TBS Games with 'Campaigns'

[Stark]

I've noticed that many TBS games - Civ-likes, HoMM-likes, etc - come with a single player campaign these days. This confuses me: I still see these games as 'civ-likes', and obviously you can't have a campaign of linked missions in Civ, the ultimate history sandbox. I've always seen these games as essentially sandboxes where you set your starting conditions and just go see what happens. Campaigns always seemed a more RTS-y sort of thing, where the missions were in a small area and relatively brief. Games like Age of Wonders and Galactic Civilizations, however, have campaigns. Does anyone play them? What's the attraction of playing crippled, small-mapped versions of the 'proper' sandbox game?

[Stofsk]

R:TW has a campaign.

I don't have a problem with campaigns in Civ-type games, I just find that I don't play them. Galciv 2 for instance, has a campaign I haven't had the patience to complete. I think I got up to mission #3 before packing it in.

Then again, I don't really have the patience to complete a regular game of Galciv 2 anyway. Early game is ok but tedious. At some point though I stop looking at what I'm doing and just hit the 'turn' button constantly.

[Stark]

R:TW isn't a Civ-like, and I don't consider it a 'campaign' in the RTS story-driven, episodic sense. So there.

[Stormbringer]

I don't know about Warlords, but the rest of the Civ games haven't really had campaigns. They've had specific scenarios but those aren't a campaign. The purpose of them is to create a more detailed treatment of a particular historical situation, rather than a the whole sweep of history.

[Stark]

Yeah I know, that's why I didn't say Civ had a campaign and in fact said the exact opposite.

[HSRTG]

I essentially cheated the Terran Alliance through the GalCiv 2 campaign mostly because I just wanted to see the story. I thought the story was worth the couple hours it took to do so.

[Stofsk]

How many missions are in the Galciv 2 campaign?

[HSRTG]

10, assuming you don't lose 1, 2, 4, 5, or 8. Failing those lead to alternate, easier missions.

EDIT: Make a copy of, then edit Data/English/Raceconfig.xml. You can make the default Terran Alliance have 1000% bonuses in everything, then simply speed through the campaign, assuming you just want the story.

EDIT 2: Clarity.

[Edi]

I've noticed that many TBS games - Civ-likes, HoMM-likes, etc - come with a single player campaign these days. This confuses me: I still see these games as 'civ-likes', and obviously you can't have a campaign of linked missions in Civ, the ultimate history sandbox.

This seems to be an issue of perception more than anything else. Civ is a turn-based strategy game, but not all turn-based strategy games are in quite the same format as Civ. In Age of Wonders, Warlords and otehr games, the goal is often conquering the map. Most single player campaigns are a string of scenarios with objectives and together they form a storyline, whereas Civ for example does not have one.

I've always seen these games as essentially sandboxes where you set your starting conditions and just go see what happens.

This is true of standalone scenarios.

Campaigns always seemed a more RTS-y sort of thing, where the missions were in a small area and relatively brief. Games like Age of Wonders and Galactic Civilizations, however, have campaigns. Does anyone play them? What's the attraction of playing crippled, small-mapped versions of the 'proper' sandbox game?

Campaigns are actually more an RPG thing than RTS thing and often the main attraction is the storyline. It's much like reading a book, except that you often have some choices in how you go about doing things and what route you take, especially if there are branches in the plot.

I tend to enjoy campaigns for that reason and I've enjoyed the HoMM series largely for the campaigns, same for the Age of Wonders (the original especially). Warlords 3 had absolutely kick-ass campaigns game-play wise because you were less constrained than in many other games and I liked the story arcs.

When one compares TBS games, they basically fall into two categories: Full-bore empire/civilization building games like the Civ, Master of Magic, Master of Orion and Dominions series and the others like HoMM, AoW and Warlords where campaign play is an important part of the initial attraction. Some of them even have campaign editors to allow people to construct their own campaigns. The focus is somewhat different in these two categories of TBS games.

Another difference between the full-bore and campaign-focused games is also that in the former, starting locations and other such things are almost always randomized and often the maps are as well, while in the campaign type games, scenarios and maps tend to be fixed in many ways. Of course, it is not always so, for example Warlords had random start locations on maps despite having excellent campaign and scripted scenario play and Dominions has only developed truly random maps in its 3rd incarnation (and they still suck compared to user made maps).

Edi

[Stark]

Many good points there. I understand AoW didn't even have a map generator until the later versions: it was entirely scenario and campaign play, like HoMM. The Dom3 map generator thing is awful, but you can always use any old map image with minimal prep.

I'm not sure most Civ-likes are less military than AoW etc, though. They have more scope for other things, but most Civ games are decided by conquest and military power.

Actually, maybe the campaigns are more prominent in character-centric games. GalCiv2 is an exception - it has a story basically because the devs like writing them - but the others all have hero units and stuff like that. This makes them more RPG-like than Civ etc, where The Empire of Nod has exactly one named member who is omnipresent.