What would you like to see in an ideal strategy game engine, with possible tactical battles. This engine should not only be able to respond to the ideal of the team's scope for EB, but for all history up till this morning.


Obviously AI is going to be a huge one, but what might contribute to a better AI, or what needs more depth modelling? My current idea is based around the fact that it's individuals who really do move the world, and thus everything associated with the nature of people will play out on a grander scale. My goal is also to include a detailed look at economies, and how it truly is trade that has lead to great nations. The rise of Rome, the rise of the Caliphate, the dominance of the West in the age of imperialism, and todays major players in the globe, all engaged in trade in markets. But what else plays a big role that gets downplayed for the sake of making your basic strategy game to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I assume we're all here because we want depth in our games, to some degree.

To this extent, I may have a follow up sort of concept that I'd also appreciate input on from those of you who've managed to read this far. It'll need a bit of revising on input from here, but I hope to be able to present to you a concept statement later on.


The quote that started me off;
Quote Originally Posted by blacksnail
Incidentally, it would be very interesting to me to see a campaign map system where you gave every army a destination as part of movement, as well as engagement parameters ("pursue and attack all enemies encountered/pursue and attack half strength enemies encountered/actively avoid all enemies if possible/force march/defend location X and the nearby vicinity from any enemy spotted"). When you hit "start the clock" every army on the map would advance to where they had been ordered by the player or the AI and battles would occur during an abstracted length of time (week/month/year) until you got back to the strategic approach again. However, the AI required to maintain a consistent grand strategy for dozens of enemy factions would be potentially crippling to code, if not confusing as hell for the player without some abstraction, so that's on my wishlist for stuff I hope to see in 10 years or so.