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What are some other great hard core strategy Games?


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NTW?

Check out the offerings of Matrix Games and HPS Simulations. From Matrix Games you can download the complete Steel Panthers: World at War for free.

There are some slightly older classics such as Norm Koger's The Operational Art of War (TOAW) which can be harder to get.

And then there's chess.

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Battleground series from Talonsoft - Napoleonics and American civil war. AI is weak but the games are good. Basically the Terrible Swift Sword and Wellington's Victory systems on the computer.

Total War series - ancient and medieval battles (bit cartoony but lots of fun and more realistic - about battles that were in fact quite crude affairs - than you might expect). There is even a Napleonics mod for it.

Korsun Pocket series for operational scale WW II (before it, V4Victory series was decent in that genre, but quite dated by now).

TacOps in addition to CM from BTS. I find the graphics and interface fiddly, but the underlying game engine is good.

The space 4x game "Stars!". Great depth of play in a genre that is usually cartoonish. Also highly playable and works well as multiplayer.

The board game Paths of Glory (a WW I strategic game) has a java engine written for it, that basically drives a cyberboard set up. It is a fine game, though it has a few realism-balance-VP issues (Italy too easy to conquer, Turkey worth too much if taken out e.g.).

As for The Operational Art of War, I am not wowed by it. It can simulate lots of things but the design is not what it is cracked up to be. Trying to substitute detailed bean counting behind the hood for game design, and fiddly at the user interface level. Korsun is a cleaner design.

The East Front - West Front series (aka updated Panzerblitz on the computer) I have similar issues with. I find the play slow and the scenario designer, editor etc all clumsy. Trying to get by on the inherent interest of the subject matter and width of coverage, but not a great design.

I hope this helps.

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One of my all time favorites is called Command HQ. Very nice game. You have to give the AI some extra money to be competitve and some of the rules that apply to the human player are not applicable to the computer. It also had modem play but do to the age it not compatibe with the newer computers.

Also check out:

The Underdogs

The guys at BFC should consider doing an updated version of HQ.

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PTO II (Pacific Theater of Operations II). Very good, although old, game. Pretty realistic, too.

Basically is about US and Japan beating the crap out of each other in the pacific. The focus is on naval warfare, but all the other stuff is present too.

Get it from the Underdogs.

Best wishes,

Daniel.

[ March 17, 2005, 12:27 PM: Message edited by: Gopblin ]

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TacOps is certainly very challenging with realistic tactics, and it has multiplayer with up to 20 players on 8 sides.

It has a MacIntosh version which is MacOS 9 but runs in the compatibility box in OSX, including the networking code.

ErikinWest, you realize that throwing around useless TLAs doesn't get you anywhere, do you?

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Harpoon 2 was a good modern tactical naval /air game. I agree Medieval Total War is good as is Rome Total War in my opinion. From a strategy point of view the Civilization series is another one to consider. I also like Masters of Orion 2 which was sort of like Civilzation in space.

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Originally posted by Der Kunstler:

Medieval Total War is THE BEST non-WWII strategy game I've ever played. Definitely worth the money. As far as WWII, you should try Hearts of Iron II - very good game at the strategic level.

Have you tried Rome: Total War? I loved MTW, but I think Rome even tops that one. All the TW games are great, I've owned all three of them.
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I am sorry but. No!

Total war isn't as great as it looks, fine if u play it normally then yes it acts like a semi realistic strat game, but then u realize the actual code and how it works out afects like morale is just plain crap.

you get just get heavey cav to repeatly charge like mad and hey look u just smashed some pikemen! (why? because when cav charge then they get a morale bonus and they do extra damage say like 15 per hit instead of 8 of a normal attack) now this problem isn't to bad in single player but online i was once losing very badly against a friend of mine (i just forgot that the byzantines could die, coz i played my mate with them and found them unbeatable) and i was down to randomly rallying units and then getting them smashed,

then i saw that i still had some heavy cav and i needle worked them to attacks then repeatlyed clicked like mad to get them to charge and after taking down 4 of my friends heavy cav groups (mainly one after the other but sometimes fighting 2 at once) i got to hes leader killed him (mine was already dead) and then hes whole army more or less routed the second my cav and few other de routing units atatcked them and i won and it just felt wrong.

it was more a expolting win!

but anyway Rome total war is even worst! the romans are sooo very overpowered and some of the unit mixs u get are just odd, like the german choosen archers?!?!?!!? i never rember them from history! but heck the tribe group of people need them coz they will easy get rolled over by the romans, even the greeks and other city state tribes are that great either. but their better then the tribe group, tho seeing spartarn elite phalanxs getting frontalty assualted and destroyed by urban chorts is very annoying!

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I'll repeat chiavarm's vote for COMMAND HQ. Not hard core but fun. Unfortunately, I moved a year ago and I've never been able to find the manual since which one needs in order to play (since the game starts by asking for the first word on page number XX).

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Originally posted by sdr633:

I'll repeat chiavarm's vote for COMMAND HQ. Not hard core but fun. Unfortunately, I moved a year ago and I've never been able to find the manual since which one needs in order to play (since the game starts by asking for the first word on page number XX).

you can download the manual from the-underdogs.org.

Command HQ manual

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