The stratagy games thread

[r4pt0r]

RTS, grand stratagy, 4x, all strategy games are welcome here. Share a snapshot of your campaign progress or great battles, and tell us your next objective

This is my Stainless Steel(A Medieval 2:Total War mod) campaign, playing as the English. It is 1177 AD, and I've claimed all the British isles and have expanded into Europe. France has but two territories left, and I've been killing off their royal family one by one. Yes that upset the pope and got me excommunicated, but alas, such is war. My biggest regret thus far is losing Stephen the mad by not paying attention to a flanking enemy unit during the siege of Paris.

So comrades, tell me, how goes the war?

[Nemrav]

Aww... Stainless Steal europe looks so... small after playing europa universalis IV good times

Stainless Steal : I was Poland and my brother Byzantium, its been a few years since we played, but I recall having stomped out the teutonic order (rebels) and the HRE was on polish gotland, not making war... (it was awfully suspicious when his transport left his full banner army with the king on leading it, I quickly reinforced the island my self)... My bro was bearly fending off constantinople from the turks (I failed to get help in time aswell)... I last remember foolishly declaring war on Lithuania (they weren't catholic) and all my half banner armies were wiped when I clicked end turn (coop doesnt allow defence due to bug)...

Europa: well many saves going, last non cheat one I did, went like this : after the Prusso-Russo wars, the american and canadian colonies allied with each-other and broke off, Canada(me) strived to expand south before the Americans expanded west... The two French reconquests of Anticosti ended in failure for france, creating the the Canadian carribean in the ashes of the Antilles.. Last thing I did was an alliance and royal marriage with Objibway (which had become protestant)

Supcom:fa : still failing epically bad in multiplayer matches, but I still like it

[RogueMason]

Hmm, I don't play strategy all that often, but it's fun when I do. I prefer RTS to TBS.

One of my favourites would have to be Stardrive. A lot of people call it unfinished, but honestly, I think it's a brilliant game; any single match will take days to complete unless you just power through it in some ungodly fashion. It's a hybrid of RTS and TBS, with combat, movement, and some diplomacy all happening in real time while research, construction, colonisation, and economy are all turn-based, and it works very well, I think. You pick a species from 8 options (humans included), give your faction a name, flag, colour, and then go through the traits that you want. You start with a single planet, with a single station, a tiny exploration ship, and a cargo ship, and you have to build up and expand from there, forging alliances and trade networks with the other species if you've managed to avoid war. Victory is determined in one of three ways; absorb all (remaining) species into a unified federation (once you've started on this path, it gets exponentially easier to absorb the other species), crush them all through conflict, or an endgame scenario that I won't say much about.

The last play-through I made was as a race of samurai space bears (no, really) called the Kulrathi. As I recall, I destroyed two species; the Ralyeh, who are almost always xenophobic, and Humanity, because they were getting pesky. I got into federations with some other species, but then I managed to complete the endgame scenario and emerge victorious.

A view of the 1^st Fleet fairly early on in the match. I'd managed to get cruisers at this point, but not many of them.

I always station my 1^st Fleet around the homeworld. The 2^nd and 3^rd tend to go around worlds very close to the home system so that I can have considerable firepower around my most important worlds when needed. The 4^ndand 5^th tend to be smaller and more specialised. I had no 5^th in this game, so it was the 9^th that was comprised of a bunch of ragtag ships that didn't get assigned to fleets upon construction, so I just gathered them all up into one thing. The 4^th was a planetary bomber fleet (or that may have been the 3^rd... hmm, can't remember).

Anyway, even earlier on I believe was this engagement:

I had to clear some Remnant from a world I wanted to colonise.

Much later on, the 2^nd and 2^nd moving to engage some hostiles.

This is a part of the endgame scenario. I won't say much except for big nasty alien ships.

On a lesser computer, this would cause a frame drop, but let me tell you, it's quite an impressive sight to behold, all those ships flying around.

This next picture's just to show that I'd recalled my main fleets to my home system because major sh*t was going down there (those big green ship markers heading towards Rathi (the system next to Ragone)) and I had to act or else I'd be in big trouble. Having a galaxy-wide civilisation is good until your best fighting forces can find themselves needing to go from one end of the map to the other

I recommend this game. I can't see any problems with it, really, and it's fun and rewarding.

I've also played Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. I can handle AI skirmishes for the most part, but one of my friends somehow manages to find a way to get to the highest tech levels insanely quickly, so it isn't much fun playing against him when you know he's got an armada building up. Nevertheless, I do enjoy Supcom. I don;'t actually have any screenshots at the moment, but I do remember an awesome moment in which I took down a T3 Seraphim naval base that had two very, very powerful battlecruisers, and I did it with a mix of destroyers, a cruiser or two, and a load of aerial support. I lost a lot of frigates, but I took them down in style.

Oh, I also enjoy launching nukes and blowing stuff up that way. That's always fun

The only turn-based strategy that I've played is Worms. I've played a couple of them, including 2, Open Warfare (on the Nintendo DS), Reloaded (the best one, IMO), and Revolution (a bit sucky). Always fun, though the AI seems to be either really dumb or insanely accurate.

...

I think I may go and play Stardrive again.