Need help choosing

[FlickJax]

LOL at 45 I never clean me room, the wife does...I do wash up and cook though ;)

[DeathTouchWilly]

Not that his helps with the indecision but man do I love Panzer Corps. It's too soon to tell whether Sim City will be on my hard drive off and on for the next decade but the Panzer Corps series has already proven capable of that. Also for whatever the reason the typical tactical situations presented with North African combat are particularly fun for me.

That said the games you listed, as was previously stated, are very different and I think any of them would easily sap countless hours out of your weekends/evenings. Rolling a dice and seeing what comes up would probably make things easier.

[Bison]

Conflict of heroes
case blue
sim city
panzer corps africa corps
star drive
distant worlds

I'd rank them like this:
Conflict of Heroes
Distant Worlds w/ Expansions
Case Blue
Panzer Corps
Sim City
Star Drive

Of course you could get two of the game for the price of DW w/ expansions.

I just like the way CoH playes out.  Good AI and the card driven events help make the scenarios play out a little different every time.  The MP community isn't too active, which is a downside for a great game.
As I've said I really find the UI a put off because it's so hard for me to read.  Great game if you can get past that or don't mind changing resolution on your monitor until you hit a sweet spot for the UI.
Case Blue -  I'm basing this off of my experience with Blitzkreig Warsaw to Paris.  It's been awhile but I lost many hours Blitzing across Poland and France.
Panzer Corps - I've never played, but it generally is very well received.  So all those people cannot all be delusional fan boys. :D
Simcity - I'm enjoying the game quite a bit, but there are several issues that need to be patched and fixed.  It requires constant internet connection to play. 
Stardrive -  This one is a wild card.  It looks like it could be really fun, but it's still in beta fwiw. 

[Bison]

I'd also ask if you are specifically tied to getting one of these games?

[FlickJax]

Well I was getting Sim City but then thought i'd wait until dust settles and it has been patched a bit. Apart from that i'm just so indecisive; when i was younger I would have just bought the lot. Unfortunately funds are a lot tighter these days.

[Bison]

Well I've already devoted 30+ hours of my life to Simcity, so it's not all bad.

[Longdan]

But is it getting better or are you just getting used to it?
I have not asked my kids lately how it is going.  The BS that EA is putting out to the public is off putting.

[Bison]

Honestly Dan I don't spend anytime at the offical site or forums.  Other than what I've read here, I've got nothing to go on but my own play experience and the patch updates.  I haven't had any server issues since release weekend, but I still would like to see an offline mode added into the game.  There are some parts of the game that from my perspective are broken and not working correctly.  That being said there is certainly enough that is working correctly with depth of planning to hold my interest.  Will I still be playing in a couple of months?  I don't know.  It depends on how they address some of the regional issues and other things.

[Longdan]

Thanks Bison.  I am trying to find out if I should be yelling at my kids for dealing with EA or breaking
down and talking tactics.  At our house we played SimCity forever but for 60 bux these days, even
though I am an addict, I don't want a broken or dysfunctional product.  I do not like EA.

[Nefaro]

DW: If you could afford just 1 of the expansions, which would you go for first?

Return of the Shakturi was the first expansion, as Bison mentioned.  I still only have that one but it was a nice leap from the vanilla game.  I'll get Legends later on during a sale or something - already have too much that I haven't played yet anyway.


Edit:  If DW is too pricey for you at the moment, StarDrive is nearing the end of it's Beta and is like a DW-Lite.  It's still a bit different but it's not a much of a jumble to deal with.  You'll have to get it from Steam, however, and I still prefer DW over it just because DW has more content- and game option-wise.

[Tuna]

DW: If you could afford just 1 of the expansions, which would you go for first?

Return of the Shakturi was the first expansion, as Bison mentioned.  I still only have that one but it was a nice leap from the vanilla game.  I'll get Legends later on during a sale or something - already have too much that I haven't played yet anyway.


Edit:  If DW is too pricey for you at the moment, StarDrive is nearing the end of it's Beta and is like a DW-Lite.  It's still a bit different but it's not a much of a jumble to deal with.  You'll have to get it from Steam, however, and I still prefer DW over it just because DW has more content- and game option-wise.

I have been tempted with all this DW talk lately.. but the price does scare me off right away. I am also tempted by StarDrive, especially by it's lower price.

[PanzersEast]

I was put off by the price of DW and the talk of font size... however, after playing it I can say it was well worth the price.  The font is small, however I tend to pause a lot as the game is a marathon and not a sprint so I have grown accustomed to the font size.  I tend to play DW slowly as the game I have setup are long games, so things happen over a longer period.  I can see DW setting on my HD for a long long time, however I can see StarDrive setting on my HD until something flasher comes along (although I still like SD).


PE

[Martok]

From everything that's being said about it, I'd steer way clear of SimCity 5 for now.  StarDrive looks like it'll be very good, but it's still in beta and won't be released as a full game for another month or so -- and even then, I'm sure it'll require a lot of balancing and bug-squashing before it's truly considered "ready for primetime". 


If price weren't an issue, I'd definitely go with Distant Worlds and the two expansions (Return of the Shakturi and Legends).  It's an absolutely marvelous game. 

It's not yet known if they'll all go on sale when the newest expansion (Shadows) comes out, but it seems probable.  Even then, though, it'd still be expensive, and I wouldn't blame you for hesitating to pick it up. 

DW: If you could afford just 1 of the expansions, which would you go for first?

Legends requires Return of the Shakturi, so grab RotS first if you can only get one. 

[JasonPratt]

Incidentally, Flick, unless you REALLY REALLY want to play an updated version of Panzer General (but really it's just Panzer General with a few updates), don't go with Panzer Korps. Cheaper to pull out your old copy of PG.

Of course, the reason they made PK was so that they could then develop and flesh out the Grand Campaigns. But those are (mostly) expansions to the main game. And again, it really depends on whether you badly want to play another two weeks of Panzer General 2012.


If you do want to play the PG game system but are kinda iffy about playing the PG missions (and extensive expansions of those missions) over again, you could do a lot worse than poke around for the Fantasy Wars/Elven Legacy series. Gorgeous fantasy game directly based on the PG game system (was originally intended to be a straighout remake/update of Fantasy General but they lost the rights to the intellectual property so just wrote a new story with new units), with something like nine or ten sequential campaigns -- you could probably find it dirt cheap, too.


(I should probably add that I am quite a slut for the PG game engine, so I impulse bought as much of the PK game modules as were available at the time. I think I only lack a couple. Never played them, but I HAVE THEM AND THEY ARE MINE AND I CAN USE THEM WHENEVER I WAAAANNNNTTT!!! Ahem. My point is that I'm not being critical above out of dislove for what the Lordz did. The other games are just much... newer.)

[FlickJax]

Got more pennies for birthday than was expecting so gonna get distant worlds and both expansions.....