Comparison of Wesnoth to turn-based strategy games?

General feedback and discussion of the game.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

Post Reply
stencil
Posts: 28
Joined: July 15th, 2021, 11:33 pm
Location: USA

Comparison of Wesnoth to turn-based strategy games?

Post by stencil »

Hi all,

Happy approaching summer. In light of my own enjoyment of Wesnoth and desire to market it to other players, along with fairly common suggestions from others about marketing, and the recent re-release of some similar turn-based strategy/ turn-based tactics games , I thought I would try my hand at making a comparison table between Wesnoth and similar games. I have attached a PDF to this thread. My question is, since I have not actually played several of the games, could some of you friendly community members let me know what things I may have entered incorrectly?

If the information I Googled is correct, Wesnoth is doing pretty well compared to similar games. Probably due to the free price tag and large number of lifetime downloads, Wesnoth appears to have a fair number of active players, which is obviously important for multiplayer usability. The number of community forum posts this year (and number of supported languages) also tops the list among compared games, which seems to be an optimistic indicator relative to future maintenance and single-player improvement. Of course, the pool of games I selected to compare is fairly niche, so I’m not suggesting that Wesnoth will ever compete with the latest and greatest, but at least among turn-based strategy I’m still a big fan.

Note: There are plenty of other games I could have included, like Triangle Strategy, Hoplite, or Rivengard, but since I haven’t played a lot of those either, I hope these dozen will at least be a representative sample. Sources came from Wikipedia, Steam, Google Play store, and individual game websites, all accessed June 1, 2023. Games and official remakes are separated with a slash and calculated together for statistics, while unofficial remakes have the source game in parentheses and are calculated individually.

*edited to update number of languages and max # players*

List of games compared:
Battle for Wesnoth
Heroes of Might and Magic
Advance Wars/ Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot
Triple-A (Axis and Allies)
Fire Emblem Engage
Battle Brothers
Wargroove
XCOM: UFO Defense/ XCOM: Enemy Within
Battle of Polytopia
Into the Breach
Master of Orion/ Remnants of the Precursors
StarCraft/StarCraft Remastered
0 AD (Age of Empires)
Attachments
BfW game comparison.pdf
(241.48 KiB) Downloaded 119 times
Last edited by stencil on June 12th, 2023, 5:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Thank you to everyone who has worked on this game!
User avatar
Pentarctagon
Project Manager
Posts: 5496
Joined: March 22nd, 2009, 10:50 pm
Location: Earth (occasionally)

Re: Comparison of Wesnoth to turn-based strategy games?

Post by Pentarctagon »

Something to note is that the player limit of 9 is just the editor's limit - if you're creating the scenario by hand then the number of sides you can add is effectively unlimited.

Also I'd be interested in knowing more about how the "# Players in 2023" values were determined, if only since I'm surprised Wesnoth's number is that high. Though I suppose I mostly look at the multiplayer number so maybe that's why.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 little bugs
take one down, patch it around
-2,147,483,648 little bugs in the code
User avatar
octalot
General Code Maintainer
Posts: 777
Joined: July 17th, 2010, 7:40 pm
Location: Austria

Re: Comparison of Wesnoth to turn-based strategy games?

Post by octalot »

Is the "Forum Posts" column just for the Steam forum?

I'm not sure what number to say for languages, but 56 includes 2 that have no strings translated at all. Definitions such as "at least 80% of core translated" or "tutorial and Two Brothers" gets numbers in the range 20-23.
stencil
Posts: 28
Joined: July 15th, 2021, 11:33 pm
Location: USA

Re: Comparison of Wesnoth to turn-based strategy games?

Post by stencil »

Thanks for the comments, @Pentarctagon and @octalot! That's very helpful to know about the player limit and languages. I'll update the sheet accordingly, maybe in a couple of days if anyone else had feedback.

The player count this year is the number of downloads I could see across all versions on Sourceforge since the start of the year; probably many people downloaded more than once, but it also doesn't include Steam or Apple store downloads, so I thought it was a fair ballpark. You're right that there are many fewer playing multiplayer, though; that would fall into the <5000 category. For forum posts, that was either determined from the game's dedicated webpage, or, if it didn't have one, the Steam forum. So some of them undoubtedly have more posts, but then, Wesnoth would as well. It's mostly meant to be ballpark figures, if some hypothetical person were thinking, "I wonder if Wesnoth is active enough for me to sink my time into as a new game." I think the answer is definitely yes!
Thank you to everyone who has worked on this game!
needmoreplayers
Posts: 67
Joined: November 17th, 2023, 7:33 pm

deleted dont care about this game no more

Post by needmoreplayers »

deleted dont care about this game no more

this seems like a dead project

this game has outdated wiki info that nobody has ever updated for a long time

this game has people who deletes questions about this game better on a very inactive forum

this game has people who dont care about anything

there seems to be very few good people on here like that 'diamond map' addon person and others

there's nobody on here that knows how to answer any questions about making this game better

like really wtf
Last edited by needmoreplayers on January 9th, 2024, 8:21 pm, edited 6 times in total.
User avatar
Atreides
Posts: 1039
Joined: March 30th, 2019, 10:38 pm
Location: On the 2nd story of the centre village of Merwuerdigliebe turning the lights on and off

Re: Comparison of Wesnoth to turn-based strategy games?

Post by Atreides »

I doubt Master of Orion only has 500,000 copies distributed since 1993... I suspect that number is only for the precusors variant. I myself play the latest version of the main branch (just plain Master of Orion) and it must have had millions of copies sold back in the day. Not to mention zillions of other copies... ; )

Other, more famous like MOO, games that BfW could have been compared to are Civilization, Master of Magic, Panzer General, Colonization, Steel Panthers, etc. I believe BfW belongs in that elite league.
Post Reply