First love was Ascendency.

Just for experimenting not for fighting. I know the AI wasn't 'good'.

But the possibility to see your population grow displayed by a 'growing plant' was supurb. Same for the industry not hammers but an industry complex. It was not displayed in numbers but in a fotopicture of a growing industrycomplex. You have to see it to understand it. Same for the music supurb.

The desinign of spaceships the different alliens the posibility to trow a ship back in to a spacelane. Just the tip of the Iceberg. You could shoot back from a planet to destroy a spaceship. You could cloak and shield your planet.

Only the micromanagement.   

The best way of to describe ascendency is 'gamedesign' 'lessons' forgotten.
In no other game the tech tree was in 3d and It was possible to see the thing you want to get and turn the tech tree 360. I know it is hard to describe those things it's just that most of the good things of ascendency were visual. No eye candy just visuals to help you to understand the game.


The most 'complete' TBS game.

Sid MEIER'S ALPHA CENTAURI

a.k.a (SMAC) Created by Brian Rennolds.

It is perfect. Every faction play's different. Good story. The possibility to change and desingn your units. The ability to change your game world in every possible way. And a lot more things I don't mention. If you change your ettics you change the way the game react on you. (More polution, Money, enz)

The only sad thing is that CIV 4 isn't so perfect. I would pay for a remake of the graphics of SMAC. Not for the gameplay or gamemechanics because those are already perfect. Just Smac in a CIV 4 engine.

Te most fun is to hear when your netwerk node is finished. Remember an army peleton singing 'You just got a network node'. Immersion

I played SMAC the sad thing is when I play CIV 4 I miss some features of SMAC in Civ 4.

Civ 4 is just no SMAC.

GC I actually. I was more of a RPG type. Favorite game of all time though is still Smash TV (Arcade) and Shadow Run (Sega Genesis).

My first TBS addiction was probably the P.T.O. series on Genesis and later Saturn, but I did have one I played alot back on a 386. Can't remember the name, but Advance Wars on GBA reminds me of it.

Great to see another Shadowrun Fan Fuels Chief. That's one of my all time favorites, still play it with an emulator on PC and still have the cartridge.

Reach for the Stars (I still have it, I could play it if I had a Hercules or CGA graphics card)

Ultima II, III, IV

Deathlord

Civilization

Spaceward Ho

Axis and Allies

Genghis Kahn (Nintendo) That wierd chinese game, Genghis Khan on the pc. Used to play it hot seat, 15 of us after roleplaying till some really sad time in the morning, drinking beer. Those were the days...

Is it the game "Genghis Khan" by "Koei"?

This was my first love, too!
Shortly after it was "Battle Isle"... maybe that's why I love hexes forever.


First obsessive love: Civilization 2

Greatest love ever: Master of Orion 2

Most recent love: Age of Wonders - Shadow Magic

Longest lasting love: Panzer General


The role of GalCivII is not yet determined. By now it has just been a little affair, but with DA it might become a true love...   

Squad Leader

Still got the original boxed game (+ Cross of Iron, + Crescendo of Doom, + GI: Anvil of Victory). They're all up in the loft somewhere with my 1st Ed AD&D stuff   

Now you've got me feeling old too!

Someone mentioned the old VAX Star Trek game. I did some conversion work on that, from FORTRAN to Decsystem-10 Macro to speed up the terminal IO so that the university wouldn't shut it down as a major resource hog.

My first favorite TBS game was, ummm, chess. heh.

My first TBS game, disregarding chess would be warlords. Warlords 2 was also good, and I really anjoyed ST: BOTF and Ascendancy, as mentioned by a few others here. and also the demo of imperium galactica 2.

My very first game of any sort was battle of britain, loaded by cassette on an old amstrad. i got a very early lesson on taking backups too - i always rewound the tape after loading, once i forgot to replace it when i went to save my game, no more battle of britain for me

Empire by Interstel. Though I played the text version earlier. The newest version (about a year old) is worth checking out: Empire Deluxe Enhanced Edition (highly moddable--lots of new units) http://killerbeesoftware.com/ Try the demo Bryce

I still have have it on a 720 k 3.5 disk.

Great game, I still remember one game that took 1500 turns to finish at the cost of 50 battle ships over 3000 armies and who knows how many fighters, destroyers etc.

First love was Ascendency. Just for experimenting not for fighting. I know the AI wasn't 'good'. But the possibility to see your population grow displayed by a 'growing plant' was supurb. Same for the industry not hammers but an industry complex. It was not displayed in numbers but in a fotopicture of a growing industrycomplex. You have to see it to understand it. Same for the music supurb. The desinign of spaceships the different alliens the posibility to trow a ship back in to a spacelane. Just the tip of the Iceberg. You could shoot back from a planet to destroy a spaceship. You could cloak and shield your planet. Only the micromanagement. The best way of to describe ascendency is 'gamedesign' 'lessons' forgotten. In no other game the tech tree was in 3d and It was possible to see the thing you want to get and turn the tech tree 360. I know it is hard to describe those things it's just that most of the good things of ascendency were visual. No eye candy just visuals to help you to understand the game.

Ascendancy wasn't TBS (Turn-Based Strategy). It had variable time-flow, and was thus technically a Real-Time Strategy.

The same was true for another game that was among my first strategy games (it was pretty unique, too). It was called Millenium: Return to Earth. It involved starting out on the Moon and trying to expand out throughout the Sol System while seeking out a way to return Earth to a paradise, all the while fending off invaders. It was slow, it was painful at times... but it was interesting.

At the very start is perhaps the hardest part, because resources are so scarce and you need to find a way to get just enough resources to actually build a solar power plant for your moon base in order to power systems beyond what the auxiliary battery can support (which is practically nothing).

Anyway... I suppose BattleTech: Crescent Hawk's Inception is among my first TBS. I really can't remember too far back, but I have been playing games since I was able to. Apple IIc and Atari 2800 were my first computers, so make assumptions on first games based on that, as there's only so much I remember from then.

Wargame Construction Set - MobyGames

Man... I remember having a poster of this game in my bedroom. It was fun to mess with. According to the release date, though, I was only 3 when it was out!

Man, what a trip down memory lane! At the risk of seriously dating myself,

Neglecting chess/checkers/and the myriad of card games I learned @ my mother's knee, (up to and including Pinochle and Canasta - Bridge came later) my first love TBS had to be the Avalon Hill wargames like Blitzkrieg, Panzer Blitz, Midway, D-Day, Jutland (MAJOR floor space needed for that one!), 1914 (the original - even tho replacing counters to reflect damaged units was a PITA), etc. Still remember having to set up and play down in the basement - for some reason my mother objected to having a game covering the dining room table a couple of days at a time    (was only able to play after school and weekends).

As far as computers, Star Trek was a major diverter of time in college (BASIC version on IBM 360 - I think I still have the deck of ~ 2000 cards with the program on it somewhere....)

When I finally got around to getting a PC for myself, I started in on the Microprose wargames like Panzer, Pacific and Space Generals. Still play Space General every once in a great while. Unfortuantely I lost the 1.1 patch and haven't had any luck finding it again....

X-Com: Enemy Unkown. That was the first game I fell in love with, I used to dream about it when I eventually fell asleep after player it for hours on end.

X-Com owned all kinds of awesomeness. I'm still a major fan and wish for Atari to somehow revive it, and revive it properly - as they're the ones that currently own the licence, technically - even though it's been over 10 years since UFO Defence/Enemy Unknown (it's from '94/'95).

When I finally got around to getting a PC for myself, I started in on the Microprose wargames like Panzer, Pacific and Space Generals. Still play Space General every once in a great while. Unfortuantely I lost the 1.1 patch and haven't had any luck finding it again....

Don't you mean Strategic Simulations, Inc.?