Lorenzo il Magnifico
I will freely admit that Lorenzo is a favorite board game. In Pre-Covid times I would beg my game group to bring it to the table. While this implementation of the game digitally had a rocky start, it’s now settled in as an elegant rendition of a very complicated game. In particular, the AI is finally modestly competitive…but very modestly… I play this game most often after a loss on Yukata or BGA…because it soothes my ego to have a reliable victory.
But the real reason for my “yes” recommendation is that I live in hope of finding a live human being to play this with. For months, I’ve hit the lobby at various times of day in the vain hope of finding a game I can join. So ] far just crickets. I just know I can’t be the only person who bought this game. I figure if I write a review, maybe someone will tell me where you’re all hiding.
– Real player with 217.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Turn-Based Strategy Board Game Games.
A nice digital adaptation of a great boardgame. If you’re not familiar with the actual boardgame you will have to follow the complete tutorial and then still have some trial and errors (the tutorial lacks a bit in dept concerning strategie, unless you want to read a lot of text in the glossary), but looking for great ways to score and learning to improve your game is actually something that makes this game a hidden jewel.
In a game of Lorenzo il Magnifico you will try to earn points by gaining buildings, assets, … (the parts shown in the big building on the right) and by gaining papal approvement (this is not obligated, but failing the pope gives you some kind of penalty).
– Real player with 32.5 hrs in game
Pollute & Conquer
A strategy about ecology, where players can capture territory and build different buildings; And the choice between green and polluting buildings is important and affects both the world and the interaction between players. If both players make mistakes, then the world dies and both players lose.
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CAPTURE TERRITORY
Buy neutral or enemy cells for the accumulated resources of money or influence. Surround the enemy or go to the other side of the map. Choose and purchase cells with the most profitable terrain: river, forest, desert, hill, snow, ocean.
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BUILD BUILDINGS
Build buildings suitable for specific terrain, using the bonuses or disadvantages of each of them. Adapt to your opponent’s strategy. Build polluting, neutral, or cleaning buildings that use different resources: coal, oil, river flow, nuclear, sun, wind, fusion power, or hydrocarbon cleaning.
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DEVELOP TECHNOLOGIES
Upgrade technologies of different buildings. Use coal with less pollution for the world. Learn to obtain solar energy more profitably than coal. Cleanse the world with advanced hydrocarbon capture technologies. Or open a new era of thermonuclear energy.
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POLLUTE AND CLEANSE
Use the wealth from coal and oil usage, getting rich at an incredible speed, despite the world’s disasters that destroy you and your enemy. Or cleanse the world so you don’t die and gain massive influence.
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CONTEST
Earn as much money and influence as possible to win. Survive the most difficult situations by finding counter-strategies against your opponent. Deal with global pollution. Or take advantage of the world’s chaos from pollution to disrupt the enemy’s plans and capture them.
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PLAY WITH FRIENDS
Play with friends on the same device as a board game. The game provides great opportunities for a complete competition, using many different strategies and adaptations for the map, enemy actions, and disasters.
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DEFEAT EVERY AI
The game has several levels of AI difficulty from the easiest for beginners who started acquainting with the world of strategies, to the most difficult for hardcore players who want to test their skills. Can you pass them all?
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CHOOSE GAME TIME
Choose a map size from several options from a small map for 15-20 minutes to a large one for 40-60 minutes.
WORLD
Long ago, people believed that our world lays on 3 elephants that stand on a giant turtle. Those people were wrong about 2 things:
First - There are no elephants. That is silly. There is only the Turtle.
Second - Our world is just a planet, but there is another beautiful place wandering space, that is similar to Earth and rests on the Turtle.
An unprecedented economic war for territories and resources flares up on the turtle.
Will it and all life on it die in the chaos of pollution?
Or will intelligent beings come to their senses and prevent the end of the world by developing new technologies?
Pollute and Conquer, compromise and cleanse.
Read More: Best Turn-Based Strategy Resource Management Games.
Age of Wonders: Planetfall
This game is easily one of the best newer strategy games (i.e. 4X style game) currently available for single player in my opinion, period. I’ve had a lot of time to try several of these sorts of games that are considered the top games in the category lately. Civ, Total War games, Stellaris, Endless Legend, the list goes on, but I always come back to this one.
NOTE: Many of the reviews for this game were from when the game was released, since then they did a massive update that re-balanced the game and overhauled several mechanics. A lot of the comments in negative reviews were from a year+ ago using the old mechanics. This game is being actively improved / patched as of Oct 2020 from what I’ve seen and they’re still releasing an expansion.
– Real player with 1901.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Turn-Based Strategy 4X Games.
As the game is now, I do not recommend it.
I played the entire series extensively, over 4.000 hours over all titles of the series, for me personally, they changed things that were good about the game, and kept things that were bad about it.
City Siege
The first thing that is really noticeable and changes the dynamic of sieges entirely, they removed gates from city walls, those were replaced by militias and defensive towers, however these militias don’t have mods, and you can’t aim the towers, so any other troop that attacks the city will be stronger.
– Real player with 1383.1 hrs in game
OIL PATCH SIMULATIONS
i have been playing the game for several months now. there are no problems with this game. everything works properly. technical support is outstanding. i had a problem starting the game because of my system setup is unique and the game itself gives you info on how to contact support. an impressive first for me. the game tells you what is wrong with it and how to fix it. nice. simple fix takes seconds just enter a special code and it fixes itself to work on my system. never heard of that before. top notch game support.
– Real player with 68.2 hrs in game
so it says to purge drill rigs to relocate and various other commands that do not have options associated with them. how exactly does this work? do i write my own script to implement these dynamics that supposedly exist or do i just accept the fact that the game is not only broken but not even complete?
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
Ozymandias: Bronze Age Empire Sim
If you’re interested in Ozymandias, please wishlist, follow us and download the demo! :)
At the dawn of history, Bronze Age kings built the first empires. Strategize their rise to power in a uniquely streamlined 4X.
DISTILLED DESIGN
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Focus on strategy over tactics, we’ve stripped the busywork out of 4X gameplay.
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Combat abstracted via innovative Power system so you need only move armies and fleets.
HISTORICAL MAPS
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8 handmade maps charting Bronze Ages around the world, empires in real-world locations.
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Empires are tagged from ‘Easy’ to ‘Very Hard’ to reflect their unique challenges.
COMPETITIVE AI
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Data-driven AI system, flexible enough to succeed in any environment.
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Streamlined ruleset is inherently AI-friendly so no ‘AI cheating’ required.
MULTIPLAYER
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Players take their turns simultaneously so there’s no waiting around.
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Choose to play ‘live’ (short turn timers) or ‘asynchronous’ (long game timers).
Shogun’s Empire: Hex Commander
I enjoy the relative simplicity of this game. Basically comes down to how effectively you can utilize counters (spears vs cavalry, swords vs spears, guns against samurai, samurai against ashigaru, etc.) Gets repetitive after playing through several campaigns, so replay value is limited.
– Real player with 83.7 hrs in game
~~Cannot save games without cloud save. I cannot recommend a game that requires online saves and will not save locally.
Other than not being able to save games without cloud save this game is a nice light turn base.~~
I was mistaken, thanks to Homenetgames for responding. Once you start the game up again and select the region you have an in-progress game in it will let you continue where you left off.
I recommend this game if you’re interested in a casual turn based strategy. I think I’ll have many hours of enjoyment (usually while multitasking).
– Real player with 32.1 hrs in game
Slipways
Okay so I’ve only played this for 28 hours. I might review this again at 250 hours and start a class action against Gabe for wasting my time. As it stands now this is my cup of tea. I like Euro games with a flow. Normally with a few people to balance the strategising. This is a solo game but captures the dynamic feeling of adjusting on the fly.
EVERYTHING IS IN FRONT OF YOU
You can connect the dots from the start or you can make incredibly predictive strategic placements to backfill.
I am not interested in games that make me go look at an Excel spreadsheet just so I can play. This game has all of it inside the game in an amazing way. Its inbuilt instructional tab is an exemplary way to get people rolling with all the components they need to know. Come back to this after a few runs and fill the gaps you missed.
– Real player with 57.1 hrs in game
SUMMARY: A must-buy streamlined space-empire management game that’s easy to play, challenginghas surprising depth, and plenty of game modes. The kind of game you can play in an hour - or constantly.
Slipways is a game of space-empire management that is so streamlined it approaches being a puzzle game. Yes, there’s exploring, tech trees, and more. But boiled down to basics, you get both the click-of-idea thrill of a puzzle game AND the fun of managing your space empire. The combination is heady, fun - and challenging.
– Real player with 49.5 hrs in game
My Business
It’s a clicker game.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
The game is interesting and good. Not everything is as easy as in real life. The game is super for your money.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Automobile Tycoon
Well… it’s not bad… but it’s not good.
I’ve burned quite a few hours in it, and keep coming back because I’m a car junky, but when I want that fix, I’m more often reaching for Automation, Gear City, or Production Line, and honestly I still prefer running Detroit in DOSBox, which this is supposed to be a spiritual successor of (it doesn’t catch the same magic though)
This is a decent spreadsheet simulator (turn off the inflation, or you’ll spend all your time micromanaging prices because costs spiral quickly but there’s no option to scale the selling price with inflation) but it isn’t really a car game. You could replace the products you’re making with just about anything, and change the R&D tree. Feels like it was built to be modular but then didn’t take off so they didn’t push it out with other assets.
– Real player with 43.4 hrs in game
It is an enjoyable game. It provides different starting conditions which provide longevity. The drawback is that it does not provide clear cut challenges and it feels more like a big sandbox, which should explain some of the earlier bad critics. If you have no need for step by step challenges (like objectives or do this and that), you will find this a very nice game.
I personally dislike these step-based gameplay, where the game leads you through specific paths. so this game is my piece of cake.
– Real player with 42.0 hrs in game
Handball Manager 2021
Awesome game! Finally a good handball game, especially at times, when we can’t play real handball.
It’s fun to progress with your favourite club and create a team of all your favoutire players. You also learn a lot about managing / coaching a real club / team.
Unfortunately it only has the real players for German, Spanish and Czech leagues, but with the editor mode, the community can create the other teams. I will share a data set including all Championsleague teams as soon as I’m done.
There are still some little bugs and crashes in the game, but only one week after sending a bug report, most of them were already fixed.
– Real player with 184.6 hrs in game
The best handball simulator on the market! Although, to be fair, that’s sadly not saying much when looking at the handball games available currently.
The game offers all the options that one could want from being a handball coach. Additionally, the ability to customize your experience through the editor certaintely gives the game a lot more depth and replayability.
However, there are notable flaws. This mainly has to do with the sometimes poor English grammar as well as the fairly outdated graphics - both of these aspects really take you out of the experience. I have also experienced a few crashes from time to time which has resulted in a bit of loss in my game progression. Lastly, the lack of certain official team licenses as well as the sometimes seemingly inconsistent match simulation are also worth noting.
– Real player with 55.4 hrs in game