Ok so first off I don't mean that games are too accessible to people with disabilities or anything like that. This is more of a critique of how strategy games shows you the ramification of your actions, even before you do the action.

The main culprit are Paradox map games, there was generally a shift between HOI 4 and CK 3, that made the games more accessible to new players. In CK 3 you get the to know the exact results of all options of events with the minor caveat of when you only get the probability of results but even then you often get the exact persentages. Before you declare a war you get a full roundup of which allies will join either side, how many troops each side has and even a force comparison based on troop quality. When doing diplomacy you get an exact value of how likely the the other part is to agree to a deal, and if not how much more they must like you for it.

This is great in the sense that new players of the franchise don't get scared and overwhelmed. However, since they designed the game around all this info always being available, it's not really possible to play it any other way. This makes it nearly impossible to fail with a bit of experience.

The main thing this kills is immersion. I don't have to know who I ally with, nor what they're personality is, if I need them for a war I can just throw money at them until their "willingness" number is greater than 0. I don't need to study their force composition compared to mine, the game just says who's is better.

Imagine a game without these values being so open to the player. Choosing who to ally with wouldn't be just choosing the one with the biggest army, but choosing someone with the correct profile that you need. For example if you are planning to wage a lot of war then it's probably best to chose someone with a militarily aggressive personality and large army. However if you want to play tall, investing in your realm and avoiding war then you probably want someone callous that won't drag you into offensive wars, but still have your back incase you get invaded.

I've foucesed on CK 3 but this is valid of all recent Paradox map games. In Viccy 3 then you get to know if a factory will be profitable before you build it, you know exactly who and by how much someone has the advantage on a Frontline.

While these games are a lot more accessible, they lose the need for reasoning, deduction and critical thinking. You don't need to have initiative, just press the best options and play opportunisticly on the moment.

Doesn't have to be ambitious or even ever released. Just curious to hear your ideas and techniques. Screenshots are welcome!

Hello, I'm building an RTS game and need to find some models for the environment. However all models that I can find usually have too many faces for the scale of my game.

I would like to find for example tree models with max 100 faces that's not in the classic cartoony low poly style, but a realistic style. Preferably even with lower quality LOD models.

Could someone point me in the right direction or give me some good search terms?

There are many libraries and frameworks that take the grunt of game dev, without locking you to their specific physics engine, etc.

For example

2D: SFML, Easily create a window and move sprites around, rest is up to you. (C++)

3D: JMonkeyEngine (Based on lwjgl) is basically the same, with 3D rendering instead. It contains tools for physics and collisions, but those are optional. You can do whatever with meshes in 3d space (Java)

I probably should have realized this before fighting with complete game engines (unity, godot) for multiple years even though I prefer doing stuff myself. I find it easier to handle when I've made it myself.

Anyone else know any minimal but feature-rich engines?