The vast majority of RTS games have TERRIBLE economic management. It is stale, but only because the implementation is crap. However most gamers seem to dislike economic management for ruining the purity of their tactics, a complaint that is somewhat ironic given that the most clever military solutions tend to arise from the economic disparity between two sides.

I'm not a huge fan of this kind of game, but I thought I'd throw a game suggestion. If you haven't played it already, you might get a few ideas

Have you ever played Mount and Blade? It's a bit deceiving at first, because it *looks* like some kind of Elder Scrolls with lower production value. It's medieval, first person and you swing your weapon by clicking... After a few hours playing you realize that it's a completely different gameplay! COMPLETELY. It's the closest thing I've ever seen to a realistic war simulation. It's really hard to explain, you might need to play. Actually, playing might not be enough, you might need to read and see some videos of gameplay.

Actually, I feel the opposite. In games frequently you need to worry about more things than in real life. For example a medieval baron, he would just say "go there" and the army will go there and they will worry about food themselves and other things. Actually, the leader frequently could be quite incompetent and it still would work out fine

Note that there were some real life presidents of certain countries that were making noobish mistakes of forgetting (or even not knowing in the first place) where exactly a certain another country is located Something not imaginable in a strategy game

Realistic strategy should deal with LESS details, because that's how it works in real life, the supreme leader have TONS on generals/minsters that make decisions instead of him.
Of course that's not exactly fun, because players want not realistic games where you have MORE control than in real life situation, so they want to dvelve in MORE details...
Plus, if you make it more realistic by reducing the details they will accuse you of making it nonrealistic Oh joys of game design

Actually, the idea is that you are the general. Or a officer or something. If you read Sun Tzu, then you would see what I'm trying to say. My idea would give the player more emergent strategies to try out, as well as to make it so that, even if you're outnumbered and cornered, the situation isn't futile.

[quote name='aattss' timestamp='1341238990' post='4954912']
Actually, the idea is that you are the general. Or a officer or something. If you read Sun Tzu, then you would see what I'm trying to say. My idea would give the player more emergent strategies to try out, as well as to make it so that, even if you're outnumbered and cornered, the situation isn't futile.

Sun Tzu is obsolete, it was written for old times when armies were tiny and the ruler was able to personally supervise the whole operation. Nowadays a stupid division is 10,000 men, which is more that whole armies in ancient times. After Napoleon times it's all about selecting sub liders, not about doing it yourself (also that's what was the cause of Napoleon's demise, English made a policy to always avoid troops lead by Napoleon and attack armies of his generals instead, while Napoleon was a superior military genius his generals were on average below the skill of average English general, so he lost in the end). Even if you are not a ruler of a country, but supervise a bigger operation (like WWII Normandy landing or Torch) all you do is select the sub generals that would lead the troops and make all decision by themselves and distribute the supplies.

But players want Sun Tzu, they strive to be a small size army superior leader (without anyiomne above giving out orders) that can oversee everything and don't deal with delegation of power to lower ranks That's completely non realistic (unless you go for a proper non modern setting), but it's pointless to argue with players

In short players want to make decisions on strategic level and operational level and tactical level at the same time. Which is absolutely unrealistic and leads to heavy micromanagement. But still they want it... They want to decide what units factories produce on country level and then decide on which side a single archer should point on the battlefield (so in the end we need to dumb the army size down because it would lead to insanely amount of small decisions to make by the player).

Check Hearts of Iron 3 for truly realistic combat (not too fun through).
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For one thing, there's no real reason to make it modern.

Also, we could have the player be an officer or the leader of guirella forces or something. He could have officers below him who take care of micromanaging, and the soldiers would do obvious tasks automatically (although it may be possible to schedule when they do what, like when should they wake up).

For one thing, there's no real reason to make it modern.

Also, we could have the player be an officer or the leader of guirella forces or something. He could have officers below him who take care of micromanaging, and the soldiers would do obvious tasks automatically (although it may be possible to schedule when they do what, like when should they wake up).

Right. Hey, have you played Mount and Blade yet? It's kind of like that. Sorry for being annoying

[quote name='aattss' timestamp='1341238990' post='4954912']
Actually, the idea is that you are the general. Or a officer or something. If you read Sun Tzu, then you would see what I'm trying to say. My idea would give the player more emergent strategies to try out, as well as to make it so that, even if you're outnumbered and cornered, the situation isn't futile.

Sun Tzu is obsolete, it was written for old times when armies were tiny and the ruler was able to personally supervise the whole operation. Nowadays a stupid division is 10,000 men, which is more that whole armies in ancient times. After Napoleon times it's all about selecting sub liders, not about doing it yourself (also that's what was the cause of Napoleon's demise, English made a policy to always avoid troops lead by Napoleon and attack armies of his generals instead, while Napoleon was a superior military genius his generals were on average below the skill of average English general, so he lost in the end). Even if you are not a ruler of a country, but supervise a bigger operation (like WWII Normandy landing or Torch) all you do is select the sub generals that would lead the troops and make all decision by themselves and distribute the supplies.

But players want Sun Tzu, they strive to be a small size army superior leader (without anyiomne above giving out orders) that can oversee everything and don't deal with delegation of power to lower ranks That's completely non realistic (unless you go for a proper non modern setting), but it's pointless to argue with players

In short players want to make decisions on strategic level and operational level and tactical level at the same time. Which is absolutely unrealistic and leads to heavy micromanagement. But still they want it... They want to decide what units factories produce on country level and then decide on which side a single archer should point on the battlefield (so in the end we need to dumb the army size down because it would lead to insanely amount of small decisions to make by the player).

Check Hearts of Iron 3 for truly realistic combat (not too fun through).
[/quote]
I would have to disagree about Sun Tzu being 'obsolete', rather I would say that as wars have increased in magnitude (a 'brush fire' war involves several hundred thousand soldiers) his advice has remained applicable at a lower level. Sun Tzu mostly discusses the logistics (generally delegated throughout all levels of an army) of victory, and the philosophy of war, not so much particular strategies.
Also, what leads you to believe that players smaller armies and more micro-management? I ask because I've tried to discuss strategy games with everyone I know who enjoys them, and I've found that what they say they want from a strategy game varies tremendously. I've heard anything from "I'd rather manage my troops without any directly controlled combat" to "I'd like to work with a team of other players, where each player has a specific role". I have difficulty deciding on my favorite aspect of strategy games, because I find all of them so enjoyable.

Actually, the idea is that you are the general. Or a officer or something. If you read Sun Tzu, then you would see what I'm trying to say. My idea would give the player more emergent strategies to try out, as well as to make it so that, even if you're outnumbered and cornered, the situation isn't futile.

I think if you are going to make the game historical, or have it take place in a fictional setting where conflicts are smaller, then it seems plausible for a single general to command a combat force, top to bottom (I don't much like micro as a representation of reality, but as a game mechanic it can be very fun). However, if your setting is modern, recent history, near future, or any fictional large-scale conflict, then it really does seem inconsistent to ask a player to both manage an empire (or even a small region) and tell individual people what to do and how to do it.

Hierarchy structuring and command delegation is half the challenge of strategy, its an important part of Sun Tsu's teaching and a greatly overlooked challenge in the strategy game world. StarCraft could explore this idea since each unit has a kill count. By giving units with high kill count "reinforcement" slots a player could link other units to it. That way a player can select any unit from that group and it would auto select the leader. Instead of issuing tactical commands to this "leader unit" a player could issue operational objectives/waypoints and the tactical decisions could be made by the leader. This would create a stronger tie between the player and the units as well since these leader units are created not just by the player's choices but by the chaos of combat as well. This explores luck in strategy. Everyone likes to keep something lucky around.

You don't need to give the player the ability to do it all, just give them a choice of what they would prefer to explore. The achievements system isn't cutting mustered for a rewarding player's anymore. The best way to reward players for success in games is opening up new perspectives in games. Giving the player the choice to look at the game from another point of view with a whole new set of tools and learning curve to explore.

Sun Tsu will always be relevant because conflict will always exist. The challenge of studying conflict is what games are.