/vr/ - Retro Games

>>1615292
I installed dinasty the last time this thread showed up and beat the game with the Ordos. 2 things stuck out. I both didn't remember it being so tough and the Rocket Tank being so effective. I honestly don't know how I used to beat this with Siege Tanks alone, no base defenses either.

On other news, the Deviator is still shit and the Saboteur's still fucking useless. And the Atreides are pussies. OST's still as good as I remembered, too.

I am surprised by how good Colonization still is.

It is hard for me to play Civ I, even Civ II, because of how good Civ IV is, but Colonization is still a great game.

>>1615292
>factions
Houses.

You should try playing it in windows.
http://dunedynasty.sourceforge.net/

There were many bug fixes so expect the game to be harder.

>>1615329
OST is one of the best for Adlib/Soundblaster. Never heard a game soundtrack being so different, and using that much sound depth at the time.

>>1615329
Those rocket tanks are too overpowered if you ask me. Get six of those and two siege tanks and you can take over the entire enemy base. And don't even get me started on those sonic tanks, they fuck my shit up and then some, and the faster the games speed the more effective they are.

>>1615331
This game looks and sounds fantastic, have you tried FreeCol yet? If so, any good?

>>1615349
>http://dunedynasty.sourceforge.net/
You sold me at multiple unit selection.

>>1615365
YES.

>>1615352
>Rocket

I wouldn't say they're overpowered. I think they behave tremendously against regular units. Longer range, high damage with the caveat of low armor and missing a lot of shots/firing slowly. VS buildings, however, it's a whole different story. They do too much dmg if you ask me.

>Sonic
Are you protecting your base adequately? Only time I have trouble with them is when I have a shitty base layout and the enemy carryall drops it on the other side of the base. I usually have a couple of loose Sieges to take care of surprise drops like that.

>>1615365
Multiple unit selection, multiple zooms, fullscreen, grouping, keyboard shortcuts. Common sense stuff geared towards making it playable today. Whoever did it did a heck of a job.

>>1615376
Compared to other units flying my way, Sonic tanks fuck me up the most is what I meant. At faster difficulties, they have longer range than Rocket Launchers, which already had a longer range than Rocket Turrets, while at the same time being able to hit enemies and buildings behind the one they are aiming at. By the time my units would get into position to fire, damage has already been done. House Harkonnen couldn't build such a beautiful machine sadly, though I shall abuse such a delight in my next playthrough with Atreides .

Bump.

>>1615331
I don't like Civ IV because nukes are utterly useless in that game. Why can't nukes obliterate a city completely or at least kill all of the garrisoned units? It defies all logic. A game that should've ended quickly turns into a chore where every city has to be won through sieges before they could even be razed.

>>1615331
I'm sorry to piss on your coffee but, I find the remake better than the original.

Sure the original has a lot of charm, and things the remake doesn't (like colonists learning trades by practicing them, or being able to train soldiers up to veteran in college), but the interface is so much better; you even get to know how an improvement will affect a tile before doing it. And also the open borders mechanic avoids that stupid mechanic by which other AIs could park random units on your workable tiles, making them unworkable. So fucking annoying.

>>1617235
>remake
Which one is that, FreeCiv?

>>1615389

Does it also make the AI not quite so retarded?

>>1617272

No, it's this:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/16810/

>>1615349
How do I get this to work? Which games files need to be copied to the data folder? I put the Battle of Arakkis (EU 1.07) .pak files in there, but the window immediately closes. Could someone please pack up a working link while I still have some hair on my head left?

>>1617323
Possibly although I haven't tried that yet. check pic

>>1617327
Oh sweet, didn't even know that existed. Kudos broski, you're the MAN. Thanks a heap!

>>1617664
>>1617323
just played 5 missions and it's still retarded. Brutal seems to give AI enemies more units or credits, shit will be coming nonstop.

>>1618827
Was there any improvement though? I have also been a victim of the retarded AI.
>mission start
>create line of defense just north of base
>worm sighted
>oh shit oh shit come back harvester
>turning left and right for what should be a straight line back to base
>gets swallowed
>worm swims next to my construction yard out of sight from the line of tanks and stops
>tanks fire at construction yard nonstop nearly destroying it

or fucking better yet, in a battle with the enemy, heated like fuck, squad needs reinforcements. try to move a team mate to position
>AFFIRMATIVE
then go back to look at the battle. minutes later the vehicle is still sitting in the same fucking spot.

or just fucking yesterday, spawned on a rock to the south. immediately north of that rock were TWO fucking sandworms guarding the northern exit non fucking stop. they continued moving left to right on that rock for over 30 minutes, never disappearing, making for getting spice a fucking challenge.

OR WHEN THE FUCKING UNITS DON'T DO SHIT AND JUST GET SHOT AT BY ENEMY TROOPS. My fucking god I shouldn't have to tell each one of them individually to attack.

>>1620367
Dunno I'm kinda used to babysit everything, minimap being tiny doesn't help at all though.
There should be improvement because everything changes to guard without fail. Other than that, units will still shoot building if target is behind it, towers will shoot over the buildings though. And worms are dicks, they patrol around the edges of solid ground a lot.

Last mission
Scout around, 2 sandworms.
All units on dirt, the second harvester goes on sand both worms start moving towards it.
Juggle harvester between spice fields, build 2nd refinery and light factory.
Missile incoming, goodbye construction yard
Welp.

I just discovered there's a ton more options in cfg in appdata.

>>1621432
God damn this mission was hard as fuck. I find that the best thing to do is build a heavy vehicles factory and pump out one or two mobile construction units just in case.

Any good RTS source port that still has an active online multiplayer?

>>1622484
>>1621432

Been a very very long time since Dune 2, but I seem to recall the 8th mission of the campaign being much harder than the 9th. I was always running out of money in the penultimate one, but for the final, there's more spice, I just eventually built up and shoved my way to victory against that sprawling half the map base.

>>1622784
>source port
excuse me what? If you mean retro rts in general, AoE2 and RA2 are probably the most alive.

>>1622814
Maybe, but they are both just tedious because of shitton of rocket turrets which AI can rebuild even after you destroy all buildings and concrete/walls nearby. Biggest challenge in the last one became map unit and building limit, It would be much easier to rush it, but you need to know weak points first and scouting is bullshit with 1 tile vision while moving.

Tiberian Dawn was pretty hard too on some missions.
I had a great time replaying Tiberian Sun couple years ago, same for RA2.
Only other old rts I played was Myth2, great campaign and great multiplayer too.

Got into Master of Magic recently. Had to fiddle around a little with the cycles/frameskip to get it running on DOSbox perfectly, but it was so worth it.

You guys need to try this shit.

>become a wizard
>choose spell schools and feats and a subject race
>build up a civilization
>expand, get more spells, mana and conquer opposing towns

Lotsa fun.

>>1622878

Oh god, I love that game. A bit too much perhaps.

If you want to play, be sure to get the insectiside (fan) patch. It cleans up a lot of shit.

>>1622902

How do you get scores that high?

>>1623429

Well, first off, play on Impossible, you get triple score.

Secondly, play on impossible. The lairs and nodes will be tougher, so you get more fame for clearing them out, and the chance to get books as rewards. This lets you steal spells when you knock over enemy fortresses, so more points there. You'll also get more points because you're killing large armies.

3) Score mine. Hold off victory if your towns are growing a lot, cast the spell of mastery when your last opponent has 1 tiny crap town left. Most of all, play whack-a-mole. You get 5 fame every time you banish or defeat an enemy wizard. So, ideally, never take a city held by an enemy player unless it's their fortress, wait for them to cast the spell of return, and then hit them again.

You'll lose points on time, but remember, this is impossible, it ll usually only take them 6-8 turns to cast Return, so you'll win more on the fame than you lose on time. Repeat until you have about 600 or so fame.

bump

>>1622878
Master of Magic remains in my top 10 games of all time, even though it's 20 years old now

Playing StarCraft for the first time ever. This is fantastic; the music is amazing, the pacing is phenomenal, even the story is very nice so far. Just completed one of the earlier missions, the "survive 30 minutes" mission. That was thrilling as fuck, right at the end, near a minute left, a fucking hoard came all at once from the right flank. I was screaming to myself "REINFORCEMENTS" and sent the last of my team to the slaughter. They all died. Buildings were crumbling left and right, and the clock seemed to stop as my buildings toppled one another. The only reason I seemed to have won was because of a building I accidentally built when I didn't know there was already one on the field, as it was the last standing before the choppers arrived. Yeah I know the hoard was probably scripted, but fuck if it didn't take me by surprise.

>>1626571

It actually isn't.

I've tested it myself, if you build up a big enough force and wipe out the enemy (It's not that hard, but you'll need to build a LOT of SCVs. A tip to a new player, you want on average 3 scvs to every vespane geyser, and 2 to each mineral patch near your base)


But yeah, ramp up enough, have about 2 dozen spare marines by about 12 minutes in, and start wiping the zerg bases out. You can clean them off the map, and then there is no colossal final wave, you just stand around looking a bit bored and wonder how your 150+ units will fit into those dropships.

>>1626578
>150+ units
How do you get this number? Mine was hardcapped at 34, six of which were SCVs.

>>1626586


You must construct additional pylons! Or in your case, supply depots. Each one lets you build 8 more supply worth of units.


Each command center gives you ten as well, but given they cost 4 times as much and take longer to build, you build those to coordinate resource clusters, not for their supply value.


You can build your way up to 200 if you have enough supply.

>>1626681
So that is what those things do. I was thinking that they were like power plants or something of the sort.

>>1617386
Rebumping for this. Been trying to get this shit working for hours now.

>>1626924

You might have gotten confused: The Protoss pylons are both supply (for units) and power plants (for buildings) and the Zerg have creep (power for buildings) and an overlord unit (kind of mobile supply depot)


As the terrans though, you have the luxury of building your stuff wherever the hell you please.


Keep what I said in mind about the SCVs, as well, you can get away with it in the early levels, and I seem to remember getting by with like 11-12ish SCVs the first time I played the campaign, but you will do a lot better if you have a big swarm of workers.

>>1626571
>>1626578
>>1626586
>>1626681
>>1626924
>>1627117

A StarCraft discussion without people talking about SC2 or calling each other n00bs?

I love you, /vr/.

>>1627117
So other groups cannot build where they please? That sucks, really was enjoying the freedom. I am learning the hotkeys now. Some of the things seem like they might be really fucking useful, like queuing workers and such.

>>1627534
Well, there is the border of age preventing the discussion of StarCraft 2.

Starting up Civilizations for the first time, and I have no idea what the fuck I am doing. Going to read the manual, might take me a bit. Any tips for a rookie?

>>1628264
Protoss building depend on psi (those blue spheres you can see when you select a pylon). Only Nexuses (where you build probes), pylons, and refineries can be built outside those blue spheres. It's also a good idea to be redundant, ie: imagine you have tons of buildings depending on a single pylon, and the enemy beelines for it. If it goes down, all buildings that depended on it become useless until new pylons are erected covering those buildings.

The Zerg work in a somewhat similar way. Hatcheries and colonies spread creep, a kind of biomatter all buildings feed on and need to survive. No buildings by other races can be built on top of the creep, and only hatcheries and refineries can be built outside it.

By Civilizations you mean the series in general or the first one?

>>1628284
StarCraft is pretty fucking complex. I meant the first one. Starting where Civilizations started.

>>1628305
Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it eventually, and it's pretty rewarding. Besides, playing the campaigns should get you through the moves so you at least know how to use each race.

As for Civ, I've played 3, 4 and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. I don't know how far can you apply the same mechanics, but the base concepts should be there.

You build your cities wherever you want (as long as it's on land), and they start with 1 population. This first citizen will start gathering three basic resources: food, gold and another resource used for building stuff, called hammers, shields or minerals, depending on the game.

You usually need 2 units of food to feed 1 population unit in a given city, the remainder is stored, and when it reaches a certain point, the population grows by 1 population unit.

Hammers/shields/minerals whatever are used to build city improvements (like barracks, markets, granaries, and so on) and units. Cities can only work on one project at a time, one by one. You can't for example build a city improvement in a city and at the same time train a unit.

Gold is used for research, for your money reserve and for hurrying up the production of improvements and units.

To found new cities you need settlers, and to improve tiles (building farms, mines) you build workers.

That should be the basic gist of it.

>>1628384
>>1628305
in Civ 1 tile improvements are built by settlers
also get FreeCiv if you have any problems running the original.
Don't allocate more gold to luxury than you absolutely need to keep population from rioting. There are city improvements for that too

>>1622878
Fucking love that game even though i only got into it 7 years ago

>>1624154
How do you deal with hostile AIs that have 14 books & 3 retorts?

I usually play as a mixture of death + nature or death + sorcery, warlord or channeler, and humans, nomads or barbarians, and I can never get past hard difficulty. Even when I try going Myrran I get smoked.

>>1632282

With great difficulty.

But, play around, experiment with more systems. I honestly think the single strongest setup is a simple 8 white, Myrran, Dwarves. I don't think I've ever lost, even on Impossible, with that. Build up fast, summon Torin, clean up. Adamantium hammerhands are fun too.


But very generally, you'll NEVER be able to compete with the impossible computer on raw total strength. Fortunately, stacking limits exist. You might be able to build a small, elite force and match the AI in any one battle. So stay small, out of their way, grovel and give them spells, and try to wait until you have a big stack of fast moving, hard hitting guys. If you're a death mage, you want a bunch of death knights.


Fly up to their capital, take it, and then smash them while they're casting the spell of return.

And honestly, I would recommend you try more combinations. Even if you wind up not liking them, forcing yourself into adopting different play styles will improve your game. If you like death, I'd recommend 8 black, infernal power, and summoner.


The main plan is to build those rapidly growing halfling cities, spam your way up to parthenons, and cast dark rituals. Get them up to cathedrals if possible. You get 30 mana a city that way. A few of those and you can do some summons, and start clearing the lairs and nodes, and from there it starts to accelerate. Your power growth is exponential in most games, so unless the AI is actively attacking you and about to banish you, don't give up. You can recover from a lot worse than I bet you think you can.

Finally (Sorry for rambling so much, I'm just spitting out ideas as they come to me) what are you generally building in your cities right when you establish them? What are you trying to maximize?

>>1632826
What's the main difference between MoO and MoM?

>>1632837

Master of Magic is good.

Ok, that big of egotism aside, I've only played MOO2, so I'm basing it on that, not the original.

I find that Master of magic has a much more dynamic balance. MOO2 is all about getting as many hammers together as possible, spreading fast, and then researching your way up to Plasma cannons and a good computer, at which point you just kill everything. You'll do your research more or less in the same way every game, once you work down your rhythm, and there's a pretty clear hierarchy of races/traits.

Master of Magic, maybe Green's a bit weak, but really, you can win with any color. A few weird weak races aside, you can win with any race. (Note, not all race/color combinations are good. I don't recommend playing pure red dwarves)

Furthermore, Master of Magic focuses a lot more on your competition with the "scenery", you get a lot of mileage out of clearing lairs and nodes and stuff, and they litter the map. Eliminating them eliminates rampaging monsters in your territory, as well as giving very helpful resources. Moo2 is all about your competition with the other players.

There's also a stacking limit, which is hugely important. Moo2 games I've played have almost always devolved into waiting for the right moment to have my Main Fleet fight the other guy's Main fleet in some big, decisive, Armageddon struggle, and losing that fight means your empire is basically done for. Master of Magic doesn't let you have more than 9 units in a space, so just throwing scads of cheap units can get you into trouble, as smaller, more elite forces beat your guys up a little bit at a time. Combine that with a lot of your power tied into your ability to throw spells, and that being locked in your capital, it means no matter how much power you get in the aggregate, you always have to worry about a powerful, elite force sneaking in to your capital and decapitating you. 1/2

>>1632837
>>1632856


Honestly, it's just about the only way to win on Impossible, where the computer gets triple of everything you do. In Master of Magic, even if it's a shitty city, losing your capital is devastating. I would much rather lose a field army than my home city.

In Moo2, it's just no big deal, really, aside from losing what is probably a large and well developed world. I'd much rather lose my home planet than my battle fleet.


Plus, I find that tactical combat, especially with having to budget your mana among many smaller skirmishes, adds an element of strategic depth that's lacking in Moo2's just "hit it as hard as you can" mentality.


Those are the most salient differences, imo.

>>1632837
>>1632860

Actually, one more thing I can think of. Research is much more "integrated" in MOO2. In Master of Magic, magical abilities aside, you start with all the capabilities your cities will have, and all you need is lots of production to climb your way up the building tree. Research gives you magic, which affects your combat abilities and you can summon new unit types, but by and large, your economy won't be that affected by your researching magic.


Moo2, obviously, is way different. You often have to pick and choose if you want the research lab or the holoprojector or whatnot, and you'll often run back and build a bunch of buildings on your worlds that you would have loved to earlier but couldn't because you hadn't researched it.

>>1632870
The research factor really makes the Master of Orion games my favourites.

Stealing tech from the Antarans or just getting plain lucky can totally break the game, as well it should.

>>1632934

For me, it did at first, but then I find you quickly find the "right" path. I can't remember the last time I started my game researching anything other than hydroponic garden, and then it's on to what you need to build a basic scout ship, and then you go for the automated factory, etc.

And I think it's characteristic of bad design for a strategy game that you'll probably be spending 10-20 hours per game on that can be so quickly and decisively decided on by a random factor like being able to grab an antaran raiding frigate.

>>1632826
Every time I'm in the mood for MoM I force myself to try different combinations and shcools, it's just that death + nature or death + sorcery are the ones I'm most comfortable with.

In terms of city development, I usually use the same scheme for all of them: granary, sawmill, farmers market, forresters guild, shrine, library, settler, and then I keep building up after that, except I never build oracles or that one building that gives you warships.

Also, holy crap halfling slingers with full life + warlord. They could even snipe out paladins.

What is everyone's thoughts on X-Com? Want to give that a go, any tips?

>>1635163

Put your first base either in the U.S. or Europe, and then when you get some money, get a second base in the other location. Expand later to East Asia, and then maybe Africa or Australia.


You won't be able to get much on your starting complement of 10 scientists. You'll want 50 ASAP, and probably expand it to 150-200 as the game continues. Your first priorities should be a real AP weapon (lasers, if nothing else), personal armour, medi-kits, heavy plasmas when you get your hands on them, and capturing a psionically capable alien for psionics. And getting better flying craft is also really good if the ufos are getting away from you.


In combat, fight in the day whenever possible. The aliens have much better night vision than you do. If it's not a terror site GO SLOW. I cannot stress this enough. The more TU you have, the better your chance of getting the reaction shot in. If you're not sure an alien is lurking behind a corner, don't stick your neck out to find out, throw a grenade. In fact, blow up cover a lot. Your teams should have rocket launchers distributed fairly liberally early game, maybe even get a rocket tank for your skyranger.


Terror missions are ugly, but especially early game, it's more important to keep your squad alive than to save the civvies.

>>1635187
Thanks for the information, will get on it tomorrow if possible.

>>1635187
>>1635810

Also, if you absolutely have to knock out a night mission, make sure to carry around electro-flares, which work as break lights. They are extremely cheap to buy (can't manufacture them), you can pick them up and throw them again and automatically recover them at the end of the mission, and will most certainly save your neck in more than one occasion, if you know how to use them.

Not sure if it really counts but has anyone here played King Arthur's World/Royal Conquest on the SNES? It looked interesting if a little basic

>>1636565
Never played it, what do you do in it?

>>1637149

It's a cross between an RTS and Lemmings in 2D, I tried the rom and it seems quite interesting. You have 5 units (Knights, Archers, Shieldbearers, builders and wizards) and each unit has different abilities with the goal being to get King Arthur (who is a very powerful version of the knight unit) to a goal. I'll probably pick it up as it's £5 complete on eBay and my Super Famicom collection is very small at the moment

>>1637304
Sounds pretty fucking cool, didn't even know it existed. Are there any other good console real time strategies? I know Dune 2 got a Genesis port, but I haven't tried it yet.

>>1638050

No idea, I know populous and powermonger also got SuFam ports but they look a little complicated to work out as I don't speak Japanese.

>>1638050
Warlocked for the GBC

>>1635163
A few recs.

>bring around 10 electroflares for night missions (you can always pick them up and rethrow them)
>grenades rule; put a dozen on a guy with good strength and throwing and have him lob them across the map
>the UN sucks for funding, so be prepared to make all your dosh as a black market alien arms dealer
>losing half your squad is no biggie
>capture a sectoid captain/commander, use stun launchers, do it, no matter how many of your team dies

>>1636176
Also, it's MUCH less harmful to your score to send your skyranger and immediately abort a terror mission than to just let a terror mission go unchecked. Just make sure all your guys are still in the skyranger when you abort.

I usually send a guy out to poke around, and if I see snakemen I load everyone back in and abort because fuck that.

>>1638804

Oh come on, the Chrysalids aren't THAT bad. I mean, you don't usually see Snakemen until April or May, and by then you ought to have heavy plasmas.

>>1639451
Especially if you have flying armor, they can't even touch you.

If you're playing TFTD though, good luck with Tentaculats...

>>1640678

Yeah, but you don't get flying armor for a long, long time. Usually when I first run into snakes, everyone's still got heavy plasmas and personal armour though.

Still, what's the worst that could happen?

>>1635187
>>1636176
>>1638801
>>1638804
Alrighty, am trying right now on beginner difficulty . My base is located in northeastern US/southeastern Canada. Started my first mission after shooting a UFO out of the skies after a long chase, where they crash landed in Mexico. I tried to time it right, but ended up on a night mission. No deaths so far, killed three aliens, but no fucking flares. Scared as fuck. I tried throwing a grenade over a mountain at an alien. Direct impac-
>wait what the fuck did he just throw?
Not car keys or a shoe. No. His fucking gun. Of all things. Good thing our team travels in pairs, as Franz saved that rookies ass.

Anyway to pick this weapon back up, or do I need to buy more weapons for this knucklehead?

>>1641320
Oh, so apparently I beat the mission. All you have to do is finish your turn after the last enemy is dead. IS IT TOO LATE FOR DAMIEN'S WEAPON?

>>1641331
All shit left on the ground should be automatically brought back to base.
Ofc, you should check it, I could be completely wrong as I didnt play the game in ages.

>>1641346
Too late to check now, on a new mission and Damien, being wounded, is sitting this one out. How would one throw grenades? I don't want this happening again, and there are three aliens crowding near my dropship. I want to fuck their shits. Made sure this time that each character had a grenade (by default).

>>1641352
Welp, my team got obliterated by one fucking alien halfway across the map. Got around 6 shots into the guy before he destroyed my entire team with an instakill blaster shooting three god damned times per turn, hitting most shots. Going to make a new game soon now that I figured out how to throw grenades (Page 42 in the manual).

>>1641483
>>1641352
>>1641346
>>1641331
>>1641320


If you win the mission, you recover any items (and there will be a lot if you took down a good sized UFO) on the ground, automatically. The rifle should be back in your stores.

In the middle of the mission, you can get the item back via moving your soldier to the tile you threw the item to, going to the inventory screen (it's the button that looks like a man standing alone, top row of those two at the bottom) and putting the item on the ground into his hand.

And don't forget, you have to prime the grenade first, then throw. They don't explode until the start of the opponent's turn though. You can use this to "relay" the grenade, however.

>>1641497
How am I supposed to defend against aliens shots though? They can shoot through fences, walls of buildings, and damned near every shot hits with an instakill. I was in a farm kind of place, and in the wheat fields were some aliens who were shooting at my squad. So I try to shoot back. Their shots of course go through the fences. My shots stop at the fence, so I ran inside a small building a little to my north to escape fire and attempt to find an alternate route to their positions. So I ended my turn from within the building and behind two walls (as if the building was full of cubicles mind you) and yes, away from doors with a wall blocking my character from the door. There was nobody in the building, but these fuckers still managed to kill my character instantly, without even a bullet trail to follow as to where I got shot. Just a fucking connection puff appeared on my character with the blaster sound going off, with him falling straight to the ground. Man I am beginning to love this game, but fuck if there isn't a lot to learn. Finally got it running smoothly in DOSBOX by outputting in overlay too, if anyone is interested in knowing that.

>>1622878
dled been playing for like 4 hours this game is great

>>1641703

Welcome to X-Com! Your early game soldiers have a life expectency that can be measured in a few days.


But in general, lead with a tank, they can usually survive a hit or two from the early game plasma weapons. Move from cover to cover, and fling smoke grenades. It's more important to keep from being seen than to hide behind something, although those little stone walls and the hedges can usually block a shot.

For your guy in the building, it sounds like they had someone on the roof or otherwise above you somehow, the game won't track along the Z axis.

>>1641825

Isn't it? If you want any tips, lemme know.

>>1642165
Lead with a tank but use it only to spot enemies and take incoming fire. Tanks do not gain experience by killing but your soldiers do.

Also I don't think anybody else mentioned it, but when you start the game make it a top priority to build an alien containment space. If you don't have a functioning one and you capture live aliens, they will die mid-transit, and you need them alive for interrogation.

To get some additional cash you can sell alien corpses for 20k each, just leave one in store for research.

>>1641825
MoM is seriously too much fun.

My favorite cheese is runemaster + artificer to create a mana engine at the beginning of the game by creating and recycling artifacts, putting all your mana points into spell power so you can make artifacts faster.

It's so cheesy, but damn it feels good when you can slap a sword of obliteration on Big Boss and send him to go sack cities.

>>1617234
You can change nukes' stats easily.
Anyway, vanilla Civ IV is worse than the modded versions so there's no reason to play it.

>>1642165
>>1643095
Thanks for the advice. Going to try again soon.

Alright guys, I was the Anon from earlier in the thread who was having trouble with running Dune Dynasty. Well, I have been talking with the creator for awhile now, trying to diagnose this issue, and have come across a solution, at least for me. The application, by default, renders in opengl. Now, there is no guarantee that this will work for you, and your computer might also support opengl, but if Dune Dynasty isn't working for you, try this.
(this is assuming that you already have the battle for arrakis .pak files patched to 1.7 and placed into the data subfolder in your dune dynasty directory)
1. go to dune dynasty folder
2. rename "dunedynasty.cfg-sample" file to "dunedynasty.cfg"
3. open dunedynasty.cfg in text editor of choice
4. where it says driver=opengl, change "opengl" to "direct3d"
The line should say "driver=direct3d".
5. save the file
It should work. Thank the developer.

>>1643110

Why not just take mana focusing and get 25% extra mana from generation and not have to spend your overland casting to generate mana?


And I find that while heroes can be immensely powerful , especially for clearing lairs and nodes, I find that against AI on Impossible, they use their favorite of psionic blast/disintigrate/doom bolt/cracks call/ word of death/whatever spammed ad nauseum until your heroes are all dead, unless they're magic immune, which makes a hero game tough.

bump

>>1646003
Alrighty, am trying again. Doing much better than before with this new tank and rocketlauncher combination. But this brings up many questions. How do I allocate more scientists? In the manual, it just shows them putting ten scientists on two different projects with nothing else of it, but it wont let me do that. Should I build more laboratories? Now that I have an alien containment space, how do I capture the aliens?

>>1648382
Disregard the scientist issue, figured that out.

>>1648382

To capture an alien (reliably) you'll need to either hit them with a stun rod or a small launcher.

The stun rod can be tricky, since you need to get next to an alien to hit them with it, and you'll usually get shot on the approach. Small launchers will need to be stolen from the aliens, and then researched, and early game, you probably have things you need more.

So usually, that means assaulting the relatively intact chambers with rookies and stun rods of medium and large scouts. You'll lose some guys, but if you catch a navigator or a sectoid leader early, it's all worth it.

>>1649306
How do you know which ones are navigators or sectoids, and what about stun bombs?

>>1649340
Many times it's just pure luck. Usually the higher ups will be waiting in some sort of command room and won't stray too far out.

The best way to know however is using mind probes. They are small spheres you can find in some of the aliens. You have to research them before being able to use them, but they allow you to scan aliens and display all their stats. Their rank (navigator, technician, leader, commander, soldier, etc) will be displayed too along with their race (sectoid, floater, snakeman, etc).

As for stun bombs, you also need to research them so you can use throw with the small launcher. Think of it as a grenade launcher; you can't use the ammo independently.

Are you liking the game so far?

>>1649672
>Are you liking the game so far?
Absolutely, but it is hard as shit even on beginner. Each time I try I get further though. Thanks for the advice. Will burn through even more hours in this game soon.

>>1650221

X-Com has a funny difficulty curve. It goes from "overwhelming" to "easy surprisingly quickly. Once you get down the basics of squad combat so you're not getting shot up on every mission, it gets much much simpler, and stuff starts feeding in off itself.

>>1650234
Easy surprisingly quickly... eh, kind of. I guess it is if you know what you're doing, especially with a nifty mechanic later on.

X-Com is similar to Master of Magic in that both fall under the "this game is so fucking broken it is actually balanced".

>>1650545

I wasn't even talking about things like psionics or blaster bombs , I'm just saying, once you especially get a grasp as to how the line of sight rules work, which things to research are good and which ones can wait a bit, and where the aliens like to lurk so you can toss a grenade even if you haven't seen anything, the game becomes much simpler, even if you're just using your starting tech.

Halfings work surprisingly well as undead with black (death) spells, which is hilarious.

In MoM i often use red (chaos) and white (life) spellbooks because the mixture of buffs, direct damage spells and healing is awesome if you go with quality over quantity troops.

I have to admit that I have savescummed and used chaos channels to reliably have flying paladins, heroes etc.
Chaos channels cannot be dispelled.

Stacking neat enchantments on strong troops and heroes is pretty gud but it fucking sucks if the computer dispells them in a trivial tactical combat.
REALLY sucks if you are fighting on water and their flying ability gets disspelled, instakilling them. Therefore chaos channels and hoping for wings is pretty neat.

>>1649306
Smoke grenades also help with capturing your first aliens. Filling a small ufo with smoke can help you quite a bit.

The smoke protects your cattle prodders a little bit from instant plasma death and also deals tiny amounts of stun damage per round, sometimes that is just the bit needed to down an alien in one prod instead of needing two.

>>1652019
>Halfings work surprisingly well as undead with black (death) spells, which is hilarious.

>name yourself Saruman
>name your starting city The Shire
>fuel your war machine with blood sacrifices from innocent hobbits
>march your armies of the dead across the land

>>1652082
Lucky dead with +1 to rolls. :)

>>1652019

I never really got the hang of it, but I know my brother had a build of 5 white 3 red myrran dracos, and would use flying bowmen, stack spells on them, and run around the map clearing all the lairs and nodes with that, which would give him enough power to take on the AIs.

That's the real gain when it comes to stacking enhancements, against those nodes that might have 7 red dragons but no direct magic.

>>1652180
Draconians are pretty strong.
Early clears of ground-based foes through massing flying bowmen and shaman.

Then Doom Drakes rape pretty much everything but flying Paladins and last-tier node monsters/summons like great drakes/wyrms.

You have to force yourself to expand, though or you are fucked, kinda like with the elves.

It's arguable but i'd place Draconians on a similar level as High Men, at the very, very top.

Worst races = Lizardmen, Gnolls, Klackons, Trolls. Only worth marginally if you go for quantity over quality and a rush game with a gazillion shitty cities.

>>1652198

I would toss the orcs (like high men, but worse), and the Barbarians (same reason as orcs) into the shitbucket, but I actually have a soft spot for the trolls.

Sure, all their units are expensive, and this compounds with their inability to build miner's guilds, so your armies build slow, but anyone who can build up to Cathedral can make the black/infernal power/dark rituals game work, and plus, have you ever run around the map with a force of 6 or so black channeled war trolls? It's hilarious, and quite powerful. Death makes you immune to all sorts of stuff, and you still regenerate, so the no-heal thing doesn't hold you back.

>>1652201
Put the Trolls in the shitbucket because you have to spend points to pick Myrran to get them, I didn't toy around with necro-trolls,yet though. Interesting.

Orcs and Barbarians suffer from being mediocre, kinda like the Beastmen.

The slow-growing dwarves and two elves are their own tier. Some awesome units but no really instant-win ones and you get punished without mercy for napping at the early game and not expanding quickly. Actually, the Dwarves suck compared to the elves. Hammerhands are good, but not THAT good.

>>1652208

The beastmen are funny. Whenever I look at them on paper: Engineers, decent economy buildings, all production buildings, early game power boost (a heart is a lot), half magic per citizen, can build all the research and magic buildings, and the Minotaurs are damn tough, they look great.

Every time I play them, it's just.... yeah, they're ok, but not awesome.

Have to disagree with you on the dwarves though. I think they're the single strongest race in the game, and I recommend to people moving up in difficulty to do your first play on the new setting with 8 white dwarves; it's bascially an automatic win. You get so much money, and so much production, you can expand so quickly and alchemy your way into mana so easily, that you just tromp things. Crush a few nodes under your hammerhands, summon Torin or some champions, clean up.

It's not so much that the Dwarves are late game powers, (although seriously, ultra-elite adamantium hammerhands can take out sky drakes 1v1), but you get your end unit really quickly, and can start clearing out stuff faster than juts about anyone. No, the dwarves kick ass.

>>1652247
Ultra elite adamantium Doom Drakes also clear out Sky drakes, so do Paladins.
Dwarves also have low growth if I remember correctly.

They are far from bad, but kinda bland. The mechanical units are also meh. I guess I need a full city tech tree to be happy with a faction.

>>1652297

So what if they grow slow? Each dwarf gives you double taxes and each worker gives you 1.5x production. What's better (if you're playing white) is those bonuses are innate, not something you tack on with marketplaces or banks. So if I cast prosperity on a size 15 dwarven city, it's worth double what I'd do on a size 15 High Men city.

You effectively get close to twice as much out of each dwarven population as you do with anyone else, so a bit of slow growth is easily pushed through.

And do ultra elite adamantium doom drakes really kill a sky drake?

2 figures, 12 swords, 7 defense, 11 HP, 50% to hit. (Firebreath ignored because sky drakes are magic immune)

Sky drake will have 20 swords, 10 defense, 20 HP, 60% to hit, lightning breath 20.


Even if the Doom drakes attack first (tricky, with the sky drake being faster, but the AI is easy to fool) you'll hit on average with 6 swords per figure, but the 10 defense will block 3 on each, for a total average of 6 damage. The Sky drake then retaliates, doing (20*0.6) - (7*.3) for 9.9 average damage. After the second attack like this, the sky drake will be down 12 HP and only have 8 left, but the first doom drake figure would likely be dead, and the second one not far away from it.


And if the Sky drake attacks first, it gets much uglier. Can't remember if breath attacks get the to hit bonus, but even if they don't, (20*.3) -(3.5*.3) averages to about 5, which means they'll kill a figure on the first swipe, and then it's pretty much over.

I mean you can do it if you swarm them, or start tossing out big buffs like high prayer, but they don't have the same degree of power that the Hammerhands have.

And I guess I just generally played to win with as much score as possible. If you're using a stables unit to do most of your fighting, what's the point of all those big expensive buildings, you know?

Oh come on, barbs aren't that bad.

They have berserkers, a pretty good unit for its price (too bad they only have 1 movement), cavalry, and are one of only 3 factions that can build warships. Plus all their melee units have innate thrown weapons which means they give no fucks about flying units being safe from ground based attacks.

Also, isn't it retarded that draconians had engineers before 1.31? I know they can also be used to tear down city walls, but why the fuck would a draconian empire need roads? lol

>>1652359

Well, myrran roads are still faster than flying, but yeah, it's a bit ridiculous.

And it's not so much that I think the Barbarians are bad, it's more that they're not quite a rushing race, an they're not quite a building race, so they wind up occupying this weird halfway point where they're good at a bunch of things but not really great at anything besides growing too fast for your ability to keep your population pacified.


Generally, I'd much rather play the nomads or the High Elves.

Looking for a game that combines the determinism of the greatest RTS games with the strategic depth of the greatest grand strategy games.

Is there a retro TBS that isn't plagued with RNG or was the genre always as shit as it is now?

>>1652703
Reach for the Stars.

Although there is an element of effective randomness. Each round of battle, each of you pick a formation. Certain formations maximize beam weapons vs missiles, but each is also good against 1 or 2 of the others, and weak against different formations.

Since you both pick blindly, it's effectively a crapshoot whether or not you've picked a good formation or a shitty one. (The bonus for picking a formation strong against the one your opponent has is a lot bigger than the ones for using beam weapons in a line or whatever)

How long did you play Master of Magic until you realied Myrror = mirror.

>>1653525
A better question is how long you played before realizing that Malleus=hammer.

Mystic X appears in both Masters of Magic and Masters of Orion 2.
In both he's a powerful hero with random powers.

>>1653525
>>1653789
13 years now. Welp.

>>1656184

How long did it take you to get the joke in pic related?


I confess, I was playing the game at around 10 years old, my dad walks in to see what I'm doing, I show off the cool item I just got out of a lair, and he starts laughing. Then he explained it to me.

>>1657013
Not seeing the humor in the image.

>>1626586
There's two major advices that work in every single RTS.
1. Train/construct/create more gatherers
2. Spend ALL the resources

It might sound really basic or stupid, but having a powerful economy makes all the difference in these games.

>>1657068


http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_kw=ramses+condoms


their old ads used to say "trust in the protection of Ramses"

>>1657236
>http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_kw=ramses+condoms
>strong yet sensitive
and i thought i had seen the worst of raping ancient cultures.

>>1635163
UFO Defence is absolutely fantastic. TFTD is still amazing and I've played through it several times on superhuman, but it's honestly kind of tedious compared to the original with overly campy AI and way too many maps designed around said AI. (Looking at you cruise liners, God damn)

Anyone that wants to try out the original needs to check out OpenXcom.org though, it is by far the best way of playing the game out there. And that's after having completed the game both vanilla, through UFOextender and Xcomutil.

I got my hands on the pre-III Age of Wonders series earlier, I think I'm going to dip into it this weekend.

Should I start with the first, or just go fully into Shadow Magic? Also it reminded me of HOMM3 in the trailer but I read comparisons to Master of Magic, which one is it more like?

>>1657314

Was it just me, or was the difficulty really messed up on OpenXcom? I played on Superhuman, and it seemed to have superhuman levels of aliens dispatched both on the Geoscape and on any given tactical mission, but the aliens seemed to have much worse weaponry ( a whole lot of plasma pistols) and seemed to have beginner level stats for their dudes.

>>1657393
Can't say I've heard about anything like that. There was a weird issue that caused fewer than normal UFOs to spawn ages ago, but that's long since been patched.

How long is it since you ran into the issue?

>>1657406

Well, I downloaded it about 2 weeks ago, version 0.9, so the most recent, I think.

>>1657439
Odd, would have assumed more people would have been pointing it out on the forums if it was in a milestone build.

You could try downloading one of the nightly builds though, 0.9 is more than a year old by now anyway. They usually shit out two or three of these a day these days, so progress is really picking up.

Hoping we'll see TFTD compatibility be prioritized more after the 1.0 release.

>>1657389
Never played Shadow Magic, just the first and second so I can't help you on your first pick.

People are right to compare it to MoM, though, as you can build cities, move units on the map without them being tied to a hero. Even the unit and building production are similar.

When the first AoW was released, people where really expecting a successor to Master of Magic.

>>1657465
>>1657439
Oh I almost forgot, you definitely want to try to grab the music files from the PS1 version.

Here's a tiny sample of it, it's a lot better than the midi crap that came with the original.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=779bmildp10

>>1657314
Speaking of UFO Defence and OpenXcom, I absolutely love what you can do with a tiny bit of rulesetfuckery.

http://i.imgur.com/q8PV3W5.png

180+ Sectoids in a single medium scout. I'm really quite amazed that the engine handled it, the turns still only took like 1 second each as well.

Currently I'm doing a double alien count ironman run on superhuman. Got a terror mission in Berlin within the first week. Flew all the way over there and noped all the way back to to Cairo when I saw the Skyranger was surrounded by 8+ floaters and at least four reapers.

After playing Dune 2 using Dune Dynasty, I wonder, why is this game still so good? All it took was a basic controls update and some bugfixes, and it plays like fucking rainbows. It's still one of the most nicely crafted RTS in terms of gameplay variety. Expansion and resource collecting don't feel like a chore and blend perfectly with the flluff of the Dune universe, which I actually follow. Balancing issues aside, I think I actually pefer the Dune 2 gameplay to later C&C titles.

>>1658286
>Flew all the way over there and noped all the way back to to Cairo when I saw the Skyranger was surrounded by 8+ floaters and at least four reapers.

Son, it's precisely for those situations the high explosive was invented. Also 1.0 will be released next week, so stay tuned.

>>1659290
Oh hell yeah, sounds awesome. Seems that the site that hosted the PS1 soundtrack in the extra downloads section has gone down though.

If anyone wants it or my double alien count mods I'd be happy to upload them however.

>>1659283
It is hard to put it into words, but I definitely agree. I like to think it is because it is tilebased so the AI isn't near as retarded as say StarCraft, your base is less reliant on harvesters as other games, the fucking music, the believable stage hazards like the sandworm, the game isn't too overly complicated, and the game manages to form a biased opinion in your mind regarding opposing teams leaders, making you feel like you really are fighting enemies. I just really felt like I was fighting a cause and everybody was against me. There are so many reasons I fucking love the game, but cannot really explain it.

>>1659954
>so the AI isn't near as retarded as say StarCraft,
Except when four factions decde to ally against you and your base is attacked by two zergs, a protoss and a terran before you finish building your barracks.

>>1659954

It's been a long time since I played Starcraft single player, and longer still since dune 2 (the original, I never touched Dune Dynasty), but I seem to recall the Starcraft AI being better.

The Dune one defended its base ok, but it never seemed to do much else, when they attacked me, I honestly thought half the time it was patrols of 2-4 units that wandered too near, and I can't remember my base ever being seriously threatened by anything other than those missiles the Harkonnen lobbed.

>>1660278
I meant in a navigation sort of sense. Trying to tell a squad to go to a certain place, and three of the soldiers go backwards halfway across the map and get slaughtered is not exactly intelligent, and having to inch every soldier around obstacles else they do this exact same thing, and even then they might still do just that, even if it is just a few steps away, is a huge disadvantage. In Dune 2, you do have to micromanage every single character, but if you tell a unit to go to a spot before realizing that someone else was already there, the character will park right next to the spot and await further orders, instead of trying to find some way to go around the obstacle, which is impossible. The only saving grace StarCraft had in this, was that if a character was stuck, he could be moved with a slow, manual, pickup unit, which the entire process is slow and ineffective. In Dune II, you make a 900 credit carryall that intelligently does that and more at fast as fuck speeds. I am not even talking about the OpenDune variants either, this is vanilla 1992 Dune II, and it controls much better than 1998 StarCraft.

>>1660340
The units were fantastic at defense though, and well makes up for it. I personally didn't like the fact that in StarCraft, you had to manually tell each unit to stand their grounds, else they follow the enemies, and again, get slaughtered. Now, I agree with both of you that enemy units actually felt like dangerous foes, almost unpredictable in that it could be a huge wave or a single wandering unit just wanting to explore your base and check out. It was a very complex AI, but the navigation is what I had meant with the initial post, hence mentioning tilebased.

Maybe a better word would have been "pathfinding".

I have always wondered though, in Dune II, is there any way to use the carryall as a unit drop ship like the enemy team does?

Ah dune, I always look fondly back on it. What did you guys end up thinking of Emperor: battle for dune if you played it at all?

>>1657389
I need to play more of this, picked up 3 recently and was kind of disappointed. Even though after hankering for some warlords action for a very long time I realized it is essentially an updated version of.

>>1660527
I really fucking hated him. Seeing those purple units for the first was so confusing, I was so unsure of their origin. Then the first cutscene following the defeat of the purple units, the one of him talking down X group leader for his failure to destroy me plays and I just think of betrayal. In the introduction, he proposed free game and rule to the house who controlled Dune, but then attacks the group who held the power? He must not have had any intention of one group ruling the land, and instead wanted to destroy all three when they were weakest. The ending cutscene was absolutely necessary, and I feel fantastic seeing it.

Is there any RTS where you have to have dune-esque energy generation, but that needs some kind of fuel to run and wire to be carried instead of magic?

>>1660527

I thought Dune Emperor was ok, but not great. They did a nice job of making sure that even the early game units were useful, as opposed to Dune II, where infantry were basically useless and you had little reason to build assault tanks once you had siege tanks.

The three factions were very much different from one another, but I think balanced suffered as a result, the Harkonen were far weaker than the other two factions, IMO, although whether the Atriedes or the Ordos were stronger was something I went back and forth on.


The campaign was very well done though. Well worth a play.

>>1660278
Ah, here it is. Sorry for bad quality, but mi internet is pretty bad (60 KB/s is my top speed)
>>1660368
To be fair, bad pathfinding is pretty excusable in anything older than 2003.
I just remembered the pathfinding of Morrowind. What a shitfest.

>>1660597
It really is excusable, I still love StarCraft, those were just some of my answers to Anons question as to why I think Dune 2 is so good.

>>1660616
I know anon, I love you too.
/vr/'s official bathhouse when

>>1660620
i hadn't even put much thought into the necessity that is the gay bathhouse. i need a moment to go reevaluate my life

>>1660594
Loved just massing sardoukar into a ball of death, also the sargeant's laser pistol reacting badly with ordos shielding was a nice touch.

>>1660527
>>1660575
Well shit, just realized that had absolutely nothing to do with anything. Disregard that, I am retarded. Never played that game, didn't even know it existed. Might give it a try one day.

>>1660706

They take forever to build, and good luck getting eaten by Inkvines, Kobras, or Minotauruses, depending on who you're fighting.

I don't know what to do anons.
I played tibrium dawn on openRA and Starcraft, and I love both. I love how each unity on starcraft has it's own tricks&traps, how each one is perfect for a task.
But I love how you you have to manage your recourses in tiberium, and how you can steal enemy buildings.
Now I can't play one without thinking in the other one, I just can't enjoy them anymore.

>>1662218
Step 1. Buy a second monitor.
Step 2. Plug in second monitor
Step 3. Open Tiberium Sun on left monitor.
Step 4. Open StarCraft on right monitor.
Step 5. Switch between the two when you long for the other.

Alternatively, spend some time learning to mod one of the games, and add in the features you want. OpenRA is just that, an unofficial opensource project. Make the future Anon, my Starsun.

Some anon made a turn based strategy thread, to which I redirected him here. He was talking about Jagged Alliance 2. Could anybody tell me more about this game? What should I expect?

Has Xcom anon from 3 days ago gotten raped by large groups of cryssalids or mind raped by ethereals without knowing how to battle psionics?

>>1663673
Imo, the crowning jewel of video gaming.
You hire up to 20 individual mercs (ie. with personalities and and voiceovers and conflicts or friendships with other mercs) and you lead your ragtag band of mercs to liberate a country.
You can be MacGuyver and build up cool stuff out of useless junk, but it's mostly about squad tactics.
There are some awesome mods.
Like seriously awesome mods.

>>1663926
Actually yes. They kept sending my troops into frenzies, killing off half my team or making him drop his weapon and fucking run away. Might not be the worst they could have done though. Also, that gif. I understand everything about that gif and more.

>>1664902
Will definitely need to check it out then. I don't plan to play the mods before the game, but what are your favorite mods Anon?

bump

>>1663673
Expendables: The Game, but with thinking and tactics.

It's awesome and has near infinite replayability. Get it.

>>1665118
The best one around seems to be 1.13, a must have patch for many people which improves many issues in the vanilla version, adds a ton more weapons and changes a few of the mechanics.

Most players however will recommend you start with vanilla, and then try out 1.13 or any of the other mods, since it also makes the game considerably harder. I personally recently tried it out, without ever consulting any FAQs or even the manual, and granted, I had to restart the game twice in the beginning and savescummed like a bitch during the initial battles, but other than that I beat it without difficulty.

>>1665118
play ja2 vanilla. its a great game and has aged well, crisp graphics, good sounds etc. 1.13 is the most popular mod, but its a mixed bag. it adds a lot of cool features, new mercs, new weapons, but it also overly complicates the interface, ruins the balance, and adds a lot more bugs than it fixes.

>>1666753
>ruins the balance

In what sense?

>>1666753
> ruin the balance
i think the other way around, at least weapons wise.

In vanilla, once you get rifle, there is almost no reason to keep a pistol. In 1.13, all weapon types has it's own role, advantages and drawbacks. Holstering pistols on machinegunners and snipers, are especially important.

>there will never be a strategy game as good as tibsun ever again

>>1668394
Haven't played too many RTS games either, what is your favorite part of Tiberium Sun? It is difficult to give you a name of an RTS that was made after Tiberium Sun without straying out of /vr/ territory. You might like Renegade, and I also hear good things about StarCraft II if you haven't tried them yet. Here is a "top 20" list for real time strategies.
http://compactiongames.about.com/od/topgames/tp/topRTS.htm
Like many other best of lists (not necessarily relating to strategy games), it would seem that either A) games made before 2004 are not good, or B) all of the greatest realtime strategy games were made after 2004. But I don't know, never tried them. You should check them out, though this is only assuming by "ever again" you mean after Tiberium Sun's creation.

You should give StarCraft, Dune II, Total Annihilation, Homeworld, and definitely the other Command and Conquer games if you loved Tiberium Sun.

bump

>>1669709
It's quite a far way out of /vr/ territory, but personally I'd say Supreme Commander Forged Alliance is just about the best RTS ever made. At least in terms of multiplayer, campaign isn't all that good.

Any recommendations for more obscure RTS games? I've played all the major series (C&C, -craft, AoE, Total Annihilation etc.) to death. Looking primarily for classic -craft, C&C and AoE clones/likes like pic related (Horde: Northern Wind), 7 Years War, Primitive Wars, 7th Legion etc.

>>1671428

Have you played War Wind? It's sort of similar to Starcraft, in that you have 4 dynamically balanced races but which still play very differently from each other.

Still, the economy's much simpler (there's just money,) and you have this neat but ultimately clunky system of hiring workers from an inn, and then if you want a soldier or a scout or something, you have to physically drag them to the training center and upgrade them, same thing to apply the upgrades you've researched.

And the combat is interesting.

>>1671553
You're a saint. War Wind was one of those games I've seen in a computing magazine fuck knows how many years ago and got really interested in it but never managed to get it before the name just slipped my mind until now. Certainly going to try it out now.

>>1671563

Just a few words of advice before you start tearing Yavaun apart.

Relative to other RTS games, combat is very quick and very deadly. 2-3 shots from a hostile version of the same unit will usually kill even advanced warriors. And a LOT of units have some kind of stealth capability. Don't do lines of battle slugging it out against each other, this is third world warfare, and it's all about ambush and counter-ambush.


I'd also suggest you play the Tha'Roon first. They're a bit easier to get a handle with than the other races. Weak economy, but their units are all really really tough.

Probably want to play the Shama'li last, they're the "magic" race, but since you can't mass cast spells, they have trouble in large confrontations. Plus, they have by far the coolest ending, so save that for last.

>>1671569
Right, thanks very much kind anon. The sequel with the humans any good?

>>1671428
Tzar The Burden of the Crown might be up your alley.

It was made by a Bulgarian company in the late 90s/early 00s, and plays much like AoE II, but without age advancement. You can play as the Europeans, the Asians or the Arabs, and they each have their own special quirks. You can even recruit mages and cast spells like summoning dragons, djinns, casting ice storms and giant fireballs. It looks cheap but it's one of the comfiest games I've ever known.

Definitely worth checking out.

>>1671587

No, it's terrible. They rape the previous canon, the balance is completely wrecked (The marines are like the best at everything), and a number of scenarios are very badly designed, a personal favorite of mine involved needing a teleporter (item you can pick up) to access a plateau, but way before I found it, the AI had stumbled across it, used it, and there's only one on the map, so you're fucked! I only even found out about the teleporter by hacking the map and finding it before anyone made any moves like that.

Don't play War Wind 2.

>>1671428
Have you played Z? The Zod Engine version is worth czeching out if you haven't played it.

Also, Populous: The Beginning might be up your alley is a pretty overlooked game, though not as obscure as the games you mentioned.
>>1671610
Sounds kind of neat.

>>1672454
I remember that game. Could never do well in it as a kid until I learnt how to build shit.

>>1671553
Hm, so far it seems that the game is less focused on basebuilding and more on tactical decisions with what you have. Not entirely my cup of tea, but it looks extremely neat otherwise. I might play through the campaign just for the plot and the style.

>>1671610
I think this game used to be a little prominent here in Russia back in the time (probably because also made by slavshits), but I never played it before. Got it too. Super comfy. Reminds me of both AoE II and a bit of Knights and Merchants for some reason. Looking great so far. The only problem I'm seeing is that resources feel a bit unbalanced. The economy's going too slow even with my AoE "train all the peasants" twitch reflexes, and some buildings require ridiculous amounts of resources that put AoE Wonders to shame. But maybe they were going for a slower, more town-buildingish sort of gameplay on purpose. But really cool, thanks. Certainly going to play more of it.

>>1672454
>Z
One of the games of my childhood. I've played it a lot back then with my dad, brings back some memories though I must have forgotten a lot about it. As good a reason as any to boot it up again, thanks a bunch too.

>Populous: The Beginning
Isn't Populous more of a 4X/sim thing? I'm in the mood for base building, resource hoarding, rushing games in particular now.

>>1672824
>War Wind

Yeah, that's legit. SPending time effectively managing your troops is far more effective than spending time making sure your base runs 100% smoothly.

Hell, it looks ugly, but often it's best to just quarter or so finish your buildings and re-task your workers to more harvesting/building.

If you want a more buildery style RTS, maybe try Serf City/ The Settlers? I was never very good at it, and I never completely got how to perfect the economy, but the basic skill of the game is making a road network as efficient as you can get it.

>>1672824
>Isn't Populous more of a 4X/sim thing
The older ones were god games but The Beginning is more of an RTS overall. You build houses that spawn braves over time, and then you train your braves to become warriors, fire warriors, preachers, or spies. You also have a shaman who can cast spells and is basically a hero unit.

Here's a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9bC_2Jczbc

>>1666478
>>1666553
>>1666753
Finally checked it out since I had a little bit of time. First off, the game is fucking hilarious. Secondly, the combat is fantastic. I killed all of the enemies in the first town, with minimal casualties (note; am on babby difficulty). But then I tried picking up items with CTRL click. Worked the first couple of times, but when there were two items in the same place, the game froze. I will need to redo this mission, but at least now I know that I want to play it. Love the mercs and their varied personalities. Igor is my favorite as of now, though I feel like there is some room for recommendations. What are your favorite mercenaries Anons? Any tips for a rookie?

>>1673721
I don't know how much you've read in the manual/walkthroughs/faqs/whatever but this was my biggest mistake:

After you conquer a city quarter (a map tile) it will fall under enemy control if the enemy sends troops there. To avoid that you have to train militia in that city (I think you can only do it when city loyalty is at 20% or above), so they stay and defend agains the army's attacks.

However, you *cannot* train militia in Omerta no matter what since it has been bombed to oblivion and nobody lives there anymore. So don't worry if the enemy takes it at the start of the game. It generates no income, has no strategic importance and serves no purpose other than being an initial tutorial-like area.

Also, based on my personal experience with this and Fallout Tactics, always have a backup doctor. Always.

As for merc recommendations, I beat the game with my main, Bull, Fox, Barry, Gasket and Ira.

Barry from IMP is an amazing explosives expert and dirt cheap. Gasket from MERC (you will get their website adress on the 2nd or 3rd day) is an amazing mechanic and dirt cheap. Train their marksmanship though, or have them stay in the back and pray.

>>1673730
Haven't read any of the manual yet. I usually play until I hit a stump, then read the manual. Thank you for all the advice, will need to play it when I get the opportunity again.

bump

>>1673721

I have just started playing this week too. I cleared Omerta, Chitzena, Drassen, the eastern SAM site and I'm almost done with Cambria. The game is an absolute blast, I know I'll be playing this years from now.

I started off my IMP with good physical stats and wisdom, 55 marksmanship, and 35 of the skills. Picked up Igor, Barry, Hitman, and Fox to start. Picked up Ira and Dimitri as well. Left Ira at Drassen to train militia before I went to Chitzena.

After Chitzena, I decided to split up into 2 groups, since I felt like I wanted to get my IMP marksmanship up fast and want to have a dedicated militia training team. Picked up Ice, Thor, and MD and made the A and B squads:

A squad: Hitman, Thor, Igor, Barry, Fox

B squad: IMP, Ice, MD, Ira, Dimitri

A squad is going to be used for raids, initial militia trainning, while B squad will be used for most of the militia training. IMP and MD will train marksmanship under Ice (training perk), Ira trains militia, and Dimitrix fixes stuff.

My primary concern is that I want my IMP to get his marksmanship up ASAP, but not at the cost of the other lower-marksmanship guys like Barry and Thor. Is teaching-student a good approach to this. IMP wisdom is at 85 so I hope it will work out. Then I'll probably have him join the A squad.

God this game rules.

>>1678543
That fun huh? I will be honest, I haven't been playing the game as much as I should. I did however give Civilizations another shot, as well as trying out Colonizations. Been playing Civilization Revolution, since it was free on xbox 360 . Really good introduction to the series, as it helped me learn the basics. Colonizations is a whole nother beast however, but still somewhat similar to Civilizations, though more complex and slower.

So for Battle Realms the optimized strategy is to spam archers (the optimal strategy for most ancient RTSs). But what about Serpent? What are the best strategy for them?

>>1615292

Anyone in this thread interested in Panzer General? At least from a test I did with my gf about a year ago, PG forever still allows for multiplayer. Anyone want to butt heads over say, Stalingrad or Kursk? I'm up to most scenarios, as either player, except for the ridiculously unbalanced ones like the Balkans or Cobra.

>>1680359
I am interested, but have never played it before. Looks easy enough to pickup though, so game on. ill rek u m8.

>>1681101

When's a good time for you? Tonight is bad for me, but I'm free most week nights from say, 9pm onward Eastern Standard time.

And for anyone interested, you can get the game at http://www.pgforever.info/ Just unzip and go. It's easy.

>>1681182
I am good for really any night, so this should work out fantastically. Tomorrow should be fine, though the link is not working, as the server for the download appears to be down. Is this the Windows XP remake, Windows 95 version, or the DOS version? I might have to find it elsewhere.

>>1681198

Oh, you're right. Hmm, guess the link died since the last time I was there

I actually found a more recent version than what I had over here

http://panzergeneraldownload.com/

And this time, I made sure it worked; the XP version will work on Windows 8, so it should work on just about anything.

Maybe tomorrow evening, 9 pm EST?

>>1681407
I feel fucked, I am not real sure if it has been a day, according to the date no, but surely it has been a day. Maybe we talked about this shit earlier and I forgot. In case I am crazy, yeah, today at 9PM EST will be fine.

>>1679675
I daresay spam Ronins. I played that thing ages ago, and all I remember is that Ronins were really awesome and Serpent clan is easier than Dragon. Oh, and that the AI blatantly cheats when it comes to resources, construction and gathering, so try to destroy their bases on one sweep.

>>1682023

Any particular scenario or side you want to do?

>>1682023
>>1682238

Just checking, are you the guy who posted up the Poland online game? If not, I could put up a Poland myself, I guess.

>>1682023
>>1682238
>>1683145


Starting up a game: Poland, me playing the Allied side, normal experience and prestige, weather, supply, fog. Game name is /vr/ game. Anyone is welcome to attend.


I'll probably stick around for a couple of hours, even if nobody shows.

>>1683145
>>1683219
Did ya leave? Was trying to join, then game crashed, now server is no longer up.

>>1683279

No, I didn't. I got the game up, but the Germans aren't moving, and it's not my turn. Probably disconnected us somehow. I'll quit and post up a second game. /vr/ game 2

>>1683279
>>1683282

And now it's crashing for me too. I'm not sure why or what's not working. You want to try hosting?

>>1683292

And I again get a game where I'm up against someone, but they don't seem to be able to move. I'm sorry, this doesn't seem to be working

>>1683292
I am willing to give it a try or two. How would one go about doing that?

>>1683304
It might show me in the game, but all I see is a loading screen, then a crash.

>>1683306

You first go to "Scenario" (Second from the left.

Pick out the scenario you want to play, hit start at the bottom.

You'll get a little window pop up with a bunch of settings. The most important ones are to set whichever side you want to play as "player" and the other side to "remote opponent".

Then, when you have your settings, hit ok, and you'll be prompted to enter a name for the game, at which I'll scroll around and try to join it.

>>1671610
I had a boxed set of this game!
One of those large ass boxes too, it was fucking great. I wholly recommend this, I loved fucking around in the map editor.

>>1683315
Alright, made the server. Someone joined, if it is you, can you move?

>>1683315
>>1683310


And now I'm getting the same thing, a long loading screen, and then a crash. I'm sorry for wasting your time, I don't think this is going to work. A shame, I would have liked to play a human at the game.

Best of luck, anon.

I'm considering getting into Starcraft: Brood War again, but there are people who have played for over a literal decade. I'm afraid of getting absolutely #rekt.

Is it even worth it?

>>1683328
You didn't waste my time, learned a fun game with a very challenging singleplayer that I lose at errytime. Would you like to play some other online strategy game? I don't know too many myself personally, besides the obvious StarCraft (which I am up for by the way), but if you have one on the mind, I would be willing to download it in a completely legal manner, and play with you dawg

So I'm working on a ruleset rebalance for OpenXCom, and I want to know people's opinions on my current layout of laser vs bullet vs plasma.

Bullet guns have been given more ammo types, mainly the increased damage alloy rounds and small explosive elerium rounds (radius 1, reduced damage compared to an alloy/normal round). All damage has been increased to be balanced around the new basic rifle damage of 36. Their general accuracy has also been improved somewhat.

Laser guns now do ~10-20% less damage than bullet weapons, but are slightly more accurate when aimed, still have infinite ammo and cost slightly less TUs. However they now require Elerium to manufacture and do not have any special ammo types.

Plasma guns have had their "clip" sizes drastically reduced, to single digit numbers for all guns. They also have the worst accuracy, though not by much. However, they retain their somewhat ridiculous damage output.

>>1683553


I really don't think the plasma, laser, and bullet weapons are supposed to be balanced with one another.. One of the big selling points is that the alien stuff IS better than your stuff, and you have to capture and reverse engineer to have a chance. Personally, I like it the way it is in vanilla.

>>1683739
This. alien tech is straight up better for a reason.

Lasguns shouldn't be doing so much less damage considering it was a critical upgrade in firepower. Making them harder to produce is fine though which would justify giving some versatility to bullets.

>>1685213
Yeah that's basically what I did. They do about as much as standard bullets, with better accuracy and infinite ammo. Bullet weapons can do quite a bit more with special ammo types, but they also do AP which is more commonly resisted. Plasma aren't really that much less accurate, but their clip sizes are smaller. They do on average 25% more than the highest damage of their equivalent bullet class gun, their damage values are untouched. They're still a clear upgrade overall, just not in all areas.

>>1671428

Dark Reign might be of interest. Skip the expansion and I never played the sequel.

7 kingdoms is probably not what you're looking for, but is another rts that I never see mentioned on /vr/. I'm not going to say it's a great game, but I liked it a lot.

And less retro, but I'm sure you're familiar with is Rise of Nations. One of my all time faves.

>>1683330
haven't ever played online before, but i think it is worth it. i mean, if anything, you will have fun.

>>1638050

The Genesis port wasn't half bad, and had a really good original soundtrack to go with it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQsLyt88nv8

also, because I also liked the soundtrack of the original it needs some representation as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px-yq4Ikpq4

>>1622902
I recently tried the patch, and wow game is even better now

>>1681182
>>1681407
why is there no fucking tutorial or wiki?

I hate how all these revival project completely disregard newcomers.

bumping for more strategy

So, apparently the first three Command and Conquer games have been officially free for awhile now. Are there any other previously commercial strategy games that are now freeware?

>>1690373
Warzone 2100 used to be commercial, I think.

>>1615292
Strategy games to play with friends?
Turn based preferred.
Civ's 5 was just too disappointing so I'm looking for something retro.

>>1691702
I am interested in this as well. Preferably online though. None of my friends see the appeal of hotseats.

>>1690373
Ground Control

>>1691769
It isn't retro, but I really have to say it; why the absolute fuck is GoG selling a free game?

>>1691858
pc games from 1999 were considered retro 2 years ago. Why can't a pc game from 2000 be considered retro today?

We shouldn't use console standarads to dictate whether or not pc games are retro, but I'm sure 2 more years from now you fucks will still say it's not retro.

>>1691960
Because the definition of 'retro' will never change, and videogames made after the time period the creators of this board deem 'retro' will never change to fit their definitions of 'retro'. And don't ask me what their idea of retro is either, as I have no idea what the fuck they were thinking. Three dimensional games make no fucking sense under the name retro, assuming it is applied to style, whereas gameplay wise strategy and roleplaying games aren't retro, as they aren't arcadelike. Then we have the whole issue of games that actually fit the term 'retro', but I would never want to see them here anyways. I am just satisfied with the way it is now, you know, actually fucking existing, regardless of it making sense or not. People often say that restrictions exhibit creativity. Perhaps having a definite deadline benefits us rather than cripples us.

I really want another 2D CnC (tiberian sun), Dune 2 or SC strategy game that has a lot of deep gameplay and easily allows itself for modding! Make a good setup with some decent gameplay/options and it would be profitable like moneytrees.

You dont even need 3D art at all...

>>1691980

I disagree. No definition exists on its own. Words can always flow to mean some other new thing. "Retro" could easily move and acquire new definitions, as long as the majority of people agree on it. However, there is no reason to say that "retro" will mean something different next year, or that it will mean something different 10 years from now. It might, but "retro" games were already feeling kind of retro when World of WarCraft came out, and that was 10 years ago.

In 10 years, we have not seen what I would consider a dramatic shift in the meaning, aside from it extending a little to cover the entire previous century rather than "up to about 1995." 4 years is not a dramatic shift over 10 years.

10 years from now, "retro" gaming might include Advance Wars and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow in most people's definitions. Or it might still not. 1999 might remain the cutoff point until sometime in the mid-century, or even until the 22nd. There is no reason to believe any particular scenario is more likely than the other. We are reaching a plateau with our computing (and therefore gaming) advancement, but new discoveries and refinements are always possible. Game design can always shift. Et cetera, et cetera.

1999 is a decent arbitrary marker. It has just enough wiggle room to include all the games we're likely to want to talk about on this board, is decently accurate for reflecting people's feelings on the matter even if it isn't perfect, and there's no reason to make it a continual "15 years ago" divide.

>>1691858
Your post reminded me of this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnoP68WwLnk

What I still don't understand is why put a price on a digital version of a game that's already freeware. If it's a physical copy of a free game at least you get some artwork, a neat little box and a manual.

>>1692178
And not to mention have the gall to sell it more than the expansion, the only fucking part of the game that has a price on it.

Trying out StarCraft for the first time, really want to get online. Is it simple enough to pirate the necessities to be able to use Battle.net for online, or should I actually shell out for a Battle.net code and legitimate game?

I want to find a sci-fi rts that kicked my naive bottom years ago.

Isometric perspective, pretty sure it used sprites.
All units are either tanks of some sort, or bipedal mechs, kinda like pic related. Colors are blue and green in campaign, IIRC.
Lots of stationary turrets, gatling one is the best.
Big focus an aerial attacks: meteor showers, bombings, some bulky support flying saucer thing with 3 protuberances. Airstrikes are shown constantly in the upper left corner of the screen.
There is a 30 minutes long survival mission in Sudan, I think.

It's not. The original is far superior and I'm someone who typically prefers the remake/updates.

>>1697863
Wrong thread.

>>1696969

Warzone 2100?

>>1700584
No, no unit constructor shenanigans. I thnik every type of tank in that game had 2 linear upgrades. Mechs weren't at all humanoid, too, imagine ED-209 with thinner legs, bigger cockpit and smaller guns.

>>1700864
Don't have a clue, so bumping for justice. Hopefully a name will come up, as this game sounds cool as fuck.

Bump

>>1696969
Finally found it, State of War. There is like a single terrible review for it online. Oh, boy.

Whats a good strategy game where your units gain some sort of veterancy bonus for destroying other units whilst staying alive

like the chevrons in RA 2

>>1706007
I know Sid Meier's Civilizations does just this, pretty much all of them.

>>1705406
Would you say it is worth checking out? Doesn't look too bad from some youtube videos, love the use of airstrikes.

>>1706079
I'm not exactly RTS-savvy, this is more of a nostalgia trip for me.

Seems kinda sluggish, which might be partiallly on me, and systems are very simple. I'm mostly enjoying the familiarity of it, I can't give you a firm recommendation one way or another.

>>1706007
It's ever so slightly not retro, but it's a massive pet super-obscure game of mine, so I might just throw it out. Primitive Wars. It's pretty much a straight dinosaur-themed Starcraft clone, but with a few twists. For factions, you get tech-savvy Stone Age humans with siege engines, humanoid dinosaur Tyranos who can disguise themselves as normal dinosaurs, as well as more classic fantasy magic-toting Elves and spooky Demons.

The game has only one resource, fruit which is similar to Starcraft minerals, but the maps are also full of neutral dinosaurs of all kinds, which your units can hunt to gain experience and collect meat that gradually heals them over time; some dinos are aggressive and can pose a threat to your armies traversing the map. Your units can gain experience from hunting dinos and killing enemy units, and gain levels that increase their stats, and Elven units even learn new spells as they advance in levels.

The game looks and plays a bit cheap, especially the weak campaigns, and is as far from an AAA title as can be, but it's still a nice little Starcraft clone with some unique ideas that can be loads of fun to play in melee or multiplayer (if you can find anyone to play with, that is, the game is extremely obscure as far as I am concerned).

>>1706007

Panzer general and her successors make unit veterancy a very big deal.

Does this multiplayer gold shit work with Civilizations 2? Would anybody be willing to play with me? Alternatively, I just got Alpha Centauri. I don't know if it has multiplayer yet, but if it does, would anybody be up for a game?

bump

>>1707470
Rebump for fun. Probably in a few days however. Have stuff to do, but don't want thread dying in that time either.

What is every bodies favorite strategy game in here?