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James Fung
United States
Berkeley
California
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IMHO, these are the essentials of a real-time strategy (RTS) game:
Managing your build. There are 3 main ways players spend their resources: reinvesting in their economy, building up their army, and investing in technology. A player who neglects their economy loses in the long-term because they will be outspent (think Germany and Japan unprepared for a long war in WW2). A player who neglects their army leaves themselves open to attack (e.g. it doesn't matter if you have more workers than your opponent if he can wipe out your mineral line easily). Technology may be bifurcated: on one side, there's the tech tree, which gives you access to units/buildings/abilities which may be better counters than the units/buildings/abilities you start off with; on the other, there's technology/abilities/spells/whatever that make units/buildings better, like a force multiplier. Making an effective build is the strategy portion of the game.
Micro. This is the real-time portion of the game. A human has only so much APM and attention to go around. Harassing attacks and drops, even if they lose more resources than they destroyed, may be worthwhile if they distract your opponent (I know I sometimes forget about my macro and end up supply blocked; or pull units from elsewhere on the battlefield; or invest resources into defenses). Good micro can also turn the tide in battles. People tell me that good players don't have to trade-off managing the battlefield and managing their macro, especially in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, where you can hotkey buildings and maintain your production cycle without looking away. But I'm a pretty novice player, so battles tend to suck up my attention.
Fog of war. Of course, there may be some RTS games that don't use fog of war, but I think fog of war complements the strategy portion of the game well. The reason is this: any particular strategy takes time and investment of resources to implement, and that means not spending time and resources on other things. The reason why cheeses work is that they are bizarre extreme strategies and, if the opponent has no effective counter, then the cheese wins outright or creates such an disadvantageous position that they would be hard to win from. However, if such cheesy plays were detected ahead of time, there generally is an easy counter.
Thus, though I think some gamers will mock me for this analogy, RTS games with fog of war are an elaborate, evolving game of rock-paper-scissors (RPS): each strategy has strengths and weaknesses. Maybe your initial build has a slight edge over your opponent's build, maybe not. But the first contact probably will not determine the victor, so each player continually adapts their strategy into one they think will gain them the upper hand, from countering enemy units to gaining an economic advantage. Good scouting gives players more information of what their opponent is capable of or intends to do, which is a definite edge in RPS.
Good scouting or reading of the opponent also for timing attacks: players often have momentary advantages which they can take advantage of, if they are aware of them. For example, when an opponent expands, they've generally sunk a lot of resources into the expansion. Defenses probably aren't in place at the expansion, and suddenly their army has to protect 2 locations. For the moment, the enemy is vulnerable, but soon their expansion will give their resource gathering a shot in the arm and they can build more units and defenses. Another timing attack may be when you have opened up a new unit, one your opponent doesn't know about. Until your opponent develops an effective counter, that unit gives you an advantage on the battlefield.
I think StarCraft: The Board Game tried its best to capture these aspects, though much of the fog of war was lost. I like how technologies that upgraded your units were kept hidden in your combat cards until revealed in combat, but that's about it as far as fog of war is concerned. Without the fog of war, each players' attacks and strategies are telegraphed somewhat in advance. This, I think, makes the game more about having a sound economy and winning the multiplayer metagame, which is typical of boardgames, rather than about picking/guessing the right direction to take your build to match your opponent.
The thing is I'm having a hard time thinking of a good boardgame mechanism that achieves the desired fog of war. For one thing, I think it's pretty important to keep hidden how many resources you're gathering (and spending). Collecting too few means that player is bulking up for an attack. A sudden jump in collection means they just expanded. These are important cues that you wouldn't want to telegraph to an opponent.
One mechanism I thought of was, in the context of a card game (since hidden information comes naturally to card games), for cards to be played hidden. When they are revealed, the player gains some bonus depending on how long it's been hidden. For example, a worker is assumed to have been working all that time and provides resources when revealed. An undetected unit production building could produce a free unit or combat bonus. Or one could just make a double-blind game and trust players to play by the honor system.
Of course, this brings up the question why try to copy RTS gameplay so closely? The main reason is, well, it's a proven idea that I feel hasn't penetrated far into boardgames. I've been playing a lot of Yomi recently, and while it has the whole RPS reading your opponent thing, you're mostly making short-term evaluations since the game situation can change within a couple card draws. RTS games ask you to play similar mindgames, but your build can only evolve so fast.
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