Since I felt like boasting yesterday, I asked my friend what does he suggest- he said Europe Universalis or Stellaris.
I was like - are they really harder than playing Civ 3 on SId or Civ 5 on Deity? He said yes.
What is your opinion?
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Mods, if this thread belongs in "Other games" section, sorry for inconvenience.
The thing is, Civ on Deity pretty much railroads you into a small set of strategies. It's not intellectually challenging in terms of combining mechanics to come up with something that is a great strategy - though you could say it would be (assuming you never visited the strategy section of CFC) to come up with a way to take advantage of the AI such that you could win. I don't count that the same as really being deep on a fair playing field, though.
EU's diplomacy layer does add a significant strategic element that Civ does not have, and it does lend itself to some real thinking about the best path forward, in a way that Civ (I - V) often don't offer due to the limited diplomacy. As a small-midsize nation who's still trying to work its way up to the world stage, you really do have to plan your way, and occasionally things blow up in your face. That's my favorite stage of the game.
I'd like to recommend either Balance of Power (1990) or Capitalism Plus (1996) for games that are very challenging. I've had both games for ages and I don't think I've ever come close to mastering either one.
I still need to try Balance of Power. It works on my Core 2 Duo laptop with XP x86, just need to have the manual up on another computer as I try to figure it out.
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Overall, there's a fine line between intellectually challenging/deep and just plain annoying/overcomplicated in games. For example, a lot of puzzle games - some would say it's challenging puzzles, I'd usually say it's annoying. It depends on what your background with the puzzles is most likely, and since I didn't grow up playing puzzle games, my familiarity with them is lower (although Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is a great game). Hearts of Iron III is a game that I'd say tries to do too much and (IMO) falls flat as a result, not being deep so much as overcomplicated. I'm still trying to decide where Victoria II falls - the more I play, the more I think it is actually a deep game, but it's an extremely gradual transition. And the level of control is still so abstract that I'm not sure it really lends itself to the intellectually challenging part, unless you are trying something intentionally combustive.
Democracy 3 is a game I was hoping might fall into this category. But so far I've found that (playing as the USA), it's all too easy to raise taxes and cut military spending early, and by the end of term 1, everyone's so happy with everything else you've increased with the improved budget (not to mention running a surplus) that you get re-elected in a landslide. Which means either real-life politicians are missing out on a super-easy win, or it underestimates how much Americans love their guns and low taxes. I'd like it to be the former, but it's probably in large part the latter.
RTS's I generally pass on due to it often, IMO, becoming more of a clickfest than strategy. I prefer my strategy to be thought-out, like it would be in real life. Obvs some people are way better at RTS's than me, but I get more satisfaction from a long game of Civ or EU than I do from a bunch of short games of Age of Empires or (even more so) Dota.
