I just saw an Age of Wonders/Age of Wonders II 2-pack for $9.99 at Target, in case anyone's interested. I played the AoW II demo once--not bad, especially at that price.

I thought AoW was fairly enjoyable. Very similar to the Warlords series IIRC.

I prefer Civ II over Civ III. Civ III changed too many things and got away from what made the Cid Meier franchise so much fun to play.

I agree wholeheartedly with the recommendation for Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire.

Those are the best turn-based-strategy games ever and even though they've been out for awhile, I still prefer them over anything that has come out since then.

SW:GB was so BADLY BOTCHED by LucasArts that when your units are just standing around doing nothing on Hoth, you can hear crickets chirping. The A.I. mysteriously took a nosedive between AOE2 and SW:GB as well, so don't expect too much of a fight.

A game that TRULY deserves recognition, however, is Total Annihilation. I honestly cannot believe this hasn't been discussed yet in the thread, but this was the game by which all strategy games were compared against for the next 4 or so years after its release. If you consider over 60 different units per side (with 4-5 tech levels), true 3D units & terrain, physics model, lifelike flying & underwater unit behavior (such as turning is done in arcs, not reach a point & turn 90 degrees), multiple resource types, TCP/IP support, orchestral-recorded soundtrack (Grammy nominated!), and runs on 640x480 up to 1600x1200 ... you've got an amazing piece of architecture. All of this seems commonplace now, but did you consider this was all in a game released nearly 7 years ago?

Not even bitmap-sprite Zerg rushes or dwarven inventors ("I've got a flying machine!") can beat that. For $10, you can usually find the original game & "Core Contingency" (a bonus pack) bundled together, and another $10 will give you "Battle Tactics", which was an addon which gives you different scenarios usually with 2 minutes to prepare for an invasion to hone your skills.

Finally, and most importantly ... the modding community is still alive & well for this game, and you can find a lot of it at http://www.tauniverse.com

Cornelius

P.S. Big props also to Homeworld, though you'll be hard-pressed to find any of your friends willing to endure 2+ hour games where winning is a slow methodical push for resources & exploration.

I mentioned TA in my first post. It really is a great game, plus the custom maps people made were awesome.

Or maybe not...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...261940-2020727



All yours for the low price of $130

There are other listings for the individual titles that are in the $5-$10 range though


BTW how is TA: Kingdoms? Same engine different setting I assume?