Dear all

I have no experience with turn-based strategy games and would like to try that genre out. Do you have any recommendations how to start?

The games should be
- available on GOG
- on the easy side (my frustration tolerance and patience is very low *lol*)
- with low complexity (i.e. preferably have not hundreds of stats, menu screens, different things to build etc.).

Setting (mid-age, world-war, ...) and graphics do not really matter.

Thanks in advance!

For turn-based strategy games two that I'd highly recommend as a starting point are Civilization 4 and Heroes of Might and Magic 3. Both are pretty easy to learn and are relatively easy on the lower difficulty settings, while still have a lot of depth once you really get into them, and are just all around great games.

Also, a few recommendations for a closely-related genre, turn-based tactics games. Fantasy General 2 and the King's Bounty series are both great entries into this genre, and I'll also put in a recommendation for Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark as a turn-based tactics games with RPG elements. The X-COM remake is also great, but quite a bit more difficult, so perhaps not the best starting point if you're looking for a more relaxed experience.

Another vote for Civ 4.

That game has a very nice set of granular difficulty options. You can, for example, remove the penalty for death (character suffers stat penalties until sitting out a battle) without changing other things, like how often enemies use revive abilities, or vice versa.

If you're a beginner, you can set options on the easy side, and change any that you find annoy or frustrate you,

(There's also some nice descriptions for what the difficulties do, with some notes on the balance implications.)

Recommending a Civilization game to a beginner who wants low complexity seems very strange to me...

In terms of Heroes of Might and Magic, also find the suggestion of 3 odd, since I for one banged my head against that one fruitlessly. Any other game in the series (at least in the first 5, no idea of the rest) seemed more manageable, and I of course would recommend the odd one out, 4, definitely the one I prefer, unlike most, but also for someone looking for something easier, units not needing heroes to move and heroes actually fighting and being able to have parties of heroes makes a huge difference.

Do second King's Bounty, at least for The Legend since that's (still) the only one I played.

But if we're at turn based tactics, I'd go against one more requirement and suggest Ascension to the Throne. Wrote a review if you're interested. It's not on GOG, but Indiegala occasionally makes it free, it's how I got it and was free again since then, so will almost certainly be again. Low production values, various issues and oddities, but after the first handful of battles which are indeed punishing, the difficulty quickly becomes a joke, so if you can get past the beginning it could be a way to learn some ropes. And there's nothing random in it, no chances to hit, no damage ranges, set movement order according to speed and location, everything can be calculated exactly, which should also help.

PS: Wonder about the casual titles, like the Bravelands. Didn't play them, but I'd think those would be simpler and easier, right?

Well I would like to recommend you Heroes of Might and Magic 3, is one of the best turn base strategy games I have played in my life but is a little bit complex at least it would be for a beginner (currently is on offer so if you can purchase it, do it and save it for later), I will make you a list:
- XCOM Enemy Unknown (play this, Xcom will make you love the genre).
- Into the Breach.
- Heroes of Might and Magic V (it's more modern and could be more accessible).
- Battle Brother (I don't play this myself, but I hear is really good!).
- Star Renegades.
- Warhammer 40K Mechanicus (could be a little complex but you will adapt quickly).
- Divinity Original Sin (very complex, the combat is super dynamic, yet is not so fruatrating)
- Shadowrun Trilogy (very simple).
- Northgard.
- Fort Triumph.
- Field of Glory 2 Medieval.

I hope this is useful for you!!!

Heroes Chronicles.
Uses a simplified version of Heroes of Might and Magic 3, and it's so easy that it's an insult to experienced players.

Civ 4 is really easy to get into playing and you can ignore the more complex stuff until you learn it.

Braveland is indeed a great title. Simple and fun.
If you have a kid (or someone who's never played strategy games before) and want to present them to the "Heroes of Might & Magic" type of mechanics, then this is probably the way to go.

I vehemently disagree with that. I bought that game on GOG a while ago and the first few missions are way harder than Dark Souls. They are insanely, ludicrously difficult.

I'm shocked that that game is so massively popular despite its insane difficulty.

Battle Brothers is indeed a really good game, but not something I'd recommend to beginners as the difficulty can be quite punishing even on the easiest settings, and things can go sideways really, really quickly.

I'm guessing you started with one of the Armageddon's Blade campaigns, as the difficulty on these is indeed pretty insane (Restoration of Erathia campaign starts off pretty easy and progresses to moderate difficulty, while the Shadow of Death campaigns maintain a moderate difficulty all the way through). I'd actually recommend people just skip the campaigns entirely and start with playing individual maps. There's also a tremendous amount of high-quality community made maps out there, targeted towards all levels of difficulty.

I think Disciples games can be easily recommended. Not that many things to keep track of.

There are definitely some brutal missions. I think everybody had to retry conquering Steadwick in 3 months multiple times. And there are many others where the difficulty spikes to insane degrees, requiring you to follow strict hero builds, restarting if you are not offered the correct skills on level ups etc.

Probably already know titles such as Civ or Heroes series so here are some not as classic but very good games:

Into the Breach, quite easy to play but a good challenge on hard mode, can be played in either short or long sessions. Very high replay value but close to no story if that's your thing.

SteamWorld Heist Fun, creative, gorgeous and well made with close reassemble of mobile games (it started as a 3ds game), you have to aim your shots like Worms game, introducing some action and "skill". Various characters and equipment to choose from.

Worms Armageddon/ World party Classic, better played with friends but enough missions for single player.

All my top recommendations already listed:

Fell Seal. (SRPG)
Braveland. ("Heroes of Might and Magic/Kings Bounty" stack-squads)
Into the Breach. (Predictable deep micro/tactics)
Fort Triumph. (SRPG-ish)

I guess my next one hasn't come up yet is my top pick for "introductory 4x game". I wouldn't start with Civilization (or at least Civ 3 or 4 that we have here), but instead Stars in Shadow. It's a space 4x game that doesn't have the micro of unit movement to strain you while you focus on learning empire management (macro).

I'd recommend against the X-Com and style games ("hardcore permadeath tactics games") for a while, or even some of them that don't have permadeath but are still "every single turn matters immeasurably" (as seen in Regalia).

If you're coming from RTS or RPG, you might consider pauseable RTS games as close enough to turn based, one of the top candidates of that being Freedom Force. (It's a full RTS, but you pause and issue commands and resume, then pause for commands, resume, etc -- bridges the gap).

EDIT: Alternatively, you could consider the games that are turn-based empire that have zoomed-in tactical, such as Lords of the Realms 2. Its turn based parts for empire management are pretty easy to grasp (but can be challenging), and its battles and sieges zoom in to be real-time strategy where you control the troops directly. Being good at the RTS part can let you be a little sloppier in the turn based... and being better at the turn-based can cover for being bad at the RTS. (In fact, you can "skip" the RTS parts and have them auto-calculated if you only want to do the empire side, though, especially early in a play, that will be costly as AI will tend to sacrifice troops too much.

Another vote for Civ IV. You can literally set up a single player game to figure it all out, no barbs, no opponents.