Medieval/fantasy strategy games...

[Simon Charles]

I'm in the mood for slow-paced gameplay. I'm looking for medieval/fantasy games where there's a map, territories to control, alliances to be made, diplomacy, etc. Something like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. I tried Total War Medieval and I hated it. The combat was too complicated for me.

Anyone got suggestions? I remember an old game from Sierra where you had to allocate peons and milk women to farms, where you had to rotate crops on patches of land, move infantry on roads, etc. There might also have been a fantasy spin-off of that with a night/day cycle, I'm not sure.

Even old classics like Disciples 2, would anyone recommend those? I missed out on them when they came out. Anything, as long as the graphics aren't too ugly and the combat doesn't have a list of 36 keys to bind. Anything turned-based or slow enough to take my time. Not too complicated. Simple, casual fun.

[Daveman]

Did you try the tutorial for Medieval? It's really rather simple when you get the fundamental rock-paper-scissors nature of it down, and if you want to just send all your men in and watch them hack each other to death you'll still likely win. If you're just not interested that's fine, but it captures the atmosphere of the period and everything well.

Try Europa Universalis. It's like Total War but I believe it's without the directly-controlled combat.

[Echo Black]

Caesar III.

[Simon Charles]

Yeah, Total War's learning curve was way too steep for me. I was looking for something a bit more arcadey than that.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I'll look them up.

In addition, I found these things :

http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/lords-of-the-realm-series

And this, apparently a sleeper hit :

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/disciples-ii-gold-edition


Guess I'll have to go with Disciples since it's on Steam. Lord of the Realm and Lord of Magic are impossible to find anymore.

[Wamplet]

I liked Knights of Honor the best.

It has a mostly West Europe map, but with parts of North Africa and eastern europe, too.

You don't really control individuals, just up to 7 or 9 knights and you can assign duties to them. I normally had most as generals so they could fight.

You get to have diplomatic ties and such and when you fight other roaming armies, it changes from the world/map view to a typical isometric RTS battleview, like Empire Earth or Age of Empires. I almost never played the battle from the Isometric view. I just auto fought, because i wasn't really interested in micromanaging my soliders in battle. Just send 2 of your Knights in battle on the world view and you will win just about every time.



It is probably quite cheap as well.

I got mine from gogamer.com (UK/US Import)


The company was formerly Black Sea Studios, now Crytek something, i believe, so I am not sure what happened to the old website.

It has some pretty good replay value, because you can play to win the game various ways:

total map conquer
voted as world emporer
collect a certain amount of rare trade goods, via conquest/diplomacy
May be another game mode.


Sadly, there was no co-op game mode, which would have really been fun.
I think there was multiplay, but i think it only let you do the isometric battles and that was it. no world conquest mode, from what i remember.


The Guild 2 was pretty interesting, but it really isn't much of a strategy game in what you are probably looking for. It requires cunning and strategy, but the conquest is at quite a smaller level, as you control individuals and focus in between 2 or 3 towns. the replay value is there, but it can still seem repetitive, due to there only being so much you can do.