How do I design a strategy game with the right balance of simplicity vs complexity?

[SeekerOfTruth007]

This is the "Historical Conflicts" game I've been working on for several months.

I find my abilities in the game I've designed do not work as intended. "Rolling Retreat" for ranged units ends up being too powerful, even with some sort of timer or counter. "Charge" becomes unnecessary once you remove Rolling Retreat.

I find that static defense needs to be very weak in order to prevent turtling.

I find that the game needs to be designed so that "blind expands" are never worth it, that way you prevent the scale of the game from escalating out of control. I find that some sort of "zone control" design might be more strategic than my previous resource concept. I'm thinking two resources from zones which are controlled by occupying combat units, thus all combat units double as "harvesters". There would be no "dedicated workers" and new structures must be placed adjacent to existing ones, with the exception of walls which can be placed anywhere.

Does this sound more reasonable than trying to keep track of 20 to 40 workers per player? It removes the "worker harass" strategy from the game though.

Updates

1 y

Do you think historical/pre-colonial strategy is more interesting? modern times strategy? or maybe futuristic strategy? Which do you think would have the most depth and sell the most copies?

[TheRealPepperPotts]

I'd suggest you join a gaming forum if you haven't already. They will have tons of good suggestions and you'll have more expertise to draw from, I'd imagine. I'm not sure what your goal with the game is, but open source game development can be a great way to collaborate with other people to get a game out there. I'm not a gamer, but I've been looking into it because I want to be able to annihilate my son when he starts playing... :D