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Micro-or-Mini Management PC Strategy Game?
darth_MALL writes "I've been looking high and low for the ultimate (could even be free!) single-player PC strategy game that offers detailed troop/battle management. I've met a few contenders that fit the bill: Medieval: Total War is a primo candidate, but Europe just ain't enough! I hate to say, the magic is gone - what I really want is to conquer the known universe from top to bottom. I checked out Ferion, as per another /.'ers suggestion, but it wasn't quite the same thrill as M:TW. What is a bloodthirsty, single player tyrant to do?"
Hearts of Iron is one of the most insanely detailed games I have ever attempted to play. And it's quite historically accurate to boot.
The micro-management detail is HUGE.
If you play a smallish to medium sized country, your very first turn could easily consume 3 real hours of detailed planning and order giving.
Go into politics, choose a small country, run for leader, build up army and economy, take on neighboring countries...Profit. Keep going until you've conquered the whole world or die trying. How's that for exciting.
It's free and you can get it here
1995's Master of Magic!! Should be able to find a copy for free on the abandonware sites.
I don't know if this fits the bill but Master of Orion 3 has TONS of micromanagement you can do. Though it may lack the action you're looking for, you can get down to really low level management or set policies and managers to do all the menial work while you conquer the galaxy. Good fun if you like getting hung up on the details.
Pretty widgets? What pretty widgets?
I'm the person that makes Pocket War (and yes there is only one of me.) It is a lot like the old text based empire game, but I guess that could be said about all games in this category to some extent. I have been told it is also like Empire Deluxe but I never played that one some I'm not sure.
Pocket PC Games
VGA Planets 3 and it's still-in development sequel Planets 4 probably has all of the micro-management and galactic conquest you'll ever need. They have a bunch of races (mostly blatantly, ahem, borrowing from popular sci-fi) each with fairly unique traits and abilities that make for unique strategies. Nothing like assimilating all of the enemy colonists on a planet with space-cover from your fleet of Cyborg cubes. Or perhaps if you are the "Evil Empire", you'd decide to just destroy the planet with the Super Laser on your Gorbi (AKA Death Star).
The combat is Strategic, not tactical -- you give your fleets their orders, they execute, and you watch the results in the 'VCR' of the combat that occured between turns.
Planets 3 has pretty decent computer players available, and Planets 4 may in the future. Mostly, though, these games are designed to be play-by-email, and are really most enjoyable when played that way. There are lots of automated hosting sites out there to help you find opponents and such.
Planets 4 is still in 'beta', but is rapidly nearing completion. I know that Planets 3 still has a fairly rabid fan base though.
The cool thing about these games is that they are pretty much all the work of one guy. Go Tim!
Anyhoo, Planets 4 can be found here:
http://www.vgaplanets.com/v4beta.htm
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.
It's all troop management and zero resource gathering. It's fairly old by now, but there are third party patches available to make it compatible with OS X or Windows XP.
PocketWar is very similar to Empire/Reach-For-The-Stars/Conquest/AdvanceWars(GB ) and is very fun, provided you like that type of game. I do! Thank you for writing a good game, especially one that can sync between PocketPC and your PC. That's a neat feature.
Each time I make the mistake of reinstalling that game, I waste countless hours playing it. This is one of the best games, although a things annoys me a lot, and fixing it would probably make it a perfect game for me:
:)
Technology's going too fast. One of the only way to win when you play at higher difficulties is to have the best techs, so you can have the most powerful units. However, by the time you build an army to attack, your units are already obsolete, and upgrading is quite expensive. Thus, the only time where there is real war is when everybody has the modern tanks and ICMBs and stealth jets. Thus, all the other units are in case you get attacked.
This is of course if you don't annihilate your ennemy at the start of the game. So, that's either at the start, or at the end of the technology tree that things move.
I wonder if there is a mod that makes technologies MUCH more expensive ( I think of something like 3X or 4X more expensive ). I guess it would make the game much more enjoyable, and would make it *necessary* to trade technologies in order to reach the 4th age before 2050, and even if everybody still is at 2nd age at 2050, that would have been a cool game
perception is reality
You manage everything from way up high with a map of the earth down to exactly how many bullets a soldier carries and how many steps they take. Does it get more detailed than that?
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
It *is* a great, detailed Grand Strategy game. I prefer Europa Universalis (from the same makers) but that's just an affection for the time period. I'm also looking forward to their Crusader Kings. But there is a LOT of technology tree managing and economic stuff as well - if you just want a big RTS this may not be what you want. Tremendously fun game though. Kevin
It's sort of turn-based. You give instructions to all of your units that are in-command (yes, it takes communication between units into account) and then it executes 10 seconds worth of time (which you can view from any vantage point that is in your area of control), and then you repeat. It is extremely historically accurate, and the most detailed *tactical* computer game I have ever seen. It has the feel of a miniatures game that has been translated over to computer, but done extremely well.
Most of their games also have Mac versions (unfortunately OS9 only -- and don't work in Classic). Their newest Combat Mission game is going to be OSX, but I can't remember if that's out yet.
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson
When you don't have all day to play a game, titles like Total Annihilation are great fun. MM is great for the hardcore (or obsessive-compulsive :) crowd, but few titles have combined smart AI and playability with decent automanagement.
I'm looking forward to getting Ground Control 2, where I can appreciate all the little things that I am allowed to do in-game, but don't have to.
Seriously, based on the demo, it's sweeet. It's getting my cash money.
I tend to play games 12 hours at a time, its a symptom of my conditio^^^personality. In case anyone was wondering about M:TW, here's my review/strategy guide. Summary: 7 out of 10.
I crank up the difficulty level to max, and just start conquering early on. Build a keep on your starting province, and start pumping out the vikings/infantry.
Conquer your neighbors with the intention of minimizing your borders with other countries. Look for coastal provinces (destroy the piers, so they can't sneak troops in), and natural bottlenecks in the terrain.
Keep your main army centralized, build a keep in every province you capture, and only start building money-making infrastructure once the province isn't bordering someone else's turf. Keep a unit of peasants in each castle so the pleb's don't revolt.
Expand outwards, always be fighting. Even if you can't keep a province, take it over and destroy all the buildings for money. Your army should mostly pay for itself, and the computer doesn't tend to rebuild castles.
If the folks revolt, send in the bishops and build a church. Assassinate the imams, they cause civil unrest. Only build units of vikings, feudal sargeants, and heavy cavalry - everything else is a waste. Go into battle with 50% more strength than the enemy has, and retreat from any even fights (its expensive to loose).
Once you get established, build a shipyard and start cranking out the baddest ships you can. I find it helpul to have a province on the atlantic and the mediterranean with a shipyard, so you can replace destroyed vessels more quickly. Naval superiority is easy to get if you start early, and will allow you lots of advantages.
Don't mess with the pope - you can conquer his little territory, but you get excommunicated and there's tons of rebellions. Sometimes he asks you to stop attacking nations, and its generally a good idea to listen unless you can get a major strategic advantage by conquering.
I like to start as the Danes, and conquer the bordering German province in the first few years of play. Then, once a foothold is established on the mainland, swing north and conquer Sweden. Sweden's a cash cow, tons of resouces and agriculture. Once the swede's are pacified, then resume the attack on the mainland.
If I play all night I can usually conquer most of the world, such that the game conceeds defeat. Its fun, but the AI doesn't use much long-term strategy. The game manages to be challenging just by throwing up random rebellions of really strong units.
The beginning is great fun, and your little men have their own personalities and descriptions. The endgame is a little disappointing for the amount of work required to get there. The tactical combat can be fun at first, but after the first 5 or 10 battles I just click auto-resolve. I never go into a fair fight, and its no fun to manually route and chase down a couple squads of archers.
The graphics are decent (for a strategy game), the music is good. Its one of the only games I've ever played that causes me stress. There really is alot to manage when you own 70% of the known world.
This was my longest slashdot post ever, whew!
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Empire is a game that is played against human opponents over a computer network, usually the internet. It is possible for a game to last from a few hours to many months. While the common goal of an Empire player is to "win", there is no clear cut definition of what winning is. Players may seak to achieve whatever goals they want to achieve.
Typically, a game is "won" by a player or group of players who make a "win declaration" and defy the world to oppose their declaration. Such declarations usually must stand unopposed either for 24 hours or by all players still playing in the game. If they are opposed, they typically wipe out the opposition and re-declare. However, it should be noted that even finishing a game with a viable country can be considered a victory (especially for a new player).
Short games, called blitzes, require an intense and concentrated amount of effort on the part of players participating. They are a tremendous amount of fun if played against a full set of active players. Such games can heavily task your physical stamina. After many hours, your hands are dying to be unattached from the keyboard, your stomach is screaming for some form of sustenance, your family (if you have one) will wonder what deamon has possesed you and your brain will turn to putty, to say nothing of your digestive system and its need to purge itself once in a while. Ahh, Empire at its best!
"Regular" games usually have some sort of sign up period lasting a week or three, and will have a well announced start date. Games typically last around two months, give or take a month though some games have been known to go for the better part of a year. "Updates", which you may learn about in other parts of this guide, typically occur once a day. It is usually a good idea to be on the game around updates, though not absolutely necessary.
Empire is complex. There is no denying that. There are hundreds of thousands of 'pieces' in the game ranging from civilians to satellites to single units of food. The computer removes most of the complexity of the game, and allows you to manage things more easily. However, if you want to be the best of the best players, it will require you to micro-manage your country, paying attention to every detail. Small advantages in the beginning of the game can pay big dividends later. It is hard to catch up.
The learning curve for the game is, as a result, rather steep. But it is far from impossible to become a good player in just a few games. Once in a while there are players who become great in a few games. It's a matter of how good you really are at such games combined with your knack for managing the environment of the game.
Empire is not for the light of heart, nor the weak of mind. But for those who tread in the tortured landscapes of Empire battlegrounds, you will no doubt enjoy yourself on some level, perhaps satisfying inner neo-lithic desires in the process.
Quite simply, in this writer's mind Empire is the best game ever. Bar none.
Geoff Cashman (Mithrilien)
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Another plus (IMO) of Planets 4 is the scripting engine. You can create virtually any scenario you can dream of, and there are already several 3rd party programs to assist in script and map creation.
Over at Drewhead's hosting site, we've had a huge variety of games... Epic team games on huge custom maps - "Resource allocation" type games, where players get a fixed number of points to build their own starting equipment / fleet - "Flagship" type games, where the goal is to hunt down the enemy's flagship... I just finished hosting one game where the goal was to mine a huge amount of a certain mineral.
Point is, the rules allow a wide variety of game types.
Once the game goes gold, Tim will likely release DLLs and such to allow 3rd party programmers to write their own add-ons, making the game even more customizable.
Uncommon Valor is an operational game set in the South Pacific from May 1, 1942 to December 31, 1943. 30 mile hexes, one day turns, units are tracked to squads, mortars and of course individual planes or PT boats.
It is *not* a tactical sim. The most control you have is to set operational postures and aircraft missions. Each day's action is fought out by friendly and enemy AI. Watching a major airstrike go after the wrong group is definitely exciting, maybe too frustrating for some. Your main concern as the player will be to keep your bases supplied and a steady flow of aircraft to the front lines. You get to do plenty of micromanagement in logistics.
The game is well supported, it got plenty of patching - sadly it needed it. The developers are now upgrading the engine to cover the whole frickin' war in the Pacific (and will then retrofit the new engine back to the South Pacific campaign).
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
If i had mod points i would ...
...) are not very bright.
:D you can sell information (Bird People), Use firepower and diplomacy (Federation), Invade planets with your huge infantry troops (Lizard Men), Explode your own ships (Fascist), Use evil Fuel-draining minefields (Crystallines), Assimilate and use warp chunnels (Borg), Blockade planets and stir unrest (Rebellion), Board enemy ships when they are out of fuel (Privateers), Make huge amounts of Fighters or Mines (Robots), Use the famous Imperial Blockade with a Star Destroyer (Empire), or spacefare as the best and use your huge amount of fighters (Colonies).
... Almost every thing you have thought about in spacefaring Science Fiction is there ...
...
...) and get that VPA. One of this days i'm getting myself a reg version, if i get some friends to play with me!
However, i must also talk about this blissful game.
I never got into VGA4 testing, as it is even more micromanagement (more than i can take). But having played my share of VGA 3 games i must praise it as one of the best multiplayer games ever. You could play it on your own, but the "AIs" out there (Admiral.exe, Dominate.exe
The ELEVEN factions are extremely balanced. You can play as the Borg! How cool is that? I played versus 10 other people with weekly turns, and the possibilities for alliances, treason, double play and the likes are endless
There are UFOs, Meteorites, Cloaking, Space Minefields, Warp Speeds, Lasers, Torpedoes, Shields, Carriers with Fighters, Terraforming, Assimilation, Orbital Bases, Transports
Although the initial GUI is horrible, there are tons of programs you can use as the file formats are well documented. I used VPA as my main GUI
Alrigh, i'm getting nostalgic. Time to download it again (it's shareware, with a limit on tech, but nothing that dampens mixed play with registered players
On the downside, the initial learning curve is a bit steep. Check out the demo but believe me, even the veteran gamer will want to take a run through the fan created tutorial