I've always wanted to play a game where your units might not do what you told them to. Your troops might think killing the enemy was immoral and wander off instead of fighting, or they might be sympathetic to the enemy and switch sides in the middle. Or the enemy might be paying them. Or they might just really think you suck as a leader.

What if you have to send out scouts of some type to tell where the enemy is? Then you have time delay while the scouts go there and back, and your info might be inaccurate. What if your scouts lie to you about enemy positions?

Maybe the game is set up so that instead of directly controlling every unit, you have various officers that you tell to use certain strategies? You'd have to ensure that the officers like/trust you enough to carry out your orders, and worry about whether some enemy's paying them to pass along all your plans.

And of course, you could also bribe your enemies and so on, to get info you're not supposed to have. It'd be funny if your enemy's troops trusted you more than your own! :P

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Original post by Grim Well, I did originally consider that option as well and found it overwhelmingly true, but still it would be quite silly... :)

Yeah, I dont think of them as individual solders either as it would be quite silly, I was in fact tossing it out there to be ridiculous while making a small point about relativity.

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Original post by Grim And if you started to model things more "correctly", you shouldn't see how the units are doing without having eg. a radio connection with them and even then the information could be inaccurate. After sending units to battle (or whatever), off they go and try to do as they were told. No new orders can be given until they come back unless you have a way to communicate with them (a medieval boat in the middle of the ocean doesn't exactly have high quality communication possibilities with the general on the continent).

Ive had the exact same thoughts myself, but theres a point at which realism no longer becomes fun to play for most players. In the grand scheme of things I dont worry too much about that since most players arent going to be offended that they can give orders to their footsoldiers half a world away in the 1200s...

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Original post by onyxflame I've always wanted to play a game where your units might not do what you told them to.

try playing majesty, its an older game but quite fun.
As i recall you have nodirect influence over your units and you encourage them to do things through a system of rewards. But they still somewhat do their own thing

Yeah, I've played Majesty, and while it's hilarious to watch your level 1 wizards throw themselves at extremely hard enemies and scream "I'm melting!", it's not quite what I had in mind for this idea. I think all my speculation is getting pretty far away from the original topic though, so I'll shut up. :P

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Original post by onyxflame Yeah, I've played Majesty, and while it's hilarious to watch your level 1 wizards throw themselves at extremely hard enemies and scream "I'm melting!", it's not quite what I had in mind for this idea. I think all my speculation is getting pretty far away from the original topic though, so I'll shut up. :P

hehe, yeah, as i recall majesty intrigued me for about a week, but the AI that controlled your units needed a little common sense.

im trying to think of games wherein you just made vague commands and the AI with its own personality executed them (or didnt) but i cant think of any others...

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Original post by xanin Quote: Original post by Grim And if you started to model things more "correctly", you shouldn't see how the units are doing without having eg. a radio connection with them and even then the information could be inaccurate. After sending units to battle (or whatever), off they go and try to do as they were told. No new orders can be given until they come back unless you have a way to communicate with them (a medieval boat in the middle of the ocean doesn't exactly have high quality communication possibilities with the general on the continent). Ive had the exact same thoughts myself, but theres a point at which realism no longer becomes fun to play for most players. In the grand scheme of things I dont worry too much about that since most players arent going to be offended that they can give orders to their footsoldiers half a world away in the 1200s...

This is true. However, I'm not arguing for realism as much as for tactical possibilities, as having some degree of communication instead of player omniscience could bring in strategies that can't be reached otherwise, such as besieging an enemy batallion in order to prevent it to receive orders or killing a scout before it reaches home base to report what it found. After all, I find reconnaissance all too simplistic if all you need is a group of kamikaze units to run through the enemy territory to find out what's there. The units should have to report back, or reconnaissance is not really reconnaissance. If this is too much of indirectness, you could limit it to being in the enemy territory. Another similar thing would be supply lines; you could besiege a city and wait until the citizens and guards starved to death (I do acknowledge the fact that in Civilization-type of games and in a few rts games you have such a mechanism, but in many rts games you don't).

And before this turns into an argument whether all this would be too much of a burder on the side of the player (making sure there are enough supplies etc), you could have optional, customizable automation.

But as far as control goes, I would categorize (in a fuzzy sense, so that games do not have to be exactly in one and only one category) games in three categories as far as controlling goes. These categories would be the following:

1. Direct control: in this type of control the game characters/units/whatever do not do anything by themselves. If you want so solve a maze, you'll have to do it yourself. First person shooters are like this, for instance.

2. Quasi-indirect control: in this type of control you don't move the characters/units/whatever by yourself, but rather give commands or missions to individual characters/units/whatever who then obey the commands or not. However, you still have to designate who executes those commands. Many third person rpgs, strategy games and the like are like this, for instance.

3. "True" indirect control: with this I mean a system in which you suggest what you want to be done or control the environment instead of the actual characters/units/whatever. Games like this would include Majesty, Populous (the original or the sequel Populous 2, but surprisingly Populous 3 would fall into the second category), Dungeon Keeper (and its sequel), Settlers I&II for the most part (IIRC the latter sequels were much more direct, but then again I only tried the demo versions and forgot about them), but that's about all I can think of right now. Maybe Black&White, but I've never really played that so I wouldn't know.

(Of course these terms are my own terminology and categorization; I'm by no means claiming this to be the final and ultimate truth and end-all in game design... ;))

I think there should be more strategy games in the third category, as it would be much more pleasant to just plan and tell what needs to be done instead of babysitting a lot of grunts. I mean, in most cases, all I want is to achieve an objective (such as gathering wood in an rts), who cares who does the job as long the jobs gets done? I've suggested it before as well in the following threads:

RTS gameplay you'd like to see implemented
Resource Shuttling in RTS Games

To summarize, instead of giving orders or missions to specific units, give the missions with priorities and let the computer do the hassle of deciding who gets which assignment. You could even have the system decide whether new units need to be built in order to achieve the objectives. Very much like in Majesty, but with elements from rts games such as handling the economy more accurately etc.

Of course it would be a completely different game from typical strategy games, but would emphasize more the tactical side of the game and less the click-fest-side.

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Original post by Grim 3. "True" indirect control: with this I mean a system in which you suggest what you want to be done or control the environment instead of the actual characters/units/whatever. Games like this would include Majesty, Populous (the original or the sequel Populous 2, but surprisingly Populous 3 would fall into the second category), Dungeon Keeper (and its sequel), Settlers I&II for the most part (IIRC the latter sequels were much more direct, but then again I only tried the demo versions and forgot about them), but that's about all I can think of right now. Maybe Black&White, but I've never really played that so I wouldn't know. (Of course these terms are my own terminology and categorization; I'm by no means claiming this to be the final and ultimate truth and end-all in game design... ;)) I think there should be more strategy games in the third category, as it would be much more pleasant to just plan and tell what needs to be done instead of babysitting a lot of grunts. I mean, in most cases, all I want is to achieve an objective (such as gathering wood in an rts), who cares who does the job as long the jobs gets done? I've suggested it before as well in the following threads: RTS gameplay you'd like to see implemented Resource Shuttling in RTS Games To summarize, instead of giving orders or missions to specific units, give the missions with priorities and let the computer do the hassle of deciding who gets which assignment. You could even have the system decide whether new units need to be built in order to achieve the objectives. Very much like in Majesty, but with elements from rts games such as handling the economy more accurately etc. Of course it would be a completely different game from typical strategy games, but would emphasize more the tactical side of the game and less the click-fest-side.

I like.

Grim->rating++;