ITT: we ask about games we'd like to play and anons point us in there direction. For example: "hey do you guys know any good strategy games involving goat herding?" and someone replies with some goat herding strategy games.
game recs
ITT: we ask about games we'd like to play and anons point us in there direction. For example: "hey do you guys know any good strategy games involving goat herding?" and someone replies with some goat herding strategy games.
How many good strategy games are there even? 10-20 max? Pretty unlikely to find anything
I'm in a scavenging mood. I want to kitbash big piles of scrap into combat units. Doesn't even have to be combat, just put trash together. You got something for me?
Evolva?
The Gearhead games are roguelike(tick-based/permadeath)/RPGs with a tactical(srpg)-like mech combat system where you can kitbash giant robots and make small human sized robots from literal scrap metal. If you make your robot building knowledge and whatever the commanding stat was high enough, you can make a team of intelligent AI companions that can pilot giant robots themselves out of, like, pieces of sheetmetal, tape, and old laptops.
This might be it, thanks
Captain of Industry?
>captain of industry
looks like Rise of Industry but better
I'd love a game with a ton of mechanics for travel / journeys / exploration. Like a modern Oregon Trail. Expedition: Conquistador was the sweet spot, the sequels were really meh on that front.
Any genre.
Cogmind. Roguelike where you're a robot, kill enemies and glue their guns onto you.
Neither have multiple parties.
But Low Magic Age/ Curse of Feldar Vale are running off the OGL and have a very old school feel.
Good thread idea OP.
I have an urge to play a game with lots of resource types, long supply and manufacturing chains and real time combat.
So something like an RTS game with a survival-RPG tier tech tree, but the combat doesn't have to be very in depth.
A 4x game would come close to this but I actually want to see the resources, resource harvesting units, factories, etc. I can't cum otherwise.
And Dawn of Man is the only game I can think of with goat herding btw.
Factorio
If you don't mind medieval setting, Stronghold has pretty complex supply chain, you can see your peasants collect the resources, process them and store them on the stockpile, granary or armory.
Anno
I think Dwarf Fortress lets you heard goats. Powermonger lets you herd sheep, if those count.
X-Com: Apocalypse? Really can't think of anything fantasy. Powermonger above is ancient times and lets you give various equipment to any unit but you can't really force them to use any particular thing.
Does anyone know any strategy game at all that has giant robots as a main feature that are portrayed as giant knights in a pseudo-medieval/fantasy time and not as walking tanks or wrestlers? Besides Vanguard Bandits and Super Robot Wars related games.
>giant robots as a main feature that are portrayed as giant knights in a pseudo-medieval/fantasy time
Bro, you're asking for something from the 80's like Dunbine and Galient. If you absolutely want sword wielding robot, the thing from top of my head is Panzer Paladin, which is your typical throwback to NES era Capcom platformers. Also I think Generation of Chaos on PSP or its sequel has mechs and is a strategy game to boot, but I haven't played it much.
>Bro, you're asking for something from the 80's like Dunbine and Galient.
Yeah, or even Escaflowne from the 90s. I don't understand why it's such a rare thing. Mech games aren't that rare, neither strategic mech games, nor mechs that use melee weapons. You'd think there'd at least be some Sengoku or 3 kingdoms, but mechs, strategy game out there somewhere, but the closest is Dynasty Warriors Gundam.
Settlers 3 and 4 would be right up your alley. They have nice supply chain systems that ultimately exist to fuel the military complex. There's also Priests that can cast spells which use mana obtained from sacrificed alcohol. Said spells range from summoning more wares to converting units, removing impassable terrain, killing units, etc.
If you want additional road autism but worse combat play settlers 2.
Mindustry is what you're looking for
Orgasm inducing game
X4
Is there any strategy game that has dungeon crawling and magic and shit, but your units can die and you can have multiple parties and isn't piss easy?
Darkest Dungeon?
I've played it. It's to grindy, and it got boring
4x isn't really what I'm looking for. I'm after something more smaller-scale and tactical, tough I will have a look at the game
Deity Empires
Arguably a lot of the fantasy 4x games are like that, minus the dungeon crawling. AOW, MOM and so on.
I keep trying to play Deity Empires but the game gets so fricking large it crashes on me every goddamn time I get to turn 500 or so.
Damn, never played that long so never saw it. Sorry to hear that. Maybe smaller maps would help?
There's far better games out there, the only reason I want to play Deity Empires is because of the frick-huge maps.
>Deity Empires
Any way to deal with the obligatory internet connection bullshit? Even a pirate version has it
I had no idea it needs one, never saw it mentioned or noticed it. Maybe it's because I'm on beta branch, seems like a strictly sp game to me.
Dungeon Keeper?
Is there any RPG-RTS hybrid game where your actual units are like RPG characters with stats and equipment, instead of the typical model where only some special "hero" characters are RPG-like (Warcraft 3, Warlords Battlecry, SpellForce, etc.)? I want something where I can autistically pick which spear my spearmanii will use, which armor they'll use, etc.
Closest thing I can think of is Fallen Enchantress, but that's not an RTS.
I can't think of any fantasy games, but you could argue that space strategy games where you design ships are like that. Not many realtime ones though, there's the RTS part of Space Rangers 2, though that wasn't very well implemented, and Star Ruler 2.
Yeah there are games like Galactic Civilizations where you get to design every aspect of your ships but those are turn based 4X games.
I guess Impossible Creatures is kind of like that, but typical RTS gameplay doesn't leave much room for spending time on designing units.
>Fallen Enchantress
Did the moronic frog owner/developer ever patch the game? He promised a year ago and spent the entire time b***hing about woke people on twitter or something.
Nevermind. Found a post on reddit from a stardock dev and the game will basically always be a buggy piece of shit because of the engine. A shame.
Yeah it's a cool concept that just failed on every level of the execution.
I used to likeStardock because of GalCiv2, but nothing they've done afterwards has been worth my time.
Didn’t SoaSE come after galciv2 and mog it in every conceivable way?
Ironclad made that and every other game they made wasn't as good. Hopefully SoaSE2 is decent.
I'm gonna refrain from calling you moronic for using "mog" like a child. SoaSE is an RTS with a space theme, GalCiv is a space 4X
>nothing they've done afterwards has been worth my time
I was calling out this statement because SoaSE (4x Homeworld) was far better than a generic Sid Meier clone.
Stardock didn't make it so it's a moot point
I used to do that in Cultures 2 as a kid. I would recruit some villagers, train them into veterans, camp next to enemy's pallisade, bring carts with food and a change of armors (wool tunics vs archers, plate for everything else), equip them with potions, make sure they're fed and rested before starting the attack...
I think the game wasn't very hard though, but maybe the sequels are.
Starsector
some warband mods have custom unit submods in them
In Bannerlord you can get an unlimited followers mod and make a merry band of companions decked out with tier 7 gear (bikini armour mod optional) to rampage across the countrysides. There's also a custom troop tree mod that lets you customise everything which combined with the distinguished service mod (promoting veteran troops to companions) makes for an awesome synthesis of mods.
Ancient wars: Sparta
Rage of Mages is kind of like this, though the games aren't particularly good.
Ultimate General: civil war lets you do this to an extent, but it's more %age effects than drastic changes from switching around equipment.
Someone told me this exists in another thread but then refused to say the name of the game, so I can only conclude they're a lying homosexual.
Either way: Secret society GS. Pick a standard conspiracy theory, try to out-maneuver the other conspiracy theories until you have influence over the entire planet.
Hard mode: It has to be good
>https://store.steampowered.com/app/946990/Secret_Government/
>it has to be good
Mixed.
Here's an alternative
>https://store.steampowered.com/app/1281190/The_Shadow_Government_Simulator/
This one is Positive and has a free demo
Those are close, but lack the inter-conspiracy shadow warfare I'm looking for. They just seem to be one conspiracy v the world.
>obvious picks
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1741640/Shadows_of_Forbidden_Gods/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/822990/Spinnortality__cyberpunk_management_sim/
>not entirely fits the bill but might be interesting enough as a concept
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1380010/Waiting_For_The_Raven/
>very different thematically but might be what you want gameplay wise
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1189100/Rise_Of_The_White_Sun/
Recommend me a recent classical RTS with base building and worker management.
Age of Darkness. Its still in development but parts of the campaign are already playable in the last update. Its basicaly They are Billions meets Warcraft.
I want a city builder that is an actual city builder not another banished clone where you deal with 20 starving children. Only other caveat is not Sim City 4 or Cities Skyline because I already played those allot.
management/business/trade game that is rather modern (2010s-now) and has a fair or large degree of complexity, with lots of freedom to do things
Goats can be herded in AoE3 but only China and Japan can get more of them.
Any good game where you're the king and have to make choices? All the games of that sort that I know are either ridicoulosly easy(sort the court), needlessly grim(yesy, your grace), or shitty mobile games
The name Warsim: The Realm of Aslona rings a bell. No idea how it plays tho.
Thanks, will check it out
Great thread idea.
Okay, I'm looking for a comfy city builder game with some RPG mechanics. Something similar to Majesty and Zeus, but much more laidback. Any ideas?
>dat cursed remaster pic
I thought Zeus was pretty laidback already. How about Nebuchadnezzar? Anons complained that it isn't difficult at all.
Zeus is pretty chill, but I also want some actual RPG mechanics in the game. You know; heroes leveling up, buying new equipment, researching magic, shit like that.
An ideal case would be something like:
>gameplay is similar to the old Impression games, so a chill city builder
>heroes are a thing, similar to Zeus and Majesty
>what heroes you get is also tied to the city you're building
>if your food source involves hunting, you'll get more archers
>similar to Zeus there is a world/diplomacy map
>besides the rival cities, you also have quest markers
>you send out your heroes to do quests and level up
>the rival cities can also send out their heroes to do the quests
>heroes also find crafting recipes for better gear
>there's a research tree for better gear
just play DF
Hinterlands
Dungeon Village 1 & 2
My Life As A King
none of these are particularly complex or good
I'd like to recapture the feel that I had when I first played chicken jockey.
Hello, I would like to request a grand strategy map-painting game with a good in-game tutorial. Yes, a GOOD in-game tutorial. Surely such a game exists, right?
Right?
>four days later
>no such game exists
GSGchuds... we lost...
What's a game with a cute female faction? Not amazons or anything like that that makes you think of aggressive, dominant women. Like how in Sins of a Solar Empire, the Advent have cute voices.
Lunar Corporation in Earth 2150
I played 13 Sentinels and loved the combat there. Is there a game that is entirely just that? Real time mecha team battles against many different enemies and lots of different abilities, upgrades etc
Not even sure if this is even the right board to ask this, wikipedia says the combat aspect of 13S is RTS so I came here
I don't think there's a mech game like that except Phantom Brigade maybe. Though from a quick look at 13S battles, you might as well play turn based mech games.
Thanks
Any good rec for turn based mecha games?
I can't really think of many specifically mecha strategy games that use a flashy style of Japanese mech combat like that outside of Super Robot Wars and related games, assuming you're particularly drawn to the flashiness of the game. Maybe try Into the Breach.
Thank you all, friends
Front Mission 3
Chaos Galaxy 1-2, not entirely about mechs as scope is a bit bigger but have all the usual mobile suits for space warfare with factions that specialize in them.
Also Mainframe Defenders, Ignited Steel, Codex of Victory.
i need a good economic simulator to replace Victoria 3
>vic3
>economic simulator
Shadow Empire, Plutocracy, Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator, World End Economica
>World End Economica
My homie.
A good turn-based WW2 game, emphasis on tactical stuff, terrain, height, etc; infantry based combat preferred, something on the scale of XCOM or JA2.
Commandoes, Silent Storm, Partisans
Is there a more mechanically-chill HoMM-like? I know how you're "supposed" to play HoMM without actually having a history with the game, so I can't enjoy it casually. I know I'm supposed to split units into 1-stacks and waste retaliations and shit like that, but really I just want to bimble around picking up magic gloves and recruiting dragons.
Decrease the difficulty and play the campaigns or custom maps not designed to be autismfests. Also you've been probably bombarded with
>PLAY THIS MOD ITS THE DEFINITIVE WAY TO PLAY NOW RRRARRRGG
so might as well just give the originals a try too.
personally, I see HotA as just another expansion pack, i.e. something to play AFTER finishing RoE, AB and SoD
>I know I'm supposed to split units into 1-stacks and waste retaliations and shit like that
You're not. It's a shitty strategy invented by pros that the devs didn't design the game around
King's Bounty, the Legend.
It has RT adventure map so probably the opposite of what he wants. Also it tends to have "balance >>>>>>>>> fun" approach to things, especially magic, which is not how unmodded NWC's HoMM games are.
Any recommendation for base building/party management game? Not like xcom or rimworld, or in first person, more in style of dead state, this war of mine or dead in vinland.
Theia maybe, though that is more 4x?
Basebuilding is really dogshit in Thea. The vast majority of buildings are straight up not worth constructing. Most are only worth it as special races attractors via materials, but if you can spare expensive resources and research points for such frivolities, you've already won anyway.
Couldn't get into Thea 2 but supposedly it's even worse there. The devs just can't balance the village part for shit.
is there anything similar to frostpunk out there? survival city builder, the environment as the antagonist, resource/population management and all that, with a strong sense of atmosphere
Banished, Dawn of men, Against the storm, Surviving Mars, Surviving the Aftermath, Endzone....
A bit different, but Kingdom Two Crowns is comfy to play on a smartphone.
IXION
>Is there anything like [the most popular indie strategy genre]
I'm sorry, but I just HAVE TO mock you.
Anyone know any games that take inspiration/copy stuff like Dark Cloud or Azure Dreams? Could really go for a comfy dungeon and town building romp.
don't think it's what you want, but there's Hinterlands
Cult of the Lamb has town building and roguelike element, also Dungeon Keeper is a classic. Both aren't exactly the comfy childhood JRPG fantasy experience you're looking for though.
i want to play a game where you can start as one nomad and just nomad around and recruit others to your group and eventually your people have babies along the way and maybe have wars with others like it's mount & blade, but i don't want to play mount & blade because the group in that are (almost) entirely male and so obviously can't be a whole tribe
i tried to do this in rimworld but the autism mechanics of that game are moronic
someone recently told me that dwarf fortress will have a fully-implemented "adventure mode" by the beginning of next year which will allow me to do this with my dwarves
so what is there?
>dwarf fortress will have
lol
I'll believe it when I see it. DF hasn't had a worthwhile content update in a decade.
Thea 2. You can play whole game as nomad, at start you get item needed for making village but you can use it to get powerful piece of gear instead.
Not nomads but Daggan
>:3c
Kenshi can be played as a nomad gang all the way
Anything where the natural recourses get depleted with use?
Banished, but I assume you already played it. Who hadn't?
a lot of games, actually
age of empires 2 and starcraft 1 are the first that come to my mind
Driftland. Though an average game, the feeling of hoarding resources was pretty satisfying. You claim these floating islands, clear out forests for wood, level mountains for stone, dig out all the gold, iron, coal, diamonds and rubies, build farmland over them, or just blow up useless islands.
Settlers series, at least 1-4, are the peak "resources deplete" games, especially when you account for the fact 3 and 4 have resources as physical objects on the map, rather than numbers in the storage.
Frost punk
Are there any 4x or adjacent games where war is the worst outcome and genociding your enemies is the hardest way to win instead of the easiest? Something where war will bankrupt you and make your civvies riot and scar the land so no one can use it anymore.
Late game Civ 2
AI has absolutely zero restrain when it comes to nukes, this ties with the global warming mechanics, so shit gets awkward in zero time, while your choice is the horrible grind of communism or endless riot of the democracy OR theocratic hellhole where everyone not rioting is turned into cannon fodder
Any rail management games that are NOT in 3D? Stuff similar RRT2 and similar "tech" level.
Factorio?
Openttd?
hearts of iron but good
HoI 3 & Darkest Hour
Game that has a mechanic like Ultimate General Civil War where you have a number of "raw" troops and weapons and use them to create and replenish units as you progress through the campaign. It doesn't need to be big numbers line moving strategy just have the limited resources across a campaign.
Point me in the direction of the obscurest and most pretentious of games.
Games that fit among other games like hidden agenda, where I had to convince the leftwing developer that I would go and do charity work in south america for him to send me the game for free. Which mixes a lot historical american adventurism and black ops while also whitewashing the soviet side of this. Games like futility, which were 8 ascii minigames that attempted to prove that games were indeed art! (which I was never able to find again). Games like Opera Omnia, where you play an historian who has to prove a history that creates the political foundation to displace an ethnic group. I need more "high on my own farts" core games.
We the Revolution
Though I don't know how you can stomach shit like that.
Except it doesn't fit the demand anon had. All it does is being pretentious, in the "I'm still mentally stuck in early 00s and I think edgy = deep" style
>it's not that anon
>it's just pretentious anon
>previous anon asked for a pretentious game
>I didn't read the actual demand, I just eye-balled the first line of it
Up yours
I read the whole thing Black person. Not my fault you're functionally moronic and insecure about it and have to prove otherwise.
>We the Revolution
Sounds like a perfect suggestion thanks.
>Though I don't know how you can stomach shit like that.
I was a theater kid. I think that says it all.
I was in the wrong tab and thought this was a Ganker thread. I was puzzled why it moved so slowly briefly.
I think you have better chance for such games on Ganker and /vrpg/
Good city builders with a fleshed-out diplomacy system? I want to make a town, but also interact with other towns in trade, alliances, war and peace.
Emperor RotMK multiplayer
Going from
is there a strategy game where you can do lewd things on a cultural level? Not just there are inherent naked units or you can take captured princesses as concubines, but like if you're playing as orcs you can turn captured humanoid cities into breeding grounds or if you're dark elves you can turn enemies into bondage slave units, things like that.
I'm not sure what exactly you consider to be the border between cultural level lewds and just captured concubine fricking, but:
Free Cities is entirely that, running a hyper-lewd arcology in an ancap-go-wild world. A large chunk of it is about pushing your vision of culture onto the people.
There was another /weg/ called XXXivilization that tried to be about running a lewd civ. It was also shit.
There's No Haven and Fort of Chains that are about managing a slaver company. As usual for the strategy genre, more text than CG. No Haven requires high RAGS tolerance.
Goblin Burrow series is about breeding captured heroines to create stronger goblin units. Personally I consider it massively wasted potential as each heroine gets just 2 lousy CGs with a trillion gobbo recolors.
If you want a straight up 4X but racial abilities are sex-themed, I don't think such a thing exists. Maybe in the depths of Civ 4 modding somewhere.
I don't care if it's ero or not per se but in RPG/fantasy you get these factions/races that are like "if you get captured by these guys you will probably be raped and/or eaten" but you never really see this happen even as flavor text or implications. Like maybe the sexy evil faction will have a succubus or something, but not like say a place where they just mindbreak people into suicidal warriors who will do anything for their next sex fix or a breeding facility where they capture and produce more succubi or harvest their life force for resources or something.
To use an example in GalCiv 2 you get the really evil offshoot of the slaver race who gains psychic nutrition from causing pain to others. This race doesn't even consider slaves valuable anymore and purely works them to death while working on artificial slaves so they can kill off the other races, and eventually winds up creating complexes that produce artificial beings purely to be thrown in to a furnace that annihilates them and their souls for energy. That's like the flavor text interpretation of their culture. I'm wondering if there's anything like that but with lewd races. Like "level 2 goblin breeding pit" as a city upgrade or something. Just some text that explains the people you defeated are being violated at least.
And yeah I don't want the entire game to revolve around it, I want the non lewd races to fear the lewd ones, or at least be able to RP that they do, and I should specify fantasy because I'm sure someone will bring up some weird Stellaris mod.
Age of Wonders?
3 isn't like that. Is 4? They have weird cultural motif shit.
Unironically go ask /d/.
I guarantee they will send you to a top quality, if very niche game that does everything you've listed
Starsector with the rape sector mod
I want a game that is difficult, a game I can crank the settings up to max and it becomes almost an impossible task to defeat. I’ve done everything lately and I can always win I want to lose for once
Do you want a game that cheats, a game where you cannot cheat (e.g. by rerolling maps until you get a start that guarantees a win), or a game with a mythological "good" AI? If it's the latter, I suggest chess.
I think Vantage Master is a fairly tough game. The AI will punish you and maps tend to be to your disadvantage. It's a turn based tactical game, like an SRPG. You could try some wargames that have specific scenarios where you play as the losing faction. If you don't care about cheating, you can try Conquest of Elysium 5 on hardest setting with wilder world and playing as a summoner type class and DO NOT reload ever and see how long you survive.
The only one I can think of that fails to meet the requirements but at least not by that much is Disciples II.
Civ 2
That is the entire premise of AI War.
Thanks for the suggestion this looks like what I’m looking for
I know you wanna lose, but don't start on the highest difficulty right away
Civ 2, especially MGE, especially without a fan patch. The AI will tear you a new one, no matter how good you are. And yet it's fun as hell, in that sweet spot between masochism and feeling like overcoming the impossible.
Similarly, there is always SMAC, but that heavily depends on your faction choices and who starts as your early neighbour, neutering a whole lot of difficulty Civ 2 had due to being so raw
Any games with cool and useful allied ai?
I have played Final Fantasy XV, Star Wars Republic Commando and Rainbow Six Vegas.
I really like rolling with some ai buddies.
Red Alert 3 campaign is designed with co-op in mind so almost every mission has you paired with AI ally. They're played by real actors, and can pull their weight depending on the objectives.
It's not /vst/, but based on your examples, you need to play Dragon's Dogma
Thank you for the suggestions, I have added Red Alert 3 and Dragon's Dogma to my wish list
At the moment I am playing Starcraft 2 Legacy of the Void and a lot of missions towards the end have allied ai bases.
The much larger sense of scale makes it more fun.
I want some good single player rts with lots of factions, preferably newer. The more gameplay options, the better (kinda like you can choose so many things in Rimworld).
Also preferably not one of the big names like AoEs, Civs etc.
Fantasy, historical, sci-fi are all okay.
Stellaris + mods gives you plenty of options
Northgard
I need cold war strategy games.
good story generators aside from ck and the usual stuff?
This has been probably been asked to death around here, but I'm new this board. AoE2 but in a fantasy setting. Also interested in anything that recaptures the magic of the original Stronghold game. I never liked any of the sequels.
>AoE2 but in a fantasy setting
Warlords Battlecry series. I played 2, anons mostly talk about 3.
Heroes of Annihilated Empires is an answer you probably haven't heard before.
Is that a "fantasy so silly haha" parody game or does it play it straight?
It takes itself pretty seriously. Devs probably wanted to be another warcraft game, though there could be silly stuff there, we mostly played MP.
Are there any RTS that have pictures of big pretty bases in their promotional screens where you will either typically be able to actually build a pretty and effective base in normal gameplay or start off with a big pretty base?
You're quite big pretty yourself, anon <3
Figured I'd ask here. Does War Tales scratch the Battle Brothers itch? It kinda looks like nuCOM, which I hate, but if it's in line with Battle Brothers as far as difficulty and gameplay I would be down.
Games where I can be a merchant? I played Patrician and the one in the Caribbean.
You just named the only good games that do that sort of a genre.
Shit
Couldn't get into it. Maybe I'll try again
The Guild 2
I can only think of a Flash game called Caravaneer. There was a sequel which got ported to Steam but I didn't play it much.
Dust till the End
A mix of a city-builder and an RPG. You know like how Crusader Kings is a bit of a mix of RPG and GSG? That's what I would like, with more emphasis on things like administration than in things like warfare if possible.
Are there any games similar to the men of war games ? i played red dragon, steel division and warno but the scale is way too big for me i hate having to micro multiple dozens of units at once. The closest game i've found is graviteam tactics.
Company of Heroes?
Syrian Warfare, Condename Panzers, CoH
Now I realize this series has a game, but it's not what I want. I want a game like this commercial
I want to have my planet/mothership approaching another planet and launching its attackers down to conqueror it while the planets themselves blast at each other.
those toys were cool as frick. why is it such a cool concept? how are planets at all different from very large ships?
Interplanetary is a neat game you might like. I don't think you can send troops, though. you build cities, do research, and install and augment interplanetary guns that you manually aim, and have to account for orbital mechanics. it's kind of a party game foremost, with light (but solid) strategy elements afaik.
Worbital isn't really /vst/ relevant but it seems like a good (drunk) party game, too.
>why is it such a cool concept?
For me, it's because it was like a miniaturized planet of thing. Like space games would normally have a desert planet, volcano planet, etc that you could capture, but with this series it wasn't just people on a rock or ice planet, it was the planet of ice with ice people and ice weapons. It has that thematic faction feel of something like Warhammer 40k or Lego's old space sets like Ice Planet, Insectoids, Exploriens, etc instead of just Faction Red Laser and Faction Blue Laser. The concept of consuming planets is always cool in a scary way as well, but even cooler is the ability of the planets themselves to fight back. The sole thing that makes it different from a spaceship is that it presumably holds most of its host species so it's like an entire realm's worth of creatures with a specific theme like you'd maybe get in a fantasy game. I feel like if you had magical floating fantasy battle city-states of lizardmen, constructs, fey creatures or whatever that it'd give the same feeling. Planets moving around nonetheless give that fun feeling of completely ignoring reality that you basically never see in sci fi strategy games since makers tend to at lest try to incorporate some level of scientific accuracy into the game. That said, the two games you linked seem a bit too dependent on physics, especially because the planets aren't freely moving. Worbital looks like it would be nice if it had free movement and maybe took a bit from Planetary Annihilation, and of course had unique thematic planets.
PA was/is great. they pulled off the spherical maps and interplanetary mechanics really well, imo -- the picture-in-picture was a good idea. I don't know why it wasn't more successful, except that it seemed like a lot of kickstarter gays were buttmad.
I have wanted either a revival of PA, or for someone else to pick it up. doing that concept with more factions than one would be interesting, including with fantasy theming.
Warlord Era game that is NOT Rise of the White Star
City building but with airships and skyscrapers, preferably exclusive to those two things. Just me building giant towers and floating cities
Airborn Kingdom
And there was a different game where you literally buy sky-scrapers, with clouds as your "ground"
What's a good strategy game where single player hasn't been ruined by being balanced for multiplayer instead of the devs making multiplayer balance a separate mod?
Just find a game you like in an unpatched state. Might be possible on torrents or by asking around in case some anons still have their CDs or DVDs.