Design

First, I started with reading the Art of War. So I will need:

- Terain types

- Day-night cycle

- Seasons

- Units or troops

- Energy level, food level

- Logistics of food and equipment

- Equipment amortization

- Economy simulation

- Troop morale

- Spy mechaWaitwaitwaitaminute.....

Based on this list, I am recreating Europa Universalis and Civilization 7. But the games I set as examples are simple. Neither of them have energy levels for units (other than health), neither has logistics, equipment amortization, etc...

It is clear I need to cut out some features to make the game fast and fun. But which ones?

Hmmm...

Maybe I need to design from the ground-up instead. Okay, what is the simplest game that has different types of units, but no balancing is needed? Rock-paper-scissors. Hm, If I would have a strategy game with these units, no health, no armor, no anything, I could play it by cleverly positioning my armies. Yes, that's it. If I craft the game towards positioning, I can get away with these three unit types.

There is a game, called "The Ancient Art of War", which has three types of units: Archers, Knights and Barbarians. They beat each other like Rock, Paper and Scissors. Perfect analogy in a medieval setting. Ok, my game will be in a medieval setting.

But we need spies, too. Also, there are questions: what kind of terrain do we need? Completely free, like in Frozen Synapse, without any space tessalation? Hexagonal grids? Square grids? Or some kind of common graph? (Hexagonal grids and square grids are just special type of graphs where each node has 6 or 4 neighbours, respectively. Countries are another type of graph, where each node (country) has a different number of neighbours.)

After giving it some thought, I settled on hex grids, since it is widespread, and you cant have right angles, so you can feeld bad if you are a perfectionist like me. Okay then, what distance should units be able to travel and see? What terrain types should be there? What about spies?

So much questions to think about...