Non-Strategy Games for Strategy Gamers (Ep.76)

Al, Jack, and Joe break from tradition to recommend non-strategy games that scratch the strategic itch.

The hosts explore games from other genres that appeal to strategy gamers through tactical thinking, resource management, and methodical planning. Al champions TIE Fighter’s economy management and Half-Life 2’s problem-solving approach. Jack advocates for Starfield’s settlement building and Pathfinder: Kingmaker’s kingdom management mechanics. Joe highlights We Who Are About to Die’s gladiatorial decision-making and Ark: Survival Evolved’s base building and dinosaur taming systems. The conversation examines how strategic thinking appears across genres, from flight simulators requiring power allocation to CRPGs featuring city building. The episode reveals that strategy gamers gravitate toward games rewarding planning, resource optimization, and systems mastery regardless of genre classification.

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Critical Moves Podcast Episode 76 Show Notes

Episode Title: Non-Strategy Games for Strategy Gamers
Hosts: Al, Jack, Joe
Episode Length: ~63 minutes

Episode Summary

Episode 76 takes a departure from typical strategy game coverage to examine games from other genres that appeal to strategic minds. Al begins with TIE Fighter from 1994, explaining how the Star Wars flight simulator requires tactical thinking and economy management through shield, engine, and laser power allocation. He follows with Half-Life 2 as the greatest game ever made, arguing it rewards methodical planning and problem-solving rather than twitch reflexes. Jack presents Starfield’s settlement building mechanics and Pathfinder: Kingmaker’s full kingdom management systems that transform RPGs into strategy-adjacent experiences. Joe contributes We Who Are About to Die’s roguelike gladiatorial combat with strategic fight selection and Ark: Survival Evolved’s survival crafting with base building and dinosaur taming.

The conversation reveals common threads across these recommendations. Games appealing to strategy gamers reward planning over reflexes, feature resource management systems, require understanding interconnected mechanics, and emphasize methodical problem-solving. TIE Fighter’s power allocation between shields, engines, and lasers mirrors economic decision-making in strategy games. Half-Life 2’s physics-based puzzles demand the same analytical thinking required for tactical combat. Starfield’s supply chains between planetary settlements replicate grand strategy resource networks. Pathfinder: Kingmaker literally incorporates Crusader Kings-style kingdom management into traditional RPG gameplay.

The hosts identify why certain games transcend genre boundaries for strategy players. Bethesda’s settlement systems in Fallout 4 and Starfield divisively integrate base building into RPG narratives, alienating traditional RPG players while attracting strategy enthusiasts. Owlcat’s Pathfinder games include full kingdom management with twelve different statistics including economy, divinity, and unruliness that grow from baronies to kingdoms. CRPGs generally appeal to strategy gamers through party management, inventory optimization, and tactical combat despite being classified as role-playing games.

The discussion touches on developer philosophies and player expectations. Valve will likely never make Half-Life 3 because expectations exceed what any game could deliver, and Steam’s 30% cut on every PC game sale eliminates financial incentive to risk game development. Bethesda games occupy a unique space making “not great RPG games” that nonetheless provide unmatched open-world experiences. Ark: Survival Evolved requires extensive manual configuration to be playable solo, with official settings designed around multiplayer shift coordination for multi-day dinosaur taming sessions.

Al reveals he’s been mispronouncing Stellaris as “Stellaris” rather than “Stell-ar-is” for 76 episodes. The hosts conclude that strategic elements appear in nearly every game through resource management, tactical decision-making, or systems optimization, though these elements vary wildly in prominence and accessibility.

Al’s First Pick: TIE Fighter (1994)

TIE Fighter from 1994 stands as Al’s favourite game of all time despite predating Jack’s existence. The Star Wars flight simulator casts players as Imperial Navy pilots flying missions against the Rebel Alliance. The game deeply rewards tactical thinking through limited resource management exactly like tactical RTS games. Players must constantly balance power allocation between shields, engines, and laser cannons since craft cannot power all systems simultaneously.

The progression system introduces increasing complexity. Players start in basic TIE fighters with only laser cannons and engines. TIE bombers add missiles and bombs. Assault gunboats introduce hyperdrives for jumping in and out of combat zones plus shields requiring additional power management. The final TIE Defender features shields, advanced concussion missiles, laser beams, and ion cannons for capital ship assaults.

Missions scale alongside technological progression. Early missions pit single TIE fighters in six-ship squads against Y-wings, X-wings, and A-wings. Later missions involve TIE Defenders taking out Mon Calamari cruisers and capital ships. Players fly alongside Darth Vader in certain missions. The tutorial alone matches modern game lengths, teaching targeting, shield management, engine management, wingman commands, and reinforcement calls.

The TIE Fighter Total Conversion mod for X-Wing Alliance provides fully updated graphics while maintaining original gameplay. The mod recently released its next version and remains available on Steam and GOG for minimal cost. The game requires keyboard and joystick for proper play, distinguishing it from arcade shooters through Microsoft Flight Simulator-level simulation depth set in space.

Why TIE Fighter Appeals to Strategy Gamers

The game rewards the same temperament required for strategy gaming success. It’s not a twitch shooter or fast reaction game but rather a pacing and planning experience. Players receive objectives and must plan approaches through levels. Running in guns blazing guarantees death. Success requires choosing right weapons, managing ammunition, and approaching enemies correctly.

The systems-driven gameplay mirrors strategy game mechanics. Players must understand how systems work before being effective, exactly like 4X or grand strategy titles. The game positions players as individual units within larger Star Wars strategy battles rather than commanding fleets. This parallels Command & Conquer Renegade’s approach of putting players in GDI trooper boots rather than commanding armies.

The progression and meaningful choices throughout missions recall quality strategy game design. Early simplicity with laser cannons and engines gradually adds missiles, bombs, hyperdrives, and shields. Each addition increases both capability and management complexity. The constant need to balance power allocation between offensive and defensive systems creates economic decision-making within action gameplay.

Al’s Second Pick: Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2 stands as the greatest game ever made according to Al. While TIE Fighter holds personal favourite status, Half-Life 2 represents objective gaming perfection. The first-person shooter rewards thoughtful planning rather than reflexes, making it the thinking person’s FPS.

The game plays at a much slower pace than typical shooters. Players cannot succeed by running in guns blazing. Success requires choosing right weapons, ensuring proper ammunition, and approaching enemies correctly. The methodical pacing appeals to strategy gamers who prefer planning over twitch reactions.

Gordon Freeman as silent protagonist creates player agency rather than narrative weakness. Unlike Duke Nukem’s defined all-American action hero personality, Freeman has no lines and no personality. Players assume Gordon Freeman’s position and approach puzzles, tasks, and missions as themselves rather than as a defined character. The Seven Days War setting where the Combine conquered Earth in seven days provides fantastic science fiction worldbuilding for players enjoying strategy games about Earth versus alien invasions.

The physics-based gameplay rewards intelligent problem-solving. Valve reinvented video game physics for Half-Life 2, creating a first-person shooter that’s secretly a puzzle game. The gravity gun allows throwing and moving objects to solve environmental challenges. The Ravenholm level provides only the gravity gun, requiring players to pick up saw blades and fire them at zombies. Success requires understanding physics systems and applying them creatively.

Why Half-Life 2 Appeals to Strategy Gamers

The game rewards methodical thinking exactly like strategy titles. Players must employ methodology when approaching challenges. Planning and tactics are required to overcome larger enemies. The game requires coordinating with NPCs and understanding physics-based systems. This isn’t a game for people seeking mindless action.

Valve’s design philosophy created games as “magic tricks” for player entertainment. They only make games when they feel they have technological angles to exploit. Half-Life 2 reinvented physics in gaming. Half-Life: Alyx later reinvented VR gaming with realistic object interaction where expo markers work on whiteboards and liquid spills realistically from bottles.

The game will never receive a Half-Life 3 sequel despite demand. Expectations exceed what any game could deliver, similar to GTA 6’s burden. Valve would need to invest hundreds of millions matching Rockstar’s GTA 6 development costs. With Steam taking 30% of every PC game sale including eventual GTA 6 revenue, Valve has no financial incentive to risk game development. They’re no longer a developer but a storefront with minimal overhead since customers build their own Steam pages.

Jack’s First Pick: Starfield

Starfield represents Bethesda Game Studios’ first new IP in over 25 years. The RPG game expanded Fallout 4’s divisive settlement building mechanics into comprehensive base building and economy management systems appealing to strategy gamers.

The ship customization uses Lego-like modular pieces costing money based on aesthetics and functionality. Players snap pieces together creating custom ship designs, then fly personally between planets. Landing on planets allows placing markers to start base building. Bases range from simple houses to large settlements featuring scientists, researchers, and workers assigned to specific jobs contributing to player income.

Supply lines connect multiple bases on different planets featuring different resources. Players can establish settlements harvesting planet-specific resources, create supply lines transporting materials between bases, refine raw materials into sellable items at specialized bases, and sell pharmaceutical goods or other products into the economy. This creates full production chains across planetary systems.

The settlement building provides much deeper strategy mechanics than Fallout 4 while being less narratively intertwined. Players ignoring the story, side quests, and “space magic” can focus entirely on base building and economy management. Bethesda’s modding accessibility means base gameplay hooks into extensive community modifications. A popular total conversion mod transforms Starfield into Star Wars, replacing language, NPCs, and assets.

Starfield’s Strategy Appeal and Limitations

The game serves two audiences poorly while creating a middle ground for strategy gamers. Traditional Bethesda RPG fans found Starfield disappointing compared to Skyrim and Oblivion. The procedurally generated thousand-plus planets feel empty despite beautiful real-time shadows based on atmospheric composition and gravity modeled on distance from stars.

Strategy gamers unconcerned with RPG expectations may find accessibility in mechanics-focused gameplay. Bethesda “doesn’t make great RPG games” despite only making RPG games, similar to how some companies only make strategy games without making great strategy games. The unique leveling systems and open-world exploration create experiences unavailable elsewhere.

The procedural generation trade-off prioritizes strategy mechanics over RPG content. Most planets statistically should be empty and barren, which hurts RPG exploration. Random building placement with repeated dead bodies and notes breaks immersion for story-focused players. However, finding planets with unique resource combinations and beautiful locations creates opportunities for base building in procedurally generated spaces unique to each player.

Jack’s Second Pick: Pathfinder: Kingmaker

Pathfinder: Kingmaker represents the definitive strategy-adjacent CRPG, unjustly overlooked in discussions despite literally being a strategy game. The game combines traditional Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition Pathfinder gameplay with comprehensive kingdom management.

Players start as barons and claim regions while managing economy across twelve different statistics including unruliness, divinity, and various other factors. The city building mechanic literally grows from baronies into entire kingdoms, explaining the game’s title. Players appoint counselors exactly like Crusader Kings while simultaneously managing character parties, dungeon exploration, and tactical combat.

The Steam storefront tags prioritize RPG, party-based RPG, fantasy, CRPG, and isometric with no immediate strategy mention. Yet screenshots prominently display city building mechanics. Reddit complaints about game difficulty consistently come from players unfamiliar with strategy games asking why empire failure causes game failure. Advice givers and satisfied players consistently cite grand strategy game experience as enabling success.

The game provides hundreds of hours of RPG content fighting skeletons and completing quests alongside complicated kingdom management. Owlcat as developer makes these games then discounts them below a single cheeseburger’s cost during frequent sales. Enhanced edition released in 2018 on Steam regularly drops to four to seven pounds.

Why Pathfinder Appeals to Strategy Gamers

The game literally integrates Crusader Kings-style kingdom management into traditional CRPG gameplay. Players claiming regions, managing economies, appointing counselors, and building cities perform grand strategy actions between dungeon crawls. The twelve economic and social statistics require constant attention and balancing.

CRPGs generally appeal to strategy gamers through party management, inventory optimization, and tactical combat. Baldur’s Gate 3 features camp management and food collection. Pillars of Eternity 1 has castle management and upgrades. Pillars of Eternity 2 provides boat management and upgrades. Pathfinder: Kingmaker extends these mechanics into full kingdom simulation.

Modern RPG players from first-person and third-person backgrounds find CRPGs complicated and difficult to manage. Strategy gamers embrace games without tutorials requiring thousand-hour learning curves discovered through Reddit posts. The complexity that alienates action RPG players attracts strategy enthusiasts.

Owlcat used Pathfinder revenue to create Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader and announce a follow-up Dark Heresy project. They’re also developing an open-world third-person RPG in The Expanse universe. The studio consistently delivers what players request while expanding into new properties.

Joe’s First Pick: We Who Are About to Die

We Who Are About to Die provides roguelike gladiatorial combat combining physics-based fighting with strategic decision-making. The game feels janky but offers good physics and fun combat with hidden strategic depth. No two runs feel identical, ranging from 15-minute sessions to three-hour campaigns.

Character backgrounds determine starting conditions and difficulty. Ex-soldiers begin powerful. Ex-slaves and indebted merchants face greater challenges. Background selection changes stats and available options. Starting weapons can be kept for subsequent rounds by purchasing upgrades, creating progression incentives.

Money comes from selecting increasingly difficult fights. Players choose between facing four champions simultaneously for high payouts, or ladder tournaments lasting through 20 opponents for endurance rewards. Fight selection randomizes from available options each round. Success depends on balancing risk against upgrade needs and survival chances.

Combat performance directly affects earnings through prestige and money. Better moves like limb-severing attacks increase both currencies because crowds enjoy spectacle. Players must maintain engagement without dragging fights out too long or prestige begins dropping. This creates strategic balance between efficiency and entertainment value.

We Who Are About to Die’s Strategic Elements

The game combines third-person fighter combat with strategy layer management. Players use winnings to purchase equipment and upgrades. Optional systems allow starting with backup fighters, though AI companions sometimes prove unhelpful or obstructive.

The roguelike structure requires strategic fight selection based on current resources and upgrade status. Choosing overly ambitious matches risks losing everything. Selecting conservative fights limits upgrade potential and long-term progression. Players must constantly evaluate risk-reward ratios for fight difficulty against potential earnings.

The spectacle system rewards strategic combat approach matching gladiatorial arena historical accuracy. Quick efficient kills provide some reward, but spectacular dispatches maximize prestige and money. Players must balance crowd entertainment against personal survival, echoing the advice from Gladiator to not kill opponents too quickly.

The game costs approximately $20 normally and frequently appears on sale. The relatively low price point makes it accessible for strategy gamers experimenting with different genres. Between 10-20 hours of gameplay provides substantial content for the cost.

Joe’s Second Pick: Ark: Survival Evolved

Ark: Survival Evolved combines survival crafting with dinosaur taming in a janky but compelling experience. Players wake on beaches wearing only underwear surrounded by dinosaurs. Success requires eating, temperature management, cooking food, and base building while taming dinosaurs as pets and mounts.

The taming system provides the game’s core appeal. Riding tamed megalodons chomping enemies feels genuinely cool. Leading packs of three raptors creates power fantasies until confronting actually dangerous dinosaurs like brontosauruses. Strategic planning involves designing cages permitting player passage but trapping dinosaurs for safe taming.

Advanced gameplay includes optimizing dinosaur stats and levels for specific purposes. Players develop elaborate strategies like using less powerful flying pets to track stronger ones, grappling onto their own pets while shooting taming arrows at targets. Base building and inventory management create survival crafting strategic layers.

The multiplayer experience involves intense tribal politics and resource warfare. Joe describes coordinating with Russian players living in ark houseboats (stone walls built on swamp rafts) who mass-produced grenades during their timezones. Teams would wake to find all tamed dinosaurs dead and bases destroyed by rival groups leaving taunting messages.

Ark’s Strategic Appeal and Accessibility Problems

The game requires extreme time investment on official settings designed around multiplayer shift coordination. Taming certain dinosaurs can take literally three real-life days without setting adjustments. Solo players must manually configure collection rates, respawn timers, and taming speeds like adjusting Stellaris difficulty sliders.

Strategic elements appear throughout base building, resource management, dinosaur optimization, and PvP tribal warfare. Players develop elaborate plans for taming dangerous creatures through environmental manipulation and creative tool use. The survival crafting genre inherently rewards strategic resource allocation and base positioning.

The game provides deep strategy hidden beneath survival mechanics for players willing to engage systems. Inventory management, crafting priorities, and base defense planning all require strategic thinking. The dinosaur taming and breeding systems allow min-maxing stat optimization rivaling RPG character building.

David Tennant voices the main villain in Ark’s surprisingly robust narrative and animated series. Despite potential for multimedia franchise success, the developers consistently fail to capitalize on strong foundations. The game remains extremely inaccessible for solo players without extensive manual configuration making it effectively a second job at default settings.

The Strategy in Every Game

The hosts conclude that strategic elements appear in nearly every game through various implementations. Racing games involve tire and fuel strategy. Even action-focused titles require some tactical decision-making or resource optimization.

Games appealing to strategy gamers share common characteristics regardless of genre. They reward planning over reflexes, feature resource management systems requiring optimization, demand understanding of interconnected mechanics, and emphasize methodical problem-solving over reactive gameplay.

The episode reveals how strategy gamers gravitate toward specific mechanics across genres. TIE Fighter’s power allocation, Half-Life 2’s physics puzzles, Starfield’s settlement chains, Pathfinder’s kingdom management, We Who Are About to Die’s fight selection, and Ark’s base building all satisfy the strategic thinking itch despite belonging to flight sim, FPS, RPG, roguelike, and survival genres respectively.

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Episode Verdict

This episode successfully demonstrates how strategic thinking transcends genre boundaries in gaming. The hosts identify specific mechanics and design philosophies that appeal to strategy gamers regardless of whether games carry strategy genre classification. TIE Fighter’s economy management through power allocation, Half-Life 2’s methodical problem-solving, Starfield’s planetary supply chains, Pathfinder’s kingdom simulation, We Who Are About to Die’s risk-reward fight selection, and Ark’s base optimization all satisfy strategic mindsets through different gameplay frameworks.

The recommendations reveal important patterns about strategy gamer preferences. Games rewarding planning over reflexes consistently appeal regardless of perspective or pacing. Resource management systems requiring optimization attract strategy enthusiasts even when embedded in shooters or survival games. Understanding interconnected mechanics before achieving effectiveness mirrors strategy game learning curves. Methodical problem-solving trumps reactive twitch gameplay across successful recommendations.

The discussion highlights how different developers approach strategy-adjacent mechanics. Bethesda’s settlement systems divisively integrate base building into RPG narratives, alienating traditional RPG audiences while attracting strategy players. Owlcat fully commits to kingdom management within CRPGs, creating games that function as strategy titles with RPG exploration layers. Valve crafts “magic tricks” where physics manipulation creates problem-solving gameplay within first-person shooters.

The episode acknowledges accessibility challenges in cross-genre recommendations. Starfield’s procedural generation serves strategy mechanics while hurting RPG exploration. Ark requires extensive manual configuration for solo accessibility despite rich strategic depth. Pathfinder’s complexity attracts strategy veterans while intimidating traditional RPG audiences. These trade-offs explain why certain games polarize audiences despite strong mechanics.

For strategy gamers seeking genre variety without abandoning strategic thinking, this episode provides valuable guidance. TIE Fighter offers tactical space combat simulation. Half-Life 2 delivers methodical first-person problem-solving. Starfield enables settlement building and supply chain management in space RPG context. Pathfinder: Kingmaker integrates full kingdom simulation into dungeon crawling. We Who Are About to Die combines gladiatorial combat with strategic fight selection. Ark: Survival Evolved wraps base building and resource optimization in dinosaur survival mechanics.

The conversation confirms that strategic thinking appears across gaming through varied implementations. Resource allocation, tactical planning, systems mastery, and methodical progression satisfy strategy enthusiasts regardless of genre packaging. The most successful cross-genre recommendations combine accessible core gameplay with deep strategic layers rewarding the analytical mindset strategy gamers bring to every challenge.

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