Strategy games

Romance of the Three Kingdoms 13 allows you to make original characters and then place them in the game as their own forces. I enjoy making lore about the characters/forces I create and customising the characters to fit that as much as the game is able to. However for that purpose the character creation capabilities are a bit lackluster and there is a limit on the amount of original characters that can be used.

Are there any other grand strategy games where something similar can be done? I like that concept in general so other genres that aren't grand strategy are welcome recommendations.

(If you know about any mods that help with this for any game feel free to tell me as well.)

I love the ottoman empire but sadly there aren't alot of games including them.
i already have axis and allies ww1 which they are in and i like it alot, but i as wondering if there are any other fun games with them in it?

Screw deciding what color jock strap to put on pilots. Let's talk about strategy games that boil things down to the decisions you need to make.

I'm talking about games like Unity of Command 2 and Decisive Campaigns Barbarossa.

Can anyone recommend simplified wargames, tactical to strategic and real or fiction.

In my mid 30s, i still have a great admiration for classic PC classics. Growing up, i was particularly fond of the Martial Art game “Budokan: The Martial Spirit” + the Military Strategy game “Nuclear War”.

Can you folks recommend games similar to these?

I think everyone who plays strategy games or practically any game where the enemy is similar to you knows the issue of shitty AIs making the game only suitable for campaign types of missions or multiplayer, as single player gets put on the backfoot or just gets more "difficult" AI via increased resource multipliers. from my own experience, the two ways to "fix" that is to either have a good AI (which costs a lot of money and is done rarely) or an asymetrical enemy (maybe some parts of the economy are disregarded, or they are just entirely different)

hence I would like to ask: what good games are out there which you can recommend for single player without just outright cheating AI?

Can you guys recommend any good civil war PC games?

Ideally something similar to HOi4 or Total War.

There was a thread on this, but it’s 4 years old and I wanted to see if there were some new ones.

I've always wanted to get into strategy games but my brain is oh so smooth and it always seemed like a genre I wasn't smart enough to play. I have played Starcraft and Age of Empires 2 (using cheats because I was a coward) and Starcraft 2 on very easy.

Civ 6 and Shogun Total War 2 are both super cheap on Steam right now. Everyone seems to love the Civilization series, but it seems like it would be way too complex for me to wrap my mind around. Total War also seems well loved and I'm thinking it might be an easier starting point.

If you had never played a strategy game before, would Total War or Civilization be a better entry point?

Personally I love those, especially roleplaying monopoly, war games and chess. I feel like I am in meaningful life when I do strategies, possibilities and roleplaying them.

Just this weekend I had the chance to play Captain Sonar for the 2nd time...3rd time? Something like that. Anyhow, the first time I played the game with friends it became a bit of a mess with understanding the rules clearly, and executing not only well as a team but properly as an opponent--our Captain wasn't calling out our movements clearly enough for the enemy radar and was trying to call too many movements in a bunch. I believe back then I had played the role of engineer, and even though it was a slightly sour experience for the friend group I knew I liked the concept of the game and saw the potential for a lot of fun. I do enjoy me a strategy or two.

Skip forward a couple years to this past weekend and I had the chance to dive into the game with individuals excited to play it. My wife doesn't like the game, and my friend's wife doesn't really like it either, so we never get a session in. Anyhow, the nerd convention this past weekend allowed for like minded folks to band together for some battleship warfare!

This time around I played Captain, and my goodness I loved that role. I felt like I had the space to be clever and the opportunity to work with a team that enhanced the opportunity to immerse myself in the strategy and chaos. My first mate and engineer worked flawlessly, never making mistakes and rarely ever requiring me to pause momentum to check their boards. I'd peek over and confer with the engineer from time to time on what she needed from me to keep the ship running, and to take a quick glance if I wanted to plan several moves ahead. My first mate was very responsive with when our weapons were available, and always attentive to prime whatever abilities I wanted ready. She even did well to remind me from time to time what we still had primed and ready to go in case I had forgotten while trying to sail the ship. My radar guy? Man he was on it. Our very first weapons launch was a torpedo which was urgently insisted on by my right hand man. He was certain he'd figured out the enemy location. And by God he was right on the money, direct hit. The enemy team took off for safer seas, and we looped around to drop a mine and give chase the long way around the central islands.

We played cat and mouse for a while, each team taking a few chances with mines, popping the drones out to scope the sectors, so on and so forth. We had a couple of close misses on our end with the enemy ship trying to gain some footing on our location, but ultimately we ran them down with a long-stagnant mine indirect hit, and a direct hit detonation when both ships were corralled within 5 spaces of each other in sector 6. I'm happy to report that my ship took no damage in the battle and came out clean as a whistle. Even happier to report how phenomenal my shipmates were. Everything I needed was delivered quickly and without confusion. My right hand man never had a for-certain shot again the rest of the game, however, he stayed pretty consistent in where he believed their sector to be, and ultimately we got the job done. I was so pumped and filled with adrenaline at the end of the game, and have rarely had that feeling in a co-op table top game.

Essentially I just wanted to drop in as a long time lurker and say how much fun I had with this team strategy game. I've only played it a couple of times, but when the machine feels well oiled everything just clicks and makes for an intense hunt filled with camaraderie. Even after the game later in the evening I texted my new pal the radar tech and thanked him for being a brainiac and making that game a great time. He responded by thanking his Captain for leading the ship. What a ride. I can only hope next time is just as fun and as smooth sailing.

In closing what is your favorite role to play in Captain Sonar, and I'm also curious which role do you guys think is the most difficult to play well? If you made it this far thanks for sticking around, have a good evening, and I wish you happy hunting for the Red October!

I love strategy games; however, I suck at them. From multiplayer player to single-player, I suck. I can't micro correctly and can't get my units to fight their preferred enemies. I understand that people who put more time into multiplayer games will be better than me. I know it is a broad question and that there are many games; however, how do I get good and understand them?

Every game I play in the total war, my opponents slaughter me. In the wargame Red Dragon, I can comprehend the modern nature of warfare, so I default to WWI mass tactics. Company of Heroes 2 is the only game I have a victory in, and that is because we both sucked.

So what do you play when you’re not playing Civ 5? What other games give you that addiction of “just one more turn”?

Not something I thought about much or, well, at all until I replayed some classics from my youth in the spring. Mostly RTS stuff like the old C&C games and AoE2. Simultaneously playing modern ones like TW Warhammer 3, and also giving a shot to some indie games just to sample something different, eg. a recent base builder called (kind of a like a hybrid between Factorio and Dyson Sphere), (a realistic space sim with a lot of tactical oversight) and (a medieval sim through and through, became a fanboy pretty fast).

I didn’t notice it at first — and not just because of the time gap — but it felt like I was playing totally different genres. Not just different sub-genres (I mean, I’m comparing RTS with base builders after all so no wonder). Still, the very fact that they’re less in the mainstream nowadays is telling. They seem spread around different niches, so you either have Total War fans, or people who only play Civ or something like Paradox strategies, and so on. And of course, people who sample everything but still stick to a single series and then rarely touch the others.

I guess what I mean to say is — there are specific popular series of strategy sub genres (again, Total War as the best example), with a dozen base building/ management type hybrid games filling different niches for different folks. Something being a strategy game feels a lot less monumental and cohesive as a genre identification in 2024 than it did… wow, I guess 2 decades ago? And somehow I think all this started once RTS games declined in popularity, that’s when the “fragmentation” began.

Welp, that's just my 2 cents on this, and totally subjective besides. What’s your take, do you think there’s just way more games on the market in general (and more diverse games at that), or are strategies simply less popular? I’m leaning more into the first, and the second only if it’s about RTS games specifically (tho they also are making a small comeback with remasters, hmmm)

I did not find that many 4X turn-based strategy games in the Next Fest. I have wishlisted all of these, and recommend doing so if we want to see more of these games on Steam. You have until Monday :)

My own Emperor of the Fading Suns Enhanced

Arcen Games' Heart of the Machine

Citadelum

Zephon

Fealty

All in the Game

I was pretty happy that my last Steam Next Fest livestream had more than 600 concurrent viewers at its peak. You can see the video here:

So I've been playing a lot of HOI4 and Men of War, and I was wondering if there were any similar good games set with more modern tech/countries? I can't really find any as most (understandably) focus on WW1/WW2, but I thought I'd check to see if anyone has one to recommend.

I've been playing heroes 5.5 recently, and the challenge is definitely there. The AI is much smarter, especially in battle, but also on tje overwold map thanks to max "lookahead" setting. The real issue with 5.5 is that it's so freaking slow, especially on huge maps and max smartness with loading times.

So i thought that maybe good old heroes 3 can do the trick as well. Not vanilla of course, the AI there is DUMB. So here i am, asking your help to find the mods (if any) that can make the game as challenging as possible.

Keep in mind that i don't... mind, if the difficulty is asymmetrical or "artificial", but at the same time, if the AI gets armies and that's it, there's nothing stopping me from cheesing it with the usual strategies (we all have seen the usual 1 archdevil vs a trillion dragons videos). So while acceptable, it definitely must not be the only improvement.

Finally i'd like to know if, in your experience, compared to other TBS, the challenge is up to par or if it's simply not a good satisfying achievement to win a heroes 3 modded game. This could also lete discover new games for my challenge dose!

Thanks in advance for any help! And DON'T say PvP, I'm looking for an experience on my own terms of time.

I don't mean that you don't have time, I mean that you mentally can't do it anymore. I used to be a big Total War fan, and now Stronghold 2 completely baffles me. Like, it's so bad that I don't even know why the games aren't text-based because I literally don't have any opportunity to enjoy and absorb the art that they've made for them. I'm 29, do I have dementia?

^

just wondering

I'm getting a bit in Crusader King 3, is there any game like that on the PS Extra? Or any good strategy game in general?