What game should I get?

**Lorenzo_H** · 08-03-2007, 08:39

Company of Heroes is so hard to get a hold of. I ordered it from Amazon in May. Here I am in August, and it still hasn't come. I am going to have to buy it from a store.

Has anyone mentioned Civ IV yet? Civ IV is a must for everyone.

**econ21** · 08-03-2007, 12:42

Originally Posted by Lorenzo_H

Has anyone mentioned Civ IV yet? Civ IV is a must for everyone.

But not for the laptop the OP mentioned. CivIV is very demanding in specs for a strategy game.

**Ja'chyra** · 08-03-2007, 15:59

I've got Civ IV and it plays quite well on the laptop but I was looking for something that is more city orientated than world and that you can fight the battles.

**Blodrast** · 08-03-2007, 21:55

Originally Posted by Ja'chyra

I've got Civ IV and it plays quite well on the laptop but I was looking for something that is more city orientated than world and that you can fight the battles.

Hmm, how about the old UFO X-COM 1 & 2 ? No problem with specs there, and you do get base management (not that much, but still - there's a ton of research to do, designing bases specialized for research/manufacturing/engineering), and of course there's the battles.

There was also Seven Kingdoms, IIRC, or Knights & Merchants (I think there's K&M 2 out there, but never played it, only the first one), both of which have some city management and there's the battles of course.

About the HOMM series.
The fans are kinda divided into 2 camps: some that think homm3 was too cheesy/obsolete, and the (considerable) changes that homm4 brought were great, and some who think homm3 is the core of the series, and homm4 is completely messed up.
There's some people in between the two extremes, but not that many. It all comes down to personal taste, in the end.

You WILL be able to play homm5 on your laptop. I've played it on a desktop with a P4/1.8GHz, 512 RAM and a GF4 MX440/64 megs. It's not smooth or great, and I don't remember the settings (they were either on high, or medium, I can't recall, but it looked more than decent. I *think* they were on high.) It played absolutely fine, sometimes it'd choke up for half a second while dragging the minimap around too much, but very much playable.
Now whether you'll like it or not, that's a completely different ball game. Homm5 was developed by Nival/Ubisoft, after NWC (who developed the rest of the franchise) went belly up. So you may notice that the game is ... different from the rest of them.

Personally, I think that homm3 is excellent, and I think that *some* of the things that homm4 brought are very good - but not all. homm3 probably has some of the best campaigns in the series (at least to my taste), but the homm4 ones are pretty good too.

One more thing - since you got the homm games, check out celestialheavens, they have a lot of fan-made maps/campaigns, some of which are very, very good. But I'd start with the campaigns first, if you haven't played the series before; then, when you get bored, you can play the fan-made maps, they are usually much better than the scenarios that come with the games.

**econ21** · 08-04-2007, 02:57

Originally Posted by Blodrast

The fans are kinda divided into 2 camps: some that think homm3 was too cheesy/obsolete, and the (considerable) changes that homm4 brought were great, and some who think homm3 is the core of the series, and homm4 is completely messed up.
There's some people in between the two extremes, but not that many. It all comes down to personal taste, in the end.

Um, I am not sure it is personal taste. The HommIV strategic AI is plain broken. Most scenarios, the AI just does not fight you. Its heroes die against random monsters, fail to flag resources or muster significant armies. This is in marked contrast to Homm3, which has very good AI.

The Homm4 battlefield AI is fine and I really like the hero character development system & better balancing of spells. But those virtues - like the pretty graphics - just makes the fact that it is a broken game more painful.

The other big plus for Homm3 is pace - it romps along at a fine rate so you can play a big scenario in an evening. Homm4 drags a bit; something Homm5 suffers from too - I blame the graphics.

**Blodrast** · 08-04-2007, 06:24

Originally Posted by econ21

Um, I am not sure it is personal taste. The HommIV strategic AI is plain broken. Most scenarios, the AI just does not fight you. Its heroes die against random monsters, fail to flag resources or muster significant armies. This is in marked contrast to Homm3, which has very good AI.

The Homm4 battlefield AI is fine and I really like the hero character development system & better balancing of spells. But those virtues - like the pretty graphics - just makes the fact that it is a broken game more painful.

The other big plus for Homm3 is pace - it romps along at a fine rate so you can play a big scenario in an evening. Homm4 drags a bit; something Homm5 suffers from too - I blame the graphics.

Well, I think we're in agreement actually. I said that some things are good about homm4, and some things are not good - I didn't go into details (I deliberately chose not to)...
In my previous post I mentioned three groups of people and their opinions - I didn't give my personal opinion (I tried to avoid that as much as possible). Ja'chyra is free to make up his own mind, I tried to be as objective as possible.

As far as my personal tastes are concerned, again, I think there are good things, and I think there are bad things in homm4, and some of them get down to the personal preference level (e.g., the spell system, or the graphics, hero classes and specializations and skills). Some, as you say, are indeed objectively good or bad (e.g., lack of strategic AI).

**TinCow** · 08-05-2007, 17:43

IMO, the HOMM series reached its pinnacle with the HOMM3 Shadow of Death campaigns. The combo artifacts you get for the Lich hero are simply amazing. It's fun assembling them and stomping the world flat with them. Then it's fun defeating him with other combo artifacts!