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[Ai Shizuka]

Hello,
I'll be away from home for six months with not so many options to spend my free time. I basically never use my laptop, so I'm not going to upgrade it (all my gaming happens at home on my main PC).

So I need a few games with low requirements.
To give you an idea, my most played games on Steam are:
- Battle Brothers (first position by a very large margin)
- Darkest Dungeon
- Oxygen not Included
- Factorio
- Hearts of Iron III
- Hearts of Iron IV
- XCOM 2
- War Thunder
- Terraria

So my favorites are turn based strategy and colony/base management, complex, punishing games.
Stuff that sucks you in for hundreds of hours.

Thanks in advance for any suggestion.

[nenjin]

Civ5?

[MCreeper]

Rimworld? But you surely must know about it already. Hardly complex and "punishing" depends, mostly on difficulty. Sucks in alright, though.

[Iduno]

Dune.

[Ai Shizuka]

Civ5?

For some reason I never played it but I don't remember why. Maybe the initial reactions from Civ 4 fans? I played civ 4 a lot.
But it looks like a good choice in my current scenario.

Rimworld? But you surely must know about it already. Hardly complex and "punishing" depends, mostly on difficulty. Sucks in alright, though.

On paper it should be right up my alley, but I've played it for only 50ish hours. Can't tell why exactly, but it never really clicked. Last play was in november 2016, so it probably changed a lot. I'll try it again.

Dune.

The first one from 1992?

[Iduno]

Dune.

The first one from 1992?

It's good, and it's got low system requirements.

Total Annihilation is also good, but mostly for multiplayer. I doubt the single player could interest you for tens of hours, let alone the requested 100s. Alpha Centauri is also good if you're going the Civ route.

I've heard a lot of good things about Dead in Vinland, but I haven't tried it. Couldn't comment on it personally, or what the system requirements are.

[nenjin]

Civ has never done it for me in general, but tons of people seem to enjoy it.

I'd suggest Total Warhammer 2 but I'm not sure your rig will handle it gracefully.

[Aoi]

Some of the old X-Com games? The X-Com Files and X-Piratez are fantastic mods. (I prefer the latter myself... something feels horribly wrong with the tech free in XCF.)

There's also quite a few roguelikes that may work out if you're open to them.

You may also want to consider outfitting your system with macro software if you're not used to gaming on it; I use AHK to do key combinations that aren't readily accessible or application-specific rebinds.

I've heard a lot of good things about Dead in Vinland, but I haven't tried it. Couldn't comment on it personally, or what the system requirements are.

I just finished DiV yesterday. It should have specs dirt low, as it's all basic 2D and didn't make my laptop start taking off.

It's not a very replayable game though, unless you're playing it on Hard+Ironman and just trying to finish it there. If I recall the notes correctly, it's not balanced for Hard, and you can so get RNG screwed which Ironman will let you fully enjoy the !!FUN!!.

Having said that, even having a plan on what to do for the first 2/3rds of the game took almost 40 hours for a playthrough, so you can probably scratch some time into it anyways.

[ChairmanPoo]

You should specify your low system reqs.


I own a Dell XPS 13 from a couple of years ago. It´s processor is pretty buff but its graphics card is integrated.
Now, assuming similar stats from your PC...
From your list:

- Battle Brothers (first position by a very large margin)  Will probably work
- Darkest Dungeon       Will probably work
- Oxygen not Included  Depending on your reqs might work, but it might be advisable to lower resolution
- Factorio    Will probably work
- Hearts of Iron III   Will probably work
- Hearts of Iron IV   Will probably Work
- XCOM 2                Probably wont work   I´d try OpenXCOM if I were you. Open source emulator of old xcom
- War Thunder         Dont really know it, going by the graphics it could go either way.
- Terraria                  Will probably work



Some suggestions on the "WIll probably work" category
- Airships: COnquer the skies
- Heat Signature
- Crusader Kings 2
- Dominions 5
- Invisible Inc
- They Are BIllions
- RImworld
- Phantom Renaisse
- Atom Zombie SMasher
- Crying Suns
- Curious Expedition


Mind  you, I´m making a lot of assumptions as to what you can actually run.

[EuchreJack]

Your biggest problem is going to be the graphic card.  Darkest Dungeon isn't resource intensive, but it needs a decent graphics card as the intergrated intel card won't cut it (at least when it was released, I think they may have changed that recently).

Have you transferred your steam account to your laptop and checked system requirements on your favorite games?  That should tell you most of what you want to know.  Then go download Dosbox and pick up a bunch of abandonware...

[delphonso]

I'm in a similar boat to you except without another computer to usually play one.

Pick up The Banner Saga - no base building, but good TBS.
Chuck a Disgaea on there for grinding, if that's your thing.
Phantom Brave has minor base building elements and a PC port.
IME , CK2 will run on almost anything.

If I think of any games with building elements, I'll drop by again. None jump to my head right away.

[Little]

Battle Brothers should probably work. Played fine on a crappy laptop from 2011.

[Ai Shizuka]

I checked the specs and it's not as terrible as I remembered it.
Now I definitely remember playing Darkest Dungeon on it at some point with no relevant issues.
AMD A8 7410 2.2 GHz
12 Gb DDR3
radeon R5 M430 1Gb
no SSD

Thanks for the suggestions. I already have some of the titles in my library.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

So I need a few games with low requirements.

So my favorites are turn based strategy and colony/base management, complex, punishing games.

In no particular order:
Panzer Corps
Vicky II
EUIV (depending on just how old your laptop is)
Any Football Manager (most of which can be configured to run smoothly on lower specs) (WARNING: you could get sucked into playing it 16 hours a day if you have nothing to do and your methodical/love football)
Prison Architect (although it could be a litte laggy depending how large/complex your prison is)

Just check out Slitherine Ltd. in general, as the strategy games they publish are usually pretty light and turn-based (and good or niche-good).

[Dostoevsky]

I'll second ChairmanPoo's recommendations (outside of Phantom Renaissance, which I haven't played).

I'd also second OpenXCom and X-Piratez, if you're comfortable (or able to get comfortable) with the quirks of original X-Com mechanics. X-Piratez is a gigantic mod... the only issue is that officially the download link is (for now) down due to a kerfuffle over map assets, so it'll take a bit of sniffing around to find.

A few other potential suggestions that should all fit your specs:

• Kingdoms and Castles - citybuilder that does feature enemy raids and the like, though perhaps not as punishing. Simplistic 3D graphics that should run okay.
• Star Traders: Frontiers - the combat (especially ground combat) is a-la Darkest Dungeon, but otherwise it's definitely its own thing. This suggestion is admittedly a tad outside, but at its heart it is TBS. Maybe read some of the existing coverage like Rock Paper Shotgun's before diving in? It can easily last you a long time if you like it, though.
• Renowned Explorers - SRPG battles like Battle Brothers, but its campaigns are sort of a series of dungeon crawls kinda-sorta like a cheery colonial version of Darkest Dungeon? It's got a good combat system, in my opinion.
• Rise to Ruins - not personally my favorite, but it does combine base/city building with wave defense.

Since you have Battle Brothers on your list I suspect you might be into SRPGs. If so, here's a few suggestions on that front:

• Voidspire Tactics - SRPG with FFT-like combat, nice fairly open world, not huge or terribly replayable but great to play through once.
• Alvora Tactics - made by the same fellow who did voidspire. A little more tightly focused on the combat than Voidspire.
• Fell Seal - basically a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy Tactics.