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[Lamptramp]

I'd also recommend the newer XCom games, both are excellent.

For the best experience I'd also recommend playing it on ironman mode, difficulty can be as simple or hard as you like but ironman makes it a whole other experience, tons of tension.

 

[Phear]

X-Com really is the best choice here.

 

[alekth]

Another vote for Crusader Kings II.

 

[Acti]

> xcom enemy unknown
> king's bounty the legend or king's bounty armored princess

Awesome stuff in my opinion.

 

[lorebringer]

I think given that he is very into SciFi and seems to be a fan of strategy games, I'm going to recommend AI War.

It's a real time pausable asymmetrical 4x variant where you play as the last survivors of the human race after the AIs have already taken over. One of the core themes behind AI War is that you are fighting a vastly superior enemy in terms of numbers and technology, you begin with a single star system out of up to 120 systems while the AI controls the rest. There are mechanics that promote the idea of guerilla war, trying to take systems and key resources while minimising the amount of attention the AI pays to you, which increases as you go. It is not the most graphically beautiful game ever made but the scale of the fleet battles can become immense, in the current game I'm playing there are routinely fleet battles involving 3000-4000 ships. It is an RTS technically but it is very much strategy oriented rather than tactical, micro management is not a thing in this game to any real extent and all of the systems are designed to take care of as many of the small details as possible. The developers are constantly adding new features and balance improvements even today, there are multiple expansions that integrate seamlessly into the base game and you can pick up the complete pack on steam right now for ~$16. As a bonus, it is built from the ground up for coop multiplayer against the AI with up to 8 players.

Spoiler

I love the shit out of AI War

 

[Vaga]

I strongly recommend Anno 1404 Gold (or 2070 if he likes the future setting), Crusader Kings 2 and King's Bounty you can't go wrong with any of them.

Company of Heroes 1&2 are great, my favourite RTS.

And why the hell not, buy your dad Dark Souls hehe.

 

[Easy_D]

Recommending Company of Heroes as well. It looks pretty damn fantastic on max settings as well as being a really fun RTS

 

[Unbound By Death]

XCOM

 

[Volotaire]

XCOM
FTL
Age of Empires 2 HD ( a bit old but still great fun)

 

[Malio]

Age of Mythology. Done.

 

[Felspawn]

who gets an Alienware laptop from Work?

 

[Aim_Ed]

Age of Wonders 3 and XCOM get the nod from me.

I'd say Divinity OS but the fantasy setting and the character building may be a bit too much if he's not into that sort of thing.

 

[Steel]

So, I bought him Crusader Kings II and Xcom for the moment. I'll probably buy him Europa Universalis when he feeling an urge for something different later. Thanks for all the suggestions

Have you tried switching the camera controls?

It reminded me of this thread.

I have, actually. He stares at the sky in that case and then wonders how the hell anyone can use inverted. He's just bad at camera control.

who gets an Alienware laptop from Work?

An engineer that has 45 years of experience. I helped him massage the issue though, he needed windows 7 to run the legacy version of autocad his clients use, that made a dell necessary. He needed a multi-harddrive capable laptop, for other reasons. Actually the reason I even had the idea is I knew a guy back in college that got an alienware from his engineering internship, simply because he requested it and made up some bullshit reasons why it was optimal. Wish my work was so generous...