I'm putting out some blatant marketing feelers today because one thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is the type of games I want to focus on making the most but more importantly what type of games do I actually play the most? The thing that smacked me in the face a lot was how much I enjoy grand strategy type games.
The problem with that is of course, there aren't that many of them out there that I haven't played to death and the ones that do exist are created by companies that are trying to wring their playerbase dry as much as possible like Paradox Interactive and Creative Assembly.
So with that in mind I've been wondering about the type of grand strategy game people would want that doesn't have the DLC garbage spammed everywhere. What sort of features would you want to see? As for the setting, I'm kind of thinking of having a fantasy setting but allow you to control Romans as part of the main story.
Sort of like the anime GATE but in the reverse and I'd have it where Rome ends up invading a fantasy world which would be hilarious I think but also somewhat interesting. There are also frequently used features in grand strategy that I find very annoying which I would probably remove or fix somehow like diplomacy spam for example. I do know that Age of Wonders exists, don't get me wrong but boy did that game need to be optimised, don't know if they've fixed the issues yet.
For me, grand strategy requires a few things to be successful.
Every aspect of the "strategy" in the game needs to be able to be automated but "how" it is automated should be left to me. I should be able to optimally playthrough a game without having to manually control every aspect such that the game becomes tedious.
No cheese. Optimal strategies should not exist where you do things that are just so obviously cheesy and not intended. Like say in your world you start off with a city that has a governor and a warrior unit. On turn one you shouldn't degrade your warrior unit to gain 50 Iron then fire your governor so you can encourage crime only to immediately review you governor and get an additional growth bonus for lowering crime. Cheesy shit like this always pisses me off in strategy games.
Highly customizable races, cultures, etc... that have significant impacts on how the game's strategy is played. Maybe I want my Romans to be a highly religious society along with a warrior society well, if I go down that root, I should have access to buildings, units, types of attacks, types of special abilities, etc... that are going to be significantly different than if I went an atheist warrior root such that the way I play the game becomes highly different given the way in which I choose to develop my people.
Lots of different avenues for success. The more variability in how to play the game, the more fun it is. Like tech rushing shouldn't always be the be-all-end-all strategy. A common problem in Grand strategy games with "advancement", imo. Like having low tech but maybe a highly religiously zealous group of low tech but high numbers should perhaps be viable. To make this more "realistic", I'd recommend not doing civilization style where you progress through the ages cause it gets tough to imagine the realism between horses beating tanks or whatever.
Don't make negotiating with NPCs the way to win the game. Make it a potential side thing to gain a slight advantage but too many grand strategy games pretty much make the whole game depending upon negotiating with dumb AI, which is trash.