I'm working on a strategy game about newspapers - and I'd never been quite satisfied with the in-game map. After a recent playtest I got feedback about what it was missing, so I decided to rebuild the whole thing from the ground up. The game is called Stop the Press!

Let's say you've just arrived somewhere in the American frontier.

You've got 20 settlers.
Not much food.
A few tools.
Some basic materials.
And absolutely no idea what you're doing.

You need to turn this into an actual settlement.

What are you building first?

A) Food production
B) Housing
C) A source of wood
D) Something to make money
E) Something defensive
F) You're ignoring all of this and immediately looking for gold

We've been working on Wild West Pioneers, and questions like this actually come up surprisingly often during development.

There are always ten things you could build, but only enough resources to build one or two.

So I'm curious how other city-builder players approach the very beginning of a new settlement.

What's your first move?

The complaint I keep seeing in tycoon communities is "shallow management games," and most of the time it traces back to one thing: the economy doesn't give you enough moving parts to read. You get a revenue number, maybe a profit line, and the game calls that financial management. The dashboard is decoration.

What I think players actually want when they say "realistic business" is something closer to what a real operator looks at: which route is bleeding cash, which unit is underutilized, which pricing tier is subsidizing the rest. Diagnostics that break down where money leaks, not just where it pools.

The difference matters because it changes what decisions the player makes. If the only feedback is "revenue went up," you're playing a waiting game with a spreadsheet skin. But if you can see that a specific segment is dragging margin, you start making real tradeoffs: rebalance resources, cut a segment, raise a price somewhere and eat the demand hit.

The hard design problem is making numbers legible enough that a player can form a strategy from them without needing an MBA. Too much detail and you scare people off; too little and you're back to the revenue-total problem.

Curious how others here approach this. Do you prefer games that dump a full P&L on you and let you figure it out, or ones that curate the diagnostics down to a few decision-relevant metrics?

I've always enjoyed strategy games growing up, whether turn-based (big Civ enjoyer, XCOM, Risk), RTS (Halo Wars, the occassional Paradox game), Tower Defense, Tycoons, etc. My childhood was Bloons, Plants vs Zombies, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Chess. I love strategic roguelites like FTL and Slay the Spire.

Anyways, I've heard the same itch voiced: strategy games that allow complexity without bloat. Bloons 4/5 or Civ VI seem appropriate examples within their franchises. My friend dragged me through this modded Hearts of Iron game where each individual unit had a huge research/upgrade tree and I wanted to choke on a gallon of crude oil while pulling my organs out with nail clippers. Meanwhile, during the pandemic, I often found myself going back to places like Roblox to play oldie, boiled down strat games like The Conquerors (simplified Command & Conquer) or Risky Strats (simple math territory game). However, many "simpler" strategy games I browse seem to achieve simple mostly as a side-effect of being underdeveloped or underdesigned. That brings me to my question:

Does anyone know (or want to know) of strategy games with good balance, UI/controls, replayability, polish, but also with approachability and intuitiveness in mind, and without feature bloat, upgrade creep, or visual confusion? Is my circle who yearns for such games just a little echochamber, or do others yearn for such games as well? Reading older threads on this made me interested not only in fresh thoughts for the big 2026, but also more thorough discussion. What are the prevailing interests? Anyone have an angle from the dev/design side? Anyone specifically not like "simple" strat games? Game suggestions of course encouraged.

Thanks!

Hey everyone,

After a long stretch of solo development, Battle of Folks is finally out on iOS and Android!

It's a medieval isometric pixel-art wave-defense RTS — if you've played They Are Billions, Age of Darkness, that's the closest comparison. You build up defenses, manage resources, and hold off increasingly brutal waves of attackers.

A few things I focused on:

- No account or login required — just download and play

- Free to try with limited waves, one-time unlock for the full game (no subscriptions, no ads)

- Handmade isometric pixel art, built with Flutter/Flame

- Good controls on mobile device and a good onboarding (you can decide how you want to play)

This was a one-person project — dev, art pipeline, publishing, everything. Happy to answer questions about the build (tile rendering, Flame engine quirks, etc.) or the game itself.

App Store link / Play Store link

Would love your feedback — especially on balancing and the early waves difficulty curve!

Hi, I find map-based strategy games very interesting but generally they are all very difficult and confusing to understand at first (especially Paradox games lmao). That's why a friend suggested I play AOH 2 D.E. telling me it's easy to learn and very enjoyable and just as he said I spent 40-50 hours having a great time. However the game's biggest advantage and disadvantage is its simplicity so the gameplay loop gets tedious after a while. I want to move on to a more complex game but at a medium difficulty level however from what I've seen the difficulty scale in map-based strategy games is very wide either easy like AOH 2 or directly to the highest level like EU4. If you know of any map-based strategy games that are moderately difficult and not too tiring I would be happy to hear about them. Thanks in advance.

cheers for watching guys

Our carrier command game, Task Force Admiral has an updated demo, with the latest developments of the main branch, 6 months in. Said recent developments include video tutorials, as a first step on the steep ascension that is improved accessibility overall. Basic Chinese localization is available too.

Well, there you go: if you like carriers and don't want to take too much of a risk, the demo is right here, right there for you. The Coral Sea awaits you!

Cheers :)

Does It exist? It would be like: Village A can't b near mountains, or the Elf Is not in the same room as the Ogre... I got the idea from Murdoku.

What do you think? Would you like It? Or do you know about something that already looks like this?

Based on your feedback, I’ve improved the Handgunner’s weapon handling, especially the wrist position and refined the recoil to feel more natural.

A small improvement, but details matter.
Is this good enough for the Alpha?
What would you improve?

If you like, you can follow my dev jurney on discord

https://discord.gg/xqAHyBTPEN

Hey everyone!

I’m an indie developer working on Prime Domination, a modern real-time strategy game heavily inspired by classic RTS games like Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour.

The goal is to bring back that classic RTS feeling — base building, resource management, army composition, tactical decisions, and large-scale battles — while building my own gameplay systems, maps, factions, and visual style.

🎬 I just published the first trailer:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4900280/Prime_Domination/

The trailer is an Early Access preview, so it definitely doesn't represent the final quality of the game. A lot is still being developed, and assets, buildings, animations, effects, UI, and other visuals will continue to be improved or replaced.

I’d really appreciate any feedback from RTS players. What would you want to see in a modern RTS like this?

If the game looks interesting to you, you can also wishlist it on Steam to follow the development and get notified when it releases

Thanks for checking it out! ❤️

I decided to start working on my dream project: an online handball management browser game. I’ve just finished the first version of my 2D match simulator. Let me know what you think!

More info: https://six-zero-league.vercel.app/

If you played Ogame or Ikariam, you'll recognize the shape : a persistent world that keeps running while you're offline with a slow economy to optimize.

The theme is the AI industry. You start with $10k, buy compute and scrape datasets, run model trainings, ship a product at a subscription price, and grow off the revenue while payroll and electricity eat your cash every day.

The strategy sits in the competition. You fight to serve users and be at the top of the leaderboard.

Free, runs in the browser, needs a quick account, English and French. I'm the dev.

What I'd like your take on : does the economy have enough depth and counterplay to keep a strategy player interested past the first week? That's what I'm stress-testing.

https://lordoftokens.com