The State of the TBS game, 2008 edition

[Jon Miller]

The RTS genre is similar, there have been numerous fantasy RTS.

JM

[Standup]

The problem is the last good fantasy TBS was Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic

Still playing this. Can't compete the last scenario. Must have restarted at least a dozen times and particularly frustrating as the difficulty rating is several times harder than any of the earlier scenarios.


You could add Disciples to the list which has gone through several editions.

Turn based is still out there - Silent Storm and all the spins offs, UFO series. I think more recently there was Fantasy Wars - read a preview somewhere but seemed to sink without trace.

There's also people like Matrix making games. Not sure its a major commercial theme though. I think TBS is probably special interest on the PC.

Interesting though to see a few success on the DS and PSP which i wouldn't have expected.

[El_Cid]

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20672

some latest info on "NOT-MOM" from stardock, I guess the 2010 reference might be a planned release window? So we will have to wait a bit longer than that i suspect
Still it's nice a AAA-like tbs game is in the works, from somebody

[UnOrthOdOx]

Originally posted by DarkCloud
Well, I certainly would purchase a non-3D Fantasy tbs game in the genre.

Then again, I am not the average consumer.

---
Anyone have an idea of what the Ideal Fantasy-TBS would look like?

I see a few games... but can't quite put a finger on their themes since most were released before I developed an interest in the genre:

* Heroes of Might and Magic [Tactical] (Perhaps the best Fantasy TBS)
* Warlords Series (Never played)
* Age of Wonders (Never played)
* Master of Magic (Never played)
* Battle of Wesnoth [Tactical Wargame] (Free online download)
* Lords of Magic (buggy as heck)
* Disciples

Can you think of any others?

Dominions is also quite good if you take the time to learn it. It has a STEEP learning curve and suffers from a lack of polish.

If someone were to take it's model, focus on one of the ages, and really tighten up the interface, controls, and feedback (ESPECIALLY what's going on in the battles, that takes some time to figure out, why did I lose there but win there?), it would make a damn good game.

[Jon Miller]

Actually, it sucks.

I played through a couple of games, and then was bored.

JM

[UnOrthOdOx]

It might in SP. I'll admit to not playing that much at all so I can't comment whether the AI is so horrid as to make it boring. As a PBEM, though, it's been quite interesting.

[LDiCesare]

Dominions III is the richest and best game I've played for ages.
It's the best multiplayer game that I know, by far.
Its interface is poor, it's insanely complex, but it's also insanely rich. It's got tons of spells, nations, creatures, and most importantly strategies.
Admittedly, the ai is poor, but beating several mighty AI's on a crowded map is a challenge. Beating LA Ermor on a big map is a challenge. There are also mods (like better or no independants) that help the ai not buy crappy units and makes it better. And in MP, the game rocks.

JonMiller, give a try to an MP game, there are many on the shrapnel forums, including blitz games you can arrange on an irc channel. Play one such mp game, get destroyed and then you'll start playing sp in order to find out how to beat worthy opponents, to try nations whose flavour is different from the ones you tried, etc.

Dominions III rocks.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Yeah, I should have said Dominions III.

It replaced CivIV as my preferred PBEM game a while ago.

[Jon Miller]

MP might be fun. I am suspicious that the reason the SP sucks is because the AI can't handle the complexity.

JM

[Jon Miller]

BTW, crappy AI but AI given so many boosts to still be a challenge is still a terrible game and uninteresting for me.

Problem with PBEM MP is that that is really slow for me.

An additional issue though is that I know a lot of games that are super complex, but most of the complexity doesn't add anything to the game. For example, MOO2 was a lot of fun and was good, but a decent amount of it's complexity added noything to the game and so was bad. If the majority of complexity adds nothing to the game then it is bad for the game. A game like Dominions 2 (the one I played) also seemed to have complexity that added nothing to the game.

And I am one who plays Advenced Squad Leader and other games which are extremely complex and have huge rule books. Complexity doesn't scare me at all.

It is just that I realize that complex != good.

JM

[UnOrthOdOx]

I agree, actually.

That's why I said in my first post on it that they need to actually REMOVE some of the complexity. Focus on ONE of the ages, and really tighten it up. Then it would be a down right good game. Not a "good game if you take the time to learn it and play mp".

[LDiCesare]

BTW, crappy AI but AI given so many boosts to still be a challenge is still a terrible game and uninteresting for me. Problem with PBEM MP is that that is really slow for me.

Actually, the ai doesn't need boosts to be competitive, it needs to hire its own national units instead of recruiting crappy militia and light infantry. That's why the 'better/no independents' mods helps it a lot.
As for PBEM, I mentionned the blitz games which are not that slow, as you can often get them finished in one or two weeks.

[Lazerus]

I've just acquired Dom3 and there doesn't seem to be much difference to Dom2 :\
I really need to learn a few strats for this thing though, i can beat normal AI upto now, haven't tried the harder levels yet, but i'm just mindlessly conquering as much territory as possible and recruiting as much as possible whilst my research pings around without a clue where to go.
I wish you could queue the leaders to build, pain having to go through each area where you want them to spawn a few guys for research or priests.

[LDiCesare]

Most improvements over Dom2 were that the ai actually builds forts, more national spells which now require research, and automatic handling of taxes. Plus a few nice things like seeing what items commanders wear and how many gems they have without needing to inspect each and everyone of them.
But overall, yes, it's not a huge deal over Dom2.

[UnOrthOdOx]

The Valkyria Chronicles had a demo on the PS3. (I'm assuming it's coming for the 360 as well.)

Seemed to be a fairly straight forward console TBS. Nothing incredibly astounding in the demo. Reviews seem to indicate some character developement can be fun with it.

The battlefield in the demo was rather bland, and the AI totally moronic. It's impossible for me to say if that was because the demo was set to super easy or not, but I'm guessing it IS, as the AI wouldn't even use all it's movements in a turn. Yes, there's some strategy to saving them in the game, but the AI NEVER used more than 3.

The character models were nice, and the overall presentation seemed to be well done, though.

Might be worth a look if the story is decent.