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Newbie to strategy war games needing some help.
[Deleted User]
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Hello kind reader.
As the title says, i'm new to strategy war games and need some help.
I'm not totally new to strategy games. many many years ago I played C&C at a guys house and I used to play a game that may have been called Populous or something like that? You built up a cibilization and every so often an earthquake, fire or tornado would rip into it undoing all the hard work. It was on the SNES, so we are going back into the late 80's early 90's.
Anyhow, I quite fancy having a crack at a strategy game like Total War or something similar. Even though I'll get ripped apart and decimated for the first few 100 games no doubt.
A few questions.
1) What is a good one to start with?
I like the look of romans, medieval and historical ones more than more modern WW2 type games. I also think they may be easier to play and get used too before I start dealing with tanks and god knows what else.
The names I know from looking at boxes in shops over the years are Total War, Empires, Shogun and that is about it.
2) What in the hell is Steam?
Whilst trying to reseach this stuff "steam" keeps getting mentioned and usually not in a good way. One comment on message board I found said that the gae kept crashing and he/she said it was because of "steam" and another said it took 4 hours to download something from "steam."
I'm guessing it's a gaming website, when i looked it looked like it just sold downloadable games. If this is the case why would someone say that it messed up a game they were playing from a disc?
I'm hoping to get a game soon so any help would be most welcome.
I really dont want to go back to playing Farmville which is boring as hell lol
Thanks.
As the title says, i'm new to strategy war games and need some help.
I'm not totally new to strategy games. many many years ago I played C&C at a guys house and I used to play a game that may have been called Populous or something like that? You built up a cibilization and every so often an earthquake, fire or tornado would rip into it undoing all the hard work. It was on the SNES, so we are going back into the late 80's early 90's.
Anyhow, I quite fancy having a crack at a strategy game like Total War or something similar. Even though I'll get ripped apart and decimated for the first few 100 games no doubt.
A few questions.
1) What is a good one to start with?
I like the look of romans, medieval and historical ones more than more modern WW2 type games. I also think they may be easier to play and get used too before I start dealing with tanks and god knows what else.
The names I know from looking at boxes in shops over the years are Total War, Empires, Shogun and that is about it.
2) What in the hell is Steam?
Whilst trying to reseach this stuff "steam" keeps getting mentioned and usually not in a good way. One comment on message board I found said that the gae kept crashing and he/she said it was because of "steam" and another said it took 4 hours to download something from "steam."
I'm guessing it's a gaming website, when i looked it looked like it just sold downloadable games. If this is the case why would someone say that it messed up a game they were playing from a disc?
I'm hoping to get a game soon so any help would be most welcome.
I really dont want to go back to playing Farmville which is boring as hell lol
Thanks.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software)
Everything you buy online through them will obviously have the DRM controlled by Steam, but there are some games that use Steam for DRM for physical copies too, am thinking of Football Manager here.
In all honesty, Steam shouldn't be an issue unless you don't have internet access or are a bit unlucky (never had a major issue in the 8 years I have been using it). It will be a problem when it comes to Christmas sale time and you seem to end up spending a load of cash on cheap games though
All the discs used to do my head in any way.:)
You get a free account, and then you add games to your account and launch those games through Steam. This means they check you own the game and are not pirating (DRM). Some boxed games require Steam to play but then have the added advantage of not needing a disc, most however are downloaded directly. This is where people moan about it taking 4hrs to download a game. The bottom line in this case though is that it is the users broadband speed, and not Steam which dicates this. I happily download at just over 3mps from Steam, my max speed. Steam requires an Internet connection to register games, and to save via Cloud, but most games will run quite happily in offline mode, the few that won't are online games anyway.
It has already been mentioned but it is worth mentioning again. Steam sales are legendary. To start with they do daily deals and weekend deals which usually take between 25-70% off of selected titles. Then they do summer and christmas sales where almost every game is reduced. It gets silly, and very expensive as you buy so much!
Anyone who bad mouths Steam are idiots, it is a very good system and very in-obstrusive. Steam is putting money back into developers pockets by letting them sell old games again and this lets them make more new games. It's a win win for everyone.
I'd suggest Crusader Kings II as well, it's a great game, has the kind of feel you're mentioning here, it's a good commodities builder game with a decent campaign and good standalone sandbox maps. Or there's the King Arthur collection, which is stupidly cheap on Steam.
Totally agree, I've never had any problems with Steam and I've been signed up around five years, my OH longer. They have fantastic deals and you can put your games into offline mode so you can play when you don't have an internet connection which is perfect for us when we head down to the in-laws as their broadband is pretty slow.
I regularly install games from disks and I can't say I've had this problem. It may depend on the type of game but I've got games installed via disk that I run through Steam, I've games bought and run directly through Steam and I've games which are installed from a disk but use Steam to verify.
I saw a copy of Total War: Rome for £4.99 in my local-ish Gamestation so took the plunge and bought it.
I can't say I fully know what I'm doing but I've won a battle and taken over a city in the "Prologue" section, more by luck than great strategy play.
I'll be happier when my archers stop running to try and fight in hand-to-hand combat and just stick with shooting arrows.
I'll have a look at Steam. Who knows give me 5-10 years and I may understand gaming enough to attempt online gaming with other people and not getting beaten or killed in under 5 minutes.
Playing with other people can teach you a lot, just go for it if you want to.:)
Also online gaming is much more fun than playing single player games IMO.
You can download single player games from steam too and they are often much cheaper than buying from a shop. It's easy to use, download it from the steam site, click install steam, make an account and you're away.
Steam really is a must for PC gamers to me, couldn't live without it.
Helps if your mate is as good as you and you take on two equally good opponents. Longest game I had was about 4 hours.
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/16960/