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.
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.
> 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...
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.
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.
Also, did you ever get into Tank War style games? I used to love Worms.
Never 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.
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.
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.
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'm not suggesting passing around a binary should always be illegal, eg. between friends on a USB key, but commercial publication should include source)
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/
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)
'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.
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.
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.
Windows only. There's a free demo with a limited number of playable factions.
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.
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.
These are my favorite turn-based games of all time:
HOMM 1, 2 & 3
Advance Wars series (including DS and DOR)
Uniwar (a surprisingly excellent mobile game inspired by Advance Wars and Starcraft 1)
Civilization 5 + Vox Populi / Community Patch (my favorite overall, but I'm getting bored of it because end game takes too long, even on quick. at least it's still actively developed, which is nice when I get the urge)
Into the Breach (least amount of playtime on my list, but it's still very solid. Playing it actually makes me feel kind of sad, because it seems like the skeleton for a great successor to Advance Wars, but there's no Steam Workshop for it, and no built-in versus mode or multiplayer)
Battle of Polytopia (second-least played amount, but also very solid. Imagine if someone made a game out of the first ~30 turns of a Quick-paced Civ5 game)
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (when I imagine my perfect turn-based game that I would design if I had the money to hire a full team of people, it's a mix of HOMM, Advance Wars, Civ5, and DCSS. It's the only roguelike I've enjoyed enough to play more than once, and I've played it a LOT)
Games that I already tried and didn't like enough to continue playing
Total War series
Rest of the HOMM series (HOMM 4+), including mods
Civ 6
Wargroove
Endless Legend
Humankind (sad to not have liked this one, I was so hyped for it)
King's Bounty series
Age of Wonders series (including Planetfall)
Warhammer 40k: Gladius (it's almost worth playing, but falls short)
Shaharazad is a relatively straightforward small box co-op game that isn’t too hard but might be fun to try co-op gaming without much setup or complexity.
Speaking of co-op, Codenames is a great game for 4+ players. Codenames Duets is a co-op version. You’ll probably want to skim the cards to make sure she knows all the words depending on her age, but it is a great vocabulary building game that I’ve heard about foreign language teachers using. Plus it’s fun. My in-laws probably requested we bring it every time we came over for a year or two before they bought their own copy.
If she’s into tactics, or grid based games at all, onitama is quick to learn and pretty straightforward.
If you’re looking for something different, I really enjoy crokinole. Though since a board is expensive, there are some other agility games on the market if flicking disks sounds like fun.
If you’re looking for something more strategic, I’ve not played it but I’ve heard great things about My Little Scythe. My board game group has not met physically in two years, and we’ve moved to RPGs digitally, but this is on my to play list. Scythe is an awesome game, but I’ve heard My Little Scythe simplifies the game while still keeping it fun with good strategic depth.
Hope that helps! If you have any other things you can add that you think your daughter would like, or themes that would appeal to her, or her age, those are very useful to give a better recommendation. Also, if more than two players are possible, that opens the door a bit to other games.
Every now and then I also revisit the Sega Genesis version of King's Bounty, the precursor to HoMM. The over world on that particular port is real time action, you have to avoid enemies as you explore the map.
I've actually never played the HoMM games, but I played Kings Bounty a bunch as a kid and loved it. Totally underrated game!
:) as quoted in the article
>And Heroes by no means resolves what has long been the biggest conundrum in wide-angle strategy-game design: that of the anticlimactic mopping up that follows that tipping point when you know you’re going to win.
Chess has a solution to this problem: Resignation. A turned based strategy game like Heroes of Might and Magic III should have the AI evaluate the game, and if things look hopeless, it should offer to resign. This will be a game-wide resignation; the AI will, when offering to resign, have all AI opponents resign at once and end the game then and there.
A resignation from the AI would be one which can be refused by the human; indeed, I wish the HOMM games had Civilization’s “Just one more turn” option to continue playing a game after it has been won: Useful in Civ for, say, after getting a domination victory, finishing up that one enemy you’re still at war with.
In terms of Heroes of Might and Magic, the general consensus is that it hit its peak with Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (HOMM3). HOMM5 deliberately copied a lot of HOMM3’s gameplay (albeit with 3d graphics), and HOMM3 to this day is being updated with fan-made mods. Horn of the Abyss is as good as anything New World Computing ever made for HOMM3, is a free download at https://h3hota.com and adds a new town type, more terrain types, user-selectable random map templates, a GUI random map template editor (much easier than editing the old tab-delimited text file which we were doing back in 2011), and support for giant 254x254 maps.
We made character sheets, spell books, skill sheets and an ever expanding world map consisting of over a hundred A4 sheets. We basically invented a DnD-like role play where I was the game master, and it all started with me trying to emulate HoMM.
This epic campaign went on for over six years and had over 30 players, and several other kids made campaigns of their own that became popular as well (there was a "car-world" inspired by Need for Speed, a "Harry Potter-world" that was a strange mix between fantasy and high-tech, and several others).
I keep going down the memory lane with Master of Orion, Master of Magic, etc. and I couldn’t stop!
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)
Makes me wonder whether a world in which those items can be carried from one meta world to another, through web3/MetaMask type wallets, is desirable. Should my hard-earned obsidian items retain some sort of secondary-market value, much like vintage Magic cards? I did work hard as heck to find them back in the day :)
I still play HoMM 3 several times a year- play a few maps, use my normal terrible strategy of one super-powerful hero and a few heroes to ferry troops around, and enjoy the nostalgia.
Am I crazy or should there be an article about this and Star Fleet Battles??? This sounds like an impossible situation in todays protect the IP above all world.
The best, most addictive spiritual successor I've found to date is Eador:Genesis. Although it has a bunch of other inspirations such as Master of Magic.
https://eador-masters-of-the-broken-world.fandom.com/wiki/Ea...
It mostly has very bad AI for which it compensates with insane material advantages, but tactical layer is stellar and strategic layer has some VERY interesting ideas as well. Your actions have far reaching consequences, such as you choose only 3 tier II units from about ten or so, and they have very different niches and work to a varying degree with each of the 4 basic classes.
