Breaking Down My Dislike of Strategy Games | Semi-Ramblomatic

This week on Semi-Ramblomatic, Yahtzee tries to explain to himself (and you) why he doesn't like strategy games.

[MitchCyan]

“I bravely sent wave after wave of my own men at the enemy”

[aj.hardwick]

So i think the issue is, like yahtzee said early in the video, is one of terminology, but not in the way he jokingly suggested. As a former military officer I would posit that not every game has Strategy, every game has Tactics. The 2 are technically very different, though they are similar in execution. Yahtz hit it on the head when he pointed out the differences between the grand scale of a warcraft or halo wars compared to the small size of Xcom. Tactics are second to second decisions you make in response to the actions of the enemy/obstacles, strategy is the grand overarching goal you are employing tactics in order to achieve.

Put simply, Strategy is the initial best laid plan, Tactics are what you use when the best laid plan doesn't survive contact with the enemy, to borrow famous saying everyone probably knows.

And I think yahtz specifically, and a lot of gamers in general, are here for the Tactics, not the strategy. The Xcom example is actually perfect because the moment to moment gameplay of the actual fights and missions is Tactical, responding as you clear the map of the fog of war to whatever you find hiding in it. The Stategic action in Xcom is the large scale goals you set for yourself and the story sets for you, like capture an enemy alien to research them, or collect resources to build more fighters so you don't miss any alien ships flying around. The two work well together and you can very easily see how your Strategic Goals can benefit your Tactical Objectives. Or to put it more plainly, how the base management gameplay is going to give you more fun and variety in the turn based combat gameplay.

This means that it is a good intersection between strategy gameplay like the RTSs of the world that require you to be making all the high level decisions and none of the tacitcal ones, and the shooters like helldivers where the Strategy is enitely handled by someone else, but the second to second Tactics are your decision alone, even if that decision does blow up 3 of your friends.

Tldr: Yahtz prpbably enjoys tactics, and doesnt enjoy strategy, which is why he doesnt like most strategy games.

[SocksAndPuppets]

The moment you said "give the chess queen a submachine gun" and "tuck that away for later" I immediately thought "Oh, Yahtzee has played Shotgun King!" - and then it didn't come up.

[electricdoor]

"...and I don't feel like I'm building a city. I feel like I'm painting by numbers." No that's exactly how city planning works here in the US. 🙃

[queengames]

The word you're looking for is "Tactics." Strategy, in the context of game design, is used to describe big picture planning and the overall "plan" you're setting up. It's why XCOM's Strategy layer is named the way it is. Tactics, meanwhile, is the moment to moment decisions you make to execute that strategy.

I pretty much feel the same way. I'm not engaged as much by the longer term planning, but I love games that focus entirely on the tactics. XCOM is also a game that gives me great joy, because it gives me concentrated doses of tactics in between a strategy layer that isn't overly complex. The fact that the two feed into each other so well is just an extra bonus. I think it says a lot about me (and the fanbase as a whole) that most of the gameplay altering mods for XCOM 2 primarily effect the tactical layer. The only one I can even think of that significantly changes the strategy portion is something like Long War, which I find disengaging precisely because it emphasizes the strategy layer so much more compared to the base game.

[johnsnow]

Xcom is a "real" tactical game with dynamic back & forth combat. Tactical Breach Wizard is essentially a puzzle game in disguise with a limited number of "solutions". Xcom is also accessible and not all that complex, but neither is Fire Emblem

[Romalac]

"My brain likes to solve the problem it's got, _then_ move on to the next." I *heavily* relate to this. There was a time in my life when I could multitask better, and obviously if backed into a proverbial corner I'll do what must be done as best I can, but I do my best work when I have a clearly stated set of objectives and can tick them off one at a time as I finish them. Having to split my focus very quickly generates stress and makes me less efficient at any one necessity.

[TVlord]

There's a couple other things about XCOM that I, as a Yahtzee fanboy, feel appeal to his tastes.

1.) The storybuilding potential. Unlike an RTS where all your units are COMPLETELY disposable, or something like Fire Emblem where all the characters are fully defined and make their own decisions and you just kind of take over for the combat, XCOM has the overall story that you as the commander are making the decisions on, but also, as he's said many times, the characters have just enough of their own personality to differentiate them while being vague enough to fill in the blanks for yourself and can have their own completely randomly generated arcs. It's not just "infantry #1213" it's "Kembe Nganga from South Africa, who started out as a rookie who would panic at the first sign of danger, but came into his own after he saved the squad after the veteran got taken out by a berserker. Now 10 missions later he's Lieutenant Kembe "Killjoy" Nganga, Assault Specialist, always willing to run headfirst into danger to save a squadmate's life. I can't think of another game that does that half as well as XCOM does.

2.) How cinematic the games are. I mean pretty much every strategy game is going to be viewed from the same top down angle with maybe a little cutaway scene to show 2 characters fighting. In XCOM not only are you constantly shifting the camera angle and zoom to get the best view of the battle, especially in missions where your squad splits up, the little cutaways are PERFECTLY done. A cool angle to show running into cover, the "hold your breath" moment as the sniper lines up their shot, the moment when it cuts to an alien getting ready to throw a grenade and you realize you're about to get fucked up. Even the little dialogue quips back and forth, while simple, add a lot to the mood. It reminds me a lot of how he feels about Persona 5 where he doesn't like JRPG combat really but it's presented so dynamically and smoothly that it's just engaging.

[anomaloushumanoid]

I think I know the exact issue, and that's that Yahtzee and gamers like him don't like planning. That is the common ground between RTS and various management games; you cannot just go in and start make decisions willy-nilly expecting to get anywhere. Part of the dopamine hit in strategy games is not in handling the problems that get thrown at you, but rather in cutting them off before they even happen; it's there to make you feel clever and competent. The trouble is often there is no immediate feedback on decisions: you make the decision now, and maybe you find out if that was a genius move or an idiotic blunder an hour later. Do something stupid in a shooter, and you know pretty much immediately, and it's immediately over. Do something stupid in strategy/management, and you may not know just how bad it is for an hour of game-play. Likewise, strategy/management has death marches, where after a bad decision has cost you the game, you still must go on for some time -sometimes hours - to determine if it's truly fatal or not, whereas if you fuck up in Dark Souls, whether the error is fatal or recoverable is going to be immediately apparent.

[Jinballify]

Let's not forget that Xcom also dips its hand ever so slightly into the Horror cookie jar.
Nothing shoots your nuts up to your intestinal cavity quite as fast as rounding a corner to see two berserkers at charging range covered by four agents, and all you brought were three rookies and your best medic because the mission was supposed to be a "standard op."

[Panktnby]

I have stress dreams about being overwhelmed in RTS games, but for some reason I still enjoy them

[DigiMatt]

RTS also has the problem of, what I will call, delayed reactivitiy. If you don't have your macro set-up as fast or faster than the other guy, then by the time you send units or they send units, you are woefully outgunned even if you made the right kind of units.

You also are punished for being where the battle is. Are your units and their units engaged and you've que'd the appropriate micro? Get back to managing your villagers and production buildings. If you enjoy watching your bombards take down a castle, you're punished for not doing the macro.

[meanmanturbo]

2:28 Thats actually a misuse of words, comon for games. In a military sense, strategy is winning wars, tactics is winning battles. Xcom is a good example of the difference between strategy and tactics actually. The tun based battles are tactics, and all the base management and research prioritization is strategy. Startegy is long term, tactics are here and now. The classic rts like Starcraft is kind of light on tactics.

[RightHandElf]

"I wonder why we can't clear out the pawns and give the queen a submachine gun. Tuck that in the back of your minds for now."

I was fully expecting a joke about a queen with a submachine gun later in the video.

[Nacimota]

Actually my first thought about X-COM when you compared it to RTS games was not the turn-based aspect of it, curiously enough, but rather the fact that you keep soldiers from mission to mission and invest in their skills/equipment and so on. They're not as disposable as most units in a typical RTS like Starcraft or whatever, and I think that gives the game a whole different feeling because you become more attached to them as individuals. Homeworld is an example of an RTS that sort of does this, and yeah decision making feels a lot more impactful in that game than in most RTS games I've played where you're mostly just managing time and economy.

That's not to say it's necessarily a good or bad thing, it's just different. I find it a lot more intense, which is sometimes an experience I'm looking for but other times I'm just not in the mood for that and would happily play something like Starcraft or Supreme Commander instead.

[Shakes-Off-Fear]

Um actually, Yahtz, the line “I’m a man with a one track mind, so much to do in one lifetime” in the Queen song ‘I Want It All’ was sung by Brian May, rather than Freddie Mercury.

[spacecentergames]

3:32 "...my jam just didn't spread..." After all these years, why does that feel like the dirtiest thing I've heard Yahtzee utter? 😂

[Xaero]

There is a nice Lemmings-like game from 2016 called *Zombie Night Terror, * loved it a lot. Seems easy enough at the beginning, but turns out to be pretty damn brainy closer to the end.
Also if one likes XCOM but doesn't like strategies, might I recommend the Mimimi Games "trilogy": *Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, Desperados III* and *Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew.* I know this type of games is a whole genre of its own, starting with *Commandos, * but I just can't help admiring Mimimi's top shelf tight gamedesign.

[johnh-n]

Aim glad you finally talked about this. I remember thinking when I started watching your videos over a decade ago that it was weird you never reviewed even the most popular strategy games, but I can say now that I get your preferences and feel no need to abuse you for not liking my favorite type of game.

[TurbineGoat]

The one strategy game I ever really got into is Into the Breach. Thanks to a combination of small maps, and enemies which are both predictible and manipulable, it often feels like a puzzle game moreso then a strategy game. And, like the examples you mention, it's a game moreso focussed on dealing with immediate problems, instead of with thinking ahead.