Warlords IV is out if you want that. In general I avoid TBS games as they tend to get overbloated with complexity and features. RTS games have to stay simple, as if they got too complicated you wouldn''t be able to play for all the shit happening at once. TBS games get as complex as the designer wants, and before long you have Orion 3.

X-Com is still the best TBS tho. Recently TBS has been getting more press in the console world though, with Advanced Wars for the GBA and Final Fantasy Tactics for the PS1. Pleasant and reasonably simple TBS games.

thinking about it i just realized how i never cared about games like battle isle or panzer general, but loved x-com and jagged alliance. there''s not a huge difference, except the latter are more flexible in terms of how your units "look" like (skill and weapon wise).

just went back to work on one along the same lines in the shadowrun universe (but seeing how microsoft is sitting on the license and not doing cr.. with it i''ll probably drop cyberware and not call it shadowrun). feature creep is my enemy, as many things id like to add might make the interface ugly and uncomfortable (like shooting two weapons at once, using different fire modes and the option to "layer" commands (like queueing in rts, just that they happen at the same time, ie. shooting while moving).

btw. playing chaos league i realized how you can screw up a game by doing just one thing wrong. it is just SO obviously blood bowl that i had to play the demo and tried hard to like it, but
managing 9 players in real time is too hectic for me (doesnt really allow any neat strategies). turn based mode is a joke (every 5 seconds you get 10 or more seconds to issue commands while the game is paused). i havent found ways to abort the 10 seconds (if you dont want to give commands its plain annoying) and you cant force giving commands (watching a perfect pass just to have the receiver run straight into a blocker that suddenly showed up because you cant change the orders for the next 3 seconds is frustrating).

it could have been so simple if you could just pause at any time to give commands like other games do it since baldurs gate. they probably wanted it to work in multiplayer and ended up with a single player thats just absolutely no fun.

what i basically mean is: give me more decent turn based team games like jagged alliance. they appeal to the rpg player in me by increasing the members skills or hunt for better equipment and at the same time allow for more flexible strategies.

silent storm would have been great if it wasnt for the hightech stuff ruining the atmosphere for me. so many cool moments like throwing a grenade out the window and having the explosion blow the enemy through the closed window right next to you or blowing away whole parts of a building (just to avoid going all the way around to the stairs).

You might want to check out silent storm. It''s set in a WW2 setting, and it''s a mixture of both realtime and turnbased action. It''s pretty fun.

Tactics Ogre, for the PS1, is also a pretty fun tactical RPG (with a couple annoying quirks, like the text boxes which pop up in the middle of some commands, and some glaringly obnoxious spelling mistakes; ever see someone write "Designation" when they mean "Destination"?) If you want to go further oldschool, try the Shining Force ones on the Sega Genesis/Master; very simple but enjoyable battle system.

And no, my Atari 520ST was never "slow". Even playing a full-screen top-down shooter at 256 colors, 320x200 pixels, 20+ FPS, with 10 huge completely unique levels, all packed onto a 1440kB floppy. On a what, 10 or 12 MHz Motorola 68K processor, right?

I''m currently working on a turn-based strategy game similiar to Final Fantasy Tactics, actually.