Played a TON of HOMM3 back in university with some friends. We played coop on the same box that is we take turns to play the game. It was so much fun. That said, I never completed the campaigns (the expansion packs are considerably more difficult). I still have a copy of HOMM3 from GOG so might click it open tonight!
I love HoMM3. Someone has even ported to Android -- in case you ever feel nostalgic. I replay it every now and then. Despite the outdated graphics, the game itself has aged really well. I still enjoy it immensely.
Shameless plug: if you're still into H3 there is almost complete open source implementation with mods support written from scratch in C++. Also there is built-in mods support.
Unfortunately I'm no longer actively participate, but project is still going strong.
To be honest it's mixed bunch because project started more than 10 years ago and there is both: some decent code as well as terrible one.
Good sides: it's fully client-server, AI implemented via pluggable libraries while all saving / networking implemented using serialization based off Boost.Serialization.
The game is actually still going strong - there’s a mod that adds a modern multiplayer lobby, with ranked competitive games, lots of new random map generators, and there are some big Twitch streamers for it; Lexiav is the biggest for English language I think, he streams full-time and gets close to 1K viewers most of the time. HOMM3 is in an amazing place right now, definitely click it open and have fun again!
HOTA (horn of the abyss). Adds a new town as well. Look it up. The HOTA mod plus the HD mod both combine to give you a modern experience for bigger resolutions (lots of UI improvements and stuff, without affecting gameplay).
HoMM3 was also my main experience with the series. I tend to pick it up once every few years with the last time in early 2020. My problem with the game is that I know the AI exploits so it's never THAT much of a challenge.
If you're picking it up again, the HD plus mod lets you play on higher resolution screens and adds keyboard shortcuts for things like splitting a creature stack in half. Highly recommended.
Thanks! I probably can still have a lot of fun because I don't really remember any of the exploits! I know I should split the soldiers into N piles of 1 soldier and 1 pile of larger group but other than that I know nothing! Probably the reason I couldn't beat the campaign back then.
I played it a bit, but got turned off a bit by the random events. In particular there was an event where huge numbers of one type of critter would appear randomly on the map. If you could talk those critters into joining your armies you were guaranteed a win. If not you lose. The entire game at that point became a race to collect as many of those critters as possible and form a giant doomstack that nothing could hope to stop and crush the opposing castle.
Heroes of Might and Magic is such a great long form gaming experience, whether you played solo or with some friends. GOG does provide access to new copies if you'd like it, but I have to highly recommend if you want to play on modern hardware to grab the open source VCMI Project engine for Heroes 3. Heroes 3 is often touted as the best of the series, and the cross platform engine allows you to play on modern Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android.
I played HOMM3 for 5 hours straight when I first encountered it. I know that sounds like nothing, but unbeknownst to me, installing it had reset my graphics drivers to set my monitor's refresh to 50Hz.
50Hz is one of those things you can see if you look at it in your peripheral vision, but not so much straight on.
After 5 hours I was screaming in pain my eyes hurt so bad. I couldn't figure out why they hurt and I couldn't stop playing either.
I like the HOMM series a lot, but my favorite game of this genre was Lords of Magic from Sierra. It played a lot like HOMM, but it had real time combat that you could pause. Amazing graphics for the time, and I love the soundtrack! This is a game I really wish had a sequel.
I think it came out before LOM, but very similar, made by the same team etc. The difference it is sci-fi themed, but otherwise they are closely related.
There's a pretty good looking modern remake of the original MoO called "Remnants of the Precursors". Appears to be basically a 1-person effort. I tried it out recently and was _very_ impressed. Really seems like it's duplicated the original's gameplay, but with better graphics and some useful UI improvements.
There is an iPad version of HoMM3 in the App Store that works wonderfully - until it crashes midgame every single time… don‘t know if this is a memory leak or something like that :-(
Heroes of Might and Magic 2.
I remember the first time I encountered the game in some obscure Italian magazine that had a disc and on the disc a demo of HoMM 2.
I played the demo, and I was blown away.
Then 1999, I got ahold of Heroes 3, then the expansions - Armageddon's Blade, Shadow of Death - so much fun and unforgettable memories.
Then in university, I discovered Wake of Gods [1]. This was a fan-made extension of the game that fixed some stuff ( like Eagle Eye being useful, fishing for artifacts in mana well's, having commanders ala heroes 4, having a bank from which you can loan money, etc.).
I play heroes 3 complete edition with HD Mod [2] to this day, a pretty awesome game, and still has an excellent, thriving community.
Honorable mentions besides Heroes of Might and Magic 3 - Heroes of Might and Magic 4 (with all expansions) and Heroes of Might and Magic 5 (all expansions - Tribes of the east). Heroes 5 is the closest to Heroes 3 as mechanics and gameplay, and I enjoyed it a lot.
To this day I play roughly 4-5 games: Dota 2, Civilization 5, Baldur's Gate 1&2 EE and Heroes 3.
Ah I still play a lot of BGEE/BG2EE (judging from the time spent on Steam it's well into 200+ hours for each game) nowadays. I'm also picking up NWNEE as there are a lot of high quality modules.
I always felt like Minsc's character was absolutely insufferable, in the same way that people who endlessly quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail think that "your father smelt of elderberry" is the pinnacle of humor.
Yeah, both examples where the people quoting it miss that the out-of-place context of the thing they're quoting is what made it funny, not the words alone.
The release of Baldur's Gate 3 caused some controversy due in part to its turn-based combat system (distict from the real-time system in BG 1 & 2). TBF, it felt like this was more about purists disagreeing with an aethetic choice within a much-loved franchise than about fundamental hostility to turn-based games in general.
You could dodge spells in BG2 as they have travel time, you can't dodge spells in a normal turn based system. Also spells have different casting times, some cast instantly others were so slow that people could walk up and hit you before the cast got done. There are many such differences, BG2 is in no way a turn based game. Its real time combat did simulate turns for spell and attack cooldowns etc, but even those weren't properly aligned to turns, a spell cast time could take a fraction of a turn, and travel time for spells were also fractions of turns etc. So wasn't turn based no matter how you view it.
BG 1 and 2 were both turn-based. It didn’t automatically stop at the end of a turn unless you configured it to. But that’s the configuration I have, because that’s what I’ve always played with and prefer, from the day the first version of BG was released.
The lack of turn-based game play is why I avoid most other games.
My problem with it is that combat slows to an absolute crawl and becomes a slog with that system. In BG a fight with a few rats takes 2 seconds. In Divinity OS and BG3 it's more like a few minutes for even the simplest battle, and much longer for larger ones. Multiply that by the length of the game and combat becomes a dreaded chore, at least for the impatient like myself
The real problem is that there are too many useless fights with trash mobs.
Removing most of them and keeping only the challenging and memorable ones would be a better thing.
Another option is an option to switch between real-time with pause and turn-based at will. The Pathfinder games do that.
to this i'll add horn of the abyss (hota) -- a rather active (and fully playable, including competitively) community expansion to heroes3 -- bringing a new town, new creatures etc. etc. -- generally considered to be at least on par quality- and scope-wise with the official add-ons.
Amazingly the source code for the Heroes of Might and Magic 3 expansions was lost for years, so they've not often been included in the HD ports. Someone has (apparently) dug it up on an old hard drive [1] though a few screenshots isn't a true proof.
Knowing that a huge organization has lost such a treasured codebase has insured that I backup almost every piece of code I ever write... after 10 years of development I dip back in every now and then and look at what younger me was working on, always brings a smile to my face.
In 100 hours, the complete binaries to any classic game, an OS emulator and this software: https://ghidra-sre.org/releaseNotes_10.0beta.html a skilled person could probably give you source code that compiles and runs the game.
Heck, even Starcraft's source code was lost by Blizzard. It was then recovered thanks to a random guy finding a golden master source code disk in a "blizzard stuff box" he bought through ebay https://mashable.com/article/starcraft-source-disc
And that's precisely why it should be illegal to release software without the source code, just like it's illegal for supermarkets to sell foods without a list of ingredients.
(I'm not suggesting passing around a binary should always be illegal, eg. between friends on a USB key, but commercial publication should include source)
While it's common in general, I wonder how much the toxic fan reaction to the expansions could have driven "just forget it" approach to storing it.
For reference, HoMM3 expansions were to reintroduce the wider aspects of Might & Magic world back to HoMM (as the series before essentially dealt with small skirmishes little related to the main storyline). Thing is, despite the name, Might & Magic is ... science-fiction more than normal epic fantasy. And a lot of HoMM fans were unaware of the fact, and there was a bit of toxic reaction when the high-tech aspects were shown in previews.
HoMM2 is one of my all time favorite games. I’ve spent countless hours exploring all the corners of every single map in the game. Sometimes, I would deliberately not defeat the last enemy, just so I can reveal all the places, monsters and castles on the map.
With its amazing soundtrack, there never was another game for me that would immerse me so deeply in a world of fantasy. HoMM3 was great, but the artwork was not quite to my taste.
I agree. I had HOMM1 upon release, and followed the series all the way through. For me, HOMM1 was the pinnacle. It was simple, and had clean art that was charming. HOMM2 got just as many hours out of me. HOMM3 was yet another extension of the original HOMM, but the art started to really go downhill.
For some reason, HOMM* games never had any appeal to it, but I've sunk hours in an obscure trading/exploration game Merchant Prince and similarly obscure Hammer of the Gods.
Only recently I've learned, that these games were direct predecessors of HoMM made by the same studio, bridging the gap between earlier King's Bounty (which I also played quite a lot).
I remember when Hammer of the Gods came out, at the time it wasn't obscure, but it's definitely forgotten today as it didn't spawn a franchise. I didn't buy the game, but it was a nice addition to King's Bounty. HOMM1 was where I bought into New World Computing's masterpieces. I'm shocked to see a discussion, anywhere, on the web today on these games. They've all remained special to me all these years later, and I'm shocked at seeing a mention of a title like Hammer of the Gods.
HotG and the Merchant Prince had one thing in common that was really going for me: the shroud on an undiscovered map was done perfectly, giving you some very vague ideas about far away lands, resembling all those medieval maps.
Of these two, I preferred Merchant Prince, because HotG had glaring balance issues, which gave Troll faction great advantage with those regenerating trolls, and the Pope/Doge elections mechanics was really fun.
Fanstratics is a spiritual successor to Heroes of Might and Magic III, it is being developed by the lead game designer of HoMM3. There are some interesting newsletters being published about the game.
HoMM3 was soo interesting to me when I first saw it, I thought it was like chess (dumbed down) and a boardgame. The mythology was also like a reference to me. I played it for so many hours when I was a teenager.
I played HoMM4 and HoMM5 also. HoMM4 felt like an incomplete game but very nice to play.
HoMM4 has an amazing soundtrack, I occasionally still play it while working.
I think recently there was an imitation of the game on mobile, and we all know how bad that would probably be given the horrible game mechanics of mobile gaming (ads, play to win, waiting to build)
Songs of Conquest looks like a very promising spiritual successor and modern take on HoMM, really nails the nostalgia for me.
https://www.songsofconquest.com/
I yearn for the days of turn-based strategy games.
I played HoMM2 and (even moreso) 3 a ton. I loved the tactical combat and that resource management didn't get out of hand. I played a ton of user-made maps. Loved it.
The other two games of this genre I played a ton were Civ1 and Civ4.
I can literally recall waking up at noon, starting up Civ1 and then looking out and it was dark. I didn't really play Civ2 and Civ3 as much. They just added isometric view and even more micro-management (IMHO).
But that all changed with Civ4. It still had the stack of doom problem but the solution added in Civ5 (one unit per hex and hexes were also new) I found to be just annoying as it forced a dance to get units placed. Plus once you got ranged/siege units to range 3 I felt like it was game over.
Anyway, the big thing that kept me on Civ4 wasn't the base game it was a player mod called Fall From heaven 2 [1]. The depth was amazing. I'd really hoped they'd make a standalone game or a new version but I believe the creator now works at another game company.
So I never liked RTSs. To me it was a different kind of game that focused on APS (actions per second). It's just not my scene.
But turn-based games like HoMM and Civ are so rare these days it makes me sad.
Those days never left. There's been a ton of TBS games released throughout the years, some of them very very good. It's my most played genre by far.
Endless legend, XCom 2, Fallen Enchantress, Age of Wonders 3, Age of Wonders: Planetfall, battletech, some tbs rpgs like divinity original sin 2, the total war series is a hybrid RTS/TBS genre, card games, tower defense games, and auto battlers.
I wanted to like 4X space games but I honestly never found one I particularly liked. Too quickly they descended into tedium. That includes MOO/MOO2. YMMV.
I did play Master of Magic and really enjoyed it. Adamantium halfling slingers anyone?
I also played the original XCOM and enjoyed it although it became simple once you had the right tech (blaster bombs?). They allowed you to breach spaceships at any point you want, which was way easier.
Chooch to Create Artifact as fast as possible while building Skill Points as much as possible and hope to god you last early game because if you can get CA with high SP you are about to win.
> The Battle for Wesnoth is an open source, turn-based strategy game with a high fantasy theme. It features both singleplayer and online/hotseat multiplayer combat.
> Explore the world of Wesnoth and take part in its many adventures! Embark on a desperate quest to reclaim your rightful throne... Flee the Lich Lords to a new home across the sea... Delve into the darkest depths of the earth to craft a jewel of fire itself... Defend your kingdom against the ravaging hordes of a foul necromancer... Or lead a straggly band of survivors across the blazing sands to confront an unseen evil.
Wesnoth is too heavily based on RNG for me (and apparently a lot of others who have tried it). Different terrain tiles changing your chance of getting hit is a cool idea in theory, but in practice it makes strategy less important and lucky dice rolls more important, especially when some tiles can give you a 70% or 80% chance to dodge. Increasing defense based on the tile you're on (and maybe a small dodge chance boost like +5% or +10%) would make it much more about strategy.
Complaining about Wesnoth RNG is for losers. Wesnoth gives you an estimate of how much damage did you do against the expected. In long games, luck always evens out. In short games, it evens out across other games. Just accept it as a stroke of fate, and to your best with what you get.
That hasn't been my experience. From what I've dealt with, a run of bad luck early will leave your army perpetually behind the curve. Since units need to survive battles to level up you can be totally destroyed by some bad luck. Sure, your dice rolls will even out over the long run but the effects of early bad luck will compound throughout the game.
One game you are unlucky, another one you are lucky. I've played hundereds of BW 2p matches, and lost/won only due to extreme run of good or bad luck maybe in 3% of games. Just move on and play the next game. Or play chess.
That’s called metagaming. In NetHack you would see people drinking from fountains all the time in the early game. Occasionally you’d get a wish which you could spend on some powerful artifact or silver dragon scale mail (SDSM) and win the game. Most of the time you’d unleash a bunch of water moccasins or a water demon and die immediately.
Needless to say you could win games of NetHack by doing the metagaming strategy. The problem is that it wasn’t going to help you win the current game in front of you, the one you’re playing right now. And that’s where some players (like myself) part ways with metagaming. We are interested in winning the current game. That is, taking every game as a unique puzzle to solve and attempting to win. So a game that randomly decides “haha you lose” is unsatisfying.
Well, it's battle for you. Your knight clad in iron is almost invincible on the field, unless some lucky arrow strikes him in the visor, killing him instantly. Real life is full of accidents, and BoW more or less honestly imitates that.
(I mostly used save-scumming in the campaign, due to overwhelming odds anyway, so I'm speaking about luck in multiplayer games)
I think we’re speaking at cross purposes then because I was mostly speaking about the campaign. If Wesnoth was designed only for one-off battles and units were meant to be sacrificed like chess pieces in singular pursuit of a victory then a campaign is wholly inappropriate.
The original point of comparison here is Heroes of Might and Magic which does not have this problem since the game is designed as a campaign with many battles and the leveling up aspect only applies to heroes which are essentially generals that do not directly participate in battle.
Yes, I was speaking about p2p. Campaigns in Wesnoth can be tough, but I always used save scumming to beat them. I think they are an afterthought and clearly main developers' focus is multiplayer, and all factions are balanced with it in mind.
That said, that Double Suns campaign with desert elves is quite great and I enjoyed it, even if it uses rather different settings from the base game.
It’s hard to say. The combat variance is pretty fundamental to the game design. If you took it away the battles would be pretty routine.
Other games manage to incorporate a lot of randomness while keeping the basic interactions (combat etc) deterministic and predictable. For an example of this, see Slay the Spire. In that game the cards all have completely predictable effects. The randomness comes from the cards you’re dealt. Furthermore, you can control the randomness of card draw in numerous ways, potentially making your deck very reliable, possibly at the expense of full potential.
Yeah, it makes it so you have to play extremely conservatively or just keep save files to roll back to. At least, that's my memory of playing the campaigns as a kid
I noticed you and Andrew seem to be talking past each other here. Andrew is talking about Wesnoth in player vs player mode. You seem to be talking about the scenarios. From a balance perspective these are two completely different games.
For anyone reading here who hasn't tried both modes, the PvP mode is a fairly good and balanced standard wargame. You can play against the AI, which is decent but not great, or against other players online.
The scenarios on the other hand... what everyone is complaining about is true. But this is a problem with the scenarios, not with the game. In order to make them "interesting", pretty much every scenario has a bunch of gotchas in it, like if the objective is to get your general to the other side of the board in 25 turns, on turn 10 some event will happen like a dam breaking and blocking off the main path or a new enemy appearing on your flank. On a first time play through, it is very hard to anticipate what gotcha will appear and how to mitigate it. To make it worse, most scenarios are ten or more battles long, and you need enough survivors and gold from the early battles to win the later ones. So, if you barely win an early battle you've basically lost the scenario, but you won't find that out until later.
To sum up, when people are loving on Wesnoth, they are talking about the game, and mostly play it in PvP. When people are hating on Wesnoth, they are talking about the scenarios, which are truly unbalanced. Tell people to try the PvP first.
If you know exactly, in advance, with certainty, how a battle between two units is going to end up, that means your strategy is much shallower. You are much less likely to need backup plans for anything.
But it's even more than that. Some units cause the same amount of _mean_ damage, but one may do so in fewer shots. And on the defense side, two units may take the same mean damage on a hex, but one unit has a higher dodge percentage, while the other has damage resistance.
That makes for a much richer variety of units: Reliable hitters vs opportunistic shot-takers; tanks which will are sure to survive an attack, and pestering nuisances which, once swatted, will go away for good. You can't have that without the randomness.
These games never stopped and are arguably better than ever. Just of the game designers you mentioned:
The Lead Designer of Civ 4 just released Old World. It's designed around reducing end game slowdown by limiting the number of orders you can place each turn, mechanically you play a series of leaders who can only give out so many orders and have to manage their dynasty, Crusader Kings style. An excellent game. https://mohawkgames.com/oldworld/
The designer of Fall From Heaven made Fallen Enchantress and I think a modern Star Control remake. Can't speak to their quality personally.
The designer of the original XCOM recently released Phoenix Point. Haven't tried this one yet but it's on my list.
Turn based tactics games in general are extremely popular. Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous has a HoMM2 style army battles built into the RPG campaign (though it's reportedly quite buggy and unbalanced...) The game overall is fantastic, and the party-level combat is also turn based if you like. Baldur's Gate 3 is turn based. Some personal favorites are all the Long War variants. XCOM 1 Long War, XCOM 2 Long War, and now XCOM 2 Long War of the Chosen.
Edit: If you're looking for something specifically like Fall From Heaven, I'd say give Endless Legend a try. It has a similar feel in the way it combines theme and mechanics. It came out in 2014 but it's still getting updates and content to this day.
Endless Legend is amazing as well as all the other games from Amplitude. They just released Humankind which is a Civ style game but instead of playing a single civilization the whole game your empire evolves with traits from societies of each era as you play through history.
> once you got ranged/siege units to range 3 I felt like it was game over
It wasn’t game over, but it made military strategy exceptionally one-dimensional. Early game was all about getting a set of range 3 archers as quickly as possible, mid game was all about getting a set of range 3 catapults as quickly as possible.
HoMM3 is a magical game.
And the music, especially in HoMM4. It's one of my favorite soundtracks ever.
I can instantly go back 20 years and feel the warmth in my heart, playing this game countless hours as a teenager.
I kid you not, I was just setting up HOMM 3 to play with my kids now. It used to be a New Years Eve tradition in my family and I think my kids are just about old enough to enjoy it with me.
Lots of good memories playing HoMM2, both single player and hotseat multiplayer in college. I was a fanatic enough at one point that I had almost completed a conversion of the NES Zelda game to a map (sadly lost to the bits of time now). At least from my perspective, it was a unique blend that scratched the itches in my brain.
It‘s not a traditional Might & Magic game (maybe it just carries the name for brand recognition) but I love „Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes“ it‘s very simple the extremely fun. I would love the have a browser version with online multiplayer for that. The mainline titles were always too tedious for me.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 200 ms ] threadNever really got into the sequels as much, HOMM3 always felt like a local maximum.
Fun fact: one of the modded scripts for HOMM3 was written by the developer of Dominion: https://opinionatedgamers.com/2012/05/11/the-art-of-design-i... and https://youtu.be/i6Uc1-AR4rM
Unfortunately I'm no longer actively participate, but project is still going strong.
https://github.com/vcmi/vcmi
https://vcmi.eu/
Good sides: it's fully client-server, AI implemented via pluggable libraries while all saving / networking implemented using serialization based off Boost.Serialization.
If you're picking it up again, the HD plus mod lets you play on higher resolution screens and adds keyboard shortcuts for things like splitting a creature stack in half. Highly recommended.
https://vcmi.eu/
50Hz is one of those things you can see if you look at it in your peripheral vision, but not so much straight on.
After 5 hours I was screaming in pain my eyes hurt so bad. I couldn't figure out why they hurt and I couldn't stop playing either.
A CRT TV is larger and you sit further away. A computer monitor is in front of your face.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_of_Magic
I think it came out before LOM, but very similar, made by the same team etc. The difference it is sci-fi themed, but otherwise they are closely related.
The https://www.reddit.com/r/rotp/ subreddit looks like it's the home of discussion.
Oh hey, and now that I look over there again, looks like it just hit 1.0 on Christmas! I'll have to download the new version and try it out again.
Then in university, I discovered Wake of Gods [1]. This was a fan-made extension of the game that fixed some stuff ( like Eagle Eye being useful, fishing for artifacts in mana well's, having commanders ala heroes 4, having a bank from which you can loan money, etc.).
I play heroes 3 complete edition with HD Mod [2] to this day, a pretty awesome game, and still has an excellent, thriving community.
Honorable mentions besides Heroes of Might and Magic 3 - Heroes of Might and Magic 4 (with all expansions) and Heroes of Might and Magic 5 (all expansions - Tribes of the east). Heroes 5 is the closest to Heroes 3 as mechanics and gameplay, and I enjoyed it a lot.
To this day I play roughly 4-5 games: Dota 2, Civilization 5, Baldur's Gate 1&2 EE and Heroes 3.
[1] - http://heroes3wog.net/
[2] - https://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/
'Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes!'
NWNEE looks good, I played also Tides of Numenara, which is a 'spiritual successor' of Planescape Torment.
The lack of turn-based game play is why I avoid most other games.
Another option is an option to switch between real-time with pause and turn-based at will. The Pathfinder games do that.
https://www.hota.acidcave.net/about_the_project.html
https://h3hota.com/ (the site is geared towards seasoned players, but be sure to check out https://h3hota.com/en/gallery for some visuals)
Knowing that a huge organization has lost such a treasured codebase has insured that I backup almost every piece of code I ever write... after 10 years of development I dip back in every now and then and look at what younger me was working on, always brings a smile to my face.
1. https://twitter.com/diskblitz/status/920801845349466113
(I'm not suggesting passing around a binary should always be illegal, eg. between friends on a USB key, but commercial publication should include source)
For reference, HoMM3 expansions were to reintroduce the wider aspects of Might & Magic world back to HoMM (as the series before essentially dealt with small skirmishes little related to the main storyline). Thing is, despite the name, Might & Magic is ... science-fiction more than normal epic fantasy. And a lot of HoMM fans were unaware of the fact, and there was a bit of toxic reaction when the high-tech aspects were shown in previews.
I keep going down the memory lane with Master of Orion, Master of Magic, etc. and I couldn’t stop!
With its amazing soundtrack, there never was another game for me that would immerse me so deeply in a world of fantasy. HoMM3 was great, but the artwork was not quite to my taste.
Only recently I've learned, that these games were direct predecessors of HoMM made by the same studio, bridging the gap between earlier King's Bounty (which I also played quite a lot).
Of these two, I preferred Merchant Prince, because HotG had glaring balance issues, which gave Troll faction great advantage with those regenerating trolls, and the Pope/Doge elections mechanics was really fun.
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter01
I think recently there was an imitation of the game on mobile, and we all know how bad that would probably be given the horrible game mechanics of mobile gaming (ads, play to win, waiting to build)
Windows only. There's a free demo with a limited number of playable factions.
https://thingonitsown.itch.io/heros-hour
I played HoMM2 and (even moreso) 3 a ton. I loved the tactical combat and that resource management didn't get out of hand. I played a ton of user-made maps. Loved it.
The other two games of this genre I played a ton were Civ1 and Civ4.
I can literally recall waking up at noon, starting up Civ1 and then looking out and it was dark. I didn't really play Civ2 and Civ3 as much. They just added isometric view and even more micro-management (IMHO).
But that all changed with Civ4. It still had the stack of doom problem but the solution added in Civ5 (one unit per hex and hexes were also new) I found to be just annoying as it forced a dance to get units placed. Plus once you got ranged/siege units to range 3 I felt like it was game over.
Anyway, the big thing that kept me on Civ4 wasn't the base game it was a player mod called Fall From heaven 2 [1]. The depth was amazing. I'd really hoped they'd make a standalone game or a new version but I believe the creator now works at another game company.
So I never liked RTSs. To me it was a different kind of game that focused on APS (actions per second). It's just not my scene.
But turn-based games like HoMM and Civ are so rare these days it makes me sad.
[1]: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/mod-fall-from-heaven-...
Endless legend, XCom 2, Fallen Enchantress, Age of Wonders 3, Age of Wonders: Planetfall, battletech, some tbs rpgs like divinity original sin 2, the total war series is a hybrid RTS/TBS genre, card games, tower defense games, and auto battlers.
M.A.X. - Mechanized assault and exploration.
Best TB strategy game and AI. Sadly there source of this is lost as well.
I did play Master of Magic and really enjoyed it. Adamantium halfling slingers anyone?
I also played the original XCOM and enjoyed it although it became simple once you had the right tech (blaster bombs?). They allowed you to breach spaceships at any point you want, which was way easier.
With Alchemist guide, of course, otherwise you would lose the benefit. Yes, best unit ever. And Life spells.
https://www.wesnoth.org/
> The Battle for Wesnoth is an open source, turn-based strategy game with a high fantasy theme. It features both singleplayer and online/hotseat multiplayer combat.
> Explore the world of Wesnoth and take part in its many adventures! Embark on a desperate quest to reclaim your rightful throne... Flee the Lich Lords to a new home across the sea... Delve into the darkest depths of the earth to craft a jewel of fire itself... Defend your kingdom against the ravaging hordes of a foul necromancer... Or lead a straggly band of survivors across the blazing sands to confront an unseen evil.
> The choice is up to you...
Complaining about Wesnoth RNG is for losers. Wesnoth gives you an estimate of how much damage did you do against the expected. In long games, luck always evens out. In short games, it evens out across other games. Just accept it as a stroke of fate, and to your best with what you get.
Needless to say you could win games of NetHack by doing the metagaming strategy. The problem is that it wasn’t going to help you win the current game in front of you, the one you’re playing right now. And that’s where some players (like myself) part ways with metagaming. We are interested in winning the current game. That is, taking every game as a unique puzzle to solve and attempting to win. So a game that randomly decides “haha you lose” is unsatisfying.
(I mostly used save-scumming in the campaign, due to overwhelming odds anyway, so I'm speaking about luck in multiplayer games)
The original point of comparison here is Heroes of Might and Magic which does not have this problem since the game is designed as a campaign with many battles and the leveling up aspect only applies to heroes which are essentially generals that do not directly participate in battle.
That said, that Double Suns campaign with desert elves is quite great and I enjoyed it, even if it uses rather different settings from the base game.
Other games manage to incorporate a lot of randomness while keeping the basic interactions (combat etc) deterministic and predictable. For an example of this, see Slay the Spire. In that game the cards all have completely predictable effects. The randomness comes from the cards you’re dealt. Furthermore, you can control the randomness of card draw in numerous ways, potentially making your deck very reliable, possibly at the expense of full potential.
I noticed you and Andrew seem to be talking past each other here. Andrew is talking about Wesnoth in player vs player mode. You seem to be talking about the scenarios. From a balance perspective these are two completely different games.
For anyone reading here who hasn't tried both modes, the PvP mode is a fairly good and balanced standard wargame. You can play against the AI, which is decent but not great, or against other players online.
The scenarios on the other hand... what everyone is complaining about is true. But this is a problem with the scenarios, not with the game. In order to make them "interesting", pretty much every scenario has a bunch of gotchas in it, like if the objective is to get your general to the other side of the board in 25 turns, on turn 10 some event will happen like a dam breaking and blocking off the main path or a new enemy appearing on your flank. On a first time play through, it is very hard to anticipate what gotcha will appear and how to mitigate it. To make it worse, most scenarios are ten or more battles long, and you need enough survivors and gold from the early battles to win the later ones. So, if you barely win an early battle you've basically lost the scenario, but you won't find that out until later.
To sum up, when people are loving on Wesnoth, they are talking about the game, and mostly play it in PvP. When people are hating on Wesnoth, they are talking about the scenarios, which are truly unbalanced. Tell people to try the PvP first.
Of course I was talking about p2p! You can always savescum in campaign, so why complain at all? :-D
Damn. Now I need to install Wesnoth and play some games... .
But it's even more than that. Some units cause the same amount of _mean_ damage, but one may do so in fewer shots. And on the defense side, two units may take the same mean damage on a hex, but one unit has a higher dodge percentage, while the other has damage resistance.
That makes for a much richer variety of units: Reliable hitters vs opportunistic shot-takers; tanks which will are sure to survive an attack, and pestering nuisances which, once swatted, will go away for good. You can't have that without the randomness.
The Lead Designer of Civ 4 just released Old World. It's designed around reducing end game slowdown by limiting the number of orders you can place each turn, mechanically you play a series of leaders who can only give out so many orders and have to manage their dynasty, Crusader Kings style. An excellent game. https://mohawkgames.com/oldworld/
The designer of Fall From Heaven made Fallen Enchantress and I think a modern Star Control remake. Can't speak to their quality personally.
The designer of the original XCOM recently released Phoenix Point. Haven't tried this one yet but it's on my list.
Turn based tactics games in general are extremely popular. Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous has a HoMM2 style army battles built into the RPG campaign (though it's reportedly quite buggy and unbalanced...) The game overall is fantastic, and the party-level combat is also turn based if you like. Baldur's Gate 3 is turn based. Some personal favorites are all the Long War variants. XCOM 1 Long War, XCOM 2 Long War, and now XCOM 2 Long War of the Chosen.
Edit: If you're looking for something specifically like Fall From Heaven, I'd say give Endless Legend a try. It has a similar feel in the way it combines theme and mechanics. It came out in 2014 but it's still getting updates and content to this day.
Looks like an Epic exclusive to me. I don't want to condone that so I'll sadly have to avoid it.
I've long been looking for a game like Final Fantasy Tactics with "native" controls. Meaning not a recreation (port) of the gamepad controls.
Basically a prettier Wesnoth. Wesnoth is great. I just prefer the isometric grid.
The Final Fantasy WotL for iOS also has too much fussing with unit's gear.
Said another way, the UX of Polytopia with the campaigning of FF WotL.
It wasn’t game over, but it made military strategy exceptionally one-dimensional. Early game was all about getting a set of range 3 archers as quickly as possible, mid game was all about getting a set of range 3 catapults as quickly as possible.
Also, did you ever get into Tank War style games? I used to love Worms.