Steam sale: any strategy game recommendations?

[Xenophon13]

GC2 has problems, but nevertheless it manages to be fun. The ship designer is addicting, and the whole rest of the game has a great level of moddability.

I never figured out Sins. The damn space battles took forever and enemy ships could fly to my base and nuke my planets before my combined firepower killed them. The pirates were a pain in the ass, and the tactical zoom was clunky, and the stupid thing had no fucking storyline even when it was all set up for one. Now that I think of it, they should have kept storylines out of GC2 and put one in Sins.

[Samuel]

The ship designer is addicting

And has no effect on the game. At all. You choose weapons, engines, sensors and armor- something that could have been handled by just plopping in numbers. Did they ever fix the "one move point faster" problem with engines where you just needed to have your ships slightly faster in order to avoid ever being forced into engagements?

the whole rest of the game has a great level of moddability.

People are complaining about the features. I don't think you can mod out the economic system- well, maybe you can combine happy/tax/population buildings (or as I like to call them "infrastructure") into one package which would make a hell of alot more sense.

The damn space battles took forever and enemy ships could fly to my base and nuke my planets before my combined firepower killed them.

They fixed that. Probably. Now you have the problem of not controlling enough ships to cover all your fronts so they come in and kill you before reinforcements arrive.

and the stupid thing had no fucking storyline even when it was all set up for one. Now that I think of it, they should have kept storylines out of GC2 and put one in Sins.

Given how bad GC2's was Seriously Sins is so many cliches in a bag that not only are par for the course, but don't make sense. A bunch of people dumped into ships and forced of a planet managed to make a fleet that can go toe to toe with a civilization with massive shipbuilding capacity and having experienced 10 years of warfare? The Visari need to get fuel supplies for some reason (space has no friction people!) and are using the TEC to do so. Exactly how they got supplies during previous stops (does the universe have an alien race you can exploit every 50,000 ly?) and why they don't just trade for it (avoid the usage of supplies due to fighting a war) is never explained.

Or why the TEC exiled the Advent. The space libertarians didn't like people using drugs and gaining magical powers... I'm not going to touch that one. I mean, it isn't like they were interacting with anyone else to begin with or that building enough ships to carry an entire civilization off planet is cheap.

[Stark]

Did you seriously just criticise a space game with FTL for having fuel requirements in the story? Are you retarded? Your apparent ignorance of both the games you're talking about is kind of stunning.

The idea that you think GalCiv2 has a problem because faster ships can keep distance is probably the least-considered opinion I've read for some time. When games have actual flaws, why do fat people feel the need to invent unconvincing or wrong ones to look tough?

[Xenophon13]

Honestly, GC2's economic system has never bothered me.

And the ship designer isn't supposed to have an effect. It is there to make cooler looking versions of the default ships. (in my opinion)

[Stofsk]

Honestly, GC2's economic system has never bothered me.

Really? I always found it hilarious that billions of people in my space empire would up and disappear from the interstellar census apparatus whenever I increased my tax rate by a certain threshold of acceptability (based on the approval rates the population had). I would then suddenly gain billions of people if I decreased my tax rate.

You could do this week by week if you were feeling particularly bored and in need of amusement.

GalCiv 2 didn't really convey a sensible economic system. I mean, new colonies can have what, half a billion people land on them? (I'm trying to remember how many dudes you can fit on a single colony ship) And what's worse the turns equal a week, so... um, that's extraordinary - being able to uproot and transport tens if not hundreds of millions of people to a destination in less than a week.

The game is fun though.

[Dominus Atheos]

So how did everyone make out? According to the receipts in my inbox, I got:

Puzzle Indie
3.74 USD
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
6.79 USD
Bioshock 2
14.99 USD
Majesty 2: Kingmaker
7.49 USD
Mount and Blade: Warband
14.99 USD
The Guild II + Pirates of the European Seas
12.49 USD
Dawn of Discovery Gold
20.09 USD
The Settlers Rise of an Empire and Heritage of Kings Pack
23.44 USD
Patricians and Merchants
5.09 USD
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
7.49 USD
Grand Theft Auto IV (US/AU)
4.99 USD
Tropico 3
7.49 USD
Tropico 3: Absolute Power
6.79 USD
Star Wars: Empire at War Gold
4.99 USD
Sol Survivor
4.99 USD

For a total of $145.85.

Did anyone beat me in total games or total spent?

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Managed to keep myself pretty restrained and only pick up the ones I knew I'd actually play. After all, even a really cheap price isn't a deal if you never even install the damn thing.

Borderlands $10.19
GTA IV $4.99
Mount & Blade Warband: $14.99
Overlord I, Expansion, and II: $4.49
W40K: Dawn of War 2 Gold: $19.99

Total: $54.65

[Samuel]

Star Wars: Empire at War Gold
4.99 USD

Er, sorry. I don't think it was worth it. You are going to find the only thing interesting is the space battles... and they have almost no tactics. It is nice to see the massive ships from mods, but I don't know how to set it up so you can send one huge fleet against the computers.

[adam_grif]

Honestly, GC2's economic system has never bothered me.

Really? I always found it hilarious that billions of people in my space empire would up and disappear from the interstellar census apparatus whenever I increased my tax rate by a certain threshold of acceptability (based on the approval rates the population had). I would then suddenly gain billions of people if I decreased my tax rate.

You could do this week by week if you were feeling particularly bored and in need of amusement.

GalCiv 2 didn't really convey a sensible economic system. I mean, new colonies can have what, half a billion people land on them? (I'm trying to remember how many dudes you can fit on a single colony ship) And what's worse the turns equal a week, so... um, that's extraordinary - being able to uproot and transport tens if not hundreds of millions of people to a destination in less than a week.

The game is fun though.

So what you're saying is that we should do a Gal Civ vs Galactic Empire thread

Let's see, 2 billion soldiers is pretty standard for a military invasion. Those transports must be pretty big! And look at how they scale compared to "FIGHTERS"! Fighters are bigger than super star destroyers!

An average early game transport is like 3 parsecs / week though, which is only ~ 1.4 lightyears per day.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Tropico 3 expansion, $6.79
Guild II + expansion, $12.49 (obscure weird ass European games, wheeee)
L4D2, finally, $10.20
Titan Quest Gold, $4.99 (I had the boxed original, but not the expansion, and I like having things on Steam, so what the hey)
Thief Deadly Shadows, $2.99 (steal)
Day of Defeat Source, $2.49 (gifted, at that price it might as well be free)

I'd say I survived, with only the bizarre impulse purchase of Guild II being excessive. There's something about Weird Fucking Obscure European Niche Games (that's a genre, you know, WFOENGs) that compel me to play them.

[Stark]

Guild 2 is so much worse than the original it's not funny; even the Pirates expansion never fixed the netcode and reducing government complexity killed the game.

Let me know if Tropico3 expansion is any good.

[PeZook]

The Visari need to get fuel supplies for some reason (space has no friction people!) and are using the TEC to do so.

Wait...how does "there is no friction in space" translate to "ships don't use fuel"?

[Samuel]

The Visari need to get fuel supplies for some reason (space has no friction people!) and are using the TEC to do so.

Wait...how does "there is no friction in space" translate to "ships don't use fuel"?

Well it doesn't. That would be the fact that you get antimatter regeneration when near stars that does the trick for "does not need fuel" (game mechanics, I know). Stark is right on my points being stupidly overzealous, but it just is annoying with the rest of the writting that makes all the sides stupid assholes.

[Artemas]

picked up:
mount&blade: warband
OF2: dragon rising
knights of honor
left 4 dead 2

pretty good i think

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Let me know if Tropico3 expansion is any good.

I've been tooling around with it and... I don't know.

It does about what you'd expect a plain jane expansion to do -- new doodads and various odds and ends. New buildings, new edicts, some new options to play with (a loyalist faction, ability to select a prominent faction on a new island, etc), but nothing really amazing or different. There's a new campaign as well, but I never bother with the campaigns in games like this so I have no idea what it's like.

The new edict category has some cool ideas, like the ability to have the annoying DJ shot (and thus permanently shut up), print money and cause inflation to spiral out of control, or write an ideology book and increase the respect of all your dumbest citizens.

The new buildings are pretty straightforward. A wind turbine for eco-power, garbage dumps to manage pollution, a weapons factory for good exports at the cost of international relations, various new tourist traps. The best improvement here is probably some reorganization of some of the buildings and letting you play around with gardens, statues, and miscellaneous items like barrels and sandbags more easily (I built a Tropican army base around the new GIANT RADAR DISH building by placing absurd amounts of sandbags).

The new loyalist faction is nice, but doesn't seriously alter gameplay. They're a little weird, in that they're not particularly loyal and just behave much like any other faction, except their demands revolve around being obsessed with you (they want you to dedicate monuments to yourself, build childhood museums and commit election fraud). They'll actually get pretty upset with you if play benevolently.

As a full price expansion, it's kind of eh, but for the dirt-cheap price I got it for I'm pretty happy.