Looking for good TBS

try Master of Magic (MoM). It is the precursor to Age of Wonders, and regarded by many as one of the greatest strategy games ever made. AI can either be sickeningly hard or completely retarded depending on difficulty and situation, but it's usually competent enough to provide a challenge (at least until you start trolling them with stacks of Shadow Demons). Initial release was buggy but most of those have been patched out by now.

Lots of fun to be had here; there are five (not counting Arcane which is basic) schools of magic you can study, you get 11 spellbook picks at the beginning of each game you can spread across Death, Life, Chaos, Sorcery or Nature realms of magic. You can also spend them to customize your Wizard with special skills such as Charismatic, Channeler, Archmage, Divine Power & Node Mastery. The huge variety of spells both local and global lets you do everything from raise a few skeletons to (attempt to) kill EVERY LIVING ENEMY UNIT IN THE GAME, open planar gates, rain continuous fire on enemy cities with Chaos Rift, create flying invisible warships with multi-layered enchantments from the Sorcery book, terraform the land to create mega-cities with Nature and much much more.

Since it's an old game, getting it to work will take some doing; you need to download the DOSBox program from the internet which allows you to run DOS-reliant games. It's easy to use though so shouldn't be too big a hassle. I think by default the sound of the game is disabled, so you should run the 'install' or setup thing in its folder before you run the game and switch it from 'No sound' to 'Sound blaster' or w/e is there. Music can get repetitive on the overworld but in battle it fits well and the sounds work great. Here are some links to help you find the stuff you will need...
http://www.abandonia.com/games/189/5
http://www.hotud.org/component/content/article/37-strategy/20376-master-of-magic\
http://www.dosbox.com/
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=4211

Of course: http://www.wesnoth.org/

The Battle for Wesnoth

The Battle for Wesnoth is a Free, turn-based tactical strategy game with a high fantasy theme, featuring both single-player, and online/hotseat multiplayer combat. Fight a desperate battle to reclaim the throne of Wesnoth, or take hand in any number of other adventures...

I already play Wesnoth & agree that its good.

I was hoping for some less mainsteam suggestions.. I've already investigate the civ series, master of orion etc

I'm not sure how much "strategy" they have to be. Two of the games I list ain't exactly "turn based strategy" like your usual 4X. Still, they're turn based and mostly about careful gameplay so I think they are worth listing.

In case you don't wanna read through this hold post I will first post a list of the games. It's ordered by how good I think games are (means by how much I want others to try them) with top being the best:
Darkwind, car combat
Space Rangers 2, spaceship rpg
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, best of all civs
Dominions 3 // Heroes of Might and Magic IV (can't decide which is better)


Darkwind is a turn based car combat game and might not be what you consider a "turn based strategy game", fair warning. It features a persistent world, means your drivers get skills, die (often!), you get money and all that stuff. It's basically free to play, but you don't get to design custom vehicles and miss out on some of the advanced stuff. "Advanced" stuff is not why you should play this, though, so the pay-to-play stuff really isn't needed.

The reason you wanna play this is the awesome events you will see. The "turn based" part means players have some time to set up great and accurate moves, that makes it very strategic and tactical. It's pretty complex, with text messages when your driver gets their nose rammed through their brain and all that funny stuff, similar to DF. Basically a very advanced version of the cool/epic/funny things you will see in ZK when people micro their units very well. A group of cars ramming into each other, doing back flips, exploding and what not. Under constant development. (Trailer from 2009, not very up to date)


Space Rangers 2 (and maybe 1, though I didn't play that) and might not be what you consider a "turn based strategy game either". It's a turn based game where you fly around a galaxy, do the usual things like mine asteroids or trade or hunt down pirates or be a pirate yourself. The fact that you can hire some other ships and eventually command military makes it a tad strategic.
There's many missions to be fulfilled, all of which vary greatly: tycoonish missions, text adventures, simple kill x within a given time, deliver y to planet z, etc.; The game features an arcade like minigame, as well as a mini-RTS. All of this is wrapped up in a simple story and lots of jokes in the form of funny references.


Licho already suggested SMAC. I think it's the best of any civ game. I played Civ, Civ2, Civ5, Freeciv, Freecol, CivNet and games with civ in their name that only have little in common with Civilisation (eg. Galciv). SMAC wins.


Dominions 3 is a rather complex turn based strategy game with lots and lots of content. There's just so many units, spells and whatnot. It's more epic-scaled (with a map similar Risk, although I never played that :P). Battles happen at the end of every turn without players giving commands. Players merely set up formations and the like.


Heroes of Might and Magic IV (everyone says 3 is the best, but I only ever played 4) is a turn based RPG (as in some of your units are "heroes") and strategy game. It's got pretty simple gameplay with various factions, resources and units. The really nice things are beautiful 2d terrain and very very nice story driven campaigns. There's just so so much to explore. To be honest I don't really like the actual gameplay, but I keep coming back to it for the story element. Played it every now and then for a few years now and still didn't even complete a quarter of it.

IMPORTANT: the following are focused on strategic TBS COMBAT so THERE IS NO EMPIRE TO MANAGE

King's Bounty: The Legend
I loved this one, great combat and magic system, combat oriented game, "living" items and some really cute quests (like meddling in the love life of demons), and whoever designed the rage system for the chest of rage was a genius
and you could marry, have children, (these things had on impact on stats and item slots) and divorce (loosing the kids, the wife, the bonuses they gave and a lot of money.. but you could find new ones) and many other things
(Finished it twice)

King's Bounty: Armored Princess , same game mechanics with some improvements and notable additions (most notably the chest of rage being replaced by a pet dragon (closable near start)), also main character is now female, the game is overall harder, and seems more epic (my campaign is still in progress)


Fantasy Wars
Kind of like panzer general but in a fantasy setting, full 3D, with spells heroes and so on, troops gain experience and perks, different terrain and movetipes with bonuses and maluses depending on unit type, missions have both secondary objectives and speed based rewards so... will you complete al secondary objectives...or go for the gold finish and grab the prize it brings?
Story has some surprising twists here and there.
(Finished twice)

Elven Legacy
Sequel to Fantasy Wars, most notable is the added flexibility on the campaign map where you can (sometimes) choose different paths and thus different battles, new heroes, new units to use and so on
(Finished with both endings)

I recently refound Magic the Gathering (the one by micropose from the 90's) that had this fun planewalker mini game called Shandalar, that was tons fun.

A very old TBS, Ascendancy, is maybe worth trying. It gets a bit tedious in the late game though (like civ1)

Haven't seen X-com mentioned.

There also is this pre-civ (1988) turn based space game... It was pretty complicated but fun. Fans made a windows compatible remake. You can find it here http://neurohack.com/anacreon/index.html

Ooh, I nearly forgot! "Advanced Strategic Command is a free, turn based strategy game." It's probably more tactical than anything mentioned. One of those complex games where you spend quite some time and brainpower for every turn even with just a few units.

Heroes of Magic and Might 3 is the best of them all. HOMM 5 tribes of the east is pretty good to it has alternitive upgrades.

BTW I do like 4 because heroes are on the battle feild but it is the worst of the series. but I still play 4 every now and then. (I beat all the HOMM missions 2 - 5

There's UFO: Alien Invasion, which is a kind of sequal to XCom

Yeah, EoFS is one of those games that was ambitious as hell, but came out... weird. I only played it because my brother wrote books for the tabletop RPG that it's based upon. I just mentioned it because it's remarkable in its sheer scale.

The only way I've had success in the game is to utterly abuse the intent of various aspects of the game and going after the Church itself. Also, looting the agoras. And don't start with any of the factions that are near the Symbiotes.