What are the websites for those? I've been wanting to find one particularly for Axis and Allies to play online.

I'll have to try the settlers one too

I've also been looking for a good A&A game online

There is also risk. The one I really want to see is Imperial, hands down the best strategy game of all time.

@TruNinja We all want to know where you play Axis and Allies online.

@Fasces Where do you play risk online?

I don't, I stopped 4 years ago

there are several sites to play AA online, one of the most common is triplea.sourceforge.net/mywiki. It has mods on it and a variety of games to play.

I haven't played AA in a long time because of the unbalanced nature of the game. Given a number of players of equal strength, the game has a bent toward the allied team. Plus the turns are pretty much the same each round and you see very little variation unless you play new players.

One game I'd love to see make it online is Shogun/Samurai Swords. I own a copy of the out-of-print board game and would love to play again. That and the old Avalon Hill Civilizations board game.

I'll also offer to play anyone at Settlers of Catan and put em on my friends list, but beware, I'm pretty good. I have about a 60% win rating. I'm always looking for some good competition and I've thought about entering the world-tournament at Gen Con Indy. The winner gets to play at Germany, all expenses paid in the Finals.

I would LOVE to see the old Civilizations board game put online!! That would be awesome. Thanks for the info TruNinja. I'll try out Catan and maybe one day we'll play.

Catan is great. But I've only played it F2F.

No problem. My name on Catan.com is ninjaj...my avatar is a chick, though. It's sorta funny but I created the female avatar because under my old avatar, I saw that guys would target other guys before they targeted a female, even if she had the same number of points and more dev cards or a better setup than her male counter-parts, especially if she was talkative (wink wink).

@SD: FtF is the preferred way because talking can become a big part of the game and it's more personable. Plus, the online version has the drawback in that people have the tendency to quit if something happens that they don't like. I've cut people off when building roads and had them quit, some people have quit because you keep rejecting their crappy trade offers and others have quit because they are having their butt handed to you. You can always find someone to take their place but it does take time. Online, the average game takes about 30 minutes, give or take. I've completed some games in 15 minutes and others in an hour depending on how quickly or slowly the others take or if you have a bunch of people quit continuously.

If you decide to start an account on there, look me up, and if you're new, I recommend joining games already in progress that are waiting on subs because if you lose, it doesn't affect your record but if you win, you get the points. The drawback is that for your 'ranking', the number of games you start from the beginning has to constitute 75% or more of the total games you've played.

"No problem. My name on Catan.com is ninjaj...my avatar is a chick, though. It's sorta funny but I created the female avatar because under my old avatar, I saw that guys would target other guys before they targeted a female, even if she had the same number of points and more dev cards or a better setup than her male counter-parts, especially if she was talkative (wink wink)."
Its so true, its so true.

actually, you guys have got me thinking about that civilization online thing. I am afterall, a computer game programmer. I'm starting to think that might be a good project to work on.

@Tru Ninja - I'm wondering if you weren't just fulfilling your own hidden inner desires. LOL

I find that I get more people I don't know team with me when I have a female character than male in City of Heroes.

In all reality, I have seen the same thing. I used my wife's account once to play some online games and her waiting time for new games was a third what mine was if I used my account. Of course the game was usually left in the middle when I told the other player that I was the gal's husband playing, not actually her. Can't really say that I blamed them for leaving though.

WAY back in the day, I played on MUDs, and I had a friend that apparently masqueraded as a girl on them. I had no idea. I mean, I knew his characters were female, but I didn't know that he...sold it so much. So one day, I was asked, "You know (name) in real life, right?"

"Yeah, he's one of my best friends."

"...he?"

AWWWWWWKward.

My standards avatars is generally one of my fav anime characters. Should I start using the female ones like Lucy or Lust, or do you think cartoon characters wont have the same effect?

They're actually pretty much proof you're a dude.

I tried playing a female on a MUD RPG once. After I got 'hit' on every time I ended up in the same room as someone else, I disbanded the character. It was just too much nonsense to deal with!

@Apple

What games have you made?

"They're actually pretty much proof you're a dude."
When I see an attractive female as an avatar for someone I automatically assume its a guy. not sure if everyone does but odds are they will be...

My main City of Heroes character was a chick who wore a big trenchcoat and sunglasses and stuff all the time. I got invited to groups and such, but nothing really egregious.

Until I thought it would be funny to make a schoolgirl alternate costume.

Not funny, it turns out.

In my experience, most female gamers pretend to be male because they don't want to deal with the bull shit.

"Until I thought it would be funny to make a schoolgirl alternate costume.

Not funny, it turns out."
What happened lol

"In my experience, most female gamers pretend to be male because they don't want to deal with the bull shit"
While a lot of male gamers will pretend to be female.

I've made a Sorry game and a Risk-type remake. Lately I've been working on a simulation game of the political history of America. The players are actually political parties (playing as if America had more than 2 parties since the beginning) and you make decisions at local, state and federal levels negotiating between the parties to get the votes you need to make the interstate go through your hometown versus the next one, stuff like that.

Once I finish my master's, I'm planning on going to work for Digital Domain in their gaming department if I manage to get hired. As of now, I make games on my own in my spare time while I do other programming jobs at work.

Sounds interesting, I will play it for sure. However it has to be good for me to continue playing it.

Actually, abge, what's awesome is getting one (just one) female face to face gamer. Because then you'll pick up more. I was the only guy in a six person D+D group for a while, and they were all at least bangable. Women tend to gravitate towards the tables that already have women at them.

As for the schoolgirl thing, I just spontaneously changed into it when we were waiting for someone to reload. No one had said a word to me through the whole mission because I was the joiner to a group of people who knew each other, suddenly I started getting friend requests and tells and everything, including someone telling me they had a character with a matching costume if I was interested in hanging out at their base. Yup.

They have a gaming division? I thought they just did movies.

Also, how old are you? For some reason I thought you were middle aged.

it baffles me how simple minded humans are

@Fasces thanks for the interest. It's a big project and I don't have any help right now so it might take awhile. I'm hoping to get a prototype ready where I could pitch it to the company I will start working for in order to make it a professional-grade operation. If not, I'll finish it on my own, bit by bit.

I once played a Doonesbury licensed game that was vaguely similar to that, but it focused on just one election. I tried so hard to get the Digits Party the presidency.

@Abge They have been primarily movies but they're expanding into games at the office here in my city. They partnered with the university to get more game developers to hire (my final project for graduation will be done in their studios).

I am middle-aged - toward the bottomside of it anyway. I'll be 33 later this month.

"@Fasces thanks for the interest. It's a big project and I don't have any help right now so it might take awhile. I'm hoping to get a prototype ready where I could pitch it to the company I will start working for in order to make it a professional-grade operation. If not, I'll finish it on my own, bit by bit."
Will it be free to play? If not I have lost interest (I am incredibly cheap)

"I tried so hard to get the Digits Party the presidency."
Name of game? DId you succeed?

OK That's what I thought. And, I guess 33 isn't really middle aged. It's probably closer to 40-50 now.

Mine starts with the original 13 states and the parties progressively build their base constituencies, do rhetoric tours to adjust the population's interests to be in line with their's etc. The 'point' movement of each jurisdiction where the party is in control versus the promises and proven movement of the other party's jurisdictions determine winners and losers in the elections, etc.

Then new territories and states come on line (historically based), trails become obsolete to train tracks and roads and finally airports and interstates, Etc. Plays from 1776 (I'm aware the states weren't really 'states' until much later after the articles of confederation were tossed out - it's a game!) to 2026 (Puerto Rico is assumed to be a state in 2016 in the game)

I don't remember the game's name, only that it was Doonesbury licensing. I managed to get New York and California to vote for me, but that wasn't quite enough. It was rather focused on how hard it was to get a third party elected.

And I guess that I'm not middle aged now, huzzah. Thirty seven.

@Fasces If I create it solely and put it online, it will be free with probably some advertising picking up the tab for the website. If I sell it to a company, probably not.

That is, of course, a very basic description as a lot of aspects of government are used and abused. Furthermore, topics of importance to the population obviously change each year, etc.

@abge Thanks for making me feel younger then. Working in an office where everyone's over the age of 50, I sometimes start to lose focus of how old I really am and start to feel like them. That's why I decided to move to do a job in what I really love... gaming! Paid to make and play games... what could be better?

"Then new territories and states come on line (historically based), trails become obsolete to train tracks and roads and finally airports and interstates, Etc. Plays from 1776 (I'm aware the states weren't really 'states' until much later after the articles of confederation were tossed out - it's a game!) to 2026 (Puerto Rico is assumed to be a state in 2016 in the game)"
Interesting. My main complaint is that it widely ignores the governments involvement in the Louisiana Purchase, invasion of Mexican California, etc but I am not sure how one could incorporate those into the game...

Actually, i've been working on how to do that... as well as how to accurately consider touchy subjects (like slavery, abortion, etc) without alienating and pissing off players. That's actually why it's been so slow as I work out those details.

well the game sounds really cool so far. Good luck.

And yeah, try not to make personal bias affect gameplay.

*as in game mechanics

I've played a little urban dead, though it is pretty mature and not as active a it used to be...