What other games complement your Dominions 3?

[HoneyBadger]

I played Archon when I was young, the original game. The chess thing? It was great, except the neighbor kid-who was a couple years younger than I was, and a snotty kid at that-would always beat me at it. Eventually, influenced by the Karate Kid, I kicked him in the stomach, and he ran crying to his momma. Apparently, he'd been taking karate, and insisted he could block me. But me and Mr Miagi won that round...heh heh

[JimMorrison]

Hey - a question for those who are using the Spore Creature Creator right now -

I just DLed the free version because I've been following Spore, and think it'll be incredibly enjoyable, but I'm a bit iffy on spending $10 now just to tinker with something I'm going to actually buy in September. I noticed that the website shows the price of Spore as $50, so I was curious if they're just trying to ameliorate their long development costs by making the packages separate, where if you buy Spore in Sept for $50, you still need the CC for $10 anyway, bringing the total cost to the "socially accepted" $60 for a new game? I couldn't find the info on that, so just wondered if anyone had heard.

[Tyrant]

Europa Universalis 3, Sins of a Solar Empire, flash games on Kongregate (including DTD)

Both EU3 and Sins are kinda odd ducks. I play 'em both a bit, and i'm not sorry i spent $ on them, but i cannot really give either an unqualified endorsement.

Sins is "neat" and different from any other RTS i've seen, but it somehow lacks a soul. You know all those lovely little flourishes that raise Dominions from "Best Game Ever" to "BEST GAME EVER!" Sins needs some of those desperately. It's like a well drawn picture of an unremarkable subject, it just doesn't sparkle.

EU3 is more like "Sim History" than a competitive game. I love the predecessors and it's a solid game that adds some nifty new features, but the makers have stubbornly refused to fix certain very simple and obvious flaws despite having redone the game twice. They also decided to replace the perfectly adequate 2D graphics with perfectly awful 3D graphics. A bit frustrating in that way.

It's cool to see Stars mentioned so much. I went to that one after VGA Planets, but i could never find a good online community and both times i tried to play MP the games collapsed.

I'm going to have to check out Dwarf Fortress, I've heard good things from so many different sources that it's got to be worth a looksee.

[Gandalf Parker]

Spore Creature:
wont run for me. I get the Direct X Unavailable error that others get. Still watching for a fix

Europa Universalis:
Abit too much history for me. I can understand why it forces the events it does but Id rather the druids could win.

VGA Planets: I really liked VGAP3. I pre-ordered VGAP4 back in 2001 and Im still waiting for it to get out of beta. For anyone who likes really REALLY deep games, its worth looking at but it seems to just keep getting deeper and deeper instead of ever releasing

[HoneyBadger]

Dwarf Fortress is one of the few games that I can recommend unequivically to anyone who's a big fan of Dom3. 99% chance you're going to like it.

No graphics worth mentioning, extremely high learning curve, narrow focus, tons of stuff yet to be implemented-including a magic system-a touchy UI, cranky forum members (atleast some of them were), and yet, a whole cartload of pure greatness.

[Omnirizon]

Tyrant said:

Both EU3 and Sins are kinda odd ducks. I play 'em both a bit, and i'm not sorry i spent $ on them, but i cannot really give either an unqualified endorsement.

Sins is "neat" and different from any other RTS i've seen, but it somehow lacks a soul. You know all those lovely little flourishes that raise Dominions from "Best Game Ever" to "BEST GAME EVER!" Sins needs some of those desperately. It's like a well drawn picture of an unremarkable subject, it just doesn't sparkle.

its interesting you say this. in another video game thread, I was talking about how GalCiv just doesn't do it, and how all Stardock games are well made, but just lack a certain something. They hit all the nails, and look great, but just are lacking this something, this soul. You just can't quite describe it, but Stardock games just don't have it. Its those little things, the panache, the "sparkle" as you say.

[JimMorrison]

HoneyBadger said:
The Total War series is another guilty pleasure. I hope someday they redo the Shogun version though-maybe expand it to include more of Asia, and Russia? I'd love to see Russian Vikings square off against Japanese Samurai-talk about a War of the Worlds! A fantasy version would also be great.

...

Fallout was a near-perfect game.
Anybody else heard that the rights to Wasteland got bought by the same company that redid The Bard's Tale? They're making a Fallout 3 too, but what I'm really interested in, and hopeful about, is Afterfall.

...

Other than the pleasure of a murderous, steroid-enduced, carjacking spree that is Grand Theft Auto IV, and the pure orgasmic Cyber-Apocalypse that is NeoContra, I haven't found too many games on the Playstation 2 that I really enjoyed. Anyone have any suggestions?

Total War series is quite bittersweet for me. When Shogun was released, I went out and bought a brand new shiny 733mhz P4, and put together my first (and only overpriced) homebuild. I agonized at the store between Total Annihilation, and Shogun as my first brand new game to test the capacities of my lovely new Voodoo 4500. I instantly fell in love when I started playing it, it was absolutely revolutionary. Unfortunately, as the graphics and animations have improved, and they have done much to make the strategy layer more interesting - they somehow keep managing to erode the behavioral AI in the tactical combat, such that the battles are less enjoyable now because of all of the little quirks and bugs (some of which I think were intentionally placed in order to simulate certain real behaviors, but which just play out as poor control). What I really want them to do is just focus on making the most powerful engine that they can, and then sell us packages that go within that engine for $5-10 apiece. I'm tired of buying the "latest and greatest", complete with all of its limitations. I want Shogun and Rome (both of which are far cooler in setting than Medieval, to me), in the new shiny engine - but I want the battles to work as well as they used to.

< pause for breath >

According to Wikipedia, Interplay only purchased the rights to the Fallout franchise. They then sold those rights to Bethesda, who is releasing Fallout 3 in October of this year. Supposedly Interplay DID retain the right to initiate development on the Fallout MMO that they had planned, but there is no current news on that. The Wasteland property was purchased by the studio InExile, which belongs to Brian Fargo, the producer of the original Wasteland. InExile just released Hei$t, has anyone played it? I'm curious what they've been up to there, other than THEIR remake of Bard's Tale in 2004. Or is that what you were referring to, Badger? It gets confusing, you see Interplay made the original Bard's Tale, and Fallout 1/2, whereas Westwood did Wasteland, and InExile did the remake of Bard's Tale and now has the rights to Wasteland. This is an incestuous group of gamemakers, and I wish someone with millions of dollars would have the vision to unite them.

As for the PS2, did you ever play Archon back in the day? One of the best games ever IMO. Apparently the game Wrath Unleashed has a very similar concept, but made more strategically deep, and not so frantically fast paced as The Unholy War was. Otherwise, it's rare for me to find a console game that really grabs me/ Played a lot of FIFA with my brother, but I think sports games are mindnumbingly boring unless played socially.