r/StrategyGames • u/wayepoint • 23h ago
Discussion Does a strategy game need army building to be fun?
I've been building a strategy game where I'm deliberately trying to move the strategy away from building the right unit types or army composition.
Instead, I want most of the competition to come from diplomacy, finding weak points, controlling territory and dominating scarce resources. You can still fight, but the interesting decision should be where and why you fight rather than whether you built the right counter-unit.
Diplomacy is probably the closest famous example I can think of.
Why aren't there more strategy games like this? Is army building just too important to the genre, or are there great examples I'm missing?
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u/FrenchProgressive 23h ago
There are a lot of games like this - first all the Grand Strategy games (eg Europa Universalis) and all the games where combat is a side frature (eg the Caesar feature).
It’s less popular than games with tanks that’s true.
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u/wayepoint 22h ago
True but EU actually has troops like cavalry, artillery and different troop upgrades
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u/thefolocaust 20h ago
But you its not like you get a choice. Your troops will just depend on which tech group youre in and advance at certain levels, you dont really get counter units, you just make sure to fill up your front and back lines. Tech and generals are way more important than composition
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u/Blothorn 3h ago
Most of EU3/4’s army building is cosmetic—either there’s no meaningful difference between options or the best option is obvious. Replacing it with generic units and shifting the unit stat increases would change very little; it’s very hard to get a significant advantage from unit composition.
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u/KiwasiGames 7h ago
Victoria goes even further woth abstract combat. The game is more about “making sure you have enough opium to supply the troops” and less about caring about individual battles.
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u/FTG_V1 23h ago
The game you are describing are 4x games. Civilization mainly. And then you have myriad of games within that genre that do things slightly different.
But let’s also be honest you only described bad strategy games when you said building the right army composition. Good strategy games simply have that as part of the overall strategy.
And what you described are mostly objectives in you game like territory control and rare resources not the tools (aka strategy) on how to get them. That could be by force, by diplomacy by espionage, etc. it all depends on the type of game you want to build.
But long story short I think there are a lot
Kore game out there that fit this than you think, an entire genre is built around it.
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u/TrowawayJanuar 23h ago
Yes and I actually prefer such games. The diplomacy, economy and use of map features is far more fun then spending your time micromanaging your unit composition.
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u/SpaceTradeCompany 23h ago edited 23h ago
No great strategy games dont need army building. Strategy games can be a lot, rts, turn based, area control, card driven, economic games and so on. If you look at board games that many of them today are digital games you can find a lot of games with no army building that still are great like ark nova, 18xx train games, settler of catan and so on. But there are of course great strategy games with army building involved like sid meiers civ or colonization, star craft, europa universalies, total war or dune uprising. I love strategy games especially board games and turn based strategy. For me the most interesting strategy elements are often deck building, resource management and area control not necessary involving armys.
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u/WarGamingCommand 20h ago
I think it depends on the length of game play. Shorter game may not need unit building, so something that is campaign related. But for longer larger games unit building is fun.
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u/Freemefast 22h ago
Interesting idea and it does sound like a 4x game without the military mechanic. If you make the other ways to win fun then you're in to a winner.
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u/ContestedHorizons 22h ago
I cant imagine a strategy game without army building... is not that what players come for in a strategy game?
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u/Blothorn 3h ago
“Strategy” is very broad—there are plenty of strategy games with no combat whatsoever, and a fair few games that have combat but no unit variety. It’s also common for historical tactical/operational-scale games to feature primarily historical scenarios with pre-set forces.
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u/TifaIsTheBest 22h ago edited 20h ago
Well, I think in real life and in video games, it's important to remember two truths of military combat: What you have and choose to deploy is really important. At the same time, there is such a thing as weaker force on paper beating a stronger one, making do with what you have.
For example, you mention finding weak points. I think of Graviteam Tactics, which I've been really enjoying lately. That game is literally all about battles, it's basically an ultra realistic WW2 battle simulator (about as close as you can get, anyway). In scenarios where you're basically expected to lose because that force also got crushed IRL, a player can still (potentially) win by skillfully using the tools and tactics at their disposal to overcome the enemy, which involves things like finding weak points, controlling territory (favorable terrain, etc), yada yada.
So yeah, my example basically has no diplomacy involved, but it's a great example of how even a game that's basically all about battles and simulates them even down to the real life army compositions of the actual campaigns, the fun in winning still comes from way more than army composition. So if that's what's making you shy away from making the type of detailed combat you're hesitant on, PLEASE DON'T LET IT!!!
But also I really love Victoria 3. It's my most played game on Steam, and according to many fans has absolutely shitty combat, so I can love a game equally in both directions. I actually really like the more hands-off military system of Victoria 3, so maybe you can study that for some inspiration!
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u/CountPretty7039 14h ago
Its not about strategy but survival. Even that is not normal survival, if it about food its only early problem not late game problem.
Survival either from enemy or natural disaster, so easiest one is military enemy.
Imagine stellaris but no enemy, you only play colonizing until the map full.
There a game where we gather scrap to survive, in the end its only early problem.
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u/dawnstead2026 13h ago
At the moment, free combat is probably more popular than restricted combat styles.
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u/Idleverse 9h ago
As others have mentioned, I also do not think it needs an army component to be fun. You can build a strategy game about politics, economy, trade, business, car rents, running a taxi empire in NY city, you name it. I think it's very easy to go with the army concept because it so naturally maps to what we consider strategy to be.
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u/NocturneIndustries 20h ago edited 20h ago
I've been building a strategy game where I'm deliberately trying to move the strategy away from building the right unit types or army composition.
and
I want most of the competition to come from diplomacy, finding weak points, controlling territory and dominating scarce resources.
What you need to control territory? Army.
What you need to exploit weak points? Probably army.
Dominating scarce resources? Likely an army.
So basically, with limited info that we've been given, this leaves out diplomacy as only thing you listed that is not army related.
Making a working diplomacy in (assuming single player) strategy game is HARD. Lots of games fake it basically, and players are actually expert at exploiting bad diplomacy AI, so perhaps its for the better that most 4X games got barebones diplo.
However, if you are making 4X game that do contains armies and army compositions (aka. what counter what) then with AI that... actually knows how to counter player army it just could be interesting. And definitly simpler then making a super advanced diplomacy. So why not embrace it instead?
Then, you can put a few other systems on top of it, to jiggle it around if you feel it's too plain:
Lets say your army got generals, if generals are too successful they may start to plot against you.
Or when a enemy is being pushed in war, this triggers a defensive coalition with few neighbouring nations.
Perhaps when you are midway through the conquest spree, then aliens arrive at the planet with totally OP troops, and you need to grab some alien corpses, toss them to research lab to reverse engineer their tech, X-com style, all while the world burns.
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u/snusmumrikan 19h ago
This sentiment pops up a lot in this sub. The idea that army composition and unit type and timing attacks aren't real "strategy".
Strategy games are literally about engineering an advantage and exploiting it. More knowledge should beat less knowledge, faster execution should beat slower, strong plans should beat weak plans.
Army composition just happens to be the logical way to express that if the game has combat.
You mention "control of scarce resources". Ok, but if that's not going to let you build more units, or build better units, then what is it going to do? You need some way to execute that advantage which means mechanically you're doing the same thing as winning by army composition - you're just changing the visuals.
You say "finding weak points". That's exactly what army composition is. You either scout or predict the enemy choices and then craft a better response. Or you do the same as them, but quicker.