stepout

One other type of sub-genre that I feel kind falls under the tactical management category (or perhaps it’s just and edge-case?), are the more combat-focused 4X games like the Age of Wonders and Warlock series. I feel like the developers in both those series put just as much attention towards combat and units as they do the strategy layer. The strategy layer in both series is obviously empire management as opposed to something like base management, but you’re still growing your empire in order to make your units more powerful. Losing a unit in a 4X game probably isn’t quite as bad as in a game like XCOM, but it really sucks to lose a unit that you’ve leveled up a lot, or if you were to lose a higher tier unit that took a lot of time and resources to build. While the more combat-focused 4X games have the most fun combat within the genre, the diplomacy aspect of the strategic layer seems to suffer and that’s usually the biggest criticism of those types of games from players who want a more robust diplomacy system. I don’t mind as much though as I’m usually just out for blood. The upcoming Age of Wonders: Planetfall looks to blur the lines even more with it’s XCOM-like combat and I believe it’s campaign mode will use the random map generator as opposed to static maps. Speaking of which, random map generators are another system that probably gets as many resources thrown at it as the strategy and combat layers of the game. Or perhaps the map layer is just considered part of the strategy layer. Either way, when done right, I think terrestrial-based 4X games have the prettiest and most interesting maps in gaming.