[Baron Munchausen]

Hmm, if you mean 'best game of ALL' that's nearly impossible to determine. No single game can be best at everything.

In Fantasy I think Master of Magic was (and IS) the best to date. I hope they update it some day. The DOS Version from 1995 is buggy as hell and can leave you with an unfinishable game (crashing when you try to go on to the next turn...) The game design is fantastic, it's just rather poorly coded.

Of 'Space' games I'd say SE IV comes pretty close to being the best in Category. The MOO series were great in their time but are quite limited in scope. Even MOO 2 with access to 'protected mode' DOS and so able to have megabytes of memory only had a max or 80 stars or so? And the development possibilities of planets is very rigidly limited.
SE IV exceeds all of these limits and more. The one area where it falls down, other than AI where all games fall down, is where MOO shines. Tactical combat. The tactical combat system in MOO 2 is fantastic. If it were only on a somewhat larger scale (so you didn't START in range of enemy weapons) it would be just about perfect for a turn based combat system. Hopefully SE V will have turn-based combat with 'impulse/initiative' to break down turns into sub-turns and reduce or eliminate the one disadvantage of this system.

Now war games in general is a really big question. There are so many of them and so many variations in theme that I really cant't make a decent guess. Ancient, Medieval, or modern warfare? Strategic or tactical? Air? Sea? Land? Etc... it's just hopeless to sift through all the air, sea, and land combat games and try to pick one. And even then I've only played a small selection of them. TILT...

[ March 18, 2003, 21:57: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]