What other games complement your Dominions 3?

[Omnirizon]

Kristoffer O said:


Guild Wars was great fun. Me JK and JO played it a lot. Mostly PvP. Got quite good at it. You don't need to be that good by yourself if you play with reliable people and voice communication.

We are trying Age of Conan now. Quite fun and beautiful, but still lots of early bugs and annoying stuff. Not as WoWish as Lotro was, but more so than GW.

JO recently discovered Desktop Defender at kongregate.com. Strangely addictive online flash game.

I remember posting in the last "other games" thread about desktop defender and how addictive it was. I remember the day I found it, i literally spent several hours that day playing; and I was supposed to be doing homework (I was just burnt out with all the reading though).

Ultimately, I couldn't swallow desktop defenders whole because to do best it requires deleting and rebuilding key towers to force the little guys to turn around and go through the whole maze again. That kind of reduced the design and strat aspect with some action and timing aspects; which I didn't like.

There is a game with the exact same concept as desktop, also at Kongregate, called Defender where you can't remove your guys, thus making the placement and order of placement an important part of the design and strategy.

[sector24]

kickthedead said:
What ever happened to Stars!? I have that game from like 1995 or so. Is that the newest one still? I can barely find any information about it on the web. Did they ever make a new one? It is a great game.

From wikipedia:

Stars! Supernova Genesis
The huge popularity of the original Stars! game convinced the developers that there would be a market for a sequel. The developers of Stars! formed a company called Mare Crisium Studios and began development of Supernova Genesis. This was intended to be a much more advanced game, with significantly better graphics, and also to remove some of the irritations of the original (such as the level of micro-management).

Unfortunately there was little interest from games publishers who by that time had become focused exclusively on the video game console and high-end 3D games markets, and so the project was eventually abandoned. As rights to the ingame graphics remain with Empire, it is unlikely that the game will be brought back into production.


[edit] Stars! 3
On August 27, 2005, information about a second sequel, tentatively named Stars! 3, was posted to Usenet.[3] Developed in private by ex-members of the Supernova Genesis team, it has an uncertain future, hinting on a return to the self-publishing model.

I played Protector on Kongregate all the way through. Those dektop defenders are fun, but if you play one you've pretty much played them all.

[DonCorazon]

Twan said:
Armaggedon Empires best indie game of last year.

I tried the demo as I loved the theme on this but found even a minor battle just takes too long. It was like a clickfest but in turn based mode. Maybe I was missing something on the UI but I gave it up when my fingers started cramping up...

[HoneyBadger]

Ok, tower defense games are definitely my guilty pleasure. Although I really wish there were more out there with pathfinding-Desktop Tower Defense is still one of the best ones, but there is sooo much that can be improved. And I can't stand to even look at the TDs that don't have pathfinding.

I love Dwarf Fortress with a passion. I'm going to mod the hell out of it though, first chance I get.

Space Empires IV was another great game. I hope V is good too, but I'm giving the plenty of time to iron out the kinks.

I want to play Planescape: Torment again. I still have all the disks and the package they came in.

I was really excited about GalCiv2, but the latest version refuses to run on my computer, and before that I'd get bluescreened every few rounds.

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.

King's Bounty is the game that got me into strategy wargaming. I couldn't tell you how many times I played that game. I still remember most of the details about it, and it's been years.

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.

Has anyone here played Dungeons of Daggorath? If ever there was a game that should be redone, it's that. Daggorath was the most intense, scariest dungeon crawl ever. All in wireframe, and made a million years ago with less code than Tetris.

I played Master of Magic, ofcourse, and Lords of Magic: Special Edition.

The Continuum is still alive-infact I'm supposed to be a beta-tester, but my computer won't support the game.

BatMUD might be a good MMO to check out. It's free, for one thing, and there are TONS of races to play. I also think the creators are Finnish. I don't know how good it is, but it's been around since the '90s, and there's a lot to it-they've also recently updated it.

There are quite a few completely free MMOs around, many of which are a lot more interesting that WoW or Everquest-although admittedly, I enjoyed Everquest for a while.
I suggest you spend an afternoon or two researching the independent MMOs online-it's worth your time and trouble.

Diablo-the first one, not the second one, was also a favorite. I liked how creepy it was, kind of like a horror version of Gauntlet. Diablo 2 was just overdone though, in my opinion. Not a bad time-waster, but too much going on, without enough atmosphere to pull it all together.

Starcraft was (incase you've been living on Mars for the last 10 years) another great game, and one that I still enjoy. They're finally doing a Starcraft 2! WOOOOO!

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?

[Gandalf Parker]

For some reason I cant find Space Empires V as addicitive as Space Empires IV.

For those who have really REALLY fond memories of old games, you might try doing a search. Particularly at open source sites such as SourceForge. It seems as if there are always projects trying to resurrect or claiming to be based on some of my favorites. Stars!, Master of Magic, Magic Realms (an old board game), etc. You can jump into the project forum and give suggestions to keep them on course, maybe help with the writing, the graphics, the beta-testing. And maybe drop a hint that if they want a really good publisher for independent projects, Shrapnel is one they should check out

[HoneyBadger]

Dungeons of Daggorath has open source code. I really wish someone would create a Flash/Browser version. I thing it would be perfect for Flash.

[Agrajag]

I think Open Source and game publishing are kind of mutually exclusive
UFO: Alien Invasion is pretty cool BTW, an open source modern XCOM.

[HoneyBadger]

There was a fantasy version of XCOM out too-if it hadn't been so buggy on my computer, it would have been pretty interesting. I forget the name but it's in the Home of the Underdogs.

[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.

[Gandalf Parker]

Agrajag said:
I think Open Source and game publishing are kind of mutually exclusive
UFO: Alien Invasion is pretty cool BTW, an open source modern XCOM.

Actually no. Many open source games have later decided to become published. And even if they stay open source, a reasonable price for distribution can be charged.

Altho my favorites will always tend to be a split. Going published for the execuatable and staying open source for the rest (mods, maps, AI, etc)