There's always Not-MoM, coming soon
Will it have multiplayer? I was under the impression SD (and/or their fanbase) didn't care much for multiplayer in epic turn-based strategy games, so I was assuming that it would be single-player only.
As others have asked, how soon is soon? For all I know it won't be released this decade. It would also be nice to know a bit more about it.
Heroes of might and magic III
Heroes V sucked, the AI is indeed dumb and cheats like mad. On normal its never a challenge but on hard it cheats so hard its twice as strong when you first encounter him, atleast that my experience with HoMM V.
HoMM III with its 2 expansions and with the unofficiall WoG expansion rocks!
Other games that you might look at: Supreme Ruler 2020 (might still need several patches), Europa Universalis III + its expansions, Diablo 2 (RPG), Starcraft (RTS), Airline tycoon (kinda turn based).
Actually the same friend who said he didn't like HoMM 5 had been long time HoMM 3 player. He does enjoy that game, but he's never tried the expansions...I can look into this.
I've personally played Diablo 2 to death. About a month ago I uninstalled it, partly because I had grown bored of it and had accomplished everything I was going to ever accomplish, and partly because the news of Diablo 3 being released in the not too distant future. It would be kind of an interesting game to play with people who have either never played it or played it sparingly (which basically describes my group), espicially on hardcore mode, but I'm not sure how interested they would be.
Don't think Starcraft would really work. Too much hotkey pressing and micro-managing. Nice thing about turn-based games is the ability to think out our turns, and it's easy enough to be doing other things in the background simultaneously if we have to wait for someone to finish their turn.
Sins of a Solar Empire was a bit of an exception, as far as RTS's go, because it was slow enough, and there was enough automation, to make it manageable for us. The problem with SoaSE was that since our group is an odd number of people, we really can't play in teams against one another. Playing against the computer got too easy, even on the "Unfair" setting, and we couldn't play against other players because we only have a limited amount of time to play each week and often times we have to save and continue our games later. Furthermore, the lack of alternate victory scenarios kind of decreased our interest. We like games that have multiple paths to victory besides conquest.
on the subject: you could also try Rise of Nations. its not quite turn based, but incorporates several features and can be tweaked for a similarly slow gameplay. for me personnaly, it did to civilization what sins has done to galciv and MoO. for a totally different thing you could try etherlords, but it has a very peculiar gameplay and I'm again not totally sure it has any mp. or, you can go aalll the way back and play master of orion 2. old, ugly, (as far as I remember) complicated mp setup, but a depth you will have trouble finding in other games. and somehow still entertaining after all these years.
last tip: go check out some gaming sites. a few of them offer reviews or game according to genre, so pick your tbs and browse until you find something that sounds interesting.
Actually we had tried Rise of Nations, just before our current group. I enjoyed it as a single-player game, and we even had some fun in it multiplayer-wise, but for similar reasons as SoaSE I don't think it would work out long-term.
I have checked some gaming sites out and sorted by category. I find that there are so few games out there for this genre that have multiplayer, and so few reviewers that will even mention if it has any of the features I'm interested in that it's hard for me to reliably pick out games that way. Futhermore, games can get better with expansion packs, updates, and patches which might not necessarily be reflected in the reviews. Looking up gaming sites is how I originally discovered Age of Wonders, so it's definitely a resource that I have used and continue to use, but I thought for once I would ask around.
If you have Civ4: Beyond the Sword (which it sounds like you do), go to http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=294774 and download Fall From Heaven II.
I've been an avid turn-based strategy gamer since the days of Civ I. Loved the Master of Magic series, played Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic to death. I think we may have similar enough tastes for me to highly encourage you to go get the mod. Forget anything that might come to mind when you think "User MOD". This MOD is more fleshed out and polished than the vast majority of games coming out of the big publishers these days.
As a mod it is based on Civ and some Civ concepts, but it is truly a different game. I haven't been able to go back to "vanilla" Civ since playing it, it's just so much better.
Yeah we have Civ 4 Beyond the Sword, I'll look into that mod.
I as well have been playing turn-based games since Civ I, though I never played Master of Magic but from what I know of it, and what games were inspired by it, it would seem to be the ideal type of game. Too bad there isn't an updated modern internet-friendly version/sequel of it to play.
I haven't actually had too many bad experiences with mods so it doesn't bother me to try them. At the moment with my group of friends we are actually playing a mod, Dwiggs 5.0. It breathed some new life into it, and while it's not perfectly polished, it adds enough high quality content that we've continued to play that.
Tho saying that i was allways partial to reading fantasy books...
Anyone here read:
1) Death Gate Cycle or
2) Song of Ice and Fire
Quite good!
Yes I do enjoy the books in the Song of Ice and Fire series. Been waiting forever for the fifth installment that keeps getting pushed back.
