I made a funny experiment.
STEP 1 - find the cross-section of all strategy games, the core features that are present in every strategy up to date
Each strategy has:
- economic model (base building included)
- military model
- world topology model
Each player has resources that he has to manage:
- time
- space / distance
- people
- money
- elements in chains from raw materials to products
- information
- tools among the 3 models above, that allow him to trade one resource for another at a cost.
STEP 2 - simplify all of those features untill any further detail removed will make some of the interactions between features impossible
STEP 3 - iterate untill you get fast minimalistic strategy - the game events equivalent of 1 week session of any 4X title compressed in 20 minutes.
STEP 4 - allow the experiment to escape in the wild jungle of the internet:
http://www.box.net/shared/s91axjpozc
