The worst strategy games ever made

[spectre]

^
Brigade E5 was a prime example of ruskie coding typical to 1C and Akella. You basically had to learn how to play it, and play it the right way, otherwise you would see yourself trying to paddle up shit creek (I had the same with Cities of Abandoned Ships, neat Pirates game the right modes, but damn it was rough around the edges). But the actual RTWP gunplay wasn't that bad, I found it to be good enough to fogive it some of its flaws, but yeah, the game played like a beta.

Myth 3 I think had the problem that Myth 1 set so high a bar and was so well thought out. It's been some time since I last played the series, but I recall Myth 2 wasn't that spectacular either, some maps were quite rubbish, like that one that used the barebones heightmap from Omaha beach landing.

M2TW was bad, but ETW was objectively more of a shitshow on release and even after patches it remains one of the weakest TW titles. Shogun II was also a bugfest but it manages to be entertaining. In my view ETW and R2TW are tied for some of the most disastrous releases by CA.

Not going to contest that. Though I believe its the strategic layer makes or breaks a TW game for me. It worked the best when it was simplified and boardgamey. The switch to 3D map in Rome was tolerable, as I could see a few benefits that tried to make up for the obvious disadvantages. At around Empire, the strategic layer became utterly unreadable to me, all riddled with shitty +5% to this, +1% to that modifiers, I would sorta, kinda get my bearings only because it was still Europe.
I remember it all started with Medieval 2 and all the pointless merchants, pincesses, priests, heretics, witches littering the countryside for you to babysit. This is perhaps why Shogun 2 was so tolerable to me, it kept some of the complexity (and some of the shit), but managed to clean this up somewhat.

Not saying that MTW2 should contest Empire as the shittiest total war out there, but for me the drop in quality started just there - unneeded complexity, failure to teach the AI how to work the game mechanics (castles vs. towns), utterly broken releases. It's like they were trying too hard to to get a slice of the Paradox pie, while compromising their core gameplay. And then came Empire, and the engine switch managed to take a steaming shit on the battles. Yay creative assembly.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Etherlords - HoMM + Magic: the Gathering, fails in both. The HoMM part is extremely bare-bones and feels like a chore, MtG is your army/deckbuilding and combat, the basics are alright but in practice most opponents start with life much higher than you and if the game goes longer you start getting damage each turn, so there goes a lot of possible strategies, also decks are small and have no limit on how many of one card you can use so it's basically about stuffing your deck with as many copies of a few broken cards as possible.

Disciples 3 - some weird hybrid between earlier Disciples and HoMM, doesn't really feel like Disciples anymore, doesn't come close to the good HoMM games, is just miserable to play compared to D1/2 or HoMM. Also looks like crap.

Lords of Magic was alright. Poorly balanced and buggy but has some neat stuff rarely seen in games like it and cool music.

 

[Galdred]

Not saying that MTW2 should contest Empire as the shittiest total war out there, but for me the drop in quality started just there - unneeded complexity, failure to teach the AI how to work the game mechanics (castles vs. towns), utterly broken releases. It's like they were trying too hard to to get a slice of the Paradox oue, while compromising their core gameplay. And then came Empire, and the engine switch managed to take a steaming shit on the battles. Yay creative assembly.

This! I think that is the main cause for the "decline" of the Total War series. They added a lot of useless micro management.
Shogun Total War 2 at least tried to tone it down a bit. I think Total Warhammer too.

 

[Filthy Sauce]

Lords of Everquest was pretty trashy. I preordered it just for a guaranteed slot in the Everquest 2 beta. I was a gay ass tart back then.

 

[Whisky]

Ya'll faggots don't know shit.

This is what I got instead of Civilization as a kid:

http://www.tacticularcancer.com/article.php?id=4328

 

[Nutria]

I believe there is a limit to buildings in a city and if you go over this limit, buildings will start disappearing and you can go back to level 0 in an instant.

Okay, this might be the winner.

 

[Gersen]

Conquest Earth deserves a mention as one of the worst RTS ever.

 

[Whisky]

I believe there is a limit to buildings in a city and if you go over this limit, buildings will start disappearing and you can go back to level 0 in an instant.

Okay, this might be the winner.

This was all speculation because the manual didn't explain shit and this is a pretty obscure game.

I think if you reach a certain limit (255?), buildings start getting overwritten and I think it begins alphabetically (At least, it always seemed that way. I do know that buildings start vanishing without notice and I'm just trying to guess why.). Coincidentally, the Level 1 and Level 2 education buildings are called Athenaeum and Academy respectively, so you can see the problem. Along with the fact that if you build a new city, your civilization education level plummets to 0 and stops all research, you can see even more problems. This is also a game where you have to build housing for your citizens and there are multiple kinds, plus most buildings cost nothing to build, resulting in a fuckton of issues. I have never seen a system so ass backwards in how it handles expansion and this was the FIRST 4X game I ever played.

I think I went easy on Destiny in that article actually, looking back on it. But I don't want to create a Windows XP VM and try it out again to confirm.

 

[Nutria]

I think if you reach a certain limit (255?)

You would think that in 1996 they could afford to spend more than one byte.

this was the FIRST 4X game I ever played.

For me it was Civ 1. I don't know if that's a blessing or a curse. I've always had extremely high expectations for games to be well balanced, so I'm often disappointed. But on the other hand, if I find a pile of stinking crap I know to jump away and not waste my time on it.

 

[Elwro]

I will always remember the important lessons of Civ 1, like the one about communism eliminating all corruption!

 

[Burning Bridges]

My first game of Civ1 was the Aztecs, I conquered all of South and North America and when the Zulus kept pissing me off I eventually ended the game with mindless nuclear holocaust in Africa until there was nothing left of it.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I will always remember the important lessons of Civ 1, like the one about communism eliminating all corruption!

And from Civ IV, I learned that shifting your economy to state property increases food production!

 

[Codexlurker]

Lords of Everquest was pretty trashy. I preordered it just for a guaranteed slot in the Everquest 2 beta. I was a gay ass tart back then.

Lol I would've too. I guess I have the good fortune to avoid terrible games.

 

[the_shadow]

Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars. Part RPG and part strategy, and it didn't do either part well. I don't know how they could have messed up what should have been awesome strategy game so badly, and why it got such decent reviews. It's boring as anything.

Total War: Rome II was a let-down as well. Seems needlessly complex compared to the first one, without adding anything of value.

 

[Codexlurker]

Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars. Part RPG and part strategy, and it didn't do either part well. I don't know how they could have messed up what should have been awesome strategy game so badly, and why it got such decent reviews. It's boring as anything.

Total War: Rome II was a let-down as well. Seems needlessly complex compared to the first one, without adding anything of value.

The problem with Spellforce 2 is that they simplified things too much compared to Spellforce. The strategy part was just too dull compared to the original.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars. Part RPG and part strategy, and it didn't do either part well. I don't know how they could have messed up what should have been awesome strategy game so badly, and why it got such decent reviews. It's boring as anything.

Yeah, I forgot about this one, Spellforce 2 was miserable to play too. And it's not like the first one was amazing (in either RTS/RPG aspect) but it was sort of enjoyable when put together, the map design was such that you're doing your hero business while slowly building up your town, looking for rare resources, maybe using the hero to defend or kill enemy scouts, and eventually getting an army to support the hero so you could take on the bigger enemy camps or optional bosses. You could actually lose bases if you got careless. It mattered when your hero died. It worked. I never got far in Spellforce 2 so maybe it gets better but what I remember was: build 5 workers > mine some stuff > build barracks > now produce the same super fast cavalry unit for the rest of the map and rally point them your hero, never get attacked once. The RPG aspect got butchered too but that's a different story.

 

[thesheeep]

I agree that Spellforce 2 wasn't quite as good as the original, but worst strategy game ever?
That's beyond absurd.

 

[mbv123]

CnC 4
Empire Earth 3

 

[Blonsky]

I remember Golden Horde being really bad, and that other game by the same studio Ancient Wars: Sparta wasnt much better.

 

[Arrowgrab]

I will always remember the important lessons of Civ 1, like the one about communism eliminating all corruption!

Point of order: it didn't. What it did was spread it all around so all cities had the same amount.

 

[Elwro]

Whoa, apologies

 

[Silva]

I never could appreciate any Civ game at all for the simple fact that their AI is driven by a code that dictates it must go for the first civ opponents on the rank no matter what, so no matter the entry, its always the same shit - you start fine in your corner of the world, do some friends, develop some cities, etc then when you start to prosper there comes a super stack of doom from a supposed friendly Civ (like Ghandi) to hit you exactly where you have no defenses. This pattern repeats no matter the supposed personality traits of Civs involved, your relationship with them, or the absence of Intel capacity to probe your weak points. Lol and people talk about "artificial difficulty" in Souls games.

So there is. Civilization is my worst strategy game ever.

P.s: the fact I was introduced to the series through Alpha Centauri - where factions show some resemblance of humanity instead playing like a robot bent on winning at all costs - may be a factor here.

 

[mbv123]

I could never get into Civ, no matter how hard I tried (played IV and V)
It just seems to just go into repetitiveness of researching the same techs, producing buildings and workers, until you outpace the AI in tech and go through shitty combat to annihilate them easily while pressing End Turn every 15 seconds.
Not exactly what I call fun.

 

[Silva]

I agree the game gets easy fast if you know what you're doing and then it turns into a matter of boring turn passing until end.

But at least Alpha Centauri allowed me to LARP. I can't LARP with Ghandi nuking me left and right.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Close Combat III: The Russian Front was probably the most disappointing strategy game that I've ever played.
-Infantry got nerfed and usually died immediately when spotted.
-Force organization got changed from previous games; in earlier games your troops were divided into infantry and support pools, but Close Combat 3 changed that into single combined list.
Meaning that full tank forces could be fielded in buildings of Stalingrad of all places.
-Campaign was a stupid mess that went linearly from beginning of operation Barbarossa to Soviets taking Berlin.
It would have been much better if they would have picked some operation and focused on it.
-Game had all the usual troubles that CC series has. Vehicle pathfinding, AI, etc.