy and espionage, even build Dyson spheres and ringworlds. Although at this point, they’re beta testing SE V so maybe you ought to wait for that one.
Seconded. SE IV is the ultimate in space civ control-freak-emperor games. I can’t wait for SE V, though SE IV is so intricate I’ve never actually finished an entire game. Had some neat empires though.