6 ms·

Absolutely loved this series, but never acclimated to the 3D maps they switched to after Civ 3. You couldn't see as much of the world at once, and units and te

Absolutely loved this series, but never acclimated to the 3D maps they switched to after Civ 3. You couldn't see as much of the world at once, and units and terrain became more difficult to discern. I wound up playing in the strategic overlay, with mods that relieved some of the claustrophobia, but it never felt as slick as the earlier 2D / isomorphic view. Other classic strategy games from that era followed the trend, favoring to showcase gorgeously detailed models enabled by their new 3D engines, over equipping you with a clever and efficient UI to conquer the world. Anyone care to recommend a favorite turn-based strategy game with a pleasant interface which you think I might enjoy?

Gravityloss 5y ago
A lot of the game moved to bonus calculation. Playing a spread sheet so to speak. What happened with units and the map was secondary. The Civilization board game was similarly boring. Most of the time there were no wars, and everybody was just trading and dealing with disasters and barbarians.
- Gravityloss 5y ago
  To add to it, Civ 1 graphics are actually quite beautiful in a pixel art way. With Civ 3, you could use for example a watercolor art pack for the terrain, which was great. And still very legible. The 3d art just looks like a console game aesthetic - it's extremely kitschy - I guess I'm just not in the target demographic.
  - dman 5y ago
    Same thing happened to Age of Empires and Railroad Tycoon. The 3d versions were never as special to me.
    - Gravityloss 5y ago
      This was the watercolor terrain pack for civ 3, maybe it was better in my memory. https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/warpstorm-watercolor-terrain.27787/ https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/warpstorm-watercolor-... Maybe there could be a "Civ for adults". With just way less content, shorter games and a more mature art style. Civ 1 didn't have: culture, religion, great persons, great works, armies, ranged units, luxuries, strategic resources, building placement, unit xp/promotion. Civ 1 didn't even have an improvement for forest tiles. Civ 1 did have as extra: home city for units. Marine units had to be transported by ship - but that added an interesting mechanic, you had to protect your super important transport loaded with 7 very expensive units. Terrain improvements took a really long time so you had to have multiple settlers work on the same tile. Some superfluous things like fortresses. Small city spam ruined Civ 1.
- hasmanean 5y ago
  How realistic.
  - Gravityloss 5y ago
    Yeah maybe that's what rulers have actually spent their time on. Ie very little energy is left over for actual territory expansion attempts. Most of the time you're putting out fires.
- nickik 5y ago
  That really questionable. Yes city layouts have large importance and getting the right bonus for important buildings does matter. However, if you want, you can play very war like, or avoid war quite well. Snowballing early with a push is a viable strategy. Rushing tech to get the first cannon and pushing then as well. It depends on what civilization and what special units and buildings you have.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > The Civilization board game Which one? There are at least two different ones, with the same name, based on the computer game franchise. (And, of course, the Avalon Hill game predating the computer game, but that doesn’t seem relevant.)
  - Gravityloss 5y ago
    I meant the old Avalon hill game indeed.
SteveNuts 5y ago
"Rome: Total war" is fantastic
- hef19898 5y ago
  As is the the Total War series in general, even if I don't like naval battles that much, but hey that's what superior numbers and auto battles are there for.
  - Aerroon 5y ago
    Total War is a technical miracle. I've yet to see any other games have so many animated units on screen in a battle at once. Other games don't even come close. It creates an amazing atmosphere.
    - Mikeb85 5y ago
      Yes and no. I followed the first Total War game (Shogun) from before it's release and it was just sprites on a 3d board. When it went full-3D it just used batching. True, they always slightly pushed what graphics were capable of but not necessarily to the same degree as the FPS or RPG genres.
      - Aerroon 5y ago
        But thousands of animated characters on screen is pushing the graphics. You can't really do the same in a standard way with an off-the-shelf engine. You put 500 animated characters on screen in UE4 and everything is going to crawl to a halt. RTS games even today limit players to ~200 pop each.
    - nickik 5y ago
      The amount of units in Total war has basically not been going up, because they value animated units to much. You are still playing with low 1000s of units, and this has been the case for a decade. The AI is also not really much better. Even on strategy map level it has been simplified.
    - 5y ago
hd4 5y ago
Shadow Empire
bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago
Battle for Wesnoth is my go to 2D turn-based strategy game. It isn’t anywhere near as advanced as Civ but it scratches my itch.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Wesnoth is tactical, not strategy. Its a good game (albeit too luck based IMO... Just get used to the "luck swings" of battle), but a totally different genre than 4X / Strategy. Civilization is on the easier / simpler end of 4X / Strategy... and believe me, this is a good thing!! Things get really complicated. Paradox games (Victoria, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Europa Universialis) are the "complicated" games, technically realtime but the underlying simulations "feel" turnbased. (Hearts of Iron progresses the simulation in 1-hour increments. They're "realtime" only because it'd be too boring to hit "next turn" so often, but you can hit the pause button and really think about a situation at say: September 1st 1939 @ 1pm if something terrible is going on) Romance of the Three Kingdoms is also a strategy game: war, tactics, resources, diplomacy, etc. etc. The elements you'd expect. ----------- "Tactics" games that focus on a singular battle as the core gameplay loop. Fire Emblem, Wesnoth, Wargroove, Advance Wars, Heroes of Might and Magic, Panzer General, Starcraft, Age of Empires. "Strategy" games approximate the battles and focus on larger scale elements. A good rule of thumb is that Strategy Games have an element of siege and supply lines, while Tactics games often just "teleport" the resources where needed. Tactics are about maneuvering your troops to get an advantage, Strategy is about finding / securing resources (ex: placing your defensive Pikeman on the enemy's mine in Civ2, or in their districts in Civ6) Civ leans towards the simpler/tactics side, but is just barely enough "Strategy" that I'd group it in the strategy side of things.
  - bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago
    Haven’t thought of it like that before. Thanks so much for the breakdown. What is your favorite? Or what would you suggest to someone that likes the tactics side more than the strategy side with my two faves actually mentioned by you: Héroes of Might and Magic and Starcraft.
    - 5y ago
thedogeye 5y ago
in Civ 6 you can toggle back to the 2D graphics really easily, i sometimes play that way bc its easier to see the resource squares.
rubslopes 5y ago
If you have an Android phone, try the great UnCiv game.
joejohns 5y ago
If you're going to try 3D maps, Humankind is the way to go. It feels like a Civ sequel but with a twist.
nitia 5y ago
Folks always call me insane for only ever playing Civ5 in strategic mode. Glad i'm not alone

Gravityloss 5y ago

A lot of the game moved to bonus calculation. Playing a spread sheet so to speak. What happened with units and the map was secondary. The Civilization board game was similarly boring. Most of the time there were no wars, and everybody was just trading and dealing with disasters and barbarians.

Gravityloss 5y ago
To add to it, Civ 1 graphics are actually quite beautiful in a pixel art way. With Civ 3, you could use for example a watercolor art pack for the terrain, which was great. And still very legible. The 3d art just looks like a console game aesthetic - it's extremely kitschy - I guess I'm just not in the target demographic.
- dman 5y ago
  Same thing happened to Age of Empires and Railroad Tycoon. The 3d versions were never as special to me.
  - Gravityloss 5y ago
    This was the watercolor terrain pack for civ 3, maybe it was better in my memory. https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/warpstorm-watercolor-terrain.27787/ https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/warpstorm-watercolor-... Maybe there could be a "Civ for adults". With just way less content, shorter games and a more mature art style. Civ 1 didn't have: culture, religion, great persons, great works, armies, ranged units, luxuries, strategic resources, building placement, unit xp/promotion. Civ 1 didn't even have an improvement for forest tiles. Civ 1 did have as extra: home city for units. Marine units had to be transported by ship - but that added an interesting mechanic, you had to protect your super important transport loaded with 7 very expensive units. Terrain improvements took a really long time so you had to have multiple settlers work on the same tile. Some superfluous things like fortresses. Small city spam ruined Civ 1.
hasmanean 5y ago
How realistic.
- Gravityloss 5y ago
  Yeah maybe that's what rulers have actually spent their time on. Ie very little energy is left over for actual territory expansion attempts. Most of the time you're putting out fires.
nickik 5y ago
That really questionable. Yes city layouts have large importance and getting the right bonus for important buildings does matter. However, if you want, you can play very war like, or avoid war quite well. Snowballing early with a push is a viable strategy. Rushing tech to get the first cannon and pushing then as well. It depends on what civilization and what special units and buildings you have.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> The Civilization board game Which one? There are at least two different ones, with the same name, based on the computer game franchise. (And, of course, the Avalon Hill game predating the computer game, but that doesn’t seem relevant.)
- Gravityloss 5y ago
  I meant the old Avalon hill game indeed.

SteveNuts 5y ago

"Rome: Total war" is fantastic

hef19898 5y ago
As is the the Total War series in general, even if I don't like naval battles that much, but hey that's what superior numbers and auto battles are there for.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  Total War is a technical miracle. I've yet to see any other games have so many animated units on screen in a battle at once. Other games don't even come close. It creates an amazing atmosphere.
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    Yes and no. I followed the first Total War game (Shogun) from before it's release and it was just sprites on a 3d board. When it went full-3D it just used batching. True, they always slightly pushed what graphics were capable of but not necessarily to the same degree as the FPS or RPG genres.
    - Aerroon 5y ago
      But thousands of animated characters on screen is pushing the graphics. You can't really do the same in a standard way with an off-the-shelf engine. You put 500 animated characters on screen in UE4 and everything is going to crawl to a halt. RTS games even today limit players to ~200 pop each.
  - nickik 5y ago
    The amount of units in Total war has basically not been going up, because they value animated units to much. You are still playing with low 1000s of units, and this has been the case for a decade. The AI is also not really much better. Even on strategy map level it has been simplified.
  - 5y ago

hd4 5y ago

Shadow Empire

bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago

Battle for Wesnoth is my go to 2D turn-based strategy game. It isn’t anywhere near as advanced as Civ but it scratches my itch.

dragontamer 5y ago
Wesnoth is tactical, not strategy. Its a good game (albeit too luck based IMO... Just get used to the "luck swings" of battle), but a totally different genre than 4X / Strategy. Civilization is on the easier / simpler end of 4X / Strategy... and believe me, this is a good thing!! Things get really complicated. Paradox games (Victoria, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Europa Universialis) are the "complicated" games, technically realtime but the underlying simulations "feel" turnbased. (Hearts of Iron progresses the simulation in 1-hour increments. They're "realtime" only because it'd be too boring to hit "next turn" so often, but you can hit the pause button and really think about a situation at say: September 1st 1939 @ 1pm if something terrible is going on) Romance of the Three Kingdoms is also a strategy game: war, tactics, resources, diplomacy, etc. etc. The elements you'd expect. ----------- "Tactics" games that focus on a singular battle as the core gameplay loop. Fire Emblem, Wesnoth, Wargroove, Advance Wars, Heroes of Might and Magic, Panzer General, Starcraft, Age of Empires. "Strategy" games approximate the battles and focus on larger scale elements. A good rule of thumb is that Strategy Games have an element of siege and supply lines, while Tactics games often just "teleport" the resources where needed. Tactics are about maneuvering your troops to get an advantage, Strategy is about finding / securing resources (ex: placing your defensive Pikeman on the enemy's mine in Civ2, or in their districts in Civ6) Civ leans towards the simpler/tactics side, but is just barely enough "Strategy" that I'd group it in the strategy side of things.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago
  Haven’t thought of it like that before. Thanks so much for the breakdown. What is your favorite? Or what would you suggest to someone that likes the tactics side more than the strategy side with my two faves actually mentioned by you: Héroes of Might and Magic and Starcraft.
  - 5y ago

thedogeye 5y ago

in Civ 6 you can toggle back to the 2D graphics really easily, i sometimes play that way bc its easier to see the resource squares.

rubslopes 5y ago

If you have an Android phone, try the great UnCiv game.

joejohns 5y ago

If you're going to try 3D maps, Humankind is the way to go. It feels like a Civ sequel but with a twist.

nitia 5y ago

Folks always call me insane for only ever playing Civ5 in strategic mode. Glad i'm not alone