Spaceward Ho! IV 4

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did not see any listing that would only work on windows 95-98

Spaceward Ho! is one of the best computer games ever made. Computer Gaming World's review called it "the Holy Grail of strategic computer games". It is turn based, so you aren't fighting off carpal tunnel pain while trying to click at the speed of light. The geniuses who designed this game made all the controls as simple and user-friendly as possible. While the graphics are now quite dated, the gameplay will never be, because the critical decisions all occur between your ears. You decide how easy to make the game, how intelligent computer opponents will be, how large your galaxy will be, and 1 minute later you're playing. Borrowing the motto from the board game Othello, Spaceward Ho! is "A Minute to Learn... A Lifetime to Master".You start with your homeworld in a sea of other planets. Opponents are out there somewhere. Each of you has different temperature and gravity preferences, so you aren't all fighting to colonize the same planets. Your homeworld, large colonies, and savings all produce income each turn; while colonies just starting to grow, and worlds being mined or terraformed, cost money every turn. You can also spend money on improving any or all of 6 different categories of technology (range, speed, weapons, shields, miniaturization, and radical), or create savings for future large purchases (fleets of ships). Debt is allowed, up to your income's ability to pay the interest. Besides money, the other thing you can accumulate is metal (non-renewable resources).Each human and computer player will pick different combinations for which technologies to fund, how heavily to fund them, how soon to make more colonies, when to mine metal from worlds, how many ships to build (and which types), and how aggressively or defensively to play. As the game goes on, technologies keep improving, so an expensive "cutting edge" fleet from 20 turns ago will be pretty weak, and getting less effective with each turn (even if no ships have been destroyed in battles). To be successful, players have to decide when to spend the money and metal to replace a fleet, or build defensive satellites to guard their worlds, or colony ships to create the massive population base they will eventually need for the funding to defeat their enemies. However, nothing is required, so a very young child can enjoy playing this game.When playing against computer opponents, they do not work together, so it is completely random whether each one will expand in your direction, or towards another computer player, You can also play against human opponents by connecting computers, and have up to 20 total players. Computer opponents plus human opponents is allowed, and I'd encourage it; especially if the humans use generic player names, so none of them are sure which opponents are the other human players. Every time a ship arrives at a world with any opponents ships and/or population, there will be a battle (unless both have selected to be allies). Because the game is turn based, you get to watch what happened in the battles, instead of micro-managing the battles. The faster ships shoot first, and a population with no ships does get to return fire. Ships with better weapons do more damage, those with better shields can absorb more damage, and firing on a population reduces the population with each shot. A homeworld or large colony is capable of defeating a large fleet, but usually at a devastating cost in population (which will take many turns to get back to where it was, and will never get to the population it could have reached if never attacked). Since large populations are most of your income source each turn, leaving large populations undefended is a dangerous gamble.While it may sound like there are a lot of choices to deal with, they are made quickly, and repeat turn after turn, until you change them. The main idea here is strategy. Every decision will likely help you in some ways while hurting you in others. Some of the outcome will be luck, but mostly it will be the result of your choices, and how well you played the strategy you implemented. Over time, you will see some options tend to work better than others, but every game is unique. Employing the same strategy game after game will produce different results, depending on which opponents are using which strategies, and which choices you make to deal with them. Games can last from a few minutes to many hours, depending on how large of a galaxy you selected, how many opponents you chose, which strategies are used by each player, and how successful each player is.To give some specifics, colonizing worlds which need more terraforming to get to your 72 degree ideal temperature will take more turns to become profitable, and cost you more money for that terraforming. Worlds which are further from your 1.0G ideal gravity will take longer to build a large population, and grow more slowly throughout, so more turns supporting those colony and less profit once they are profitable. The choice of whether to colonize such worlds will likely be made by how bad they are, if they are near an opponent or nestled in a corner behind your homeworld, and whether you are driving nearby opponents back or suffering regular attacks. Spending all your technology budget on weapons and shields is a great short-term strategy, but will eventually result in opposing fleets shooting first, your fleet needing more turns to move from world to world, not having as long of a range, and consuming more non-renewable metal (due to low or no miniturization). Building a large fleet early can be great if you find an opponent's homeworld, or intercept a fleet headed to your homeworld. However, later on you will be able to build a fleet which travels faster, so it will not just benefit from your weapons and shields improvements, but also be able to visit more worlds in fewer turns, so you get more use from it before it becomes obsolete. When a fleet has become several levels of technology behind your current abilities, you can scrap it (recovering some of the metal), or keep sending it after your opponents until it is destroyed, or send individual ships out to explore many more worlds, or use it to defend a colony, or some combination of several of those options. When you find an opponent's planet, or it's fleet attacks, you can immediately build a fleet to combat your opponent, or wait for some of your technology to improve (advances are somewhat predictable, but not revealed until they occur). Waiting may let your opponent defend their world, or attack another of your colonies; but it will also give you a more powerful fleet, which will be useful further into the future. There are many more examples, which you decide as you go. Second guessing your decisions, and finding missed opportunities, are common. It all combines to make Spaceward Ho! more challenging, fun, and realistic than nearly all other computer games.