Military and the ideal RTS
Alright, so to get to what I was really trying to say about military strategy in a game.
The way I see it, a target, in terms of what Caesar 3 sets down should be given us, in the beginning of the game. Now either we can be given a fixed amount of time to achieve this target, or we should be racing both to fulfill our quotas. If we are racing each other to fill the quota, then it might be interesting to allow players to choose their own quotas.
The quota might be like a status in the game, like industrial age, 6 level military, 8 science… etc. and so much capital… or liquid assets for army building. This will make things interesting, because if a players set themselves different targets of civ, and compete with each other, when setting the target itself, players will have to think.
A player might set a really low quota for himself, in the hope of catching his opponent early, unaware, but if the other opponent plays faster, even if he does not complete his quota at the end of the session of resource collection, he might still have the advantage. And if one sets himself a really high quota, he might suddenly find himself having to fight, without really preparing for it.
The quota might also be a steady ‘income’ for the city or state, from what ever it does to collect resources. So then the quota would have to be three things… first would be the level of research, then the amount of resource collected, and then the ‘income.’
So anyway, once one of the players attains his quota, the next step is the battle. Now if you have the resources you’re supposed, it will mean that you can support a particular size and kind of army. Like if you haven’t done any maritime research, you cant have a navy. So then you set about choosing an army.
The ‘income’ has been included because an army when on campaign will still need some sort of an economic resource. Plundering of course counts. And also an army would treat economics very differently, it wouldn’t build ‘town centres’ to start with.
Anyway the army, and how it works will be dealt with later.
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RTS Military Strategy
I know, the last blog I wrote, would suggest a piece about how the ideal RTS would deal with battle, but instead, I’m going to digress, and talk about how RTSs deal with the issue right now.
There are basically three kinds of battles that RTSs engage in, one is in the open field, so to speak, the other happens at the city walls of the opponent, and the third at your own city walls.
The battles in open fields rarely ever happen, and if they do, rarely are deliberate engagements, but usually are the result of two marching armies meeting each other en route to the opposing city walls. Of course this is very unreal, considering that open battles are more fun, and provide better chances for strategy etc… anyway, in battles of this sort, the outcome is seems is decided by which sort of unit sees which sort of unit first… and the amount of strategy is very limited
Then come the battles outside city walls. These I find are even worse, in terms of fairness, or reality quotient, assuming that such a thing even exists. Battles around cities are fought by garrisons, and city defenses are sort of par to of the design of the very city. But in all the games that we play, the very option of building a city defenses is false… in fact many games that we play, don’t even give the option of a fortified city anymore.
And its sad, because epic, and desperate battles for a city are essential…
Actually this brings me back, to my initial point, that I made very unsubstantially in the beginning, simply that games need to deal with battle and building separately the two cannot be dealt with by the same enterprise.
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Returning to the Idea RTS
Returning to my earlier RTS bit.
Lets see, I begin to see why its not been done yet. Basically, the idea is to create the illusion of comprehensive control of the city, or state, or whatever it is.
Plus it becomes too easy, using any of the existing gaming systems to actually build a game in any way.
I will therefore make a suggestion, MARRY CAESAR 3 WITH CHESS. That would be a good RTS game. Caesar 3 itself has a mockery of battle for battle, I mean all it asks you to do is create a steady stream of soldiers, and in fact, even that is limited, and you have to depend on wall towers! but what the game has managed to do, and done very well, is set up a challenging urban development puzzle. The whole trade bit, where resource collection is based, very really, on collection of capital, be it from trade, or human capital, or infrastructure, and you are judged, or have to achieve certain amounts of all of the above, to get to the next level.
I’ve already suggest SIM CITY 4 in the past, and that too would fit the bill perfectly. So then, assuming you have a good city in place, what about the army? And defence and the rest of that?
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