Economic strategies

[Cheater Hater]

I'd like to put in another recommendation for Settlers 2--that is one of the best strategy games I've ever played, and I still have my original CD (and put in the work to manually install it on DOSBOX). It looks more like a real-time Civilization or SimCity-style game, but the economic comparison makes a lot of sense as most of the core of the game is managing supply lines. It does have a lot of idiosyncrasies though--the gameplay is extremely slow (though pressing V accelerates time, and there are cheats that accelerate it further), and you have to learn a lot of mechanics to get the most out of it (especially in the higher-difficulty story levels, along with the insanely hard world campaign). There also are a lot of other things surrounding it that aren't nearly as good--Settlers 3 and forward are a more-traditional RTS, and while the Anniversary edition is okay (as it's mostly Settlers 2 with a new coat of paint, a new campaign, and some AI improvements), it's much harder (as you can't exploit the AI, and they're much more aggressive towards you). And that's to say nothing of the god-awful DS port I specifically sought out--it's Settlers 2, but with only one save slot and extremely buggy (the music makes the game crash, and it will generally crash about 2-3 hours into a game).

If you do decide to take the plunge, feel free to ask me any questions and I'll help you get through some of the initial speed bumps.

+1 to settlers 2. I bought gold but couldn't get it to work on my win 7 Laptop. I wasted hours of my childhood on that game. Annoyingly never got through the whole campaign. You needed to be good with your economy on it because it was easy to run out of resources on a map...

Any advice on how to get it to run on a win 7 OS?

Are you talking about the GOG version? I don't have any experience with that, but I remember when I did have the disc version running I think it was on Windows 7. Any help on the GOG forums?

How far did you get in the campaign? I remember that it wasn't too difficult, but level 7 was the most difficult since the player coming from the west put a time limit on your early game. Of course, I can assume it was harder if you didn't realize just how broken Catapults were (even before you consider that they didn't break the initial peace treaties you often have in the main campaign).

[Bacchus]

Has anyone tried the: https://wl.widelands.org open-source not-a-remake of Settlers II?

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I'd like to put in another recommendation for Settlers 2--that is one of the best strategy games I've ever played, and I still have my original CD (and put in the work to manually install it on DOSBOX). It looks more like a real-time Civilization or SimCity-style game, but the economic comparison makes a lot of sense as most of the core of the game is managing supply lines. It does have a lot of idiosyncrasies though--the gameplay is extremely slow (though pressing V accelerates time, and there are cheats that accelerate it further), and you have to learn a lot of mechanics to get the most out of it (especially in the higher-difficulty story levels, along with the insanely hard world campaign). There also are a lot of other things surrounding it that aren't nearly as good--Settlers 3 and forward are a more-traditional RTS, and while the Anniversary edition is okay (as it's mostly Settlers 2 with a new coat of paint, a new campaign, and some AI improvements), it's much harder (as you can't exploit the AI, and they're much more aggressive towards you). And that's to say nothing of the god-awful DS port I specifically sought out--it's Settlers 2, but with only one save slot and extremely buggy (the music makes the game crash, and it will generally crash about 2-3 hours into a game).

If you do decide to take the plunge, feel free to ask me any questions and I'll help you get through some of the initial speed bumps.

+1 to settlers 2. I bought gold but couldn't get it to work on my win 7 Laptop. I wasted hours of my childhood on that game. Annoyingly never got through the whole campaign. You needed to be good with your economy on it because it was easy to run out of resources on a map...

Any advice on how to get it to run on a win 7 OS?

Are you talking about the GOG version? I don't have any experience with that, but I remember when I did have the disc version running I think it was on Windows 7. Any help on the GOG forums?

How far did you get in the campaign? I remember that it wasn't too difficult, but level 7 was the most difficult since the player coming from the west put a time limit on your early game. Of course, I can assume it was harder if you didn't realize just how broken Catapults were (even before you consider that they didn't break the initial peace treaties you often have in the main campaign).

I was only about 9 or 10 but I worked out the basic exploits - that the catapults killed soliders without breaking peace treaties, and that fortresses gave you a much better return on gold as 1 of each type of solider was promoted. Cannot remember how far I got but I think it may have been 9... It was so so long ago though.

I think it was the tenth anniversary edition I bought. Was cheap but really couldn't get it to work. Might check if it is on steam. I liked the fact you could actually stop yourself being able to win using all the limited iron making tools. No game would ever let you do that in this day and age!

I actually got it in a triple pack with civ 2 and sim city 2000. I bought it for sim city for £10 back in the day, but spent little time on that compared to the other 2!

[Cheater Hater]

I was only about 9 or 10 but I worked out the basic exploits - that the catapults killed soliders without breaking peace treaties, and that fortresses gave you a much better return on gold as 1 of each type of solider was promoted. Cannot remember how far I got but I think it may have been 9... It was so so long ago though.

I think it was the tenth anniversary edition I bought. Was cheap but really couldn't get it to work. Might check if it is on steam. I liked the fact you could actually stop yourself being able to win using all the limited iron making tools. No game would ever let you do that in this day and age!

I actually got it in a triple pack with civ 2 and sim city 2000. I bought it for sim city for £10 back in the day, but spent little time on that compared to the other 2!

Yeah, those are the major things, along with needing to stop coin intake at every military building except when you finally have a conflicted border (that was the best thing the anniversary edition did, making no coin intake the default). I don't remember iron ever being the major inflection point, instead it was stone (in particular because you couldn't stop your old catapults from taking in stone). Part of it is that you could replenish your soldiers by demolishing a lot of your old military buildings (deleting every other building in your core far away from the enemy, as well as backing away from dead-ends you've exhausted of resources).

Are you talking about the tenth edition one being the one you bought recently? I'm pretty sure that's only on GOG (and in fact I believe that's the only way it was released in the US--I remember playing the demo back in the day, but Settlers just isn't that popular over here). As I mentioned, it didn't run the best--it was playable, but it ran choppy on my laptops (and I haven't played it at all on my new beefy PC).

@Bacchus: Yeah, I've heard of Widelands, but I've never played it--from what I got from reading the site it seems like it's adding way too much complexity, and a lot of the charm in Settlers 2 is its simplicity with hidden depth.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I bought it a few years ago as a disc. Couldn't get it to run kept saying incorrect something or other...

[Hail]

It's all about building up continuous-running resource chains, clearing bottlenecks and optimizing logistics is what I mean. "City-building" is just theme in Caesar, one that works excellently, though.

I must add to my list:
IMPERIALISM
IMPERIALISM 2: THE AGE OF EXPLORATION
BANISHED

I bought it a few years ago as a disc. Couldn't get it to run kept saying incorrect something or other...

SETTLERS® 2: GOLD EDITION (GoG version) runs in DoxBox on Win 7 x64 with no problems

[Sian]

It's all about building up continuous-running resource chains, clearing bottlenecks and optimizing logistics is what I mean. "City-building" is just theme in Caesar, one that works excellently, though.

I must add to my list:
IMPERIALISM
IMPERIALISM 2: THE AGE OF EXPLORATION
BANISHED

I remember playing both Imperialism I and II quite a bit ... Imperialism through suffers (from what i recall) from the combat system being to static, and it being to easy to annex minors (whether by military or diplomacy) which can be used to snowball hard.

Banished is IMO to much of a puzzle game masquerading as a strategy game ... as soon as you get a village up and running, as long as you don't press to hard it doesn't break, and with everything open from the start its merely a question of knowing the best way to go at it ... to be frank, i find it to easily solvable. And it got first got mod support (as in, modable) when the ship of interest had sailed on, missing out big time

[Hail]

has anyone played Industry Giant 2?

[chumchu]

Through the Ages has been raised here a couple of times, I think Seven is quite a big fan. I actually played the new version face to face a couple of months back, it's not bad.

I love how the website boardgaming-online only actually runs TtA

Do you need any other?

Seriously, I have spent more time in TtA than in any computer game =) If anyone here is up for a challenge I would love to play them on BGO, any settings you like.