Yes, that was my favorite strategy game of that time. I tried to recreate the experience by playing Age of Wonders, but it didn’t quite feel the same.
Slitherine released a remake of it late last year. Haven’t tried it myself, but the reviews seem decent.
Tyrian was great! And also Tyrian 2000 which I was able to play somewhere. Maybe Gametap or some similar service. I remember trying it out as shareware (I think) and thinking it was Epic Games’ best published shooter to date. Still holds up, imo.
I loved the upgrades and the fact that you had a health bar instead of a 1 hit kill. Plus all the stuff you said.
Ultima 6. It was Baldur’s Gate before Baldur’s Gate, and it had very deep conversation and morality systems. Also amazing VGA graphics (for the time, 256 colors!) interesting PC Speaker AND Sound Blaster music, and an interesting open world and story that showed that preconceived notions and prejudices can be bad, and that sometimes you can solve cultural misunderstandings through communication and sharing instead of conflict.
Ultima 6 was a masterpiece and way ahead of its time. If any of the Ultima games needs a remake, it’s that one, imo. I also played Goblins 2, but never got around to 1 or 3. Did enjoy it, but got stuck on some puzzles and gave up. You couldn’t just go online and find a solution like you can nowadays. If I ever got back into the Goblins series, I probably would finish them using those online hints though. I’ve lost the patience (and more importantly, time) to do it the hard way nowadays.
That’s why I deleted my actual Facebook account, it really did give me the impression that the company was Cyberstalking me. They knew stuff I did not tell them or put down anywhere in any of the data forms they gave me to fill out. I didn’t upload any pictures, I barely did much of anything, yet somehow they seemed to know everything about me anyway.
I eventually made a new “account” a few years later and left it completely blank and filled out nothing but my name… and yet they still guessed quite a few things correctly, including who I knew in real life. So damn creepy. I only use that new account for log in synchronization for games and apps that don’t have any other means of access. I wish I could get rid of it too, but it’s a necessary evil for certain edge cases.