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Space Empires IV (SE:4) from Malfador is a fun game along these lines. SE:V came out recently but I haven't been enjoying it as much - the new 3d interface is getting in my way.

Actually, the sad thing is that although there are many great turn-based strategy games, most of them just don't get much respect. The shining counterexample I can think of right now is Civ 4, but there are plenty of others. There are some great open-source TBS games, such as Battle for Wesnoth, most of wich focus largely on great AI (a few Civilization clones fall into this category). There are also plenty of low-cost commercial ones that on't get widely advertised (a personal favorite is the Space Empires series, which has acceptable AI and is highly moddable).

I still play Alpha Centauri (Civilization on an alien planet, for those wo don't know) and Heros of Might and Magic III (haven't tried IV yet). Both AC and HoMaM3 are well over 5 years old, but both have: decent AI, great map generators, ability to play anything from a 30-min to a 6-hour game (not counting campaigns), tons of replayability, and enough strategic aspects to work on that there's always more thinking to do. Neither has fantastic graphics or a sophisticated game engine by today's standards; they win on good design. There's litte aside from cutscene movies that cannot easily be written, even improved on by OSS developers (Wesnoth, it's hats off to you). While I agree that RTS games get far more attention than most TBS, don't discount the greatness of TBS; they're not only still there, most of them are far easier on the pocketbook.

Actually I somewhat agree with your parent. You just list bland mediocre games. The underground has many totally crappy games/bands, but gameplay still takes precedence over graphics/sound. Check for example Space Empires IV.

It doesn't have the greatest graphics/sound ever, but it has a massive player-community making mods, improved AI, new alien races, etc.
I admit Master of Orion 3 was pretty advanced, but gameplay wise I choose SE4.

fine then since you don't like adobe then substitute for another company such as sierra, maybe that one is too big for you too and you don't think that piracy would hurt them, so lets get even smaller yet...how about a really small company such as malfador

my arguement is not dependant on using adobe. i hate adobe with a passion. my argument could stand with any software company. find one you like and replace any instances of the word adobe with your own favorite software company's name.

From the bottom up to where I lost interest: Ah, so facts are not interesting to you. got it.

No, it was the length of your response and the number of grammatical and typographic errors that made me lose interest.

Money doesn't make starships that can travel 3.5 light years in a reasonable time, and you of all people should know that. It certainly won't happen for 80 billion.

What does make starships? Borcht? How about we give the engineers at Nasa some money and see what they come up with? And why exactly should I know how much it costs to build such a craft? I am not an engineer.

As someone with a physics degree, you know damned well what we expect to happen when we travel at significant fractions of the speed of light.

I am not sure to what you are referring, relativity? I don't see how that would be a problem. As a proponent of manned space flight, I would think that you would be pretty happy about relativistic effects as they make it possible for a person to travel anywhere in the universe in their lifetime. But then, as you probably get the majority of your views about space exploration from Star Trek and various RPG's; you are probably waiting for the "warp" drive and the "worm-hole" methods. That way you can be back for lunch, and find that your twin brother hasn't aged a bit.

At ~10% of the speed of light the effects of relativity will be so minor as to go unnoticed, so you must be referring to something else, though I can't imagine what issues with Physics their might be, it seems fully possible, from a Physics point of view. Its no simple engineering task I imagine, but neither is providing beef to a guy on Mars.

Odds are that if you can travel 3.5 LY in even 20 years, you've managed to make nearby planets a very short trip.

Sure, but I am talking about exploration, you are talking about empire building,15th century style. I am interesting in learning something new about the universe, you are trying to rack up high score in Space Empires IV

Funny, you are talking about going to remote galaxies

Remote galaxies? Where did that come from? NEAREST STAR SYSTEM, eg. ~5ly. Last time I checked, the nearest galaxy would be the Magellanic Clouds, at around 200,000 light years.

while calling those of us who simply want to hop to the next planet over living in a fantasy world.

I am not saying that putting people on Mars is a Fantasy, its certainly possible, obviously, just not as exciting to me, personally, as sending a probe to another star system. To use your example of the 15-18th century explorers, eg. Cook. Having Cook transport settlers to Newfoundland would NOT qualify as exploration, sending Cook to survey the Pacific WOULD qualify as exploration. Can't you see the difference?


I could go on, but, as Chirchill said, "A fanatic is someone who won't change their mind and won't change the subject."

Space Empires IV Gold might be a game for you. The game is a customizable space conquest game that also allows for tactical, turn based resolution of space combat. Since you can design your own ships, you get to customize the ship design and tactics to suit your own style of fighting. There is also a substantial modding community coming up with customized race and technology sets.

Another game to look at is Age of Wonders 2. This game is a fantasy strategic game with tactical, turn based combat resolution. Cities can be upgraded ala Civ with different capabilities. Each city can produce a certain type of unit (or upgrade). Units are combined into armies and sent out to rampage.

If you love independent gaming and want to help keep it alive, do the right thing and PAY for those shareware games. And yes, I've paid for mine. =D

There's a LOT of great games made by a few people working together on something they love. But like any other business, if they don't get money they don't stay in business. ;)

Remember that Doom started out as shareware, I don't think you could call Id "unsuccessful".

If you want a list of things to try, Soldat, Space Station Manager, Space Empires IV, and Uplink are all fun.

I'm surprised to hear slashdotters rallying behind the MOO series. There's an independent developer that has created the ultimate 4X (Expand, Extend, Explore, and Exploit) galactic empire game. Space Empires IV seems to be everything that MOO3 is, plus it is user-extensible -- every aspect of the game is editable and customizable.

I've never played any of the MOO games. Can anyone tell me what it can do that Star Empires cannot? As far as I can see, the only advantage MOO3 has is internet multiplayer. SEIV has all the gameplay. Or am I wrong, and missing something magical about MOO?

Some of these may be from this year, but since they're from smaller companies don't get that much publicity they're easy to overlook.

Malfador's Space Empires IV (Gold version due in February or so, but the original is darn good), published by Shrapnel. It's a 4X space game, and focuses very heavily on depth and customizability versus flash. Want to replace the tech tree wholesale? Customize your race to be lousy at combat, but rake in the resources and trade? Create a system type featuring unusually powerful black holes? You can, if you like. It's been out for a while, but the publisher and developer are still supporting it.

Illwinter's "Dominions" is a fantasy 4X, that some have compared to Master of Magic. Ritual magic, combat spells, item construction, combat formations, god customization, 14 very different (not mirror-image...) races to choose from... Also still in active development -- e.g. I've gotten helpful responses regarding bugs and questions sent via e-mail, and they're still patching to fix bugs and add features.

Battlefront's "Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord" is fairly old -- "CM: Barbarossa to Berlin" might be out sometime next year -- but still very good for 3D WWII tactical (up to Battalion-sized, say) warfare, with a nice WEGO system. It's very, very detailed, although you don't really have to memorize armor slopes... CMBO is not in active development anymore since they've been busy on the sequel, but the forum community is still active.

All three of the above support both solo- and multiple players (CMBO only two at a time, Dominions 14, SE4 not sure what the limit is if there is one).

There's also A-Sharp's "King of Dragon Pass", which seems intriguing. I can't comment on this too much since I've only seen the demo, but a (the?) dev has been spotted on USENET answering questions about it occasionally. It might be of interest to Runequest/Glorantha fans in particular.

The demo reminded me vaguely of the old Hammurabi decision-making game, if for some reason anybody remembers that (e.g. "101 BASIC Computer Games"). Of course, this one is FAR more complicated...

...and flexible game design itself. In particular, some games are highly configurable -- Space Empires IV, for instance, lets you redo the entire technology tree and a rather large number of other settings; even without that customizability, it would still be a highly complicated game. As a consequence, the number of variables that would be needed for, say, even non-completely-scripted ship design would be rather extreme.

Perhaps 'completely reconfigurable' versus 'highly competitive AI' is a fundamental choice, and it's implausible to have both with current limitations?

If you liked VGA Plants, you should try Space Empires III, or it's recently-commercially-released relative, Space Empires IV. Like VGA planets, it is turn-based, and can use transferred files so you can play with people far and wide. It has a bit more economics, and the ships are restricted by what you choose to research instead of by race, but it does have the minor problem that turns are sequential, not batch, so everyone is at the mercy of a single slow player. The graphics beat the pants off of VGA Planets, though.

SE3 was the yardstick by which I measured WINE performance for a long time, although now it's perfectly playable under it so I need a new yardstick.

A lot of people will not play real-time games because they have high blood pressure and it could endanger their lives. I had that problem until the right drugs were identified.

Perhaps they should file lawsuits under the Americans with Disabilities Act against the makers of games they like that don't feature turn-based play. That seems to be the preferred approach these days.

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...Space Empires IV [...] It's not for those who like big luxurious cut scenes and beautiful graphics. The graphics are merely functional.

Makes me wonder how you would describe the graphics of any of its prior incarnations :)

The OP is correct that Shrapnel Games is only distributing SEIV through snailmail (this is not a downloadable game, it requires a CD in the drive to play).

Malfador Machinations is the development team behind the Space Empires series -- the best thing about SEIV is the community (to which the developers actively belong). The game itself is a patch or two away from meeting the expectations of those who have played SEIII, imho. The documentation is many, many more "patches" away from being worthwhile :)

The OP linked to the Shrapnel Games homepage -- those interested in the actual product might be interested in the actual product page.