Narrative Strategy Games: Is less actually more?

I enjoy games with a narrative. By that, I mean that there are games that I play where winning isn’t my only objective. Understand me rightly; I always play to win. But there are some kinds of games where the key to my enjoyment lies in playing to the utmost…

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Classical Warfare: Pitched Battle

The pitched battle system in Imperium has gone through many iterations; I can count four or five, just of the top of my head. And we’re talking of fully-fledged iterations; with the engine implemented and playable. Some of these have been good, others, less so. The key problem that has…

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Classical Warfare: Conflict

The previous two posts have explained a bit how the units and the leaders function; all of this comes together when two armies meet on the battle map. The result is that the player is taken to the battle resolution window, where the player has the opportunity to set up…

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Classical Warfare: Characteristic leaders

Over on Flash of Steel, Troy Goodfellow has raised some interesting questions in a response to the previous post. I shall have to pass over most of the discussion for another time, as it would involve a rather more detailed discussion of the game’s character model than would be useful…

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Classical Warfare: Command

The effect of commanders on battles in the ancient world is the subject of many books and varied opinions. In Imperium, I have preferred to go with the idea that the overall commander significantly affected the outcome of the battles. Thus, who commands the battle should have an effect on…

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Classic Warfare: Force

Determining how to model forces across the board in this kind of game is not a trivial matter. Standardized units did not exist; not even within the same state, so just settling on a unit size becomes a problem. This is closely followed by the issues of determining unit factors,…

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