Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to this episode of our podcast. Today we're going to talk about strategy games, not so surprisingly, and we're going to talk about what makes a strategy game, like what are the necessary components and ah like where do the boundary go between a strategy game and a non-strategy game.
Speaker: um And the yeah, we are the usual crew. So we're going do, i think we're go start off with just um just a few initial thoughts on what makes a strategy game.
Speaker: um Does any anyone of you want to want i share? ah think you can start, Andreas. You usually have a good sense of direction and then we can build or just say, no, you're completely wrong on this.
Speaker: Yeah, so i have i have some terrible opinions on this. First of all, I dislike a lot of strategy or games calling themselves strategy games which do not have a military component.
Speaker: mean, technically, you can have a strategy outside of war But for some reason, whenever you make a strategy game without military, it tends to... Well, it tends to not to really feel like a strategy game. I mean, a resource management game could be its own category. I don't think Factoria is a strategy game.
Speaker: What about you? Well, I tend to agree with you there. I mean, there are some great non-military strategy games like yeah ah below land Above Land, Below sea which cute little indie game. It's a really nice strategy game. But in general, for me personally, there has to be a military element to a strategy game. Otherwise, um I'm not really compelled into i mean, some people would would say City Skylines or Sim City, those are strategy games, I tend to not agree, because then we could say, well, the Sims is a strategy game.
Speaker: So the military component and the resource management component are two things that I personally and like to see in the strategy games. i don't I don't think I've ever ah kind of thought about that as something that a strategy game needs to have. It it makes sense because, I mean, the word strategy comes from a greek an ancient Greek word for general, right? Troop leadership or command.
Speaker: and But I don't think I've ever had that I never made that qualifier myself, but yeah, ah for me, it's more about you know resource management, troop management, but it's generally managing something, whether it's troops, whether it's resources. And for my part, I prefer what you need to manage all of those.
Speaker: You know, I agree. i should probably clarify that I do not think the military component is a necessary thing for something to be a strategy game. However, I believe that almost all strategy games which I've played...
Speaker: that have been compelling and then and that have had like the feel of a strategy game where you, as Magnus said, do manage resources, manage troops, manage or like control a um a larger entities of some kind of units, or something like that.
Speaker: Whenever it doesn't have a military component, a lot of other things tend to fall apart ah for some reason. yeah I'm looking at a list of strategy games on Steam right now, they have a City Skylines 2, and I do not consider City Skylines a strategy game.
Speaker: I think the Builder is something else. I was about to say that, I mean, when we talk about which games want to talk about in this podcast, every game we mentioned has this.
Speaker: It has a military factor and a military dimension. And I don't think I've ever enjoyed playing a strategy game without it. But it's it's a bit of a weird thing to cast up at like the first criteria for a strategy you game. You need a military dimension. It's radical. And I'm going to challenge myself just to to fuck things up.
Speaker: Because there is one game I really like, which I guess qualifies as a strategy game and doesn't really belong anywhere else. And it's Democracy. Especially Democracy 3. Democracy 3 is a good example. You can technically have a war in it, but you don't get to manage the war.
Speaker: No, but I mean, I think that's a good example. But then again, yes, it qualifies as a strategy game. And one of my favorite game series of all time, ah Football Manager, qualifies as a kind of a strategy game.
Speaker: But then again, it's not really strategy game in that sense, as as I view strategy games when when we talk about them or when we look at them.
Speaker: Football is just war with other means. Yeah, exactly. You kick a ball into a goal. That's war. We won. ah But yeah, it's not necessary, but I mean, it's the first thing that comes to mind. And I think for you viewers, when you think strategy games, you're going to think about a military component.
Speaker: Yeah, you might. You can't fall like into the ditch on the other side of the road. And that's basically me thinking about strategy games and only thinking about grand strategy.
Speaker: And I think this is also kind of an age thing. I talked to a friend of ours who's 10 years older than me. He's around 40. And when he's thinking thinking about strategy games, he he likes drops the oldest Sid Meier's games, Civilization, Colonization.
Speaker: and And at that point, you basically, you you barely had computer games that were strategy games. You had some board games, ah but that was like the era of 4X.
Speaker: 4X was a new thing. ah So I think i I tend to disregard a lot of games that could be strategy games and that we probably will be talking about on this podcast ah because I don't think about them like in quotes, real strategy games.
Speaker: ah Speaking of, i mean I do want to also add that like the history of the strategy game more or less flows from the Kriegsspiel and from a like and historical tradition of board games simulating war.
Speaker: And I guess I'm still looking through the Steam charts. The Steam charts are hilarious. There is one game I actually do think merits to be called a strategy game, which is not really a war game. And it's the anno, I think it's anno 1800 I have here, but all the anno games, essentially trading games.
Speaker: I do suppose. So just having said that it should have a military component, I guess I'm just sitting here proving myself wrong. Yeah, but I think that's something we're going to do a lot of in this podcast because i know, yeah, sure, the the great strategy games, Tropico, great strategy games in in that sense.
Speaker: But then again, lacking the military component that I so frequently said is needed in the end or in the beginning. And I think that this is also the great part with strategy gaming, whether it's a grand strategy game, an RTS or a small indie game,
Speaker: There's so many to choose from, and there's such a wide variety. And I ah look forward to i mean talking about the games I love, listen about your games, but also learn more and maybe challenge myself a bit in what is a strategy game, what qualifies so as a strategy game.
Speaker: We're going to do a deep dive into this, but first, since I think we have ah hopefully have a number of new listeners who haven't heard or heard of us before at all, I think we should mention a little bit ah who we are and the how we got into strategy gaming.
Speaker: And i guess I could begin. so my name is Andreas Eriksson. I do work in the Swedish politics ah with essentially political strategy, which is rarely a part of... or in strategy In strategy games, political strategy tends to be the worst part.
Speaker: Whenever they have a diplomacy mechanism, that's that's the mechanism I'm going to hate. Yeah. I have been doing or playing strategy games, so well, forever. That's essentially how I got into computer gaming with like Age of Empires and the ah Red Alert and stuff like that when I was a child.
Speaker: And it's mainly the type of games I keep playing whenever I want to do anything with my brain. do have other games I play when I just want to. I'm not even going to say relax. I have other games which I play when I want to transport through time.
Speaker: And that's essentially the silly shooter, arena shooter games. um Because then I can just play it and then I can go to bed and the five hours of boredom has elapsed. But whenever I don't want to do something brainy in gaming, it go boils down to strategy games.
Speaker: What about you guys? How about you, Johan? Well, Johan Mospari, I did work in politics, but no longer. But as Andrea said, it's kind of the boring part of strategy unless you play Democracy 3, which is an amazing game, as we just said.
Speaker: And my way into strategy gaming is basically i have to thank my two older cousins for this, because when I was seven, around six, seven, and they brought me into this amazing world, which was Warhammer Fantasy Battles and Warhammer 40K.
Speaker: and So it started ah there with kind of board gaming, war gaming, miniature war gaming, but which still is a huge part of my life, and I still do. But that made it transition into the first game I played, which was Warcraft Orcs and Humans, which just kind of blew me away. And if you listen to to our first episode, when we went through the best worst games and such, at you will see how long I've been playing them.
Speaker: And it is a relaxing part, and it Also worth mentioning, and we've got to come back to this, all of us are also part of a group that actually plays a grand strategy game called Hearts of Iron 4.
Speaker: So, I mean, I think it's a big essential part of myself and the games I enjoy. Sure, I i enjoy role-playing games also. I do not enjoy first-person shooter games, but it tends to, when I want 30 minutes to lapse, I can easily put on turmoil or something like that and just see 30 minutes click away of resource management and drilling for oil during the gold rush or oil rush in the US.
Speaker: and So that's kind of the way how I came in. I came from the miniature wargaming part and we are going to get more into that later on. But Magnus, how about you?
Speaker: Well, basically, I i got into strategy games because I live in the countryside now and i had a crappy computer. and a crappy and internet connection. And I was kid in the 90s. I was born in 94, just to kind of date me a bit here.
Speaker: ah And basically, you kind of, because you you need you need to get into games. You need someone to teach you or teach yourself. And most of my friends got like the first Xboxes. They got into that, got heavily into shooter games, maybe didn't even play that much PC.
Speaker: And I had three sisters. They weren't that into gaming. i had a crappy internet connection. i never got into... ah i mean, I've played it, but you need you need your hours to get good.
Speaker: And I just never got good. ah But... what I could do was play strategy games because basically they they, at least in those days, they didn't, they were single player games mainly.
Speaker: You have interesting examples of like the hot key fire, the hotke file the function in Heroes, where you kind of like play alternating turns. Hot seat. Yeah, hot seat. Thank you. Not hot key. Hot seat.
Speaker: ah But that didn't really, I think that's an experiment that didn't last. and But I got into strategy games in a big way with Rome Toad War.
Speaker: And I was the perfect age for that. Rome was so cool. And every little like every little kid, at least every little boy, thinks Rome is so cool. And they dropped that game. And i was just it it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. And I had so many hours just painting the map in that game and realizing that that's really what I like.
Speaker: I like building my little my little cities. I like training my little troops. I like painting the map. Even today, I'm ah still into it. Give me a game where I can just paint the map. ah And like you guys, I got into to the Paradox dish and addiction.
Speaker: And for you listening, if you haven't played any Paradox games, we will be talking more about them. and We might bring them up as both the best and worst games, actually. like ah But they are fantastic for just that, just painting the map and losing yourself in time.
Speaker: and And i think that's sort really... That's what got me into strategy gaming and what's kept me there. And I would say that it's about 97% of everything I play is a strategy game, preferably ground strategy.
Speaker: I think you said something very interesting regarding strategy games single-player games. There is this really fun anecdote which i encountered while ah following a podcast or streamer, I think, who did StarCraft 1 back in the day when the European scene essentially... We didn't really have a competitive gaming scene back then.
Speaker: when they encountered South Korea, and which had. So StarCraft had apparently been this ah fun little um strategy. i want to call it sort of a multi multi-unit hack and slash. I don't like strategy games with few units. I don't and i don't know. No, wrong, bad.
Speaker: Never mind. Yeah. So this has been played on Battle.net and on multiplayer servers in Sweden or or or in Europe and in the US quite a lot, but not really competitively. So people were playing the game the way it felt and looked. You built nice cities, you built large armies, had fire fun battles.
Speaker: And then the competitive players started to get the internet connections which could actually play with Europe. And we started having like real live competitions. And the um the the the levels of tactics which had developed in the competitive environment just playing the game through like all the functions say the game provided you, i just trying to win, win, win, was apparently mind-blowing for for the Europeans.
Speaker: Because this was just... unheard of. This was just not how you played games, so not how you played strategy games, ah which I think is wonderful. you um Yeah, I mean, i can agree with that because I i played StarCraft 1 competitively in Sweden.
Speaker: at Spent a lot of hours in it. I poured a lot of hours in it. And it was mostly, it was fun. i mean, you played for fun. And then when Battle.net kind of came out and the scene opened up even more and you started to play against other people in Europe. It was still fun, it was still cool, it was still good.
Speaker: And I remember my first game with with actually me and a mate of mine, and who you also know, ah we we went in and a 2v2 against two South Korean guys. And we got so demolished that we don't we didn't know what happened.
Speaker: they They had tactics, they had a whole other of way of seeing this, that this wasn't playing for fun, this was something you play to win and you play to win. hard, ah which which which i i love it in a sense of, yeah, okay, it made us rage quit and not play for a week, but it also pushed us to become better and kind of get the, which I think is going to be a whole other episode and a whole standalone episode, the kind of competitive e-sporting that especially RTSs has become on the scene. But that was the first kind of, the way that you both have been into
Speaker: We played it as single-player games. They did not. They played it as multiplayer sports games, basically. Well, that's what I mean with... That's what I mean with... I don't really...
Speaker: I don't really think that anything other than grand strategy is really a strategy game. and I mean, the RTS scene is just such a beautiful example of that because it's just such a try-hard competitive scene.
Speaker: And even if you're just a casual gamer, you you get a bit of that. And I... It's never been my thing. and I'm sorry to all you RTS players out there. It's never been my thing. We will be talking about a lot of games this podcast.
Speaker: God damn it. It's just such a different feel to the crowd that plays like big, grand strategy games and are usually quite chill about it. Yeah, I think basically all of us three, or at least you and me, Magnus,
Speaker: We want a coloring book and just color the world. but that's That's kind of what I want from a grand strategy game. Give me a coloring book, but now I've got a coloring book with small units and my little cities, and I can just go around and, oh, now this has become a nice blue shade. This has become a nice blue shade. OK, everything is a nice blue shade. I'm done.
Speaker: I think we're playing into the the only autists play grand strategy games meme right here. Which is weird because I'm going to argue against this and I'm probably the most autistic of us. But I actually find that those those components of strategy games sort of annoying. It's like loot in MMORPGs.
Speaker: Okay, this might be the most autistic part anyway because it's like loot in MMORPGs. I just want to go for it. Like, I'm a total loot goblin. I need to kill everything to loot it.
Speaker: Same thing in a yeah regular RPGs. Whenever I play Gothic, I return and play Gothic 2 quite a lot. It's one of my favorite RPG games. I need to kill and loot everything. Because otherwise, the world is not in order.
Speaker: um But I do hate this, or rather, I do dislike this component in strategy games, actually. And i do prefer strategy games in the um RTS style. where what matters is essentially my ability to a make a good plan between like what I've been ah gathering resources I've been gathering, I've built up and how I enter it into the battlefield and I just need to be good at reacting fast enough to actually carry out this plan faster and better than my opponent this is what I and enjoy and then things like order and beautiful cityscape or a beautiful map
Speaker: like k yeah yeah essentially goes out the window very early on. But it's interesting you say that because you're also kind of the main proponent here for kind of resource management and getting all of this up.
Speaker: I mean, how how do you manage the resource management thing, which I also think is essential for grants if for strategy games with that kind of quick, now I have to kill everything and loot it because, i mean, those are two different components in how you play a game.
Speaker: Well, essentially, that's the fun thing about... oh We're going to have a deep dive in this. we we can know we I think this might be today the episode when we deep dive into this, actually. We're going to have a specific yeah episode on resources, of course, because I demand it.
Speaker: But i think one of the things that makes strategy games really fun... Is the fact that you actually mix several different game modes.
Speaker: And they all boil down. Or they're all connected by this sort of planning process. to win against an opponent and with whatever resources, whatever tools are available, and then just using them all.
Speaker: If there is a system where you need to mine gold and collect lumber in order to have your army, then you need to do it. If you don't do it and just try to have an army, you're going to fail. i think this is very compelling, and I do actually like adding a lot of mechanism into my mechanisms into my strategy games. I like them very complex.
Speaker: I think that's how you solve of the StarCraft II try-hard problem, um which is all of StarCraft II. It's a try-hard problem. where they They have boiled it down to something very short and simple, and it's very easy for people to make me a game metas and to play the meta and to optimize.
Speaker: If you make a game messy enough, it's really hard to optimize. And the then then it gets fair in some ways again. ah so this is I'm going to something more. No, never mind. I'm going to let you guys in. I'm ranting.
Speaker: No, no. I mean, ranting is good in this part. Yeah, i I can agree with you here. I mean, some some place, StarCraft II suffers a lot from this, and a lot of our other RTS games suffers a lot from this.
Speaker: And some instances, also Paradox games. You know, when the competitive scene gets to, and we've all heard this, and yes, I'm going to reference Hearts of Iron 4 again,
Speaker: Metagaming, meta players, ah this is the new meta. Yeah, I hate that. I can't stand it. I don't want to do, oh, you build this, you win. You do this, you win. that That's no fun. Then strategy is out of the window.
Speaker: I mean, it's it kind of takes the fun out of the game for me personally. And even though even if I know what the meta strategy is, I kind of tend to not use that. I want to do something else and see, can this work? Can this surprise or anything like that? But I tend to agree with you a bit that I'm kind of allergic to this one thing wins all metagaming. And sorry to all you metagamers out there who actually wants to use it.
Speaker: Do that. It's not for me. Don't like it. Yeah. um I also want to add, because there is something. um ah think there's a fair... I think you can say that in some ways strategy gaming has maybe not died, but taken a very massive beating um the last 10, 15 years.
Speaker: And one of the things I think has gone wrong in a lot of strategy gaming or in the development of strategy games is there are a lot of... um new releases are too small. They're too focused. They want to be tactics game. You have a strategy game that is essentially only the battlefield or or one that is essentially only the city building or one that's essentially everything boiled down to one resource and one battlefield and just making it small and narrow. Um...
Speaker: And I think the big, yeah ah messy ah try to plan with a lot of different tools is what made the strategy games so good ah back in the day what made them so successful. There was a time when strategy games essentially was one of the largest genres of gaming and they just aren't anymore. And I think it is because but we have all this new cool tech to build even better strategy and planning games.
Speaker: And instead we use it to build flashy hack and slash games. Yeah, I can agree with you somewhat. I mean, if we should look at it, when I sat down and kind of started doing research for this podcast, I came across a person on the internet, I do not remember the name, but he he is a professor in gaming.
Speaker: and He said this about strategy gaming. We had the golden age of strategy gaming between like 1995 up until 05. yeah ah five That was the golden age of strategy gaming. Then Right now we've been in the decline from 2005 up until 2020.
Speaker: and twenty twenty But now we're, and I feel I can vouch for this, that was kind of the the Rome is falling. We have the gods outside our city walls.
Speaker: and But now we're kind of in the renaissance again. It's starting to heat up. We have some exciting titles. there There's been some great titles up. So Yes, I can agree with you. We have been in the dark ages of strategy gaming, but we are slowly clawing our way back into the renaissance here.
Speaker: Fuck, I don't agree with you. I mean, i don I don't buy the concept of this whole golden age of strategy gaming. The thing is, computers were so bad. What what were you supposed to play other than strategy games?
Speaker: You couldn't play, I mean, ah multiplayer shooters because we didn't have the tech for it. we but Unreal Tournament, Magnus. wanted to build a game. you built the strategy game. That's basically what you did.
Speaker: And I mean, Sid Meier and other people, you just looked at, okay, what kind of games do we play otherwise? i mean, you had you had Duck Hunter before that, but a you barely had decent shooters, so you had to build strategy games.
Speaker: And then you get into it, and sure, yeah, strategy games have ah smaller part of you know the whole the whole gaming economy, because shooters get good enough that they're actually worthwhile playing, and you get...
Speaker: You get the tech and you get the the internet connections to to play them online and it works. ah And sure, I think but that that has taken too much of kind of like the oxygen in the gaming space.
Speaker: ah But it's also because i think people think that it's easier to get into a first-person shooter. i'm I'm not sure I agree with that, actually, because, I mean, it's it doesn't take a lot of time to get decent at strategy gaming.
Speaker: you need to invest hours to get really good. But getting really good at first-person shooter, I mean, that takes time. and That's one of the reasons I don't want i don't play them that much, because I get online, I get shot in the head about 15 times, and that's basically where my interest ends.
Speaker: Yeah, okay. I can agree with you that it's somewhat pretentious talk about the golden age of strategy gaming, but I'm going to do that because I'm also old, and I tend to look that new is not always better.
Speaker: But I think that thing that kind of went in and started to kill the or kill maybe decline the the strategy games is yes first-person shooters all that but the big main thing i think is two things it's uh playstation and xbox we got consoles uh which kind of took away the space the pcs uh or the computers at the time they couldn't keep up with that now we see that it can and But yeah, the element of ah strategy games, I think we have some some exciting titles the past five years. So I don't agree with it being dead. Yes, it's a smaller part of the whole gaming industry, but it's still quite a vibrant, alive part.
Speaker: Well, I want to counter-argue that, sure, other styles of gaming has developed quite a quite a lot and become a lot cooler.
Speaker: But I do also feel that a lot of the ambition that went into strategy games back in the day has sort of been... there um sort of scaled down or scaled back. yeah um ah One of my favorite strategy games ever is a game called Warrior Kings Battles. It's a continuation of the Warrior Kings game.
Speaker: And I do realize that that doesn't help anyone pinpoint it ah because it's very, very unknown. It's very small. I can't say it's a small game. That's the fun thing about it. It's a massive game and it just adds scope upon scope upon scope and it kind of fucks it up, but it still keeps going.
Speaker: And um it it tried to essentially be an entire battle simulator. It tried to be essentially a Kriegsspiel in your computer.
Speaker: And you don't see that many games who try to do that anymore. And and the one you see, I think, are very often these sort of long-running game series, like Total War series or Civ or like those kinds of legacy ah series of games.
Speaker: But it's at least when I scroll through like yeah this the Steam or Gully games from the pages of new releases of strategy games, it is very rarely game.
Speaker: either Grand or RTS strategy games with just a massive scope? Yes, and also no. and Because we we have a game series that that actually does this, which is a game series I love, which is ah Ultimate General.
Speaker: They do this, Ultimate General Civil War. They've done Gettysburg, and they've released something now that is set in the colonial times with the American Civil War.
Speaker: They tried to take all of that and with the resource management and tried to do the whole Krikspiel simulation from it. But yes, there are few and they're far in between.
Speaker: yeah i have actually i haven't played Ultimate General. role I haven't looked at it, but and the du the Battlefield mechanics looks beautiful. But i haven't i actually yeah since I never purchased it, I haven't gotten into how well the rest of the game mechanics works.
Speaker: It's actually a game that I ah want to do an episode about. Fantastic, then I need to play it. and Otherwise, we have this. ah There is one game you guys have been trying to force or convince, demanding how you view it, me to play. um God, I forget the name, but it's one of those battlefield that um tactics games.
Speaker: Steel Division. Yes, Steel Division. think Steel Division is making my point for me. It's not a bad game. I've played it a bit now. like it. It's really good. But it is also very intentionally scaled down to one aspect of the game.
Speaker: And, well, I think that is i think that i think it results in many good games. But this thing that I think got the strategy game ball rolling has sort of been, ah well, scaled out of it.
Speaker: Yeah, well, I just played it before and and I can say that yes and no. hey but Not to like talk about big... I want to talk about the whole studio and the whole whole series of War No Steel Division and everything that Eugene ah Studios have been doing. But you are right that it's really cool when you're looking at the tactical level.
Speaker: ah And it's very underdeveloped when you look at a strategic level or a resource management level. And you you basically you can't do much. They they have a component the game that has the whole strategic map of the Eastern Front, least their operations on the Eastern Front of our battle.
Speaker: But it's so scaled down that it's almost it's it's dumbed down to a level where they might as well have skipped it. So as I mentioned... It would have been fantastic.
Speaker: As mentioned, I've been sitting and looking around at the Steam store page whilst we've been talking, and there is something that I think find very interesting. So they have a bunch of categories for strategy games. They have like the RTS, they have the 4X, they have the Grand Strategy, they have a Strategy in General, they have something they call Strategy and Tactical RPGs.
Speaker: And when i click on them, it's just the same games. Steam is really bad at differentiating between games. Actually, when I'm scrolling down in the strategy, right next Anno 1800 is...
Speaker: ace Trading, Card, Shop Simulator, and Lust Goddess. Lust Goddess seems to be a porn game. um I doubt that you control an army in it.
Speaker: I don't think that's it's that kind of porn. I mean, it could be Warhammer 40k game, right? Yeah. It could be. It's true.
Speaker: Yeah, but I mean, just see, but that's a whole other episode just to see what Games Workshop has done with their IP. Here's how they describe it. So, Lost Goddess is a hot and thrilling collectible card game. so That's where the strategy game comes in, I guess.
Speaker: Where you assemble your unique squad of sexy, mercenary girls. eat Earn their love and trust, and they will show you their gratitude by things that we don't talk about in this podcast.
Speaker: Yeah. But essentially, Steam seems to think that you can... do a team building tactics porn game and say it's a sort of strategy and I think there is a point to it which is we just talked about a tactics a game with an army a tactics game with the five um naked girl cards I think I actually don't want to hover over it and see what it looks like because well it might be confusing I'm just going to lose my track on the English and start speaking Swedish or something in that case please don't
Speaker: But, like, what what I'm trying to go at is, like, there are bunch of different um subcategories to just strategy. And some of them are of dubious. Some of them are, like, super definitely strategy. What we...
Speaker: Maybe it's like, where do we draw the lines and which do you like, which do you feel are like kind of iffy? Because I can immediately add that I think lot of tactics games are sort of... I understand why a lot of storefronts want to consider them strategy.
Speaker: just don't. I think that it's hard to draw a clear line, but you know it when you see it, right? Yeah. We all know that this Lust Goddess, sorry, it's not a strategy game.
Speaker: It just isn't. ah But you know it when you see it. And we could we could spend another half hour on talking about what the exact demarcations of a strategy game is. But I think we we wander around it. I mean, we want some kind of resource management.
Speaker: We like if there's a military dimension. It doesn't have to be a military dimension. um And if you're just looking at naked ladies, maybe that's not a strategy game.
Speaker: there's There's different card games for that. i mean just Or different websites for that. hat But I tend to agree agree with you. I mean, we want some kind of resource management. We want some kind of military in it. We we want an opponent, at least one.
Speaker: And i for me, it doesn't matter if it's an RTS, if it's turn-based, or if it's ah linear mapping, or if it's a hexagon mapping. I mean, some of the best games I've played in like strategy game so or hex-based games based games, which I do like. and But there's i don't I agree with Magnus here. There's no clear definition outside of kind of the lost goddess or whatever you said. I kind of spaced out there and didn't want to be a part of that discussion.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But what do you like? If we go at it from that direction, what what what what sort of what categories of strategy game do you enjoy playing as a strategy game player?
Speaker: a strategy game player, I mean, i I do like everything from the grand strategy games, but I mean, the one game I've played the most in in recent times, I've been two games because I've had a lot at work, so I kind of just want to chill down and chill out my brain.
Speaker: So the first one is Warhammer Total War 2, which I think is an amazing game if you've been into the Warhammer universe because it kind of captures kind the board gaming essence of it and with some resource management.
Speaker: There's a lot of things that could be better to elevate it. But then I also play a lot of Warhammer Armageddon, which is Slytherin Studios. It's an amazing little turn-based hex game also set in the Warhammer 4K universe.
Speaker: which has no resource management. It's it's basically Panzer General in that sense. You get the army, you have units carry over, you get some new units, spend your resources in upgrading and getting them back. That's kind of the resource management and hold back the green tide.
Speaker: i kind of like those games, but then again, also when I want to be challenged, I tend to play... yeah Hearts of Iron 4 crank up the difficulty and chase achievement as Ethiopia or New Zealand or whatever. Or if I want to have a chill game, I play yeah the Soviet Union and now I'm going to turn every country in the world to communist, for instance. I mean, it it depends on what I'm after at the time. what What do I want in this specific moment? Do I have five hours to kill just having a fun game? Do I want need to wind down on a train trip? Or am I playing with my friends?
Speaker: And I mean, Magnus had a great example. He played Steel Division before he got the into this recording. And yeah, it depends on my mood.
Speaker: Yeah. So I sort of tend to agree. But I also realized that there is something there is something about how we talk about strategy games that does different things for me. um And I guess I have what it what I would um very stupidly call my... um strategy sense or strategy thingle or something like that, um ah which is essentially when I play a game and I realize that I do have to do planning, just not manually carrying out like a routine. and
Speaker: and the reason I want to talk about this is because You can see this in, for example, RTS games. You see a lot of... Starcraft. But you see a lot of like very tight, small RTS games where you essentially have to react very fast.
Speaker: You do plan. You have to sort of do the rock-paper-scissor against your enemy and figure out what they're building and build the counters to it and stuff like that. But to a very large extent, you play it by just doing, much like a shooter.
Speaker: And then you have the ones where you have to plan. And I've realized something which bothers me a little bit, and it's that the name of the sort of subtrate game know so sub-genres of strategy game doesn't really make sense.
Speaker: For example...
Speaker: RTS game like Starcraft or a slightly a slower one like Age of Empires pretty much either Age of Empires game is in some ways I think you can't you can't really call them a grand strategy game but Cossacks one of my favorite strategy games ever it's essentially just Age of Empire with gunpowder. So it's essentially Empire 3.
Speaker: It's older, actually, but but nevertheless. yeah nevertheless But it's also scaled up to the point where it can take you 20 minutes to walk a unit across the map, the entire map, and there you can have, like, 40,000 units. and the um There is no real upper limit.
Speaker: And all of a sudden, it starts to behave in many ways like a grand strategy game because you need to think in much more long-term views. You can't just play it on reflex. um Your planning becomes a lot more... um ah sort of like, yeah more or less thinking about painting the map, ah painting thinking about build-up. ah But that means that there isn't really a clear boundary between an RTS and a grand strategy game. And maybe the the only real difference is whether it's turn-based or real-time.
Speaker: But on the other hand, the Crusader Kings is ah real-time. Yeah, I can agree with that. I mean, a game that pops to mind, which is a strategy game on the level but when you actually fight the battle it it comes down to the to the tactical level which still division in many ways are but even older games which is one of my favorite old game series is the close combat series if you play that one where you have the strategic map but as soon as a battle you come into a tactical view with your squads with your units with your soldiers so yeah the the line is kind of blurred between it but I think that's a
Speaker: good thing, actually. like Yeah, well, I actually looked up ah before the podcast because they we we would be talking about, okay, what's a strategy game? And it's really fun to see Wikipedia try to like ring in what's a strategy game is basically their one definition. it's It's a game where decision-making skills determine the outcome.
Speaker: So, I mean, it's it's not your skill. It doesn't matter if you can do a 360 no-scope. That's not how you win the game. ah It's some kind of decision-making. but That's that's a stupid, the definition, because... Chess to... Probably Animal Crossing is a strategy game.
Speaker: but The problem with that is, though, that deciding to not do a 360 no-scope definitely improves your chances of winning. yeah sure. sure
Speaker: yeah But I can think about that because I have also did some research with this and I fell upon this kind of thing that people tend to class as this is a strategy game.
Speaker: and In my opinion, it is definitely not. And that's the RTS first-person shooter hybrids that exist. and which for For instance, we have the What was the name of that? Oh, Command & Conquer Renegade, if if you're old enough that to remember that game.
Speaker: That is not a strategy game. It's a first-person shooter game. The only strategy level you have, do I want to do this mission or that mission? but That's not a strategy game. It's not resource management. and there are and And I think our biggest proponent for for how good this game is, and I love this game, and I don't know if he he'll agree with me here, but some people tend to say that oh, but Mount & Blade, that's a strategy game. And I tend to say, no, it's not.
Speaker: It's not a strategy game. It's a great game, but it's not really a strategy game when you run around. It's kind of this mix-up. You have your own little guy doing giving the orders, but in the end, you kind of just go in and wail on um the opponents. I don't think and Andreas will agree with me, but that's kind of a definition for me that it's not a strategy game in that sense.
Speaker: I think that one is really hard, actually. I play a lot of Mount & Blade. i love it um But I also play it like a strategy gamer. like The way I do play is essentially get a big army, try to fight a bigger army, use tactical advantage, use field advantage, look at the map, try to figure out what the battlefield is going to look like if I can, trick them into this position.
Speaker: um Essentially try to get as many kills per unit I deploy. But whenever I watch a streamer playing it, most of them play it are like an RPG.
Speaker: Exactly. Like an army. And one of the best game and mods I've ever played, which keep crashing on my computer right now, is the Crusader Blade mod, which is essentially, you play Crusader Kings.
Speaker: But instead of the really boring rock-paper-scissor, dice-rolling, weird battle system that Paradox likes to have, you just generate the battle in the battlefield Mountain Blade.
Speaker: And that is brilliant. It's essentially what Total War should have been if they had focused on um graphical fidelity and scale rather than weird hero units. ah we're We're going to get into Total of War and Kappa.
Speaker: good things and bad things about that, but I think we're going to save that for the other. But okay, yeah, I can agree with you, but when I play Mountain Blade, I tend to approach it as as a strategy game.
Speaker: But then again, when I see kind of the majority of people playing it, they don't do that. so i mean you When you spend three hours in the smitty, just making bigger and bigger weapons and selling them for ridiculous prices because the game economy is, well, dumb.
Speaker: Yeah. yeah And we're're we're also touching on the crossover between RPG and strategy games. And for sure, there are crossovers. But and let's just say that not all RPG. Yeah, it's resource management and a lot of the time.
Speaker: yeah I don't think that's strategy gaming. ah I will break this rule when we get to ah ah when we get to the Heroes of Might and Magic, which is classed as an RPG game, and I've always played that as strategy game.
Speaker: Yeah, there is not an RPG. There is almost no RPG element in Heroes of Might and Magic. yeah Like, what are you going to do? Play dress up with your hero? Yeah, but I i can agree with with it in some ways. I mean, I think it's one of the best strategy game series out there, but Yes, there is a certain RPGing element into it.
Speaker: but But yeah, i and and I think it kind of comes back to what we said in the start, that classifying what is a strategy game, it's it's quite hard to do and say definitively, this is a strategy game.
Speaker: This is what a strategy game should contain. i mean But you know it when you see it, no matter what matter if it's, 4x if it's hex based if it's turn based if it's not you know it when you see it uh and if you win by doing your 360 no scope it's not a strategy game if it's just looking at the naked ladies on the new york trading cards or for that part i'm not sure any trading card game is a strategy game but uh we'll have a guest on i think to have that route Yeah, oh oh now those are fighting words. As an old Magic the Gathering player, those are definitely fighting words. um
Speaker: Cannot for the lack you see the charm in a trading card game, but okay. It's a very good way to spend money. I mean, it's not a good investment, but you definitely spend quite effectively.
Speaker: like There's a lot of money going out and a very small amount of stuff going coming back in. It's space-efficient consumerism. Compared it to Warhammer, where actually need to paint the minis and have a map and board and stuff, it it actually takes up space for your money. Here you can just have your money in a very, very small deck in the back of your pocket.
Speaker: Also, you don't have to assemble the cards before you paint them and play with them and then put them on display. But you need to stick them into sleeves because they never sell pre-sleeved cards even though no one yeah um or any like no reasonable Magic the Gathering pair player plays with unsleeved cards. That's insane. That's like throwing money away.
Speaker: I think we're about this close to start talking about Magic the Gathering. And that's my cue to say, I think that this might be where we round off this episode, right? Almost. that I want to bring up one final short topic that I think we're going to sort of sort of run round of on.
Speaker: Absolutely. I want one more round with all of us. And I want us to give us ah give it the best take on what Un-makes a strategy game. Like, is there something that you can add to a game that just makes it stop being a strategy game?
Speaker: Except for Naked Ladies.
Speaker: Yeah, for for me, basically, the first-person shooter element. When that comes in, it's kind of out the window for me. Yeah, 360 no scope. I mean, that kind of thing.
Speaker: I saw that Command & Conquer Renegade. great first-person shooter game, not a strategy game, in my sense. So I think that is the kind of clear definition for for my part.
Speaker: Yeah. I almost want to say, because we were talking about like Animal Crossing and little day of video, I mean, like,
Speaker: small games, more phone games more, kind of like games you buy for your iPhone. ah And absolutely, they're great. But I think that the pay-to-win element That ruins strategy game. Because all of a sudden, it's not about your decision-making skill.
Speaker: but it Anytime you can kind of buy your way around that, that it stops it stops being ah strategy game for me. Absolutely. no That's really good that's a really good idea. um I mean, essentially, what would chess be if one of the team could upgrade their pawns to ah to a to a queen by essentially paying 10 bucks ahead of the game?
Speaker: ah you stop having like the, especially in the multiplayer versions, you stop having the sort of equal footing, which I think is very important. I had one other point. Johan, you want to say something?
Speaker: Yeah, I just want to round off my last statement. this I think every game that has a paid to win element is disqualified as a good game. but Basically, that that's my take on it. You shouldn't be able to.
Speaker: I mean, no, I don't like paid to win. I do not like loot boxes either. so um yeah Yeah, I have one other thing which I think can disqualify something from being a strategy game, and it's scale.
Speaker: um i think a strategy game can keep a lot of these sort of game elements, but just become too small. ah my my main example would be a few of the tactics games and RPGs like Dragon Age Origins, where you command the party.
Speaker: And you do a lot of resource management planning and stuff in that game. But you come on the party and a party is just too small to be a strategy game. It's the same thing with like Commando and those kind of all this like Commando is small division or a squad doing things.
Speaker: Tactics games are their own thing. And I think that like there is a real difference between it's nebulous, but there is a real difference between tactics and strategy games. That depends on like how much you get to manage. And when it gets too small, it just stops being strategy. and Yeah, 100% agree with you. I mean, we have some great games like Expeditions. They have Vikings, Conquistador, Rome.
Speaker: and There are some... North Guard is like another great example. Great tactical games, but you manage a party. It's not really a strategy game in that sense. And I'm saying this because if you look at the Steam page once again, they want to have Marvel Midnight Suns. They want to have XCOM. They want to have the weird titty game with a tactics element. They want to add them to strategy, and I want them to remove them from strategy. I want them to take the tactics game genre more seriously. Was that your hidden agenda for this whole podcast episode? Yes.
Speaker: yeah just lobbying Because obviously we are big enough that we have listeners working at Steam. Fix this. Yeah, so that's our last thing. Steam, fix this.
