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[ebenezer]

Hi everyone,

I am a bit cross with DF. It's a great game under many aspects, but sometimes its complexity puts me off. It's not the learning curve, actually I find that quite exciting.
What I can't stand is all this micromanagement, it's like being at work ("god no, not another bunch of migrants to rename/sort/accomodate/etc!").

Do you know games similar to DF in spirit (sandbox, open-ended) but not as complex (to the point of becoming tedious)?
Thanks!

[10ebbor10]

Aurora (space 4x, but with arguably more micromanagement than DF)
Uhm...

Do they have to be released yet?

[FritzPL]

UnReal World.

There's plenty of things in that roguelike you will find similar to DF. I said roguelike, but it's basically a giant world, set in a bit of fantasy, but otherwise depicts late Iron Age in Finland, and it's various cultures. You can hunt seals in the icy islands in the North with Seal-Tribe, or catch pikes in the southern archipelago with Islanders. You can wander the World, migrating to the South with reindeers when winter comes, attacking Njerpezit camps(which, while heroic, is a very risky task). You can build cottages to accomodate yourself, build pens to enclose your animals in them, create a kilometer-long fence filled with traps - set with animals in mind, set nets that will block rivers, smoke food in your cosy sauna(s).

Milion of posibilities, unbelievable simplicity, tons of fun.
And I mean DF kind of fun, the one where you go sleep after a day of setting a fence around your house, just to wake up with a Yogi bear knocking on your door.

[hemmingjay]

Gnomoria.

It is very similar to DF, a bit more limited and has proper graphics.

[nenjin]

Towns is in the same vein as well, yeah?

[Flying Carcass]

Maybe something like Tropico would be up your ally.

[hemmingjay]

Towns is more like Majesty, IMHO. Also, I don't think that the UI is less infuriating than DF most of the time.

[Robsoie]

You should get Dwarf Therapist to work along DF, it's an excellent program that truly makes the whole management of those dwarves easier and much more bearable.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=66525.0

[pilgrimboy]

I haven't enjoyed Dwarf Fortress as much since the military changes. I just am not that good at militaries now. I used to build an exterior fortress that my archers could shoot arrows at the incoming goblin siege. Now, that just doesn't work. But that was a long time ago.

And I also hate vampires.

[pilgrimboy]

To add to that.

I own gnomoria, but it just doesn't seem developed enough yet. I had a good time with Towns. But for some reason, I spend most of my time playing Minecraft. Although I did fire up Baldur's Gate II recently and am playing that.

[hemmingjay]

Have you played Gnomoria in the last 30 days? There is a lot of new stuff in the game now, but this isn't the place.

[ebenezer]

Thanks guys!
Unfortunately I have a Mac and some of these games are not available.

[Seraphim342]

A Game of Dwarves is pretty fun, nowhere near as complex as DF but similar.  My only problem with it is finite enemies, they only show up in little caves you mine out.  Apparently they'll be adding invasions at some point though, which would basically make it DF-Lite in 3D. 

If you're into space sims, the X series, specifically X3:Reuinion/Terran Conflict/Albion Prelude might be right up your alley.  It's got a very challenging learning curve, but once you get the hang of it it becomes second nature.  Scope's virtually limitless, so if you like DF you'll probably like it. 

[Aavak]

Hi ebenezer (awesome name by the way ), given the description of what you're looking for, I think that both Towns and Gnomoria are quite close. Of the two, I would personally recommend Gnomoria, which is admittedly in an earlier point of its development cycle, but seems to capture the DF feel and bundle it up in a more pleasing (to my sense of aesthetics) package. Specifically I find that Gnomoria's UI is the better out of the two, as it is quite intuitive, by and large requires no explanation, and can be controlled entirely from the mouse with a minimum of sub-menus to navigate. Towns' UI by comparison, can be as awkward as DF's, if not a little more sometimes.

I had a quick look at the Gnomoria forums and have found a few people asking about a Mac port. The developer has stated that although he had no specific plans to port the game originally, he is receptive to the fact a few people have come forward asking about it. It may be worth posting in the forum to add your voice to the others. There seems to be at least one discussion on ways to get the game to run outside of a straight up port as well. Here's a link, in case you're interested, Mac. The game is being very actively developed and new (and sometimes very large) patches are released frequently, so should the developer decide there's enough interest, a Mac port might come out quite quickly.

If you're not sure about the game on the whole, I've recently started LPing it as a bit of a side-project to my other LPs. I've not recorded many episodes so far but despite concerns it wouldn't be as fun to LP, I'm getting quite into it, so more are likely to follow with increasing frequency. You can check them out here if you'd like to see what the game's about and whether it's close enough to DF for your liking with the edge taking off the complexity/micromanagement. As you mentioned the military specifically, and as I was planning on working on that in the next episode anyway, I'll try to go into a bit more depth when I come to it. I think it offers the sort of customization of DF on the whole, but it is a bit simpler (in a good way).

Hope this helps