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[J-Snake]

balancing continuous things is easier than discrete things; you can just finetune parameters exactly how you want them.

Getting the right parameters is not a trivial task in general, at least not for what I am doing. First you need to assure you found a rule-set which can be balanced out this way. Then it is not like you solve a set of linear equations to find the parameters. Also it is not just tweaking around until you find an optimum. You need to develop some deeper understanding to get a feeling where repercussions of changes can go in order to find balance.

[brog]

not saying it's trivial; balance in general is challenging and needs a deep understanding.  but with continuous variables, you have more freedom of movement, less constraints; just generally more power to set things exactly how you need.

[Archibald]

I frequently make strategies and while I agree balancing is more time consuming than in other game types it is nowhere near very time consuming. Compared to coding and art assets balancing is still very low time consuming. Also it is trivial and strightforward; play the game, check what options you used the most, make the cost of these options higher, repeat. It will take a few days at most (and the "work" consists mostly of playing your game and changing one number here and one there which is hardly exchausting).
But maybe it is the perception that balance is hard and time consuming is stopping devs from making these games? That might be true I guess...

[baconman]

It's mostly replaced with roguelikes.

I don't think it's just because strategy games are hard to formulate and put together, but it's a particular challenge in making one particularly fun.

[Graham.]

Balancing is pretty hard. Starcraft iterated hard, both I and II, just because of the balance. When you have a zillion things that are dependent on each other, one thing affects another which affects another and so on, trial-and-error balancing doesn't work. The deeper your game gets the harder it is to balance (exponentially).

Also, multiplayer RTS is the hardest genre to play-test without a lot of people. Even an MMO you can kind of test with small groups and scale the community. Minecraft is kind of like the beginning of an MMO in development, and their growth was natural (also because Notch knows what he's doing). But for RTS you need a constant influx of new players and skilled players to test. And since it's not like say, a platformer, you aren't always narrowing down your gameplay experience. Sometimes you fix things and the game becomes more stable. Then you play-test, realize a huge problem, fix it, and the gameplay shifts wildly. Then you play-test again.

It's one of those problems that's hard to solve if money is how you eat. If you wanna build a good RTS you need one of the following:
  1. A real love for the genre.
  2. A brilliant mind for inter-dependency balancing problems.
  3. The will to build much better analytical tools so that you can leverage play-test data far more effectively. We're kind of in the stone-age on this one, even Blizzard.
  4. Or, you know, all 3.

[Archibald]

I recently finished this turn based strategy game.

http://rydia.net/udder/prog/strattech/index.html

Do you have any impressions how well strategies sell yet? Especially in comparison to other games you made previously (if you made any).

If you wanna build a good RTS you need

I would exclude RTS from the consideration completely, first you would need to compete with Blizzard which is not a smart move, second these are indeed hard to make. Or to put it shorter, I perfectly understand why there are so few indie made RTSes What I wonder is why there are so few non RTS strategies which are much easier to make and have basicly no competition from AAA titles.

[Graham.]

Legend of Grimrock is turn-based right? That one's new, big-budget indie. It's not really strategy though...

Final Fantasy Tactics counts, right? It's hand-held. Total War, Civ - those are historical. Strategy is hard. I was reading about Sacrifice the other day, and it's poor sales. It was one of my favourite games. It's real-time but kind of plodding in pace sometimes. Slow RTS is like turn-based sort of.

My game has heavy strategic elements. You could definitely get your strategy fix from it. But it's not a strategy game. The strategy elements are sort-of built on top of the action-adventure elements. Strategy is like that, it rises naturally out of other mechanics. It's kind of like the second floor of a building. The only reason you'd bang your head to build the second floor before the first is because you have a calling. I think conceptually, strategy games are just hard to reach in your dev-dreams. You've got to be clever.

I'd like to see more strategy. I play Starcraft, but it's like, I want some competition for it too. Civ and Total War are kind of like role-playing games, they're not hard strategy.

My answer, there is no good reason. It's just more daunting. I'm getting kind of excited about strategy now.

[rek]

I've wondered the same thing about racing games – I've only counted two in these forums – but the reasons posited for the lack of strats don't seem to make sense for the lack of racing games.

[Moczan]

Final Fantasy Tactics has it roots on PSX. It was released in 1997 so I would consider it pretty old. I think the problem with strategies is that the genre is already a niche and each sub-genre is dominated by few really great AAA titles. It's takes much more time to produce a great strategy title and you have to compete for already small playerbase with those AAA titles.

[Archibald]

and each sub-genre is dominated by few really great AAA titles.

Such as?

Here is the full list of games released in recent years of several subgenres:
- empire builder - Civilization 5; end of list.
- non turn based 4x space - Sins of the Solar Empire; end of list.
- turn based 4x space - NA.

Also, here is the awesome graphics of an example AAA title
http://www.freegameempire.com/Img/Cache/Games/Space-Empires-Starfury/Screenshot-1.jpg
(this game was made by one guy, he released 5 sequels, sold in retail (I have a boxed version) not digital, translated to several languages )

I don't know about the niche thing, but the competition from AAA titles is irrelevant. Any fan of strategy games can easily afford to buy all AAA titles he wish and still he will have money left for more.

[John Sandoval]

Also, here is the awesome graphics of an example AAA title
http://www.freegameempire.com/Img/Cache/Games/Space-Empires-Starfury/Screenshot-1.jpg
(this game was made by one guy, he released 5 sequels, sold in retail (I have a boxed version) not digital, translated to several languages )

maybe this is a joke that's going over my head or sth, but that doesn't look triple a at all

more like... runescape

[Archibald]

I checked release dates, if I were a hard die fan of 4x I would buy: Sword of the Stars in 2006, Sins of a Solar Empire in 2008, Civilization V in 2010. That's 1 game per TWO YEARS This market definitely is not flooded by AAA titles and there is a lot of room for indie games.

Plus, strategy gamers are very friendly to playing more than one game of the genre. For example if you are a fan of racing games and you find one you like you play it and probably not want to play others (because the sluggish controls, worse graphics, etc). On the other hand fans of strategies are eager to play inferior strategies and more than one strategy, because the fun comes from nuances of balance, different theme or basicly slightly different something, anything that will let you learn the game again and struggle to beat it again and the fun of discovering your optimum moves again. Strategy gamer is almost impossible to be overfeed (all these FreeCiv, FreeCol, FreeOrion which are basicly slightly different and clearly inferior clones of already existing games, someone make these, someone play these).

[SHilbert]

I feel compelled to mention Digitanks as well. There was a devlog here a while ago: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=13758.0.

But yeah, one example certainly doesn't make a trend.

[Muz]

I love strategy games. But I agree, they're a lot of effort and most people don't even play them much less make them. IMO, they're easier than action games to code because you don't have to worry as much about technical things like lag and performance.

Battle for Wesnoth is a great indie game btw. I actually play it more than commercial strategy games. There's also plenty of excellent indie browser strategy games - Neptune's Pride, Blight of the Immortals, Supremacy 1914, tons of manager games, Economies of Scale.

It's a genre that should probably be dominated by indies or small studios as well, mainly because it's easy to produce and graphics/expensive features aren't a huge factor in the quality of a strategy game.

[Paul Eres]

does tower defense count as strategy? if so i've made one. but real-time strategy is more mainstream than turn-based strategy, definitely

i do wish more people would make turn-based strategy games, but i think the reason they aren't made is that most game developers themselves don't play them

there are *lot* of indie game developers that i've encountered over the years (been making indie games and been involved in the community for almost 20 years now). and out of all those people, in all the game-making communities i've been a part of, i probably can count the number of them who enjoy playing strategy games on my fingers. it's definitely in the single-digit percentile