Making Strategy Games with...Strategy?

KaB0b0 asks: "Many people I know play primarily RPGs and 'Strategy Games' in their free time (and even sometimes when they're pressed for time). But this arises a question. Is there really any such thing as a 'Strategy Game'? Most of my enemies online seem to think 'build a lot of troops, attack early' is a good strategy for their gaming advantage. In fact, you'd be very hardpressed to find someone who uses actualy tactics in a strategy game." Of course, most RTS games are vastly oversimplified which allows this type of "blitz" game. If games had the concept of supply lines, morale, and other such ignored aspects of battle mechanics, then maybe this would be different. Turn-based strategy games, also suffer from this to an extent, however it's less of a problem there. If you were to create a strategy game with real strategy, what would you implement?

"Take, for instance, StarCraft. The last time I played with someone actually used a strategy besides simply building a lot of medium units and some large units and then sent them all as soon as possible was.. well, never. What could a game developer do in order to insure actual use of strategy in a game intended for it? I realize there's always going to be people who play the game so they can get a good record for some stupid reason, but how can you actually make a game for the real strategist?"

Comments

World War II Online

[Flounder]

Look as WWIIOL (not what is currently is, but what it's very close to actually being).

Control of certain choke points (cities, military bases, depots, etc), determine where your supply lines are and where they flow. This determines what equipment, weapons, and troops you are able to spawn at particular cities. Eventually, supply lines will be visualized with train and truck convoys moving between cities. These lines will be able to be disrupted, disrupting the supply lines and the availability of units.

Real world tactics have actually proven very effective in this game. It's not a perfect game yet, but it's getting there.

Strategy Variants of RTS's

[Lord_Pall]

In the beginning, we had Dune 2... A fairly straightforward rts.. Not particularly strategic, and completely lacking in multiplay..

Then came warcraft 1.. Multiplayer was added, so the depth, or lack thereof of the game became evident.. It was still based around minimal strategy.. (Very little unit differentiation, fairly unbalanced)

Then came command and conquer.. Still unbalanced, but slightly more strategic.. The true precursor of rts victories involving overwhelming force as opposed to subterfuge or attrition..

Then came warcraft 2.. A good logical extension.. SLightly simpler game dynamic, but similiar concept.. Some slight skirmishes, some resource allocation and research, but still based around the idealogy of overwhelming force.. You either crush someone, or you lose.. No battle lines..

Then the big one.. Total Annihilation (From the now defunct Cavedog)

Based around a HUGE number of units, dramatically different resource harvesting model, and a more "warfare" like playstyle.

TA was one of the first games to truly represent the idea of defensive gameplay, and a war of attrition.. battle lines became drawn, conflict ocurred in that geographic area, and you had an ebb and flow of combat..

Winning a TA match didn't usually involve overwhelming force deployment and steamrolling over someone, but instead sneaky tactics and superior resource management.

The inclusion of battlefield recovery of destroyed hulks, and extreme range indirect artillery only added to this feel..

Development continued along the "clickfest" or faster paced route with Starcraft, the rest of the Command and COnquer series, and I assume Warcraft 3..

Development on the flipside continued with Earth 2150, Moon Project, and should be continued by Empire Earth (At least by my take on the beta)

We've seen a few "Crossover" types.. Age of Kings springs to mind.. and to a greater degree, Cossacks..

And then we've got the true extremes.. The introduction of turn based depth in a real time environment.. I'm not entirely clear what the root for these games were, but its developed from the simcity style Transport Tycoon, through Pax Imperia, Railroad Tycoon to games like Europa Universalis, Starships Unlimited, and even Monopoly Tycoon(I'd highly reccomend looking at Europa Universalis 2 when it releases.. Especially if you're a history buff)...

There are plenty of RTS games that require insane amounts of strategy.. and a lot of them even have the interfaces to support it..

Re:probably "Operational Art of War" or Road 2 Mos

[stripes]

Computer games have fixed this somewhat...you can be a bit more vague or have battlefield "fog" - but the same issue remains...the typical wargamer has a hell of a lot more knowledge and control of his tactial situation then a real life commander..(at least back then...maybe not so much now)

I remember some of the older network sci-fi war games had some really interesting features similar to this. You did get perfect information, but it was time delayed, as were your orders. It was very hard to fight distant battles because it might take 8 turns to find out how a battle is going, and then another 8 turns to issue new orders to the units that (may) be left there.

It was kind of a cool feature because as you beat an enemy back to their home world you might have a production advantage (as your industrial base is expanding, or at least not contracting), but you are at an increasing information disadvantage.

Otherwise...the best tactical game i can recommend is Norm Koger's The Operational Art of War

I'm sure that is a wonderful game. I do want to plug a (now fairly old) nice real-time game. Total Annihilation, most for it's fine use of terrain. You can hide from arty behind hills, and many other somewhat realistic effects (as realistic as any game featuring huge robots has a right to be at least). Of corse that is mostly tactical, not strategic, but it is more interesting then just picking the types of units to make, and attempting to make an attack as fast as possible...

Anyway, want real strategy games? Try enlisting in officer school, they will let you play some very realistic war games. Of corse it does imply a career change that might be a little life limiting, but aren't you willing to make the sacrifice?

Anybody played Gettysburg?

[Galvatron]

It's a pretty short game (basically, you can fight the Battle of Gettysburg. That's it), but I got it about a month ago from CompUSA for $3. An incredible amount of time and effort was put into making it as realistic as possible. I've barely even begun to scratch the surface of the strategy. There's excellent handling of morale (regiments have commanders, and are broken up into several units), flanking (in short, don't get flanked!), casualties (after thirty seconds of shooting, you're not going to kill an entire unit), and even manuvers (individual units can be manuvered very easily, but if you want to keep the regiment together, you're limited to the sorts of manuver's a commander could be reasonably expected to signal through bugle calls or whatever).

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is this: there are true strategy games, but they suffer from two factors. First, they tend to be short, or repetitive. A lot of effort goes into the realism, and so less effort is spent on making it a fulfilling game. Second, they tend to be complex. With Warcraft and its brethren, the rules are simple, and there's very little you have to do to set up an attack. With highly strategic games, they often have manuals as thick as the encyclopedia explaining all the different factors that affect morale, the relative strengths of units, the types of commands you are allowed to give, and so forth. So, there is a steeper learning curve than most people are used to.