Good play-by-email video games?

mashedtaters

Hey all, here's my dilemma. My brother and I would like to play a video game together, but we live across the country and have completely opposite work schedules.
In order to circumvent these difficulties, we were thinking of doing a play-by-email game, like civ4 or se4. However, both of those games are extremely long...
Anyone have any other ideas of good games that could be played despite our inability to be online at the same time? Thanks.

BillyYank

At one place I worked, me and my coworkers used to play Sid's Alpha Centauri by email. We limited to 4 humans, with the Aliens and Pirates played by the AI. There's settings to make the game go faster, we always played with accelerated start.

CrevsDaak

Dwarf Fortress? It's really long (it never ends unless you lose) but it's hilarious.

mashedtaters

I will have to look those games up. I can't really think of any non-4x games at all.

BillyYank

Alpha Centauri is a 4x game. It's essentially a science fiction version of Civilization II.

mashedtaters

Anyone know of any non-4x games?

mf2112

Chess?

CrevsDaak

I don't even know what non-4x is so I can't help you there. Majesty comes to mind, but it's actually *very* fast sometimes.

Mr2150

4X = eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate...

mf2112

Command and Conquer Online?

mf2112

Maybe you could play BG or IWD and just email the save game back and forth? You each have 2 or 3 characters, but play the whole group when you each play. Set some play rules like you each play for 24 game hours, must include one rest period each 24 hours, must distribute magic items fairly between characters (by the end of the day at least )

ajwz

There arent too many I know of
My recommendations would be:

Heroes of might and magic (3 or 5)
Civ V
Tabletop Simulator (any board game or card game)
Galactic Civilisations 3
Disciples 2 or 3

Not all of these have direct PBeM support, but they all have save games that can be manually sent over

BillyYank

I just remembered, Steel Panthers has a play by email mode.

Steel Panthers: World War II
Steel Panthers: Main Battle Tank

The first is WWII/Mid-20th century timeframe, and the second is modern warfare, Vietnam to present. These are tactical, squad/vehicle level wargames. They're Igo-Ugo turn based. A player plays his turn, and saves it to the special email save game slot, then zips that up and mails it to his opponent. The second player unzips it and replays what he can see of the first player's turn, then takes his turn and mails it back.

Like Beamdog, Camo Workshop started as a fan effort to keep a classic 1990's game franchise alive. Both these games are available as free downloads, because the deal they cut with SSI doesn't allow them to sell the base games. They make their money selling scenario packs and other addons.