05 of 30 - Strategery

[aggienaut]

And now for something entirely unrelated!

   I've always been a huge fan of strategy games. I've been a player of Dune II, Red Alert II, Warcraft II, Age of Empire II, Civ II & III, Starcraft, and possibly others.
   Originally, opposing sides had either units that were more or less exactly the same, or at least units that looked different but were functionally identical. Then the makers decided to change it up, make the strategy a little asymmetrical and give the various sides different sorts of units. Starcraft even made the means of production slightly different. One very major aspect has always been the same though: the economics.
   Invariably, one must harvest something in order to produce your tanks. It is odd to me that this should be the unexceptional rule, since throughout history only Columbian narcoterrorists have really had such a direct corrolation between production and military output. Normally, the military strategists have a set budget. Yes they have to fight fluctuations of it in Congress, but dear god don't make THAT part of the game. Not only is it unrealistic, I find it incredibly annoying, as keeping an eye on my workers and balancing production between economic capital and military units is not what I play strategy games to do.
   In addition your vehicles will have a build cost but no maintenance cost. This allows one to simply continue to build up bigger and bigger armies over time. This is also very unrealistic, as the limit to military build-up on a strategic scale has always been available support budget, not build time. For example, I would imagine the "cost" of an infantryman is somewhere near half the yearly cost to maintain him anyway, or such (since what you're paying for is primarily just paying him during training). So you see, this is not only unrealistic, but also effects the strategic interplay of the game.

   I think it would be interesting to make a strategy game that not only breaks from the standard harvest-based economics, but has the various factions work on different economic models. Here is what I thought up:
Democracy: The military forces of a democracy will have a set budget. However, for every person they lose (counting both infantry units and members of vehicle crews), they lose some of their budget (as popular support for the war goes down). Consequently the Democracy forces will want to emphasize stand-off attack weapons and expensive technology that will minimize losses.
Communism: Communist forces will have a set budget. It doesn't matter how good you do, the budget comes from those who produce in accordance with ability, to those who need in accordance with need. In fact, your budget might even go DOWN if you're doing well in the scenario. Purchase of additional units, however, isn't done by paying a set price, but rather requesting the units from central command, whom will decide whether or not you really need the unit, and send it to you with substantial delay. (= Units are cheap, however, and maintenance costs, especially personnel pay, is low. Available units are quite technologically advanced for their costs.
Local Warlord Kleptocracy: Budget depends on holding on to certain key stratego-economic points. Also, likely funded by a Democratic or Communist force by proxy (this money will probably just be a set amount). Kleptocratic forces will probably use cheap out-of-date predecessors of Democratic/Communist units, and technicals, and such.
Insurgents: My main thought with insurgents is that whereas other factions will have structures and vehicles, as is usual in strategy games, the insurgents will have primarily only personnel units. For example more units will be recruited by a "recruiter" individual, whereas for most other forces they'd come from barracks and such. There will be some buildings however, such as weapons caches and bomb factories. The basic idea is that most insurgent units will only be detectable up close so they'll be hard to find. I'm not sure how they'll be funded. I'm thinking they'll get a certain bounty for killing enemy forces, and perhaps budget increases when the enemy accidently kills civilians. ...and maybe a small permanent budget to tide them over - this is the money Iran is giving them ;)
Narco-Terrorists: Think FARC-EP. They'll be the only ones to work like most stategy games -- budget will come directly from operating and harvesting hidden drug fields and labs.
Mercenaries: The Mercenaries work for whomever and are entirely funded via bounties on destroyinig enemy units.

   And of course, as I noted above, maintenance costs should be such that the size of your forces is limited by the budget, and can't grow ad infinitem until you can zerg rush your enemies with mammoth tanks. You'll have to actually utilize tactics and strategy to destroy your enemy!

   So there you are. I think someone should make this game.

Comments

[technophobe1975.livejournal.com]

I played Civilisation for the PS3, and although you can theoretically go for any type of government, even a pacifistic one, the game tries to push you towards a more military based one as it is a LOT harder to win any other way.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I really liked the Fundamentalist government in Civ II (: And communism was pretty good in that game as well. In Civ III they made communism a lot less great and there's no fundamentalism, but I still tend to avoid the democracies because that war weariness really gets me down. I'm a bit annoyed that now Fascism seems to be the most effective government (once you get the expansion that has it) ... and feudelism is all but useless!

I haven't played Civ IV yet because I'm really afraid I'll become hopelessly addicted. I have enough trouble with my addiction to Civ III!

[rattsu.livejournal.com]

I agree completely! I'd buy that game.

I miss the good old days of Close Combat 3, where you bought your units, at the start, and then it was all about how you used them. I can't stand these button bashing building games, I mean I enjoyed Starcraft as much as the next girl, but that was because of the awesome plot, not because I wanted to play build the tzerg with other players.

I want strategy. I want to entrench or choose which avenues to attack. I want to look at the terrain and do long term planning. I want all the awesome shit of war, not farmville.

Company of Heroes (my current addiction) is kinda alright in that way, it handles supplies better, and you need to hold key locations in order to get your population or your supplies.

Farm Foreman Tycoon

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

"I want all the awesome shit of war, not farmville."

Heh lol!!


Yeah as far back as the original Dune and Red Alert I've been aggravated with having to spend time managing harvesters and shit. You'd think it would have occured to someone by now that "hey these people don't really want to play farm foreman maybe we should take out that aspect of the game."

One thing I like about Civ III is that you can actually effect the strategic terrain of the game by where you build roads and/or destroy the enemies' roads. I think that brings a really neat strategic dimension to things.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard of either of these two games! O_o

[pouncing-tiger.livejournal.com]

I like you're idea for including maintenance costs.

Perhaps a slightly more accurate view if you don't want to deal with harvesting and mining.

Democracy (or more accurately, Republic): Military budget is a certain percentage of nation's GDP. Due to the innovations of your populace, you have the best technology money can buy. Percentage may vary slightly based on the whims of the voting public (perhaps some sore of sinusoidal curve to represent the swing of politics). Winning a major victory will cause a sudden drop in military budget for the following year or two because the public wants a "Peace Dividend".

Dictatorship (or Communism - is there really a difference?): Military budget can be any percentage of your nation's GDP you want. Technology is lower because all your greatest minds have fled to Democracies. But after a certain number of years of raping your GDP for military spending, your economy collapses, your government is overthrown, and you lose.

[pouncing-tiger.livejournal.com]

Your. Not You're. (DOH!!!)

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

heh your idea for causing a lower budget when victorious is similar to my idea for communism. I like the idea of something that works "backwards" like that unrewarding players because it would be such a mindfuck to them heheheheh.

Additional Game Mechanics.

[xaositecte.livejournal.com]

There should be civilian population centers scattered around the game map. Insurgents recruit wholly from these centers, and use them as "bases." It's possible to wipe out the Insurgent and Kleptocracy factions very easily by destroying the population centers, but doing this too much causes a non-standard game over as the international community declares you a war criminal.

Each faction has a certain limit of acceptable Collateral damage, with Democracy being very low, Communism being slightly higher, but still fairly low.

Re: Additional Game Mechanics.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I don't think the good ole soviet states gave much of a rats ass about collateral damage..

Yeah I had been thinking something about the population centers and insurgents and collateral damage to them causing the insurgent budget to increase. Also it causing the democratic budget to decrease is probably a good idea as well.

[hereticxxii.livejournal.com]

I'd play that game.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

As which faction?