Welcome!
This forum is a friendly place, and the more the merrier.
Feel free to ask questions, and do take a look at the
WIKI (not quite up to date, but a useful resource nonetheless) and
Kahuna's Guide To AI War, which covers the basics of defensive setups.
Both Chris and Keith are good guys, which makes for a very relaxed and friendly forum atmosphere.
No no,
really and to be honest,
i am the strange hard line of the past from humanity.
today the games on the market sucks, too easy, only scratching on the surface, no deep inside. fast and bullshit. waste of time.
Ah, good! Another old-timer.
While games like AI War - Fleet Command can appeal to the strategy grognards, and while certainly engaging and a fun diversion, they have fairly simple game mechanics, lack
true depth, and take only a short time to play (many games are completed in less than 24h, would you believe it?)
Come play Dominions 4 in multiplayer, like the dinosaurs of gaming.
i grow up with samll pcs and games in 90s, one of the first generation maybe. maybe second. XD
most games today are the same as in that time, lol, only that 25 years are gone. a blink of a eye in digital games. ^^. better grafik, yes, in hope for some cash. but the game play, the jpoy are very poor. and sad but true: the classics are still high in sold, because they have style.
todays companies are tight, close and mostly dont do anything to help by problems. you are different.
and so you have my thanks.
Oh, 90s. One of the youngsters who prefers fast games with little depth. Forget what I said.
I am, of course, just kidding, and I am doing so because this time - the early years of the second decade of the 21st century - is the best time to be around as a gamer. There are more interesting games of all types around than at any time previous, regardless of which type of game you prefer, and that most decidedly also goes for deep strategy games. Digital distribution has eliminated one of the greatest barriers to entry, leading to a proliferation of games - including quality games. One just has to look at the edges of the market, when one doesn't have mainstream tastes.
Which is why I consider it humorous whenever anybody does the "the games of today are too easy and lack depth..." spiel.
Like most people who care to post on this board, I adore AI Wars - Fleet Command for the superior game it is. While certainly not the deepest game around, and while its game mechanics and mathematics are fairly simple to grasp, it has more depth than most and while you'll probably win on 7/7 after a week or two, there's a lot more to learn and, perhaps more importantly, it has what I consider a superior
game flow to most other strategy games on the market.
Asymmetrical warfare is damn hard to carry out well in strategy games, but AI War does it splendidly, while letting the player control the tempo. This leads to that perfection of play that occurs when the player knows he's fully in control of the situation, developing his position step by step.... until he either wins, oversteps, or an accumulation of small errors catch up with him, leaving him in deep trouble,
while knowing full well that he has only his own mistakes to blame, thus encouraging the development of better strategy.
And once you've grown comfortable with one setup for the game, you will always find more painful options to enable, which helps it ensure its longevity. Taken together, this makes it a game that will continue to challenge you so long as you are willing to pile on the pain, so to speak.
The game is heavy on strategy while providing a sideline in tactics that becomes more important the more outrageously you stack the odds against you. It features very simple logistics, but in a real-time game that is most definitely not a drawback.
So have fun!
(That said, I do mean it about also picking up Dominions 4, if you don't own it already,
really like deep strategy games, and are fine with old-school turn-based strategy games with poor graphics - that takes weeks or months to play in multiplayer, one turn at a time.)