Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Ai Shizuka]

I explain.
In many games, i realized I find way more enjoyment in the initial stage. The early game, in wich one has to struggle for survival and lay the foundations for future gameplay. This goes both for survival and building games.

Examples:
- Dwarf fortress. First couple years, building the core of the fortress, looking for resources. Losing a dwarf is still sort of a big deal.
- Minecraft. First few days, in wich the night actually is dangerous and losing stuff is a problem. Same goes for Terraria.
- Wurm online. I enjoyed a lot the initial stage, finding a place to settle, living in a cave with few basic tools. Once I estabilished a base, it became boring quickly.
- Civilization 4 (immortal level). The BC years, with a few small cities in need of careful micromanagement.
- The Paradox games, especially Crusader Kings. Loved the early game as a small backwater county. You know your nobles and your neighbors and you must be careful. Becomes boring when you are bigger.

I could go on. I realize in all these games nobody forces the player to grow and steamroll everything, but it's sort of the only way to prosper and win (or the equivalent of 'winning').
So I'm looking for games that make you struggle in all stages and don't evolve in the usual 'start from nothing and become god' escalation.

Can be survival, building, strategy, anything.

[MonkeyHead]

Sounds like AI Wars: Fleet Command could be right up your street. Outnumbered and out-gunned humanity needs to take down the AI cores, without ever becoming enough of a threat to be noticed and squashed like a bug.

[Erkki]

I'd also be interested in finding one... I cant recall but a single 4X or strategy that doesnt have the megalomaniac "become god" escalation at which point the game becomes boring. The only one I know is the truly massive War in the Pacific series which absolutely needs to played against a human opponent and is a huge time investment. There just doesnt seem to be a more casual option.

In many games, including DF, the player may at least impose house rules on oneself... But at some point the game just becomes a grind. For example I really dont want to voluntarily try my luck with the syndromes of those FBs in the basement, and the Goblins have been easy to defeat for long even with full iron equipment and no training rooms.

[Biag]

FTL sort of has this feeling. Even when you make it to the boss (which will take a few tries), you're usually only one disaster away from losing everything.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Well, there's Don't Starve. Being a game that measures your progress largely by how long you can survive, it's pretty uniformly difficult, and it tends to scale up the challenge as time goes on, to make sure the player doesn't get too complacent. And you'll be enjoying those early parts many times, over and over again.

[BurnedToast]

Sounds like AI Wars: Fleet Command could be right up your street. Outnumbered and out-gunned humanity needs to take down the AI cores, without ever becoming enough of a threat to be noticed and squashed like a bug.

I have to disagree with this.

While you don't literally take everything over (though you can, it's just boring and pointless and takes forever) once you get a "core" of worlds captured with 1 - 3 good chokepoints... you've effectively won unless you do something really derpy.

You've got infinite resources and effectively infinite time (the AI progress goes up so slow it hardly matters) and the AI won't punch through your chokepoints if they are properly designed.

Meanwhile, while the enemy is superior in a strategic sense, in a tactical sense it's quite the opposite - you can just blob your whole fleet into an enemy world and outnumber him 10:1 and crush him effortlessly (except the AI cores, of course, but that's sort of a "boss battle")

So do you literally "stay small" compared to the size of the galaxy and the strategic size of the enemy? Yes. But the same core problem of not worrying about survival and just steamrolling the enemy (tactically) remains.

[HFS]

once you get a "core" of worlds captured with 1 - 3 good chokepoints...

Solution: Play without chokepoints.

[BurnedToast]

once you get a "core" of worlds captured with 1 - 3 good chokepoints...

Solution: Play without chokepoints.

I could go on. I realize in all these games nobody forces the player to grow and steamroll everything, but it's sort of the only way to prosper and win (or the equivalent of 'winning').
So I'm looking for games that make you struggle in all stages and don't evolve in the usual 'start from nothing and become god' escalation.

Using an extremely sub-optimal strategy is not what the OP was looking for, I think.

[sambojin]

Battlemaster can be like this, on both a personal and a kingdom level. As a no-name noble you can essentially do whatever you want in your kingdom and your posts don't mean much. Become a duke, king, emperor or move up the ranks in a religion and you might have to actually start doing things like reading other's posts, thinking about diplomacy and army sizes, or have some vague concern on the content of your own posts. It's way easier (and possibly more rewarding) to find a profitable estate and go monster hunting. Even then you can't over-recruit or you'll go broke (special forces ftw).

On a kingdom level, there's quite a few checks and balances in place to limit over-expansion. Army supply, morale, the time it takes to conquer major towns and the co-ordination of 40-80 people makes large campaigns (or ones that are far away) very difficult indeed. Doable, but you can be a powerhouse of a kingdom without conquering everyone else (except that it's boring).

[mosshadow]

Battlemaster can be like this, on both a personal and a kingdom level. As a no-name noble you can essentially do whatever you want in your kingdom and your posts don't mean much. Become a duke, king, emperor or move up the ranks in a religion and you might have to actually start doing things like reading other's posts, thinking about diplomacy and army sizes, or have some vague concern on the content of your own posts. It's way easier (and possibly more rewarding) to find a profitable estate and go monster hunting. Even then you can't over-recruit or you'll go broke (special forces ftw).

On a kingdom level, there's quite a few checks and balances in place to limit over-expansion. Army supply, morale, the time it takes to conquer major towns and the co-ordination of 40-80 people makes large campaigns (or ones that are far away) very difficult indeed. Doable, but you can be a powerhouse of a kingdom without conquering everyone else (except that it's boring).

That sounds pretty neat, I think Ill try it

[sambojin]

It's a very slow, 2 turns a day game, MMORPG where roleplaying and messaging is the order of the day. It's good if you get into it, but expect the long haul if you're going to get much out of it. Expect 2-3 days just to find a vacant estate and to make your way to the capital to hire troops. Expect a 2 weeks to a month to get yourself reasonably established.

Little graphics, but much roleplaying. Think of an RTD with a bit of a battle and economic system built around it (you, not the game, determine what you're doing through messaging and interaction with other's characters. It just works out travel times, battles and crop production for you). Great if you like that sort of stuff, but it doesn't tickle everyone's fancy.

You can duel people. But it's up to you and them to determine why you're having a duel.

[BFEL]

It's a very slow, 2 turns a day game, MMORPG

Knew it! Right when you started gushing about it I knew this was going to be its horrible crippling flaw.

Ugh, I hate those "games"  I want to freaking PLAY something, no need to make a career out of it.

[mosshadow]

Yeah Ive gotten a 180 gold per tax day estate now. But I used up all the action points (hours) in 3 mins so Now I gotta wait for 3 hours to get more.

[MoLAoS]

It's a very slow, 2 turns a day game, MMORPG

Knew it! Right when you started gushing about it I knew this was going to be its horrible crippling flaw.

Ugh, I hate those "games"  I want to freaking PLAY something, no need to make a career out of it.

I tried to play that game. God what a snooze fest. And I say this as a power player in SpaceFed and Warfacts and EVEOnline.

Games that have extremely slow action gain are not "more strategic," they are hell online. Taking 2 days to actually achieve anything is not "content." Its like they designed the games around the principles of micro-transactions, but you can't actually buy your way to fun.

Actually it reminds me of this forum game subforum on civfan. 1 turn every two days, and it takes a whopping 10 minutes to do a turn. "But I have a life." Having 10 minutes a day to blow on a forum game is not "having a life," its just "not giving a shit about computer games."

Worse than PBEM I swear.

Ah well, some people just like boring games I guess.

[itisnotlogical]

The original XCom was like this, and probably Terror from the Deep (assuming you don't cheese PSI/MC). You'll get plenty of high-tech gear and weapons, but you're in a constant arms race with the enemy. You're only really safe when you're about to win the game.

Again, assuming you don't spam PSI/MC or are just much, much better at Oldcom then me