I'm glad to see more strategy games being developed. I've always loved games like Military Madness and Battle Isle. This might be my new favorite Love project now that VidWars (
http://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php? ... it=Vidwars) seems dead.
There's a lot of these types of games out there, but oddly enough most of them rarely add anything new. Since now's your chance, do you have plans on adding anything that most others don't?
I'm trying to think of things that are either underutilized or nonexistent in most of these games:
Persistent campaign - Money/resources are used to buy units from a pool. Units carry over or can be rerecruited for a lesser cost. When games like Wesnoth or the Close Combat series added these persistent campaigns, each match felt like it meant more and I cared a lot more about continuing on to new missions. Maybe I just feel like single missions are too much like puzzle games instead of broader strategic ones.
General Powers - Advance wars was one of the few I've seen actually have unique abilities per sides. It was interesting, but there is a lot more you can do with it. Diablo or Company of Heroes Style skill trees allow for players to use a lot more strategies in both singleplayer and muiltiplayer, as well as contributing to campaign based play. Whether the abilities are just things like "+5% strength of all tanks" or they are more active like "Activate once every X turns to call missile strike on an area" is a matter of preference.
Unit Perks - Similar to Civilization 4+. Instead of units simply getting a generic extra experience star they get to choose among relevant upgrades (increased armor, increased anti-tank, etc.)
Unit Abilities - There really aren't a lot of these games that let units do anything besides move and attack. Giving certain units alternative special abilities would spice things up. Not everyone needs to have them, but it's nice to see some. (Examples: Leadership unit that uses it's turn to buff nearby units, a unit that burrows into the ground).
Stealth - Not a lot of these games have anything besides basic line of sight. This suggestion is obvious, but it's a bitch to code in stealth mechanics into a multiplayer game after most of the code is already there. If you have any inkling of using stealth and fog of war make sure to do that earlier than later.
Building/Terrain Changing - Most games only let you capture factories or whatnot, but what about letting engineer units build fortifications, trenches, turrets, drones, etc?
Railroads - The only game I remember using this was one of the Battle Isle games. The rails themselves were a very interesting concept. Some maps had rails that would allow the use of really powerful train units. Limited to where they could travel, but strong and fast, train units were a welcome addition. It was a hard choice trying to figure out if I should try to fight these things head on or patiently avoid/exploit their limited range. When they were used as high speed troop transports in some maps, protecting/attacking these supply lines was really fun too. Combine this with letting some sort of engineer unit extend rails and the player has even more options.
