Looking for a multiplayer, turn-based game to be played over days, weeks, or longer.

[Meta]

My friends and I have a pretty big discord group of long term university friends and some newer online buds. Most of us play in a DnD game every two weeks or so, but we also chat a lot in the discord and will dabble in other games like dota or tabletop sim when more people are around.

The weakness of all of those other games is that they require everyone to be free at the same time, which often doesn't happen. I'm hoping someone can help me find a game that we can play at our own speed and chat about as we go. I've seen some people have had success playing Dominions like this, even using play by post. I'd prefer a game a little less daunting, though.

All the stuff I hope a suggestions has:

Relatively easy to get in to. Even if top level play is very hard, we'll all likely be starting out together, so no worries about someone stomping the game.

Players take their turns at their own speed, no simultaneous gameplay needed. Some days we'll probably all hop on together and advance more of the game at once, but even moving ahead a little at a time during the work week will make for good watercooler talk.

A mix of public and hidden information would be nice for discussing the game. If everything is hidden from enemies, we can't chat about it so much, if everything is revealed, well that removes some of the fun of bluffing.

Teamplay would be great. A game that we can set up as a 2v2v2v2 or something similar would be cool. Can create channels for discussing tactics, truces, etc.

[Spacewolf]

Solium Infernum is a pretty fun game which would fulfil your requirements as far as I can tell.

[Meta]

Solium Infernum is a pretty fun game which would fulfil your requirements as far as I can tell.

Looks pretty neat. The UI is a bit confusing to me, not a lot of labels, but we can probably figure it out. I'll bring this one up for sure.

[Otomodachi]

Can't recommend Dominions enough. I get where you are coming from in terms of being daunting to get into, but if you're all starting from the same place and playing with NO AI at first, there's very little chance of wiping out or anything. You can all just kinda spaz around in the kiddy pool for a while. :)

[Anteros]

Most of the turn based grand strategy games like Age of Wonders would (sorta) work. The problems you're going to run into is that you'll be required to be online at the same time whenever one of you battles the other. Also, the game would have to be left running all the time, which isn't really a big deal if you have a good computer and stable internet, but I don't know your situation. I'm not really sure of any games that circumvent these problems entirely. I'll keep thinking in case something occurs to me.

People on these forums run online DnD games from time to time where people post their moves on the forum for the DM and others to read. Maybe something like that would work for you.

I'm sure you've already considered MMOs right? They're not turn based, but they allow everyone to go at their own speed and hop in and out when they want.

[Narkis]

We used to play Civ 5 here on GitP using Giant Multiplayer Robot (http://multiplayerrobot.com/), a site that automates passing the save around so that everyone can play their turn whenever they can. It was pretty fun.

[Meta]

Dominions - Maybe we can give it a shot. Which one is best? Cheaper is nicer as well, so we may wait on a steam sale or something.


AoW - something like this or pitboss mode in civ 5 works if you leave it running, but I'm going to try and avoid that much power usage if possible.


MMOs- We played neverwinter together for awhile. Some people fell behind, and even the people in front got bored. Was very repetitive and didn't feel very skill intensive. Maybe some raids are challenging, but it seemed like we had to run the mindless lower level stuff again and again.


DnD - we have a pretty regular game already, but maybe something PbP could be a cool change. I'll float the idea.


GMR - I've heard of the GMR. Another good idea, thanks everyone.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

GMR is great, and works pretty flawlessly. Cannot recommend enough.

Sounds like you have more than 7, else you could have a long-running game on webDiplomacy (https://webdiplomacy.net). (Actually, looks like there might be some variants that support more than 7?)

[sleepy hedgehog]

When we were in that situation, we played a dwarf fortress succession campaign.
Whoever was free would take it, and advance it for a season or two.

Now, this specifically, probably won't fit your group, since slogging through learning Dwarf Fortress is painful.
But I'm sure there's other city builders where it would work.

[Artanis]

For my two cents, I'd recommend checking out Massive Assault/ (https://store.steampowered.com/app/34630/Massive_Assault/).

[Meta]

GMR seems to be the favorite, but we're all on different versions of Civ. Gotta get that straightened out.

I appreciate everyone's input and checked out everyone's suggestions, might end up solo playing some of them myself.

[JNAProductions]

Diplomacy? It's a board game, but there are online programs for it.

[Grif]

GMR is great, and works pretty flawlessly. Cannot recommend enough.


For a more traditional Civ experience, you could always also play Civ IV by email. (Just pass the turns around.) I have gotten it working to be somewhat GMR like, in that you can just play and forget, but that takes a bit more setup.

(A shame that Pitboss functionality had been broken by the move to Steam. I think there's also a way to reenable that.)

[Psyren]

If you turn on Auto-Combat (i.e. the AI fights for both of you so that you don't ever have to be around at the same time), Heroes of Might and Magic 3 works for this. The AI can resolve things in fiddly or wasteful ways though.

[Jama7301]

Maybe Frozen Synapse 1 or 2? It allows for small 1v1 combat skirmishes where people submit their turns and then they play out simultaneously. You can do live play if you're online, otherwise, people can submit their turns whenever and they'll play out the next time they pull up the game, after the moves have been submitted.

[Avaris]

My immediate thought would be Neptune’s Pride. I’ve never played it, but Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a few articles which give a very good idea of how it works.

Basically, real time space conquest game, except the real time aspects are in the sense of ‘it takes half a day to travel between star systems’, so it’s basically turn based. A huge amount of the game is the discussions around it with the other friends playing. “I have a fleet able to hit your system within half a day, so back off” kind of thing.

Apparently there is a more recent game, Subterfuge, which plays in a similar way, with submarines.

Check it out: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/11/08/have-you-played-neptunes-pride/

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/01/02/neptunes-pride-the-complete-epic/

[Meta]

Frozen Synapse looks pretty neat, as does Neptune's Pride. I think the real time aspect of Pride is going to be a dealbreaker though.

[Wraith]

Chaos Reborn has a real-time and a "play by email" mode which players can log into as they need, and also supports team-based multiplayer.

[Meta]

Chaos Reborn has a real-time and a "play by email" mode which players can log into as they need, and also supports team-based multiplayer.

This was the winner. I had never heard of this game, but 5 of us have it downloaded now. We're all on the tutorial still but if the multiplayer games are easy to set up, it'll be perfect, ty!