Favorite games

[Endoperez]

B0rsuk said:

You are confusing game lore / mechanics obscurity and skill. Skill and tactics matters in Crawl, and if you point out an area where Crawl is unfair, the developers will often try to remedy that.

I mentioned that it's like that for most roguelikes. I've played Crawl, I like it and I know it's different. I even mentioned that there's less need for spoilers when it comes to Crawl. What else should I have said?

Still, there's lots of skills involved in roguelikes. Skills like knowing when to run, how to get your things identified (depends from the game), knowing when to turn back before you have to run, surviving when low on food, avoiding tough monsters you can't fight yet. To know when to run, you have to know if a given monster is dangerous - that's also a skill of sorts, or a spoiler-thing, but some games are better in this regard. Descriptions can help, or just making the really dangerous monsters look dangerous somehow. Capital letter, ominous color, changing colors, weird effects/messages on the same level, threatening you, etc etc.

[B0rsuk]

You should've appologised ;-).

About green in Master of Magic: I disagree it's a strong magic. Abusing sprites is just that - abuse of game mechanics intended to prevent deadlocks. I have really no idea why it favours attacker over defender. I suppose you could... attack a city with a fast and regenerating unit, wait, and... conquer it without touching city gate ?
Green magic has lots of ineffective summons (except for Great Wyrm, I guess), some small buffs, and ... what else ? Cracks call is frustrating in the hands of AI, but not cost effective.

[vfb]

Web is good. And if a city is defended by a bunch of worms on the ground, there's no reason it shouldn't be conquered by bunch of magical flying units. Unless the worms are armed with shotguns.

Hey, I tried Crawl (on the telnet server), it's pretty cool! Except I keep hitting 'l' to look around, and it moves me. I suppose I could remap the keys, but I haven't even looked for help other than ?? yet. What's a good 1st character to try? I did a Demigod Crusader and forgot to watch my HP. Now I'm trying a Draconian Chaos Knight.

[Ming]

Not counting the ancient text only games (Infocom's come to mind) or war games, the following are/were my top ten strategy games in rough chronological order(can't remember the exact order). They might not be the best games now, but each broke new grounds at the time and were head and shoulders above the rest - eating up countless number of hours of my time...

Sword of Aragon
Wizard's Crown
Wasteland
MOO
HOMM
Civ
MOM
Xcom
VGA Planets
and of course, Dom3, or I should say 2 even though I barely played it (waited for Dom3 before buying a copy) since most of the ground breaking were done in Dom2.

[B0rsuk]

vfb said:
Web is good. And if a city is defended by a bunch of worms on the ground, there's no reason it shouldn't be conquered by bunch of magical flying units. Unless the worms are armed with shotguns.

Yes, web is nice. But conquering a city without harming its defenders ?

Hey, I tried Crawl (on the telnet server), it's pretty cool! Except I keep hitting 'l' to look around, and it moves me. I suppose I could remap the keys, but I haven't even looked for help other than ?? yet. What's a good 1st character to try? I did a Demigod Crusader and forgot to watch my HP. Now I'm trying a Draconian Chaos Knight.

1. You look around with 'x' (examine). While doing so, you can press '?' to view monster description.

Some of easiest characters are:
Troll berserker (and berserkers in general). Trolls have stupidly high regeneration rate, great hp, and fight very well unarmed. You shouldn't run into trouble too fast. Just watch for orc wizards, priests, warriors (purple, green, yellow). They hit hard.
If you DO run into trouble, press 'a' and berserk.
Crawl rewards specialist classes at the moment. For fighter types, try dwarves, minotaurs, orcs, trolls. Demigods have all skills slightly below average, which means they are much worse at many skills than those specialists. Caution - ogres are hard to play.
Fighter is armour-based, Gladiator is more about dodging.
Assassin can be also nice starting class, just don't train Darts too hard. It doesn't pay off. Poisoned needles should be saved for tougher enemies.
Gods good for fighters: Okawaru, Yredelemnul, Xom, Makhleb...

[Torin]

True True that its an exploit about the sprites but you actually kill the defenders to get the city.

*Life has much goodies, Just cause, altar of battle, buffs, healing!!!!!, Torin , but its weak in summons, you have to wait till arch angel.
*blue i think its the best, counter magic, phantasmal warriors, damage spells, spell blast, improved dispelling, and the best critter around, the sky drake, also the fun steal global that i dont remember the name now.
*black is cool, you get the cheapest summons, drain life+black sleep combo to get units as undead, wrack battle enchantment, werewolfs, and the cool zombie mastery plus cool special heros.
*green has early summons, web, call lightning, earth lore, change terrain & transmute and later town portal to teleport troops around.
*fire has the best battle damage with many types of. and also some overland violence with volcanos and earthquakes. I can think of chaos channels + the overland enchantment that boost chaos units.

My goal was almost always a balanced wizard with all the colors so i can to spell trade and get every goodie, with charismatic to aid diplomacy.
Also famous + warlord to boost troops & heroes and get the more heroes and mercs.

pitty you cannot get life & death at the same time, i tried that getting death and drained life from an arch angel (a life spellcaster) but what i got is an undead arch angel with 40 points of death spells.

[chrispedersen]

You're nuts.

Web is green. It grounds all flying units. Combine that with the white spell for improving movement one for trolls
and trolls can outregen almost any combat.

MOM was awesome for the depth of options, and how many nations were viable.

[Xietor]

1. Dominions II and III. I have played this game for years now, 1st on a local forum in New Orleans, and here after Katrina. It has withstood the test of time. The endless variety allows almost infinite replay.

2. Civilization-The Grandfather of all of these great games. Though it does not have the infinite replay of Dominions, it was transcendental for its time. You could play the game 24 hours a day for weeks and be in bliss. No game, not even Dominions, rivaled the original Civ for addiction over the short haul.

3. Moo II- Another great game. Better than Moo, and certainly better than the flop that was Moo III.

4. Master of Magic-many have already given it accolades.

5. Original EQ-breaking the Plane of Fear before any of the expansions was not for the faint of heart. This was a game that will never come again. Before Companies catered to the casual player, there was a brutal game with severe penalties for death. Companies discovered if they made things easier and with no penalties they would get more paying customers.

True, but for hardcore gamers, the original EQ was King.

[Torin]

Better yet, enchant a warship with flight and it alone can clean ground units.
Better yet if you built it with mithril or admiantum.

[Foodstamp]

Wow I can't believe no one is mentioning my favorite MoM spell of all time, Confusion. Give me that spell on a blue/black wizard and I can give you the world.