The closest thing I can think of is the current implementation of Star Wars X-Wing (a miniatures boardgame) where both players actually need to place asteroids before the start of a game (answering to a few rules).

This essentially generates the terrain for the game, and is part playing your strategy and denying your opponent's. I think it's brilliant, but it works only because it is simple.

Your suggestion sounds like it could be streamlined a bit further so as not spending too much time/attention/focus getting things setup before a game starts.

One thing you could do is cake-cutting, i.e., where one person metaphorically divides a cake and the other person chooses which piece they want.

For example, you could start with a randomly generated (but pretty open) map, with two empty bases in reasonable positions. Player 1 adds an environmental feature. Player 2 has a choice: pick one of the two bases, or add an environmental feature of their own. If they add a feature, then Player 1 makes a choice: pick a base or add yet another feature. It goes back and forth like that until one player picks a base.

(After that, the player who didn't pick their base should have the chance to place one more feature, to mitigate the choosers' advantage a bit.)

Having a hand of randomly-drawn feature tiles and a bit of placement constraint like a board game would enrich the decisions. Like you don't just want players putting their favorite features in every map, and putting them all equidistant between the bases so that there's no advantage. You want some tough decisions, like "this resource would play into my build strategy, but it only fits near that one base. Do I place it and hope it's not so sweet a deal that my opponent chooses that base? Do I enrich the other base with something nice so that my opponent takes it, so that I can get the first base and play this tile as my consolation tile?"

Really, what you propose sounds like an AWESOME game for good friends to have a blast, just as having a beers and pretzels tabletop game testing out the most OTT special units from the weirdest expansions for fun and giggles.It doesn't sound like a game that has any chance to become a competitive gamers favourite, or is even very fun to play for strangers over the internet.

Entirely possible. I'm operating under the advice of a game designer who said something like (massive paraphrase warning) "Don't try to design an esport. Add hooks to make it easier for your game to be adopted as one, sure, but trying to design one from the outset will get you a soulless, joyless 'game'" With how this game is taking shape in my head and in a handful of limited prototypes, any competitive scene that could possibly grow up around it would look very different to, say, Starcraft's. My use of the phrase "competitive RTS" was really just redundant - I meant the stereotypical RTS, where two or more players go up against each other.

This is also my opinion. I see many games that are E-Sports favorites because of its balance as quite soulless. Not boring to play as long as you are into ultracompetitiveness and can get satisfaction out of that, but certainly lacking in flavour. And from playing games that have inherent troubles with balance I can say that this is not as much of a problem as some whiners make it sound like, as long as there are always multiple viable strategies, it doesn't matter much if one is a little bit better and one is not as good.

With that said, I would concentrate on balancing not so much the "fairness" of your design, but its "rage factor". Giving players the ability to "officially troll" their opponents can be fun in some games, as long as its tightly controlled. The last thing you want is that your players feel their opponents using cheap tricks, "cheating", and doing so by using (or "abusing") the games own official rules. Its when a not so balanced game turns into a broken one... and even if this would balance out over many games, many players will just look at that one match that made them angry like hell, forgetting the other matches where they owned....

That is why I have my doubts about too much interference with the opponents resources pre game or the veto system. I am not 100% sure I understand how you want to implement a veto system in a competitive game, but looking at the US politics, we see how a "veto" gets seen when the two parties involved are so hostile to each other... neither side sees anything good about it, not even the party that was able to veto their "opponent"...

As long as strangers are playing against each other, I would be concerned about making sure everyone gets to have some fun. Now, I know this is a hot topic about games which try to make sure skillfull players don't own too much, but given that as a dev you should be concerned about more than just single players, it does make sense to try to bridge the skill gap a little bit. So if your pre game is too much about skill (or knowledge), that gap will widen even more.

Making the pre game too much about luck would on the other hand leave players with the feeling that they lost because of the RNG... which can be good, to some extent, very few players want to face the truth that they are not the top 1% of players and rather blame it on the RNG.

But if the RNG starts to troll them before the game even begins, that might be too much for many.

Now, there is another thing. One of the interesting parts about wargames and strategy titles is to have to adapt to your surroundings. Its what makes or breaks a real militarys strategy. The combatant who is better able to adapt to their surroundings usually wins. Bringing tanks without infantry support into a city is usually ending badly. Letting infantry attack a machine gun nest over no mans land too.

Now, I did write before about why forcing the player to re-adjust every game could be too much... but you are trying to turn this thing on its head. Instead of the player having to adapt to the environment, they can now adapt the environment to them. That is not how war usually works. Which is fine if you want to go more abstract.

From a realistic perspective, a "random" procedural approach would certainly be better. How well that approach will work for an RTS or any strategic game IDK though....

The players involvment in pre game "environment setup" should be quite limited. You usually don't have the ability to bring in the big tools to move cubic kilometres of earth before a "random encounter" somewhere along the frontline.

I do see this as a good tool to make a onesided "defense" game mode more interesting though. Give the defender the chance to setup their defensive structures before the game starts, and also to change the battlefield within limits. Give the Attacker the ability to plan their attack waves at the same time to keep the attacker busy while the defender sets up his fortress and death zones.

Then give the attacker a limited ability to scout the defenders defenses pre game so its not just a mindless slaughter favoring the defender. And the defender is forced to adapt the well prepared strategy, and maybe even make sure their initial setup allows for multiple viable defense strategies should their opponent successfully avoid one of the traps they set up.

That would work without any veto system, as the whole game made is inherently assymmetric. Hard to balance? Yes. But could be very interesting, and makes exensive pre game environment changes quite realistic.

Other game types could have different pre-game options. A "random encounter" could have a real randomly generated environment. You could limit the terrain generation so no side is getting too much of an advantage. You could place resources at fixed positions, if there even are any (a game made WITHOUT resources in a game that usually has some in every map could make for quite a different game... having to preserve resources yet still defeat the enemy would force players to adapt their strategies for sure)... like the only resources on the map are in the middle, an abandoned supply base each of the opponents are trying to get.

Maybe there is a "trench line" style of game mode, where both players set up defensive lines in their half of the map? They can go crazy on it, with no involvment of their opponent.

The only thing here is that there needs to be some "stalemate breaker" units that prevent a WW1-style multiyear stalemate, without making the trenches completly irrelevant.

With that said, I would concentrate on balancing not so much the "fairness" of your design, but its "rage factor". Giving players the ability to "officially troll" their opponents can be fun in some games, as long as its tightly controlled. The last thing you want is that your players feel their opponents using cheap tricks, "cheating", and doing so by using (or "abusing") the games own official rules. Its when a not so balanced game turns into a broken one... and even if this would balance out over many games, many players will just look at that one match that made them angry like hell, forgetting the other matches where they owned....

This is very much one of my focuses. I mentioned earlier the possibility of win/loss tiers. Right now in almost every game, a loss is a loss is a loss. People will "gg and concede" games that have turned against them (with varying levels of tolerance for the longshot comeback) because the only likely outcome left is defeat. The idea would be that even if your enemy has gained an advantage you can attempt to salvage the situation by holding them to a less meritorious win condition, or attempting a "minor victory" condition yourself.

The ability to modify the battleground would likely always be fairly minor, and ideally used to correct for certain strategies you think you might be weak against. However, it would almost certainly be necessary to have information about your opponent to make useful, meaning my "don't know the enemy faction" desire wouldn't work very well. Perhaps different game modes could allow for the possibility.You mentioned the "random encounter" and "siege" type scenarios, and I've envisioned others as well. All these could allow for different win/loss conditions - the downside being all the learning a player has to do to compete across all scenarios.

@valrus: "cake-cutting" is a very cool concept, but I think like Luckless' Tile Laying it doesn't fit as well into this particular design as envisioned. I want to resist the temptation to make the pre-battle phase too time-consuming for the players (if I include it at all).

This is very much one of my focuses. I mentioned earlier the possibility of win/loss tiers. Right now in almost every game, a loss is a loss is a loss. People will "gg and concede" games that have turned against them (with varying levels of tolerance for the longshot comeback) because the only likely outcome left is defeat. The idea would be that even if your enemy has gained an advantage you can attempt to salvage the situation by holding them to a less meritorious win condition, or attempting a "minor victory" condition yourself.

The ability to modify the battleground would likely always be fairly minor, and ideally used to correct for certain strategies you think you might be weak against. However, it would almost certainly be necessary to have information about your opponent to make useful, meaning my "don't know the enemy faction" desire wouldn't work very well. Perhaps different game modes could allow for the possibility.You mentioned the "random encounter" and "siege" type scenarios, and I've envisioned others as well. All these could allow for different win/loss conditions - the downside being all the learning a player has to do to compete across all scenarios.

Time to learn certainly goes up with all the different Game Modes and the additional complexity this pre-game adds to it, on the other hand an RTS is not really a game type that lends itself to "try and error" type of learning. Only very frustration resistant players could learn the full set of rules in a RTS with loosing over and over. Most will turn to tutorials and other resources to learn the games rules.

You could introduce players to the different game type with a series of mini-tutorials, each showing how a certain game mode plays out in 5-10 minutes... that might give players enough knowledge to hold their own, without forcing them into playing a full battle tutorial mission for each game type.

Gaining knowledge about your opponent could be part of the pre game too. Maybe if a player gives up certain pre-game advantages, he can get insight into his opponents setup during the pre game... giving him the advantage to be able to adapt to this setup, at the price of having only limited means left to adapt as most of it was given up for the knowledge advantage?

This would mean the player would have wasted most of his pre-game advantage to get an early game advantage. He couldn't prepare the map for his strategy, but he most probably knows what his enemy will be up to. So you get an offensive option (adjusting the map and resources to give you an offensive boost) and a defensive option (getting the knowledge advantage, which might let you anticipate your opponents early game moves until first contact is made).

Ah, it does help to simplify the concept down to basics. So now the pre-game phase is really a choice between one of several advantages: knowledge, advanced preparation, harming the other guy's strats, etc etc. That's a good way to think of it. It also lets me keep with the "minimum info known" at the beginning of the game.

Thanks for bouncing these ideas back and forth. Now to decide if I try to prototype this stuff now or later...

Ah, it does help to simplify the concept down to basics. So now the pre-game phase is really a choice between one of several advantages: knowledge, advanced preparation, harming the other guy's strats, etc etc. That's a good way to think of it. It also lets me keep with the "minimum info known" at the beginning of the game.

Thanks for bouncing these ideas back and forth. Now to decide if I try to prototype this stuff now or later...

How about a simple paper prototype with very simplified rules and a "mockup game", so basically there is just the output of the pre-game prototype that will then be judged based on the mockup ruleset of your "mockup game"? Just to see if and how such a pre game could work from a high level perspective? Maybe that would be enough to have more eyes look on the idea, and put it in front of some friends to see if they "can break it", or if they like it.

Anyway, good luck with your idea there.

For the tile laying mechanic, maybe think about it more as a deck builder game? You have X cards to play, and each card has a different effect on the game. Some cards grouped together would then play off each other, such as a resource card surrounded by mountains near your starting base, or be less tactically useful, such as an open plain.

As a player for each turn of playing you have to decide, "Do I play a card to secure an advantage FOR me, or do I play a card to limit the opponent's advantage?"

The key for an RTS type game would be how many tiles you place, and finding an effective sweet spot. Too few tiles in total and the mechanic doesn't do much and you don't get many maps over-all, but too many and your game start becomes bogged down.

Maybe different sized tiles would be an answer? So you could have larger more static tiles, and each player can place 2-4 of these that then build the bulk of the map, then smaller sub tiles that would help define the bases or special locations within the larger tiles.

I feel that it is kind of like selecting starting locations in Settler's of Catan; it is as much about limiting an opponent's options as securing advantage for yourself.

I recall years ago (decades) seeing a gamemaster having a (large) minitiaturtes tabletop game where the two sides each got to discard from the terrain a set few features (objects) from a randomy thrown together map (the GM litterally had thrown the terrain feature into place on the large map). This gave them the choice to select terrain (a bit) to their advantage (something a historic general did by selecting the battlefield when given a choice.