How did (you) get into /vst/?I remember when I was just a wee lad I would watch my parents play strategy games, being too little and too young to play them myself. Dad would play Shogun Total War like a paradox game with battles being a rare sight, and mom would play Caesar 3. Then saw Stronghold installed on dad's PC one day, tried a siege map and got screams from fire burned into my brain.
My next door neighbour would invite me over to watch him play exclusive the sandbox mode of Stronghold Crusader, never the real game, he'd just set up battles and it blew my mind. I'll never forgive him for sending me down this path.
>>2355991went to parent's friends house. they had a pc and in the 2000 that was crazy. he had age of empires installed. he'd let me play for hours while i was visting. i havent spoke to that guy in years. good times
One of my first PC games was an RTS, so it's not like I could avoid getting into it.
>>2356003The devil is in the details. What was the RTS, how did it end up on PC. Details, details nigger
>>2355991my first memory is warcraft 2, a peon in the snow
>>2355991I went through a chud phase when I was younger where I wanted to larp as the great conquerors of the past and "learn history", but ended up developing a genuine appreciation for the genre and also found out that a lot of historical strategy games are quite inaccurate. Now some of my favorite strategy and tactics games are non-historical because I feel like they generally have more depth, and I learnt all my history from more credible sources than Rome: Total War.
>>2356007Earth 2140, from a gaming mag. And it was a used PC, from someone my dad knew, that came preinstalled with Heroes 2 (first hotseat matches with my cousins), and Ancient Conquest demo.
>>2355991Caesar 2 came with the first family pc, and the first game I ever bought was Warcraft 2 cause the cover looked cool
>>2356017>I went through a chud phase when I was younger where I wanted to larp as the great conquerors of the past and "learn history"Holy based
>>2355991my dad played civ 5 all the time and would let me use his computer to play it if he was watching TV or something. funny thing is that I couldn't read English yet so I had to figure everything out using math and the symbols so I thought that India was shit because they just got extra unhappiness twice lol
>>2355991I just play all kinds of genres and RTS, 4x, and SRPG games just happen to be some of them.
>>2355991>be 7>get Flight Simulator 98 as a birthday present>the box includes a Microsoft CD filled with demos and extra software>in that CD are also Age of Empires 1 and Close Combat demos>AoE especially is almost like a mini game with scenarios and several missions long campaign>end up playing the demos more than Flight Simulator
>first game ever was RA2>discovered multiplayer with War3 custom mapsi never stood a chance, this was always my home
Got age of kings for free with my parents new pc. And I already wanted to play it badly because I heard about it. It felt amazing when aoc got released and I could play Spanish, Aztecs and Mayans.
>>2355991My first games were SSI games. My dad was into wargames so he got me into Steel Panthers 2 and Panzer General 2 right around the point long term memories were forming. Moving apaches around the map might actually be my earliest memory.
>>2356032>my dad played civ 5 all the time>Civ 5 released in 2010>There is a very real chance that this anon is actually old enough to post hereThat's fucked. You're fucked.
>>2356042There was nothing better than demo disks as a kid. You could play that shit for years and not get bored.
My father played a few strategy games, but rarely. On his office pc he had a WW2-era game, where you can give medals to your units. He later also told me about another WW2-era strategy game he played in his days, which had a very tough AI, which would take the time to think about it's turns, while you do yours. So the secret to beat it, which my father was told by someone else, was to do your turns as quickly as possible. I also played Sudden Strike on his pc.Later when I got my own PC I played Age of Empire 2, Die Völker, Warcraft 2 and 3 and eventually I got Empire Total War and Shogun 2. I also eventually discovered Victoria II, which I played for decades.
>>2356131Welcome to the real world, granddad. Come join us in the home.
>>2355991I saw my cousin playing starcraft and I thought it's the coolest thing ever. He burned me a cd and gave me his serial key so I'd stop pestering him about it.
>>2355991Playing shareware versions of various strategy games (Master of Magic, Hammer of the Gods, World Empire III, Stelcon 2469, Baldies, etc.). My first city-builder was SimCity 2000 and I first saw it on the two library computers where older kids would play it.
>>2355991i wanted to borrow a harry potter game from my elementary school mate, but he accidentally gave me empire earth (It was just a ripped cd with nothing written on it) and I fell in love
Hometown childhood best friend house, he and his dad played strategy games. First time I played risk too. First Rts experience I think was my friend playing Warcraft 1 or command and conquer. Flipped through a lot of instruction manuals. They also played the original civilization.
>>2355991CK2 was free like 10 years ago
star trek armada 2 . my first strategy game and what got me into Star Trek as well.
>>2356487That game was awesome as a young kid who had only seen random Voyager episodes.
>>2355991Many years ago my dad needed to buy computer parts for work and he took me with him to the store for some reason. Anyway I saw the Warcraft 3 battle chest on one of the shelves. It looked so badass, so I asked my dad if we could buy it. Imagine my shock when he said yes. I was WAY too young to understand the story (or the gameplay - I never won games without cheat codes lol) but I had so much fun with it that I never cared.
>>2356032>my dad played Civ 5holy fuck I'm old. my story is that my dad played Civ 2
>>2355991A bunch of my friends in middle school played Brood War (this was several years before Starcraft 2 came out), and I ended up playing with them because it was one of the few games they played that ran on my hand-me-down shitbox that had a Windows 98 sticker on it because it was that old.That was a taste of the /vst/ life, but I didn't fully become an a/vst/ist until the latter half of high school when I got a modern PC and discovered Victoria 2 because of someone posting an autism map somewhere that they made using Canomer's so-called "paintable" map.I remember when I finally got into college I was shocked at how almost none of the nerds I ran into have played Starcraft before, given how every nerd in my high school played it. Seems like every high school out there was full of nerds that played fighting games or only shooters instead (we played shooters too, but not *only* shooters). This was about 15 years ago back before map painters became mainstream.
I liked doodling over my history map and great big country and VGH mentally, then I found Victoria 2
>>2355991/vr/ got shafted with the "2007 is retro", ruining the board forever.Most of the games from /vr/ I cared about are strategies, so here I amSometimes, there is even a decent thread
>>2357741Your mom's retro, faget
>>2356520Tfw you played Civ 2 when it was new
>>2355991My childhood defining game was Command & Conquer. I loved both watching my dad play and then playing it myself. Although I was rather shit at it and didn't actually beat TD or RA1 until the remaster came out. Felt like a nice little bit of closure once I did though.
>>2355991Best friend's dad was into them, we played a lot of AoE and Stronghold at his place.
>>2355991Dune was my favorite book when I was 9, and my dad somehow got his hands on Dune 1. I remember being really pissed off at all the mismatches with the book but still playing it over and over.Then an uncle had Dune II, which got me "a bit" obsessed & insufferable about.Shit calmed down when I got HoMM1 on the PC, then C&C on PS1.
>>2355991saw an ad for Rome Total War.
Played Panzer General, Command & Conquer, Civ 2 with my dad
>>2358153My brother. Did you turn out retarded like me? I suspect learning all about WW2 and Cold War vehicles stunted me in other areas.
>>2355991AoE1 CD strapped to a box of nutri grainor shovelware MoO clone on a 20 games in 1 CD picked up at a garage salehell if i can remember which was first
>>2355991Friends showed me Rise of Nations, Age of Mythology, and Impossible Creatures one summer at my grandpa’s condo.I think my dad got me Age of Empires III for Christmas that year (I was 10), but I also remember playing Rise of Nations on his laptop because it wouldn’t work on our home computer.From there it was Stronghold 2, Star Wars Empire at War, Imperial Glory, American Conquest, and then probably half a dozen others that I pirated and forgot about.>>2356001My friend showed me the Titan expansion when they got it and I remember messing around with the scenario editor.
>>2355991I got into /vst/ much later than other genres, used to play mostly RPGs and FPSs. One day a friend showed me Civilization Revolution (babby’s first /vst/) and I was hooked from there on out.
my dad and uncle were both big into Starcraft and Warcraft, and my dad was big into Age of Empires for a bit too
>>2355991My dad was obsessed with making me a future leader (of a country) so my homeschooling largely consisted of me playing strategy games and then him discussing political philosophy with me. I started out on EU2 and then the sequels as they came out, also Civilization, a lot of eastern front war games I don't remember the names of now. Had to get my GED with Khan Academy but it's still hard to do anything that isn't playing a strategy game lol. Still unemployed and living with my dad who is trying to fund a political organisation.
>>2358375based schizo dad
>>2355991Childhood friend's dad was a computer scientist and they had multiple computers along with basically every single game from the early to mid 90's, but MOO and MOO2 were what really got me.Somehow I never really thought about how wild that was.
Lego battles on the DS.
>>2358432Not enough anon, context matters. Who got it for you. Details matter.
Bought the first Battle for Middle Earth when I was ~10 because I loved LotR and the box was eye catching. Around the same time I played custom battles in R:TW at a friends house and was absolutely stunned by the scale of it, but it was a couple of years before I bought it myself. A year or two later I bought DoW (including WA & DC IIRC) and me and a friend played the absolute shit out of that at my place. Then when I had just turned 13 I bought EU3, again 90% based on the box art, and that was it. I'm pretty sure I've bought and, in some fahsion, enjoyed every Paradox GSG (though not every DLC lol) since then. Honourable mentions to the Alexander movie tie-in RTS and a weird Risk/RTS hybrid version of Axis&Allies that I sunk hundreds of hours in to
>>2358432I remember playing this game as a kid but I used cheat codes to get through everything because that was before I understood what strategy games were about. I just thought it was cool that I could have a bunch of little lego men to boss around.
It all started with Warcraft 1 for me.
Dad is a gamer, so I grew up playing Warcraft 2, Starcraft, Age of Empires I&II
back in 1998, dad bought our first PC for the whole family and it came with a bundle of software on CDs, including a copy of the first Age of Empires game (original of course). Some time later dad began buying PC magazines that came with CDs with software and some games, I remember one that came with a bunch of game demos and the two I liked the most were Star Wars Force Commander and C&C Tiberian Sun.
civ 1 playin at school old black&white screen computers
>>2355991Friend got me into Warcraft 1 when I was in middle school, then I bought the sequel from the game rack at Piggly Wiggly.
>>2355991i remember being 5 on the computer which had AOE 2 on it. the campaign scenarios and reading the in-game encyclopedia is what made me a history chud
>>2360548Didnt have a computer but i played Warcraft 2 on ps1 and starcraft on N64. Rts used to be so good i got my mom to play Red Alert 1 on ps1.
How many of you cunts are uner 30 jesus
>>2355991when I was 8 I was visiting my granparents, while my uncle was there, and he showed me Anno 1701 and Starcraft 2
>>2361388>how dare zoomers play a genre that isn't currently being milked to death by AAA publishers
Saw a review of Hearts of Iron 2 in a vidya magazine, which triggered my latent map painting autism
Started with Dune 2 and Mega-lo-mania on Sega. In Dune I would always surround my island base with rocket towers and slowly build up the army, and in Mega-lo-mania I never realized that unused people would carry on to the next era and because of that never managed to beat the later eras as a kid.Then played the fuck out of Red Alert 2, Warcraft 3 and HoMM 4 when I got access to PC. I liked HoMM 4 over 3 primarily because you could make a fuckoff strong hero and clear maps with him alone. Also loved fucking around with map editor in W3, spent countless hours scouring other people's maps for cool models and making weird custom spells.
oh uh oh stinky
>>2355991Think it was the StarCraft demo that hooked me. I already liked SimCity games and just naturally ended up getting C&C and a bunch of games where building or fighting or both was the main focus.In the StarCraft demo the zerg are called "xenomorphs" and you fight on the side of the confederacy. Fun bunch of missions.
>>2355991Warcraft 1 from a pirated CD, on my uncle's old Acer laptop , 486 Intel CPU, no audio except for PC Speaker.
>>2358343>MoO clone1st MOO clone i ever played was made in 1997. Warpath 97'. and it plays more like Asteroids with some MOO1 mechanics.
Risk, I never played a game, I just liked playing with the toy soldiers
It all started when I was 8 and my friend at school showed me Red Alert 2 and I thought it was really cool
