Origin Stories: Our First Strategy Games (ep.106)

Everyone has an origin story. In episode 106, Al is joined by Jack and Joe to talk about the games that first drew them into strategy, from Populous on the Mega Drive and Lords of the Realm II to Red Alert 2, Civilization II and Age of Empires II. With a gap of around twenty-five years between the youngest and oldest of us, the starting points are very different. We also look at which games ate the most hours, what we would hand to a child first (Spore, City Skylines and Red Alert Remastered all get a mention), what older strategy games had that modern ones have lost, and what today’s games do better. Along the way there are school computer lab loans, shareware memories, and a bridge nobody could build in SimCity. If you have a game that started it all for you, we would like to hear about it in the Discord.

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Critical Moves examines strategy games through weekly Friday episodes and Monday news updates. Six hosts across multiple continents analyze recent releases, forgotten classics, and industry developments without the typical podcast theatrics. We cover real-time strategy, 4X civilization builders, turn-based tactics, and hybrid games that blur genre boundaries.