Strategic Primer

Strategic Primer is a strategy game that I am designing. It has two forms: a computer game (which has yet to get beyond the prototype phase) and a “pen-and-paper” version run by a human being. I am currently running a campaign of the “pen-and-paper” version (mostly by email rather than using actual paper), which would eagerly welcome any new players. So far this campaign has moved no faster than a turn per month.

While there is a website for the game, that I intend to eventually be a more substantial, better organized resource, for now the best source of archived information about the game is this blog. This page is intended to serve as a topical list of relevant posts, but often lags behind the weekly posts, so you may read more recent posts at the automatically-updated category archive. There is also a small collection of documents about the game, which was intended to replace some older, now out-dated, inconsistent and disorganized posts. It’s arguable whether those documents or this page is the best introduction to the game and basic reference for players in the current campaign.

For Players

Beginning players should refer to the Starting Package of advances that every player begins the game with; once they’ve invented or discovered additional advances, I maintain a separate file for each player to keep him or her up to date. They may also wish to consult the sample strategy I created.

I’m developing a suite of assistive programs to help players in the current campaign (and me); I post development reports somewhat regularly. An early report contained links to the feature tracker and the source code; I also create pre-compiled binary executable versions for Windows and Mac as well as the cross-platform JAR file.

Players may wish to know how character advancement of workers and soldiers and non-player-directed in-game research is handled, though knowledge of these details is by no means essential for success in the game.

Players should think about diplomacy when instructing their explorers and, in deciding what to try to invent in the game, should think big.

History of Strategic Primer

Earlier on this blog, I’ve described how the game began, what technology I used to run the first campaign, and how what kinds of advances players can discover has changed as the game developed. And there were various directions I considered taking the game but decided against.

Technical Challenges

I’ve discussed several technical challenges I face both in writing the program and running the campaign, including dealing with The size and detail of the world while making it realistically complex, keeping track of players’ technical and scientific advancement, modeling and representing units’ capabilities (“statistics”) including training, and researching the necessary rules or statistics to carry out players’ intentions.

The computer version, especially with my long-range design plans, has posed its own challenges in addition to many of those I mentioned above, including designing an API, representing orders, and redesigning it as a server and clients.

Previous Turns of the Current Campaign

I have posted summaries of the events of every turn so far: the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth turns.