What makes a game strategic?

[Marcus Wolfe]

Yeah, title says all.

[ninja_lord666]

I chose "That's a good question". Strategy doesn't come from the game; it comes from the player. You can have two people play the exact same game yet one wins while the other looses, because the first had a better strategy. The thing that makes some games better than others is options like take BFME2 for example: there are 6 different factions (seven with the expansion) which each take a different style of gameplay. The dwarves focus around siege engines with strong units as back-up while Mordor is based on many cheep, expendable orcs with trolls on the side. This adds a lot more dimension to the strategy because of the differences. Ultimately, though, the strategy comes from the player, not the game.

 

EDIT: Removed the somewhat trolley comments from your post. You know the rules by now.

 

- Switch

[Marcus Wolfe]

Well think about it man. By giving you all those different civilizations, that game gave you a wider variety of options.

[ninja_lord666]

Yes, but you specifically asked what makes a game more strategic, not what makes a game better. Sure the different factions make BFME2 better, but that doesn't make it more strategic. Strategy is taking what you have and using that to it's fullest potential to accomplish a goal. The fact that the game gives you more to start with doesn't change that.

[Marcus Wolfe]

Hmmmm....so perhaps I am asking the wrong question.

[TheTerminator2004]

Ninjalord's right, strategy does come from the player, but only if the game makes it possible to utilize such strategies. People use a lot more strategy when playing, say, Total War than they do playing Age of Empires, for example, because Total War makes it possible to use different strategies, such as flanking, or making use of height, whereas Age of Empires does not. In Total War, flanking your enemy with light cavalry while charging from the front with heavy infantry and holding your archers back to fire from a distance actually works, and is a lot more effective than just selecting all your units and right clicking on the enemy, which is basically all you do in Age of Empires.

 

The different factions in BFME2 don't allow use of any particular strategy, they simply encourage players to try out different ones, so they don't actually effect the strategies it's possible to use in the game.

[Marcus Wolfe]

Man, you ask a dumb question around here........

[Lord Barkmann]

Play the Combat Mission Games and then come back to me and we'll talk about what makes a game strategic