EUIV sounds promising, but I'm nervous about it because it's the same people as CKII. I'm guessing the realism level is such that you can't really go absolutely crazy.

Anno 2070 looks interesting, I'll look into that some more.

 

If you're looking at Civilization: Beyond Earth I might suggest putting it off until this fall since that's when the new Expansion is supposed to come out.

 

There's ways to snowball in both games, but it requires knowing the game mechanics very well. There's some forced "realism" as far as historical events go, but they generally make the game more interesting.

 

XCOM Enemy Unknown and the expansion Enemy Within if fantastic (and then long war mod once you've played through a time or two).

 

Or knowing the game mechanics somewhat and playing France, Ottomans, or Austria. Seconding Basilisk - staying outside of Europe (or on the fringes) is more interesting.

Re: aforementioned historical events for Taure - things like the Wars of the Roses, English Civil War, Iberian Wedding, Burgundian Inheritance - have a high chance of happening each game. They're not guaranteed, but you'll usually see them happen. It's definitely possible to derail history anyway, but for some cases, you might need to go out of your way to do so. (Looking at you, Iberian Wedding).

Given the stated sort-of-downvote for CK and HoI - EU is a bit of a risky pick. I'd look elsewhere first, even if I love EU to hell and back.

 

How is it hard to deviate from history in CK2? I mean, you can do shit like this:



I only picked up CK2 a few weeks ago, loving the hell out of it. I became the king of Norway and Sweden and the Norse Pope, had forty children, then when I died my kingdom exploded in a big ball of fiery gavelkind destruction, and my heir had to fight all his brothers for domination of the land.

It's awesome.

 

Hmm, as far as turn-based strategy games go, I can't say I know a great deal.

Folks already mentioned HoMM 3&5, which are pretty much the best ones in the series.

Have you tried out Disciples 2 with all its expansions? It's pretty great. Word of warning, don't play Disciples 3.

Alpha Centauri's also fucking amazing and I highly recommend it. If the visuals of the original game are too outdated for you, I think there's a mod for Civilization 4 which brings stuff up to date.

And while I'm bringing up Civ 4, look up Fall From Heaven II. I think you'd enjoy this, in particular because it has a deep, rich setting, which had all spawned from quite a lengthy custom D&D session (years and years), and all of it can be found in a rather extensive .pdf file.

I've heard good things about Endless Legend, but I can't say much about it, I've yet to actually play it, despite having it installed for months. Such is the curse of a backlog. Maybe someone else here has chanced playing the game and could tell you more about it?

Now, real-time, that's a completely different thing. There's so much here you could give a try, provided you don't mind them aged a bit.

Supreme Commander + Forged Alliance; really, it's the fucking pinnacle of the genre, and if it had better unit pathfinding, it would be quite literally a 10/10 game.

Command & Conquer; up to, and including, Tiberium Wars and Kane's Wrath. Ignore Tiberium Twilight. It doesn't exist. It's a cruel, cruel joke.

Battle Realms

Metal Fatigue

Warrior Kings

Emperor: Battle for Dune

Total Annihilation

TA: Kingdoms

Earth 2150 series

Homeworld series

That's all I got for now. It ought to suffice, I think.

 

Oh, you can go crazy alright.

Uh, huh.

This one's not even particularly difficult.

This one is pretty hard though.

EU4 is pretty unique, it'd be easier to tell if you'd like it if you could elaborate on what you didn't like about CK2. It's based on nations, not people and therefore is a bit simpler in some aspects like Feudal Law, Inheritance, Levies, etc. etc. but can be a bit more challenging at times simply because war is the main mechanic of conflict. As such, if you're a lowly minor power and you get matched up against France, Spain, or Britain there's very little you can do.

There are still some great other mechanics like colonization, tech, cultural integration and vassalization that are pretty cool. Exploration and colonization in particular are well done.

Finally, let's look at some hilarious Steam reviews:

My personal favorite

"If wiping out and assimalating indigenous populations is wrong, then I don't wanna be right."

"Swedish India 10/10"

"The King of Naples annulled our royal marriage. I annulled his kingdom. 8/8 m8"

"I swear to GOD if you ask me ONE MORE TIME austria ill shove this unlawful territory up your holy roman REAR"

"You can watch your ambitions crushed in million different ways. 10/10"

"Played as the Native Americans, put Europeans in reservations. 10/10"

"*Takes semi-small nation, builds functioning and prosperous empire*
*France declares war*
*starts new game*"

I'd recommend Victoria 2 as well, but honestly that's a game so complicated I don't even understand how the economy works and I once conquered China with Korea.

 

Yup, Planetfall. I never got into Alpha Centauri, but I did enjoy that quite a bit.

This, x1000.

FFH2 is an enormously engaging mod with great story and crazy gameplay. 21 civs, any of which can completely break the game in their own way, and take you down an entirely different game path.

More specifically, I'd recommend More Naval AI or Erebus in the Balance (the mod I work on) for updated versions boasting AI boosts and improved UI, and polished/tightened gameplay (especially for MP) respectively.

 

I heard a lot of great things about Endless Legend, then I played it and wasn't impressed. It's not bad, but not particularly interesting.

 

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes is a decent game if you liked Civ IV but felt there should be more RPG-like mechanics included. It's got a good mix of 4X, quests, heroes and monsters to be interesting without being too different.

 

most economic trade sims I have tried suck Im afraid.

EU series is just ruling nodes of pre set trade routes.

 

It's getting reworked in the new expansion Common Sense though.

 

yeah, I always tend to get burned by paradox expansions though. They are rarely expansive enough for my tastes, more like simple DLC. Which is a shame. Will probably get it though.

 

I highly recommend Empire Total War with it's mods, Imperial Splendour or A Proper Empire. It's amazing, but I do love that period.

 

My biggest problem with CK2 is that nothing happens unless you instigate it. Of course this is true of most games, but in most games, you have a clear set of options available to you that occupy all of your time: here are the buildings available to me, here are the resources they cost, these are the ones I want for X goals, now I have to go about getting the resources, fending off these barbarians, managing my economy v my army, etc. You're actively involved in management of a system that needs your regular input.

In CK2, on the other hand, whole years of in-game time can go by and absolutely nothing happens requiring your input. Everything just trundles along as it is unless you search for something to do with the game. And often there isn't anything to do i.e. there are no options open to you other than to wait years for something to happen. Can I marry somone? No, I've got a wife already. Can I mess around with my childrens' lives? No options available there either. Has anything happened with this plot yet? Nope, no new people to try to convince to join the plot. Have I engineered a claim on X territory yet? No, have to wait for that too. Can I put on event? Not enough gold. Can I build improvements on my land? I already set that in motion years ago and it's still years away from finishing. Etc.

The CivV: BNW trade system is pretty good, I think:

- A diverse resource system where certain resources are needed for certain things, and you're extremely unlikely to have all of them.

- A variety of different trade routes open for you to establish, which generate different amounts of food/gold.

- Religion and tourism travelling via trade routes.

Greater complexity would be great, especially with the resources, but it's a good start. Does EUIV have a resource system?

 

This is what EU4 is for me. There are clear objectives you can shoot for, both short and long term, and other nations are actively opposing you in accomplishing them, either because they are your rivals or because you grew to big to fast and pissed off enough folks to form a coalition against you. Your army and navy are a constant drain, but if you lower maintenance then other countries might attack you for being "weak". Playing as a non-Western nation is especially difficult because of the increasing disparity in technology due to the flat percentage increase in tech cost the less "civilized" your culture is, with that percentage increasing the further away they are. The most important resource is monarch points; you only generate so many a month, and you use them for almost every decision and action.

There's a lot going on in EU4. Here are a few let's play channels that do a lot of EU4 if you want to see the game in action.

That's kind of the point of CK2. It's very hard to actually run out of things to do, but there's a lot that is hidden beneath the surface that isn't made clear to the player.

Claims, for instance. You can get one of your advisers fabricating claims or you could inherit them from your family, but you can also invite someone to your court who has a claim, or marry them to a vassal or other courtier, give them some land, and then go to war for their claim. As long as the claim isn't for something on a similar tier as you (Kingdom claim if you're a king, ducal claim if you're a duke, etc.) then when you win the war they'll be a vassal under you. And the land that you gave them? Start a plot to revoke it; it shouldn't be their land anyway because they are the King/Duke/Count of X and not Y, so you'll get a lot of backers for it, and the newly instated lord will (usually) give it up without a fuss. This is the quickest way to actually grow your realm outside of bordering a different religion and declaring holy wars for their land.*

At no point is this actually presented as something the player can do. You have to find it on your own.

*I haven't played the game for a few patches, so my recollection of game mechanics may be different than what is actually available right now. I don't think this is something that Paradox would change, but I have been proven wrong before.

 

Is there a big difference between Ck2 and EU4? Except for time periods, apparently.

 

From the sounds of it I might prefer EUIV, because of the nation rather than dynasty focus. I never really have the patience in CKII for fiddling around with individual people's claims etc