As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Free strategy games?
theSquid
Sydney, AustraliaRegistered User regular
Sydney, AustraliaRegistered User regular
Who knows of any free strategy games - preferably open source? I'll list ones that qualify in some way or another, but I dunno... they're still not quite what I'm looking for...
This list is not in any particular order and will fluctuate wildly between
Savage
Savage is pretty cool, but AFAIK it's multiplayer and requires several people. Basically it's an RTS commander building a base and telling a bunch of FPS players to kill the other RTS commander's FPS players. Then the FPS players get rewarded with weapons and money to buy weapons benevolently handed down by yon RTS commander, whilst the RTS commander is rewarded by land and gold to build shit and research stuff to beat the other guy with.
Battle for Wesnoth
A pretty cool turn based strategy game that is often referred to by open source nutters such as myself as something good that came out of the open source bedroom programmers dark filthy corner. It's a fantasy based TBS that incorporates an RPG system where every one of your units not only levels up but can be rerecruited further into the campaign. And bloody hell are there a lot of small yet pretty cool campaigns. Anyway, it's not my cup of tea.
Widelands
A game which anyone would tell you is unfinished and crappy and I'm inclined to agree. It's pretty much a carbon copy of Settlers 2 in terms of gameplay, but what the maps tend to contain that I really hate is limited resources, namely granite. Also in the tutorial campaigns they try to tell a poorly worded storyline which I have no doubt will get polished over time but good god they need an artist working on their game stat.
FreeOrion
Gee, I wonder what influenced this game. Strangely enough it doesn't seem to be MoO but rather VGA Planets since that seems to be closer to how the gameplay mechanics work than the old DOS game of yore. I wanted to get into this game since I'd really like either GalCiv2 to become playable on Linux or a free turn based space empire sim but there's no tutorial and so many options and the tech tree is so ridiculously gigantic that I have no idea where to start. It's like X3 or Dwarf Fortress without the shiny graphics of the former or the promise of hilarity of the latter. Yet another example of open source programmers getting so involved with their own project that they've forgotten that they're making a game and need to stop and do the unlikeable things like write dialog.
Also, there's no Ubuntu repository for it.
Command and Conquer: Tiberium Dawn
We all know what this is, and in case you were hiding under a rock several months ago it got rereleased as freeware. I actually bought the Decade compilation of Command and Conquer because I loved the series, even when EA cockslapped it by shamelessly sticking the brand name onto some generic War on Terror cash-in strategy game. Included here because it is technically free, although honestly I played it to death by about a decade ago.
VGA Planets
How many of you know this indie gem? VGA Planets is a game of minimal graphics and shamelessly stolen *.bmp files from the 90's where various TV sci fi empires duke it out against each other. Finally, you get to see whether a Borg Cube can defeat the Death Star (well not really, but they have the same graphics and are the biggest ships of the Cyborg and Evil Empire's fleet) This game's 1.0 release was in 1991 I think, and the two versions still being played are 3.5 and 4, 3.5 being ugly and having ancient looking graphics and sound bites, while 4 looks nicer but feature-wise was infected with FreeOrion syndrome - in other words it takes too long to make a turn. The surprising thing is the races are actually kinda balanced for being as different as they are and with all the weird special abilities that they have. Well most of them anyway. Cyborgs tend to just swallow everybody up after a while true to the race that they're based on.
Anything else?
This list is not in any particular order and will fluctuate wildly between
Savage
Savage is pretty cool, but AFAIK it's multiplayer and requires several people. Basically it's an RTS commander building a base and telling a bunch of FPS players to kill the other RTS commander's FPS players. Then the FPS players get rewarded with weapons and money to buy weapons benevolently handed down by yon RTS commander, whilst the RTS commander is rewarded by land and gold to build shit and research stuff to beat the other guy with.
Battle for Wesnoth
A pretty cool turn based strategy game that is often referred to by open source nutters such as myself as something good that came out of the open source bedroom programmers dark filthy corner. It's a fantasy based TBS that incorporates an RPG system where every one of your units not only levels up but can be rerecruited further into the campaign. And bloody hell are there a lot of small yet pretty cool campaigns. Anyway, it's not my cup of tea.
Widelands
A game which anyone would tell you is unfinished and crappy and I'm inclined to agree. It's pretty much a carbon copy of Settlers 2 in terms of gameplay, but what the maps tend to contain that I really hate is limited resources, namely granite. Also in the tutorial campaigns they try to tell a poorly worded storyline which I have no doubt will get polished over time but good god they need an artist working on their game stat.
FreeOrion
Gee, I wonder what influenced this game. Strangely enough it doesn't seem to be MoO but rather VGA Planets since that seems to be closer to how the gameplay mechanics work than the old DOS game of yore. I wanted to get into this game since I'd really like either GalCiv2 to become playable on Linux or a free turn based space empire sim but there's no tutorial and so many options and the tech tree is so ridiculously gigantic that I have no idea where to start. It's like X3 or Dwarf Fortress without the shiny graphics of the former or the promise of hilarity of the latter. Yet another example of open source programmers getting so involved with their own project that they've forgotten that they're making a game and need to stop and do the unlikeable things like write dialog.
Also, there's no Ubuntu repository for it.
Command and Conquer: Tiberium Dawn
We all know what this is, and in case you were hiding under a rock several months ago it got rereleased as freeware. I actually bought the Decade compilation of Command and Conquer because I loved the series, even when EA cockslapped it by shamelessly sticking the brand name onto some generic War on Terror cash-in strategy game. Included here because it is technically free, although honestly I played it to death by about a decade ago.
VGA Planets
How many of you know this indie gem? VGA Planets is a game of minimal graphics and shamelessly stolen *.bmp files from the 90's where various TV sci fi empires duke it out against each other. Finally, you get to see whether a Borg Cube can defeat the Death Star (well not really, but they have the same graphics and are the biggest ships of the Cyborg and Evil Empire's fleet) This game's 1.0 release was in 1991 I think, and the two versions still being played are 3.5 and 4, 3.5 being ugly and having ancient looking graphics and sound bites, while 4 looks nicer but feature-wise was infected with FreeOrion syndrome - in other words it takes too long to make a turn. The surprising thing is the races are actually kinda balanced for being as different as they are and with all the weird special abilities that they have. Well most of them anyway. Cyborgs tend to just swallow everybody up after a while true to the race that they're based on.
Anything else?
theSquid on
0
Posts
FreeOrion is incredibly far from complete.
That too.
Wait, what is this?
That is Generals.
That is my opinion of what Generals is in the grand scheme of things, and why it exists.
Also, I'm giving that there Tribal Wars thingo a go. I find the concept of an online semi TBS perfectly acceptable.
But on that note, what's the difference between Tribal Wars and, say, Travian or Ikariam?
I happened to LIKE Generals, but you're right in that it had about as much to do with the Command and Conquer brand as it did with Dune or Age of Empires.
I didn't like Generals, but I think that's because I went in thinking it would be a C&C game. I played about thirty minutes, went "What is this horseshit?", and quit.
Warlords Battle Cry III
Disciples II: Rise of the Elves (Gold)
Nemesis of the Roman Empire
Cannon Fodder
Commandes 3: Destination Berlin
X2: The Threat.
However, for 99 cents, you can get access to these: http://www.gametap.com/games/premium-games/strategy-games
Civ 4: Warlords
Empire Earth
Heroes of Might and Magic III and IV
Freespace 2
X-Com
Homeworld 1&2
Lords of the Realm II (A favorite from my childhood)
Lords of Magic
Age of Wonders
Etc...
Playing Empire Earth right now, but the extra amount of resources the computers earn... it's retarded. This game is proving to be so goddamn difficult. I know computers get extra resources to account for human intelligence, but how the hell do you outsmart 20 battleships when you have maybe three.
Nectaris. Imagine hexagonal Advance Wars without factories, and all your units having an effect on each hexagon around them as opposed to just the ones they're standing on. Most Wii users were sadly too used to Advance Wars and didn't bother to actually learn the gameplay mechanics and just dismissed it as a simplified Advance Wars. Don't listen to said users, they're just wrong.
The Wii version obviously isn't free, but the Windows version is, if you can find it. Or you can ask me and I'll try to find it.
Titans of Steel Warring Suns - hex-based strategy/rpg with mechs.
Bang Howdy - grid-based cowboys and indian with timed turn-based combat.
Steel Panthers World at War - hex-based WWII TBS/wargame.
Clonk Endeavour - 2D RTS/platforming hybrid with several available themed settings and a wide variety of mods.
Ground Control - tactical RTS from the makers of World in Conflict.
Enemy Nations - RTS with randomized levels, line of sight, and diplomacy. Supports 1280x1024 @ 24bit, which is more than you'd expect from a 1997 Windows 3.1 game.
They're too busy in the forums argueing over game mechanics to actually program it. They shouldn't even call it 'FreeOrion' anymore, it's nothing like Masters of Orion and never will be.
Edit: Wait, it actually looks like they made some progress on it! Wow!
Also, once you get into Enemy Nations it can be pretty fun, I just wish the graphics, sounds, and UI were more polished. I've never played it multiplayer with more than 1 other person but I expect it would be pretty cool. Here's the official site: http://www.enemynations.com/ .
Edit 2: Titans of Steel Warring Suns doesn't seem to run on my computer, but the soundtrack sure is good.
To contribute some of you may want to check out AirMech.
It's free as in f2p. Its not a pure strategy game. You directly control one unit, the titular AirMech. It can transform between walking and flying mode. As that one unit you fly around the map capturing nodes and building structures and units. You control your army directly via ferrying units around from place to place and indirectly via giving them orders as you drop them off. I messed around with it a bit and it was decently fun, especially with friends but, it felt a little too grindy to me when it came to unlocking certain things. Still, some of you may like it, and it is free so, worth checking out!
You can grab it free from here. The link is on the left towards the bottom of the page. It's kind of a pain to find, so here's a direct link to the download.
Youtube Gameplay
Age of Empires Online is good too. No, it's not as good as 2 or 3, but it's still a lot of fun.
Edit: Fount it. The name is Glest (glest.org/en/index.php).
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
Here's an addition: Dota 2 - The popular freeware Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients (DotA) gets remade as a full-on free to play as a massively multiplayer online (MMO) real time strategy (RTS) game. You can get it absolutely free from Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/570/
Here's an LP I made:
Here's an addition: Dota 2 - The popular freeware Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients (DotA) gets remade as a full-on free to play as a massively multiplayer online (MMO) real time strategy (RTS) game. You can get it absolutely free from Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/570/
Here's an LP I made:
battlemines.com