Polytopia if you like strategy. You can buy tribes if you want to, but the basic 4 they give you have the "strongest" in the game, there's no p2w. I've ended up buying all the tribes and am well on my way to all the skins (they only have one extra skin for some of the tribes at the moment) but that's because I play it a ton and have for years, so it's just to support the dev.

Dev is active and makes improvements regularly, just released a long anticipated update that had some significant game play changes so it feels fresh, and the changes seem to make it more interesting / balanced so far.

There's also a very dedicated fan community on discord that sets up frequent tournaments or team games if you find you like it.

[–] MuffinMangler@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I can second Polytopia. It doesn't need an internet connection either.

[–] Whirling_Ashandarei@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Nope, not unless you're playing online against randoma or friends.

[–] TheEntity@kbin.social 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I actually considered going back to Polytopia and grabbing a tribe or two. Can you recommend any specific one if you were to choose only one?

[–] Whirling_Ashandarei@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Hmmm. I'd say if you want to try some very different gameplay, one of the "special" tribes. Cymanti or Polaris can be quite fun. Aquarion used to be fairly weak but they're a lot better following the update, elyrion was actually pretty weakened by the update but devs know this and are working on ways to make them a bit stronger.

If you just want good music, I like Yaddak and ai mo. Quetzali are fun as well. Lux is versatile but they're more expensive than any other tribe just as a joke about their in game culture lol so buy them late imo. Wouldn't recommend vengir till later also, swords are cool but can be hard to play since their econ takes time to develop.