Rob Zacny

Episode 350: Aging Gracefully

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Three Moves Ahead 350:

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Aging Gracefully

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. Softened memories of sunlit rooms on Saturday mornings and brilliant panzer strategy replace the reality of grueling turn counts and CD-ROM issues. Can you ever really go home again? Is Master of Orion really as good as we recall? (The answer to both is: no.) Rob Zacny, Rowan Kaiser, Sean Sands, and Troy "I don't Google during a podcast" Goodfellow wheel their chairs into the whist room to talk about games that have aged gracefully and games that have not.

Vampire: The Masquerade, Battle for Middle Earth, Impossible Creatures, Master of Orion, Rise of Nations, Medieval Lords, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Warcraft 2, Planescape: Torment, Elder Scrolls, TIE Fighter, Imperialism, Age of Empires, Rise of Legends, Anno 2070, Need for Speed, Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer Corps, Final Fantasy, Max Payne, Wizardry 7, Myst, Under a Killing Moon, Myth, Dark Reign, Battlezone, Seven Kingdoms, Sacrifice, Messiah, Civilization

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I haven't listened to the show yet, but that list of referenced games has me *really* looking forward to it!

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Great episode, people.

 

Age of Empires: yeah, I bought this remake when they asked couple of bucks for it. Played the game on release but I was like 12 back then. And it's horrible. You have to microcontrol citizens and click on freaking animals, rebuild farms. And historicity is worse than Total War. In Rise of Nations you at least have abstractions of armies, here it's a very specific army of sterotypes. AoE3 felt similar to me, but at least it had asynchronous races and is fun to explore, especially when in 2007 BigHuge Games added widescreen support there. Which still looks bad because of stretched UI and icons. Which was not a problem in Rise of Nations made several years earlier. I am, therefore, surprised by Troy's love for Age of Mythology. Isn't it the same game but with cerberus? Is campaign that much better?

 

Rise of Legends: I think it's the best game I don't want to play. Aesthetics are just superb, they did interesting things with cities and campaigns, trading with neutrals... And shoved useless trendy stuff like heroes and micromanagement. I'll still buy it if they publish it on Steam, I'm sure you understand.

 

Anno 2077: this is the game that convinced me never to buy anything on UPlay. "Ah, 64% of players dealt with this level faster than you", "Last month voting was won by this guy, 3 people voted for him", "Wait for 5 minutes till I load some crap through your glitchy old wi-fi". This is the case when pirating a game actually makes it better. Screw you, Ubisoft. Play Anno 1404 - basically the same game without all the crap.

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Nice episode. A lot of thoughts and nostalgia. 

Well I agree with a lot of things said by Rob, there are very few old games that has special mechanisms and styles that you will make you grab them and play them again and again (not because of nostalgia), most other games had been redone and improved upon them (whether it is sequel game or similar games done by different developers). 

The example of Rise of Nations is good one, even if it is a generic RTS as play style, but it is one of the few that has this amazing balance and it is abstract of all historic period flavors, I gotta say there were other games tried to achieve the same like empire earth series and Empires: dawn of modern world, but RON had distinguishable balance, UI and overall aesthetic. The thing is after 2005 there was no attempt by any developers to make something similar to RON, and that is why in my opinion such a game will be played over and over.

I want to add about total war games, I see it evolving overall, and to be honest I dont see any right justification of the old ones to be superior, as much as I loved M2TW and had most fun playing it, I revisited it recently and there many annoying things in the campaign mechanism, buildings, UI, and the AI.     

For games that have a really superior predecessor, I cant think of much, Stronghold games come to my mind. 

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I think Sacrifice is the most notable game that I go back and play again regularly because nothing has improved on it in the intervening years. Man, I love that game.

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Having never played it, I recently downloaded and fired up Battlezone because it just sounds neat. And it is. I think. See, I went to the multiplayer portion to see if I could set up skirmishing with the AI, maybe generate some random maps, see if it's possible to play some comp stomp with some friends. It doesn't look like that's possible, so I set it down, and haven't given it a second thought until hearing it come up in this podcast.

 

Games are so personal, not just in an emotional sense, but in a practical sense: what you want them to deliver. And I think the big thing we don't talk about very much in games is how completely inadequate to meeting our personal needs just about all games are. We're lucky if they do one or two things right long enough for us to look past how badly they do everything else. Lots of times, I find myself evaluating a game based on its bullet points rather than specifically demanding something from it that comes from my own needs, because, as far as games have come in the last 20-30 years, they're still pretty primitive, and they're not going to do just what I want. It will always be a compromise.

 

No matter how realistic a corridor shooter is, you can't open that office door and see who worked inside, you're restricted to that corridor. You'll have to instead install an open-world game, which comes with its own issues of samey-ness or a less satisfying combat model, if that's even what you really want to be doing. Or, say you're playing a strategy war game and you'd like to play just as a soldier on the battlefield in that same battle for a bit. You're going to have to install a whole new game for that to happen, and it won't be "your" war. I'll be more reasonable, let's say you do fire up Citizen Kabuto, and you think to yourself, "This is pretty ok, but I'd rather not do all this base management." Well, gotta write off the whole game, then, because the game cannot meet that simple demand.

 

One gentleman on the podcast said that the mere thought of a Civ 4 stack of doom was enough to put him off ever getting back to the game. Well, I wonder if maybe Civ 4, as groundbreaking and loved as it is, maybe is a really great game, but is not--and never was--a very good experience?

 

Games have the problem of introducing a whole world of possibility and then immediately restricting those possibilities, due to the need to be highly focused, and due to technological constraints. I think this is part of the pain of games nostalgia, because it also implies that the game you're playing right now, whether it's tearin' up those Steam charts or not, well, it is also really not very good. It's really not meeting your needs, and you're always, always bending more toward the game rather than the game to you.

 

What we see with "games that don't age gracefully" is that we're just less willing to put up with the grosser inadequacies to scratch one highly specific itch. Except, maybe it wasn't an itch, it was just a momentary fascination with a specific novelty, not something we would have necessarily sought out.

 

Is it this way with movies, books, and music? Sure, they can be faddish or clumsily loud distractions, and sometimes that's just good enough. But I also know that I can wrap myself in a satisfying novel, movie, or music album, and they're decently crafted experiences based on generations of storytelling or musicianship that has been part of a long, evolving human conversation. And if one particular work isn't meeting my needs, there are many, many thousands of substitutes.

 

Anyway, I'm completely getting away from the topic at hand, carry on.

 

tl;dr: doctorfrog suddenly discovers all video games are bad

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I love when this podcast gets nostalgic. The episodes about King of Dragonpass or Shadow of the Horned Rat were some of my favorite. I would not otherwise hear discussion of those classic games.

 

I dont know whats the best place to bring it up but please do some pre-release content for Stellaris. I would love to see an interview with a developer or some impressions from a pre-release build of the game, preferably both :)

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Well this prompted me to fire up Age of Rifles again - (or more accurately, faff around trying to remember how to execute command lines in DOSBOX until I found the top reply in this page http://www.myabandonware.com/game/wargame-construction-set-iii-age-of-rifles-1846-1905-2e2  where some enterprising chap has put the whole AOR package together, user scenarios and all, in a simple, executable file).

 

Before you could say 'Chinese Gordon' I was in the Soudan at the Wells of Abu Klea with 'The Square that Broke' against the Mahdist hordes. Has it aged well? It certainly looks like a game from 1996, but the hex-grid, turn based combat is not that different to what I have been playing recently in Order of Battle: Pacific. I would say it has aged OK, a bit like Jeff Bridges - looks rough but can still put in a great performance.

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From a programming point of view there were *many* huge sea-changes in the 1990s:

 

- VGA obsoleting all the old (CGA, EGA, Hercules) PC graphics modes

- mice become something every PC has instead of something only spreadsheet people pay for

- sound cards!

- the move to 32bit CPUs

- the point where C compilers could do enough heavy lifting that it no longer made sense to do everything in assmebly

- VESA modes and support for higher resolutions than 320x200 with 256 colors, and the promise of true-color support

- GUI-based operating systems make a market for better graphics cards

- CD storage begins to replace floppy and cartridge-based games

- the crossover point where everyone had floating point hardware that was faster than emulating it with integers

- full-motion video becomes practical

- the switch from 2D-centric to 3D-centric hardware

- geometry offload coprocessors

- the sudden plummet in memory and hard disk costs (memory was $50/mb in the mid-90s; adjusting for inflation that's heading for four orders of magnitude in price reduction between then and now)

- modems are fast enough for gaming

- OpenGL, GLIDE and DirectX

- analog sticks on consoles

- wavetable synthesis sound cards

- 3D-centric hardware starts to suck less, with real Z buffers and perspective-correct rendering

- quaternions, skinned models, and a lot of technical improvements in 3D tradecraft

- gamepads start to move to PC

- dial-up internet causes IPX to dry up and blow away

- USB begins obsoleting sound card game ports

- broadband internet

- 2D graphics cards are dead in the mainstream

- several orders of magnitude speed increase in CPUs over the decade, with several associated fundamental changes in what constitutes "optimized" code

 

    I've probably missed some, and that's not even getting into the sea changes that happened in publishing. Those were interesting times to be working in the industry.

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I'd be quite interested in your take on Empire Earth - in my opinion, a game quite similar in appeal to Rise of Nations, and with three iterations nicely bracketing Rise of Nations and Rise of Legends.

 

Like RoN, it requires you to build multiple bases to stay competitive (and not just for territorial control ; it has a similar cap on "buildings per base")

Like RoN, it follows technology from very early civilizations to the "modern era"

 

And, like RoN (IMO) - the final iteration just didn't tick (m)any of the boxes that earlier iterations did, leaving an earlier iteration as the one that "stood the test of time"

 

For me, it actually holds MORE continued appeal than RoN does (thanks to GoG and Steam, I can enjoy both, but still..)

 

If you have played it - how would you say it fit the narrative? 

(if you haven't - do so :) )

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Great discussion. The point about well-aged games being often something that hasn't been done well more recently seems fundamental in my mind.

 

In my case I've found that if I played the game back in the day I can often get back into it fairly easily. It's more difficult to get past the vestiges of the era jumping into an older game fresh. I played through Red Alert 2 for the first time in a long time and even though some of the controls were antiquated (setting waypoints being the big one) I was able to get through because it all came back after a while. When I played Tie Fighter again a few years ago (jumping through many, many hoops to do so pre-GOG release) my first thought was, "Oh my God, this looks awful" but somehow the visuals ended up getting out of the way in the first dogfight and it was like playing it back in the good old days.

 

Soon after the Star Wars Rebellion 3MA I jumped into that for the first time. I can see such a good game there but my God, the clicking you have to do. I can see myself enjoying the hell out of that game but I just can't get past all the clicking.

 

I'd be quite interested in your take on Empire Earth - in my opinion, a game quite similar in appeal to Rise of Nations, and with three iterations nicely bracketing Rise of Nations and Rise of Legends.

 

Like RoN, it requires you to build multiple bases to stay competitive (and not just for territorial control ; it has a similar cap on "buildings per base")

Like RoN, it follows technology from very early civilizations to the "modern era"

 

And, like RoN (IMO) - the final iteration just didn't tick (m)any of the boxes that earlier iterations did, leaving an earlier iteration as the one that "stood the test of time"

 

For me, it actually holds MORE continued appeal than RoN does (thanks to GoG and Steam, I can enjoy both, but still..)

 

If you have played it - how would you say it fit the narrative? 

(if you haven't - do so :) )

 

Empire Earth, wasn't the basic pitch for that "Age of Empires 2, but bigger with a lot more eras?" I think I remember reading a magazine preview of that and thinking it sounded awesome even though I hadn't played Age of Empires.

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I'm sorry but I have to disagree with what Rob said about Steel Panthers. The game is still being actively developed and update by the Camo Workshop and, in my opinion, it holds up extremely well up to this day.

Rob complained about the turn resolution length, but that's a complaint I don't understand, coming from him. Can't that be said for ALL TBS hex-and-counter games? Besides, WinSPWWII has extensive options to speed up AI turn resolution. It also has an option to speed up artillery phase. Honestly, Rob's comments irked me because all of his points against the game are moot, in my opinion, and I feel they don't do the game justice.

Even the graphics are not THAT bad, compared to standard hex-and-counter fare (the paid version sold by Shrapnel scales nicely to my desktop resolution).

 

I know I sound like SP's mom here... But the game has a level of care, dev support (a new update just came out), customizability and sheer replay value that you don't often see in this day and age...

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

Otherwise, great show as usual, and thanks for another brilliant episode to help me trudge through my workday, Mr. Zacny!

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Empire Earth, wasn't the basic pitch for that "Age of Empires 2, but bigger with a lot more eras?" I think I remember reading a magazine preview of that and thinking it sounded awesome even though I hadn't played Age of Empires.

 

In a certain aspect, yes, however - it also was a try to mix Age of Empires 2 with some civ elements, much like Rise of Nations, plus a zoom and camera controls that resemble to a Total War game (in sense that you could look very close to your units).

 

I tried to play again sometime ago...but, while the overall game still holds, the visual didn´t aged well, when I first played been able to look so close to units and the game effect was impressive, now just feel quite bad. Also, the game had like gazillion eras, but many of them felt like filler, like the prehistoric ones, where you kind had nothing to do but try, fast as you can, get away from them. Other eras just felt redundant. However, Empire Earth had some future eras with some very Battle Tech/Mech Warrior like mechs. The game sequels didn´t appeared to match the original game, I played the demo for Empire Earth 2 and felt begin too close to RoN and the third game was kind a disaster.

 

I am curious, because I think, this is the second or more time, I heard someone complain about Battle for Middle Earth, I don´t remember the reviews from the game, so what happened? I did it enjoyed the first game, despite each unique map begin followed by lots of very generic ones. The second game was better in many aspects, but missed how you could no longer put units atop of walls.

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One thing about some crpg in the 90, was that many of them often tried to be also total conversion of tabletop systems to computer, which often caused more problem, as developers didn´t think much what actually meant to adapt something to play in tabletop with a GM to a computer. The result was over complex character creation system in this games, where half of the things don´t even worked or had to be cut off. The Realms of Arkania trilogy is a poster child for this, begin adapted from a german rpg system, the game had lots and lots of skills and spells that simple didn´t worked or had absolute no use at all (but you don´t know that... specially back there, without better access to internet). Per example, you could have character training in things like horse riding... except there is absolute no horses in the game! and you had no way of knowing this or that maybe that there was another skill that actually you need....like later part in some of the games, you had to have someone which know to read...something which you likely never need or used in the game until that moment.

 

One curious case of a game, which by all standards, others might have done it better but still holds really well was Shining Force II, a very good jrpg tatical game with a lot of charm.

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I have a recent example of "reverse" nostalgia?

I never felt "the Force" with Supreme Commander, when it came out. I was too unexperienced as a "strategy gamer", too dumb to understand the mechanics or too overwhelmed with the unit count and too bored by the visual design. But after all the recent Ashes of the Singularity hype, I installed Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance and ... cannot stop playing it!

It just took years of training with other games, to make me appreciate the thing, I missed out on. Equally, watching Korean Starcraft 2 Pro League made me a better player, going back to Starcraft 1, which I still play. It's not 'nostalgia', if you're still playing the old(er) games, is it...?

I guess, it's only 'nostalgia' if your vivid memories of sleepless nights are stronger than the game itself? Which means, you had time to make a memento 'selfie', looking down on yourself, while playing - not paying attention to the units in front of you?!

 

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A couple points on specific games mentioned, based on playing them in the last two years.

 

Daggerfall

Surprisingly, even with the terrible graphics, highly confusing and tedious plot dungeons, and goofy mechanics, this is a lot more fun to play than you'd think.  Why?

* If you switch into mouselook mode the interface is fairly functional tolerable.

* The regional criminal reputation system and chaotic store looting was Skyrim/GTA emergent gameplay long before that was a thing.

* It's incredibly fast paced.  In contrast to say, Skyrim, you can clear out most randomally generated dungeons in 15 minutes.

* Flying your horse around never stops being funny.

* The skill system is not quite as good as Morrowind's, but it's so arcadey, simple, and fast-paced leveling you get a constant series of significant upgrades.

 

Imperialism I

* The basic design is still fine, but the interface is total agony.  There is no way to close all the popup windows except clicking the upper right corner, which will give you carpal tunnel in a hurry.

 

Imperialism II

* It's still just as great as the day it was released.  Well, not the graphics, you know what I mean.

* The things that really stick out is how it was from the days before focus testing and careful balancing.  About half of the technologies are completely useless, for example.  The technology dependency chain is painfully complex.

* More thoughts.

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I'm sorry but I have to disagree with what Rob said about Steel Panthers. The game is still being actively developed and update by the Camo Workshop and, in my opinion, it holds up extremely well up to this day.

Rob complained about the turn resolution length, but that's a complaint I don't understand, coming from him. Can't that be said for ALL TBS hex-and-counter games? Besides, WinSPWWII has extensive options to speed up AI turn resolution. It also has an option to speed up artillery phase. Honestly, Rob's comments irked me because all of his points against the game are moot, in my opinion, and I feel they don't do the game justice.

Even the graphics are not THAT bad, compared to standard hex-and-counter fare (the paid version sold by Shrapnel scales nicely to my desktop resolution).

 

I know I sound like SP's mom here... But the game has a level of care, dev support (a new update just came out), customizability and sheer replay value that you don't often see in this day and age...

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

Otherwise, great show as usual, and thanks for another brilliant episode to help me trudge through my workday, Mr. Zacny!

 

yeah, i have found Rob's comment about Steel Panthers strange too. Maybe he just doesnt know about winspmbt/winsppww?

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I'm so happy that I finally go to hear Activision/Pandemic's 1998 Battlezone mentioned, well, anywhere. That was a game that captured both me and my childhood best friend to an almost embarrassing degree where we would spend hours drawing comics based on the game featuring us as pilots on the side of the NDSF. As young as we were I'm not entirely sure we grasped the mechanics to a great degree beyond building a big posse of space tanks and leading them straight into the face of whoever opposed us, but when it came to the theme it completely had me hooked. There sense of wonder and mystery I felt when I explored planets and satellites I knew existed in the solar system hasn't been matched since, and the "Soviet Threat" worked great even for someone who born the same year that the Berlin Wall fell.

 

I did try going back a few years back, but found myself struggling with some mouse sensitivity issues that made it impossible to basically turn around at all. Hearing that Rebellion has plans to HD-ify the original has me very interested though. A playable, slightly prettier version of the original could hit the sweet spot just right for me.

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I'm so happy that I finally go to hear Activision/Pandemic's 1998 Battlezone mentioned, well, anywhere.

 

For what it's worth, http://store.steampowered.com/app/414770/ is an attempt to make something clearly inspired by Battlezone. "Bionite Origins"; it was originally on Kickstarter a couple of years back.  Not sure whether it's playable yet, but it seems to be on Steam greenlight...

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Does anyone have any suggestions for a game that would scratch the same itch as Warlords 3, probably specifically the Darklords Rising expansion. I don't recall it changing the game significantly, but I remember enjoying the campaign a lot, and it having a whole bunch of both custom and developer made scenarios. For me, the Warlords series was wonderful light mix of wargame and strategy elements. Battle for Wesnoth is great, but lacking all economic management aspects it's a vastly different things. HOMM-likes live and die with the tactical battles, and are greatly slowed by them as well. And anything real-time is not turn-based.

 

Warlords 4 is, at least in my rather vague memories, vastly inferior.

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A nice, albeit somewhat melancholy episode from my perspective.  As I type, I look into a cabinet of games, some of which were mentioned in this episode.  Many of them have sat patiently collecting dust over the years, but I've always held in the back of my mind that someday I would find the time again to enjoy them more fully.  Maybe the reunion won't really be all that enjoyable after all.  C'est la vie.  

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Does anyone have any suggestions for a game that would scratch the same itch as Warlords 3, probably specifically the Darklords Rising expansion. I don't recall it changing the game significantly, but I remember enjoying the campaign a lot, and it having a whole bunch of both custom and developer made scenarios. For me, the Warlords series was wonderful light mix of wargame and strategy elements. Battle for Wesnoth is great, but lacking all economic management aspects it's a vastly different things. HOMM-likes live and die with the tactical battles, and are greatly slowed by them as well. And anything real-time is not turn-based.

 

Warlords 4 is, at least in my rather vague memories, vastly inferior.

 

I only played Warlords 4 and if you want something like it but better then you can't go wrong with Age of Wonders 3. Campaign is OK, but is artificially limited - you won't have many mechanics like item crafting or custom heroes there. There are nice scenarios and, most importantly, very powerful random map generator. I have to say maps look very beautiful. Endless Legend is a similar game with much bigger focus on economy and dimplomacy, but maps there are random mash of things; AoW3 creates worlds. 

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I only played Warlords 4 and if you want something like it but better then you can't go wrong with Age of Wonders 3. Campaign is OK, but is artificially limited - you won't have many mechanics like item crafting or custom heroes there. There are nice scenarios and, most importantly, very powerful random map generator. I have to say maps look very beautiful. Endless Legend is a similar game with much bigger focus on economy and dimplomacy, but maps there are random mash of things; AoW3 creates worlds. 

 

Age of Wonders 3 has tactical battles, right? In my mind that kind of disqualifies it from filling the same role as Warlords series. Still, Age of Wonders 3 might be worth visiting all on it's own.

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Age of Wonders 3 has tactical battles, right? In my mind that kind of disqualifies it from filling the same role as Warlords series. Still, Age of Wonders 3 might be worth visiting all on it's own.

 

Ah, I din't quite understand you don't want tactical battles. AoW3 differs from HoMM in tactical battle length and "smart" system of quickbattles - by default every battle game asks if you want to autoresolve it and tells you chances of winning. Unlike HoMM game doesn't feel empty when you pass most battles. Battles themselves tend to be quick unless it's a multi-army attack on some city - then it drags on. And it'd be hard to win if you haven't tried those troops in smaller battles.

 

You may want to look at Warlock 2. It features empire building and "strategic" battles. Everything is fought on overworld map. If you seen Civilization 5 it's very similar idea, but the game has sort-of story mode (not quite a campaign but the enemy is strong but passive, throws various challenges at you and just waits for you to come), interesting spells (including terraforming - create mountains for tactical checkpoint or raise land from the sea to have more fertile land for your cities). If you've played old Panzer General/Fantasy General/Panzer Corps games then it's like this plus cities, spells and artifacts.

 

I wouldn't say it's a great game but it's fun enough. Perhaps it'd suite your tastes better even though AoW3 is overally a better game. 

 

Then there's Endless Legend. Optional, quick and simple tactical battles - but it's certainly not a wargame. Like in Civilization, you can win without fighting any major war, some factions can easily do it without fighting at all. It's much more about empire building, diplomacy, research and so on.

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