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[Mephansteras]

Since this thread has popped back up, I just want to say I'd like a strategy game that focuses on the long game.

So it would be one where you actually fight out the battles, but you don't have to win every battle to win the war, and it is in fact sometimes necessary to surrender certain valuable assets or troops so that you can take them back and use them later. Or you might want to retreat from a battle, and it's not some objective saying you need to do this, it's a call you make on your own judgment of the situation.

And there'd be no obtaining resources so that you can obtain more units in the middle of a battle. The only way more units will show up during a battle is if reinforcements arrive, which is something you'd need to set up ahead of time, or maybe you could send a messenger to call in reinforcements if they happen to be somewhat nearby.

Capturing resources would still be useful, though, as you'd need to feed your troops and sometimes replenish and repair their equipment. And though it wouldn't be feasible to build anything but simple structures on the battle timescale, between battles you can build things like wooden fortifications and siege engines, and maybe things like stone fortifications and ships if there is enough time between battles (you'd be able to save progress between battles, of course, but you'd want to be in a safe place to do it so that the enemy doesn't just kill your workers).

And you shouldn't be able to just spawn troops out of nowhere. If you were in your home country/city-state, you could recruit troops from your populace, but otherwise you'd need to convince natives of the area you are in to join your cause or work as mercenaries, you'll have to wait for reinforcements to arrive at your location.

Isn't that basically what the Total War series does? It does have all of that, but it has most of it.

No, no by far. And especially now that they dumb down the game with each iteration.

Not going to argue that they haven't been dumbing down the series, but...it seems to me like it matches a lot of what he's asking for.

You can lose battles, cities, and fleets without necessarily losing the game. Often, retreating from an unwinnable situation is better than fighting to the death or trying to hold a city against a superior force.

For the most part, you fight with the forces you have in place. You can't make more in the middle of a battle, and even situations where reinforcements can arrive are rare.

You don't build up structures within a battle, but between battles your focus is usually on training new troops and building improvements in your provinces/cities.

Units are drawn from the local population rather than appearing out of mid-air, and building too many high-number units can have a serious impact on the economy of a province.


It might not be exactly what he wants...but it looks pretty close to me. Especially the original Rome: Total War.

[LordBaal]

Not going to argue that they haven't been dumbing down the series, but...it seems to me like it matches a lot of what he's asking for.

You can lose battles, cities, and fleets without necessarily losing the game. Often, retreating from an unwinnable situation is better than fighting to the death or trying to hold a city against a superior force.

For the most part, you fight with the forces you have in place. You can't make more in the middle of a battle, and even situations where reinforcements can arrive are rare.

You don't build up structures within a battle, but between battles your focus is usually on training new troops and building improvements in your provinces/cities.

Units are drawn from the local population rather than appearing out of mid-air, and building too many high-number units can have a serious impact on the economy of a province.

It might not be exactly what he wants...but it looks pretty close to me. Especially the original Rome: Total War.

Well, looked upon from that angle you are right. Most things are there, more or less, some wholeheartedly, others halfarsed.

To elaborate a bit, I'm kind of disappointed of how total war is becoming more about battles and less about war. But even a bigger focus on battles doesn't mean they got better, as frankly, they got quite worst. Now the battles won't last over five minutes, the units run around like doing cocaine and any resemblance of reality is lost. Their main focus is to look pretty and beyond that, nothing much more.

At the strategic side the game has suffered a massive dumbing or "streamlining and optimizing" as they like to say. They keep running away from anything micro except for battles, where you have magic abilities/spells now. I have never understand why there's a perception that micro is such a bad thing, and that a game can't have both things granted it has a good helping AI, and then I remember total war AI and realize why they run away from micromanagement all the time.

Perhaps I'm quite exigent but I long for a game like the following:

I wish for a strategy game that would be like a mix of Europa Universalis and Civilization with a tad of Total War in the strategic part but featuring not only a single planet but hundreds of them, and their respective star systems. A turn based strategy game.

With Total War like battles for land and sea battles and Homeworld like battles for the space ones. Or real time tactical game.

The basis of it is that, a turn based strategy game with real time tactics.

With a research system akin to the one of Space Empires V and overall feel of Emperor of the Falling Suns. Where population and resources are taken into account in a local way. No magic piles of resources, if you have steel in one side of the planet and a vehicle factory in the other side or even in another planet, there must be a way of taking the steel from point A to B in order to make a vehicle.

As for the research system, I mean that you put your research assets into areas of science and research, and certain thresholds may or not unlock new tech or upgrade older tech.

Oh and with a custom array of design for infantry gear and vehicles load out, but also even buildings and races themselves, like Spore but not aimed at 5 years old, something serious looking. Where in the case of vehicles each design really affects it's performance and fire arcs and such. And borrowing a little from SotS where prototype vehicles have more cost and some vehicles are really nice while sometimes others are kind of lemons. As you progress in technology new types of components, hulls and vehicles are available.

As for the infantry, you get to not only choose the uniform and weapon load out, but can make several types of infantry and then the squad, platoon and company load out. For the individual soldier imagine something along the lines of the Dawn of War army painter but with the Firestorm Over Kronus mod weapons choices, but instead of just painting you choose which weapons they carry and what kind of uniform they use for desert, urban, ice, jungle and so environments, the weapons they will use and their combat behavior. Also while at it, as with the vehicles, you get more things as your tech progress.

Then you chose "a regular squad will be made up by 5 soldiers with machine guns, and an antitank squad will be made up of 3 soldiers with antitank rifles and 2 soldiers with machine guns, a platton will be made up of 3 regular squads and 2 antitank squads..." and so on. This of course would not be constricted to just squads, plattons... you could modify it to be cohorts, legions, phalanxes, cadres, whatever the heck you want.

As with the infantry squads and companies system, an army and fleet load out system should be used, so instead of you needing to recruit everything individually you can have an template and recruit whole armies and fleets on the whim of a click, the game recruiting and commissioning the vehicles from the nearest/most suitable/convenient planets, factories and shipyards.

And last but not least, a proper naming system for ships, where you can customize if they get random names (from generic or custom lists), numbers or both, and their class and design type are also made clear and if any or all of this is written on the hull or not, where the first of a class can auto get it's class name if you choose to. The same go for army naming, specifically for squad, platoon and company levels.

Graphic wise I would not be much concerned. Something along the lines of Dawn of War level of graphics would be nice but I would be happy even if is something in 2D, however I have heard that even when 2D is less demanding to the machine, quality 2d graphics (Starcraft 1, Age of Empires comes to mind) are actually harder to make than 3d.

I've been looking around for some way to start a kick start but alas, I haven't been lucky, since I live in a third world country kickstart won't let me do one.

[itisnotlogical]

A Pokemon game where you use Pokemon for something other than battling in a Pokemon tournament or the Mystery Dungeon games. A Pokemon police force. A Pokemon RTS. Wild Pokemon hunting, killing and eating each other to survive. Even a game where you play as Team Rocket would be amazing.

I'm not a Pokemon fan by any stretch of the imagination, so forgive me if something like this has been made any time since Pokemon Snap, but to an outsider looking in it just looks like it only gets prettier and maybe a new game mechanic once in a while.

[mastahcheese]

Have you looked at Pokémon Ranger? You get to use Pokémon to put out forest fires and junk.

[Graknorke]

Have you looked at Pokémon Ranger? You get to use Pokémon to put out forest fires and junk.

It is basically Pokémon Police/animal control/environmentalists. I rather liked it, and the capture mechanics are pretty neat.

[SealyStar]

I have more entries for my list of offensive games!

4. Gated Community Quest
This one is set in the 53rd state of the GJBD/K5O universe, Horida. You are Drayvond Marsden, a black teenager who leaves the conveniently huge gated community he is residing in to purchase some iced-tea beverages and confections from the convenience store. You must now get home through the gated community again. Unfortunately, the small army of identical creepy-ass crackers in the neighborhood watch all found you guilty of EWB (existing while black), and want to kill you. The residents of the gated community are also uncomfortable with having a negro in their neighborhood, and will call for help if they catch you. Other hazards include guard dogs and reckless drivers.

You have very little health and mostly rely on the armor provided by your hoodie. Also, you cannot fight back, because you are unarmed and the creepy-ass crackers have guns and will shoot you if you run up to them. Every so often you run into a non-racist homeowner, who will sell you supplies: iced tea will grant you a speed boost, candy heals you, and you can buy new, undamaged hoodies once yours gets too damaged. To win, you must make it a certain distance through the randomly-generated streets of the gated community, to your residence.

5. Gaza Force
Unlike the actiony previous games in the series, this one is an RTS. It follows a war between Israel and Palestine, except with less focus on the geopolitical ramifications and more on ridiculous stereotypes of both sides. Both sides have some commonalities; for example, both can build nukes - the Israelis have a factory as a prereq, while Palestinians must build an Iranian Embassy first.

Israelis have Investment Banks which generate their resources. In addition to the standard soldiers, tanks, and planes, they have units like the Torah-wielding Rabbi, the meshuga (builder unit), the law-school-dropout son of one of the investment bankers), the Mossad Agent who fights using nothing but an Uzi and Krav Maga, and the American Dignitary, who runs over Palestinians in his gas-guzzling luxury car (and only fights for the Israelis "'cuz hell, kikes ain't towelheads!").

Palestinians get their money from Oil Wells. Their basic infantry in the Mujahid, trained at the Madrassa. They have an Imam (identical to the Rabbi except with Imam, Allah, and Koran used instead of Rabbi, G-d, and Torah), an AK-47-wielding literal Camel Jockey (who is dismayed with your reference to all his people as Camel Jockeys, because it belittles his many years of training as an actual Camel Jockey), a Hijacker who can take Israeli planes, and Iranian Mercenaries as elite infantry (+20% damage against the Israeli American Embassy structure).

6. Middle East Peace
This one is a stealth/puzzle game where you are an aging hippie who goes around the Middle East graffiti-tagging stuff in the name of peace. The stealth component is a simple matter of avoiding being seen by the combatants (civilians are fine) wherever you are tagging. The puzzle component: to avoid being shot by the people who don't want Middle East peace, you must be careful in your use of colors; red for Turks, blue for Israelis, green for Arabs, and red, white, and blue for American soldiers.

At the beginning you only have to worry about one or two sides and tagging things correctly is a matter of finding the right paint within the level. As the game goes on, however, more sides join the game; Americans are the last to be introduced; because they require three colors, two of which are used for other groups, they are the hardest to find materials for. The other complication is that it becomes less obvious what faction is which, and you must observe the area to figure out first.

[Fniff]

A game where you play a faceless mook against a well-armed, smart shooter protagonist.

Story is, you're a soldier in the Evil Empire. Okay, you may be essentially working for a hellish combination of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but the pay is good, they make the trains run on time, and you need to feed your family. You agree that The Good Rebellion is morally in the right, but the state is still recovering from the massive war against the Evil Empire and a revolution would really screw things up. Get to work, soldier.

Gameplay goes like this. The game has a Papers Please like family that you have to feed between levels, and you get paid depending on what you do in the game. You start out as a lowly Private, ordered to guard a fuel depot or something that would be the setting of the first mission of a regular shooter. You have a mass-produced rifle that is horribly inaccurate, a manual that barely explains anything and is mostly useless propaganda ("Shoot enemies of the empire! Gain victory! Gain money! Gain trust of the empire! Begin rejoicing!"), and a coat that can only keep out the cold. You have a set list of areas to patrol and check for enemies of the state. The maps should be fairly open-ended, and have plenty of little details so that it doesn't get too mind-numbing. However, after a while, the hero would arrive. You are fighting against the protagonist of some other shooter. Their AI should be highly advanced and their equipment really good. They have a set of objectives that they must complete. They range in terms of character: sometimes they are sneaky sorts, other times they are cold-blooded snipers, other times they like explosives. There should be various traits involved with them: for example, sometimes they prefer to do the minimal amount of killing, other times they slaughter everyone.

There are various ways of dealing with them. You can attempt to take them on mano-a-mano, but that's going to result with you getting killed nine times out of ten because as said, your rifle is terrible and they are very skilled. You can wait for your squadmates to wear him down and get killed, followed by you finishing the job, but if they kill him first you won't get the bonus payment for dispatching him personally. You can attempt to run away and hide in a cupboard, but this will definitely get your pay docked and they will hunt for you if they like slaughtering everyone.

As you manage to survive against the onslaught of heroes, you get promoted. As you go up and up, you get better weapons (Guns that don't jam half the time and don't aim to the right! How is this possible?), the option to command your subordinates (Go over there and die for the Empire! Me? I'll be right behind you!), and better armor (You can stand up to the enemy with the chance of not getting immediately killed!). Storywise, the situation is getting worse. The Good Rebellion is growing in power, and the Evil Empire is losing more supporters by the day. Slowly but surely, you go on the offense. Of course, this means you're pitted against enemies that were as useless as you were at the start (The friendly AI in shooters can be pretty bad), so this is actually a release in tension.

However, things get rapidly worse as you become a target for the enemy at your high rank. Heroes begin to target you personally, making the levels suddenly much harder. At this point in the story, the Evil Empire begins to lose. After a few missions that get more and more desperate, going from "Blow up the bridges allowing the Good Rebellion into the capital!", then "Defend the tanks firing at the Good Rebellion's infantry!", to the penultimate mission being "Retreat to the Palace, the Evil Emperor has a plan and it will work, honest". The last mission takes place at the palace with you as the sole survivor of your unit. The Evil Emperor approaches you and congratulates you for your service to the Empire, then he knocks you out with a pistolwhip. When you wake up, you see him in civilian clothes running to an awaiting helicopter, finding you in the Emperor's clothes. Then the ultimate hero of the rebellion kicks down the door and gives you a witty one liner that would be pretty cool if you weren't in the villain's shoes, quite literally. So begins the hardest fight in the game.

If you manage to lose, then the game's end is set to triumphant music, describing the great new democracy that has risen from the ashes of the Evil Empire, showing pictures of the Evil Emperor (You) being spat upon by his gravediggers as he's buried in an unmarked grave, and finally noting that this victory is not without sacrifices (Showing your family sitting on a street in rags next to a cardboard sign saying "NO HOME 4 CHILDREN PLEASE GIVE $$$"). Essentially, everything you worked for in the game has been destroyed, but the world essentially got better.

If you manage to win, then game's end is set to ominous music, describing the way you managed to take control, destroy the last of the Good Rebellion, and ultimately rule with an iron fist (Not actually specifying if this is a benevolent or evil rule), then finally showing a picture of you and your family all smiling (For the first time in the game) and holding each other. Essentially, the world is now under the rule of a possibly cruel dictator, but your family and you got out of the game on top. It's ultimately your choice which ending is the happiest one.

I think this would be a great way to point out the weirdness of FPS games by introducing an outside prospective. I think the recent wave of FPS games pointing out the oddities of themselves is a good direction, but doing it from the POV of a regular FPS protagonist doesn't work as well as doing it from another perspective could. Also, this should be preferably done without going the Overlord-style "You're pretty bad but your enemies are much worse" route. The Good Rebellion are as the name implies, good. The Evil Empire are utter bastards and deserve to be kicked out, but the problem is that you are just trying to provide for your family yet you are an equal target, which from your perspective puts the Good Rebellion firmly in the wrong.

[scrdest]

But maybe you could be a mob hitman? This way, the cleaner you do the last mission, the more info you have on the next, as nobody is on high alert - and if you go in guns blazing, your next target will put more effort to hide his defenses.

I wish for a multiplayer Hitman, with the target(s) being NPCs and the players taking the role of, say, four hitmen. For added fun, one of them may be a mole for a rival agency and is trying to eliminate the rest of the team OR protect the target(s).

If he has to eliminate the others, he gets a Major Victory if he does that and the target is dead, Minor Victory if the the target is dead and the team is alive, Minor Loss if the target escaped but the crew got killed, and Major Loss if the the target fled and the crew is alive. Team gets MV for finding the traitor and killing the target, minor for missing the traitor while killing the target, etc.

If he has to protect the VIP, he gets a MV if the VIP fled and he didn't get discovered, mV if he protected the VIP at the cost of his life, mL if he lives and the VIP doesn't, ML if neither lives.

A game all about breaking and entering, from simple robbery to upscale heists, set in a procedurally generated city. No set or scripted missions, just investigate, plan, and execute everything on your own initiative.

Old JoWood game, not sure if it was even released outside of Poland, The Sting is pretty much the first part. Sadly, not the latter.

[Sebastian2203]

I have got an idea .. And I am desperately trying to make it real... ( Sorry for my grammar I am lazy )

Game where you are god and you experiment with life , it would be ASCII simulator where you generate your would with parameters for your planet, and you would be able to change every detail, average temperature rainfall etc. I know DF is partialy this, but there comes "CIV" stage, you would be able to play some Zombie Infection scenarios, "No OIL" scenarios.. I had played some such games but they lack comeplexity, and with ASCII it cant be hard to add complexity, Imagine you could watch your civ as they burst trought "AGE of exploration" there would be many things in game which would determine future of your civilization and goal of game would basicaly be to create planet where Humans can sucessfully fly to space withouth killing themselves.. And maybe you would be also able to use !FUN! button... release zombie apocalypse, meteor or anything... If I had program which would help me to build such game I would sacrifice all my time to learn working on it, and creating that game.. if only .. if only ... GODDAMIT

[scrdest]

I have got an idea .. And I am desperately trying to make it real... ( Sorry for my grammar I am lazy )

Game where you are god and you experiment with life , it would be ASCII simulator where you generate your would with parameters for your planet, and you would be able to change every detail, average temperature rainfall etc. I know DF is partialy this, but there comes "CIV" stage, you would be able to play some Zombie Infection scenarios, "No OIL" scenarios.. I had played some such games but they lack comeplexity, and with ASCII it cant be hard to add complexity, Imagine you could watch your civ as they burst trought "AGE of exploration" there would be many things in game which would determine future of your civilization and goal of game would basicaly be to create planet where Humans can sucessfully fly to space withouth killing themselves.. And maybe you would be also able to use !FUN! button... release zombie apocalypse, meteor or anything... If I had program which would help me to build such game I would sacrifice all my time to learn working on it, and creating that game.. if only .. if only ... GODDAMIT

Isn't Ultima Ratio Regnum basically that?

[Graknorke]

No, URR is a tombraider roguelike.

[scrdest]

No, URR is a tombraider roguelike.

Right now, but I'm pretty sure it was supposed to have a civilization stage later on in development.

[Graknorke]

No, URR is a tombraider roguelike.

Right now, but I'm pretty sure it was supposed to have a civilization stage later on in development.

No, it was supposed to have a civilization stage earlier in development. Now it's cut down to just tomb raiding.

[Parsely]

I want Tom Clancy games with depth back. No more cover shooters plox. :X

[BFEL]

I want a full on hunter-gatherer tribal simulator. So something along the lines of the current Monster Hunter games but without the mission based sport hunting.

Essentially you play as a member of a tribe and along with your fellow hunters you have to provide food and shelter for your tribesmen, as well as fend off bigger attacks from more ferocious predators.
I'm thinking it should be generally open-world, and if you die you simply play as a different member of your tribe (there are a set number of these, which increase or decrease depending on how well you do)
It would also be interesting if it let you take some other NPC hunters along with you, similar to the way pawns were handled in Dragons Dogma, and those hunters also count towards your tribe numbers.
If you do well enough your tribe might eventually get more advanced weapons and such, and even discover agriculture. On the flip side if you do poorly your village elder might decide your tribe has to try and migrate somewhere else (this also happens if you completely over-hunt, so balance is important.)
And of course if you do really REALLY bad your tribe will straight up die out.