Low System Requirement Stategy Games

Does anyone have any good recommendations for a turned based strategy game for a laptop? I'm looking for something to have fun with while I have some down time. Thank you.

Have to recommend Galactic Civilizations. I've only played the first and loved it. I hear the 2nd is amazing, too, but I never got to it myself. Gal Civ 1 will probably run on a cell phone with little issues.
You might be able to get a copy of Civilization 2 Gold Edition or something like that cheap. Great game and will run on old stuff.
If you'll have an internet connection, I'll use this as a chance to shill for the free browser MMO strategy game I've been playing, Pardus.

Heroes Of Might And Magic 3 is a good one and will run on low spec comps. I lost alot of time to this game, it's fun.

Fallout: Tactics which GoG has for $6 and Jagged Alliance 2 which GoG has for $10.

You can probably run Civ 4 on a laptop if its a fairly new one. You might have to turn the settings on low.

larrymadill wrote:

You can probably run Civ 4 on a laptop if its a fairly new one. You might have to turn the settings on low.

If not, Civ 3 would run beautifully, and you can probably get it cheap.

Aetius wrote:

Battle for Wesnoth.

Seconded.

Civ 4 may or may not run adequately, depending on your laptop (it's too beefy for my poor aging laptop). Civ 3 should run fine, but make sure you get the Conquests expansion pack, which is far superior to the vanilla game.

If you can find a copy, Shadow Watch is a good laptop game, although you'll need to download an older Java VM (e.g. version 1.1.8) to get it to run properly.

TheCounselor wrote:
larrymadill wrote:

You can probably run Civ 4 on a laptop if its a fairly new one. You might have to turn the settings on low.

If not, Civ 3 would run beautifully, and you can probably get it cheap.

The only downfall with this strategy is that it completely removes the ability to *not* have "downtime". I just can not have it installed on my laptop anymore. It's too damn addictive.

There's a Windows version of Panzer General, if you never tried it, go for it. It should run on absolutely anything and is still one of the finest turn-based WW2 strategies. Home of the Underdogs doesn't host the file anymore it seems, but I can upload it for you, just PM me.

There is also freeciv. None of that fancy civ 2-4 graphics, just pixelated free goodness.

Aetius wrote:

Battle for Wesnoth.

Thirded < Is that even a word?

Great, free, game. You'll love it.

TheCounselor wrote:
larrymadill wrote:

You can probably run Civ 4 on a laptop if its a fairly new one. You might have to turn the settings on low.

If not, Civ 3 would run beautifully, and you can probably get it cheap.

My problem with Civ 3 is that it plays fine, until you start to get deep into the game. Then it really bogs down on slower processors.

Try the Paradox games - Victoria, Deus Vult, EU3, HOI2 will probably do fine as long as you meet the minimums.

Yeah, you'll probably be better off telling us if you have any preferences, because due to the niche popularity of the genre, system requirements can be rather low. You'ld be hard-pressed to even come up with a new release that will have problems playing on a laptop.

I think GalCiv I or II is a solid choice. If you're looking to just kill some downtime, either game can be configured to be playable in short doses (smaller universes with few habitable planets).

Anything Good Old Games should run fine, and they're cheap to boot.

I can't believe none of you have mentioned Master of Orion, Master of Magic or X-com yet. Even if you have to DOSbox them up they ran on the original Dos just fine. You lappie will have no trouble.

Larry wrote:

Heroes Of Might And Magic 3 is a good one and will run on low spec comps. I lost alot of time to this game, it's fun.

When I saw this topic this was the first game I thought of.

Tamren wrote:

I can't believe none of you have mentioned Master of Orion, Master of Magic or X-com yet. Even if you have to DOSbox them up they ran on the original Dos just fine. You lappie will have no trouble.

I was under the impression that these games were not distributed any more, except for X-Com. Is there a legal way to obtain the others?

Gametap or gog.com. Jagged Alliance, Darwinia, X-com, I can go on. The two services are sick with great older strategy titles.

Aetius wrote:

I was under the impression that these games were not distributed any more, except for X-Com. Is there a legal way to obtain the others?

You can get them from an abandonware site in about 10 seconds of google. Do some research beforehand thought, some of them are reputed to have viruses. Not certain on the legality but neither of those can be found in a box. I can't even remember if they came on a floppy.

Master of Orion 2 can be bought as a digital download from Atari. Skip MOO3, it was terrible.

Yeah, a couple people just recommended it, so here it is agian.
X-Com was the first thing that popped into my mind. That one kept me busy for many many days after highschool. It nearly ruined my final quarter of freshman year.

I installed Civilization III on my oldass Laptop and had a blast with it

There's also a game you can find on Abandonia or The Home of the Underdogs called "Chaos Overlords"

It's a bit old (but it's free now). It's sortof a 4X gang/crime lord type of turn-based game that I've played for hundreds of hours. It's incredibly addictive and the visuals (though very basic) will never get old.

If another fan of Chaos Overlords reads this, the lead programmer is working on a sequel in his spare time

Thanks everyone. These are a lot of suggestions, I'm going to try out gal sim 1 or 2 first. I couldn't find a place to get Heroes of might and magic 3.

Cool, I still fire up Chaos Overlords every now and then I'f I'm looking for a random timesink.

CelticKrush wrote:

Thanks everyone. These are a lot of suggestions, I'm going to try out gal sim 1 or 2 first. I couldn't find a place to get Heroes of might and magic 3.

Here you go, countless hours of low system required enjoyment. http://www.amazon.com/Heroes-Might-Magic-3-Complete-Pc/dp/B00004YKX4

Rome: Total War, runs fine on my Core Duo with Intel 945 GPU and 1 gig of ram on Vista.

Al wrote:

Fallout: Tactics which GoG has for $6

While not the popular choice, I absolutely love this game. I have it sitting on my desk to this day meaning to return to it for another run. I don't understand why it wasn't better received by the gaming community than it was at the time.

larrymadill wrote:

You can probably run Civ 4 on a laptop if its a fairly new one. You might have to turn the settings on low.

I mentioned this in another thread, but if you get Civ 4 then you absolutely need to look up the mod Fall From Heaven. It's really good.