The worst strategy games ever made

[Galdred]

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.

Wasn't nuke Gandhi a bug they turned into an internal meme?
I think he became over agressive at the nuclear age because of an overflow of his peacefulness variable or something like that.

 

[vota DC]

Gandhi is always aggressive in civ1, in all ages.

 

[Silva]

 

[Arrowgrab]

Gandhi is always aggressive in civ1, in all ages.

Nope, it's not age related. He's only super-aggressive when his government is democracy.

Every AI player has an aggression value, and Gandhi's was 1, the lowest possible number. However, when an AI nation adopts democracy, their aggression is reduced by 2 points. In Gandhi's case, that means it becomes -1, which causes an underflow error and is interpreted by the program as 255.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

MOO3 would certainly be high on the list.

I had a lot of fun with that game.

 

[d1nolore]

Lords of the Realm 3.

Lords of the Realm 2 was a great game; castle management with resources, army management, with awesome battles most notably castle battles. Army movement on campaign map and great multiplayer. All done in the mid 90's.

LotR3 came out 8 years later. It was an extremely dumbed down steamy pile of shite. Take all the great elements from LotR2 and remove most of them, take away the management and strategy and turn it into a boring action game. It was basically an attempt at a cash grab using the Lord of the Realms name and they proceeded to bury the titles future and shit on its legacy.

 

[MilesBeyond]

I find LotR 3 and MoO 3, and I suppose even Disciples 3, to be highly instructive as to what makes a good game. All three games, especially MoO 3, suffered from both complexity and streamlining - they overcomplicated the parts of the games that should have been streamlined, and they streamlined the parts of the games that should have been more fleshed out.

It's an important reminder to game devs: Complexity is awesome but only when the underlying mechanics are already fun. Streamlining can be good but only when the things you're streamlining are a PITA. Making unfun things complex doesn't make them fun, it just makes them both unfun and irritating. Taking interesting parts of the game and streamlining them doesn't make the game more playable, it just makes it more shallow.

 

[Galdred]

LotR3 came out 8 years later. It was an extremely dumbed down steamy pile of shite. Take all the great elements from LotR2 and remove most of them, take away the management and strategy and turn it into a boring action game. It was basically an attempt at a cash grab using the Lord of the Realms name and they proceeded to bury the titles future and shit on its legacy.

That is a bit excessive: A good part of the Introversion team ended up working on Stronghold. I personnaly don't like stronghold that much (too "RTS-y" for me), but I must concede it is not too bad when it comes to legacies. Much better than MOO or MoM legacy for sure.

 

[flyingjohn]

Civ v because the ai ruins the entire game.

Other horrible strategy games you can at least play and be bored,but this one seems to be proud in its stupidity.
Every single turn you will be bombarded with useless notifications and the ai telling you it likes/hates you for some god forsaken reason.
Diplomatically you can't even attempt to play this game because it will do stupid things(like you liberate a civ and it declares war without an army) constantly.
It doesn't check for army score or vicinity before declaring war meaning it is literally "feels beat reals" in ai form.
Every single tile and building give you some small garbage +1 food or culture,and there is no way to specialize considering everything the same(minus getting lucky on some hills and having a production city but that is it)
So the difference between playing bad and good is maybe a couple of turns quicker victory,how fun.
The combat ai has no memory or sight whatsoever.You can literally park a submarine and wait for the onslaught to happen.If an enemy unit sees another it will attack regardless if there is an army waiting behind.
World congress is useless because any other vote that isn't natural heritage sites will get you denounced and warred by everybody.
You took a city,well here is penalty after penalty because you did something good.

I mean sure there are broken and boring strategy games but this feels step below mediocrity without being technically broken which is an achievement in itself.

 

[d1nolore]

LotR3 came out 8 years later. It was an extremely dumbed down steamy pile of shite. Take all the great elements from LotR2 and remove most of them, take away the management and strategy and turn it into a boring action game. It was basically an attempt at a cash grab using the Lord of the Realms name and they proceeded to bury the titles future and shit on its legacy.

That is a bit excessive: A good part of the Introversion team ended up working on Stronghold. I personnaly don't like stronghold that much (too "RTS-y" for me), but I must concede it is not too bad when it comes to legacies. Much better than MOO or MoM legacy for sure.

I'm just referencing Lords of the Realms. I don't think I was being harsh at all. lotR3 was a revival, and introduction to the series for newer gamers. They then proceeded to make a very subpar game that was basically a completely different game and genre than the earlier games. It was a completely different game, a RTS, and a terrible one at that. It was a terrible game that killed the series, such a shame.

Did they honestly think that LotR3 would inspire a future sequel? I personally think that the developers were rushed and not given an adequate amount of time to complete the game and thus they cut out about 40% of the game design. I hope that's true because it would be embarrassing if they planned to release that game.

 

[adrix89]

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EA's Dungeon Keeper Mobile

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