Mechanics

Buildings are so common in real life that they feature in most games as well - they are often crucial to providing an interesting setting for a game or story.

Dwellings are a type of building that seems to be unique to Heroes of Might and Magic.

Combat is a fight or contest between individuals or groups. It is often matter of life or death. Fortunately it is a very rare occurrence for most of us in the modern world, yet it is a staple of games.

Vying for control of strategically important resources is what this mechanic is all about…

Most strategy games feature an economic system that produces different resources for the player to spend on improving their circumstances. Those resources would be pointless without interesting things to spend them on…

Most strategy games feature an economic system that produces different resources for the player to spend on improving their circumstances.

An encounter is an unexpected or casual meeting with someone or something. It’s the little adventures that provide texture to the larger narrative.

Exploring the unknown is a common mechanic in many games.

The health mechanic is a staple of many games because so many of them involve combat, death and destruction.

A mini-game is a smaller game nested within a bigger game.

Movement is one of the most basic mechanics used in nearly all games - it is also an essential mechanic in turn-based strategy games.

There are roughly two main approaches to letting players control the movement of entities in a game world: direct control and indirect control.

In real life and real-time video games, movement takes time. In turn-based games, time is abstracted so we also need to abstract the fact that movement costs time.

Grid-based movement is a straightforward movement system often used in strategy games, board-games and roguelikes.

Hexagonal-based movement is a more complex movement system that is often used in war games and occasionally in strategy games.

“Time is an illusion.” – Albert Einstein

Turn-based means that players take turns acting instead of all acting at once. Static order means that the turn order is not dynamic.

Turn-based means that players take turns acting instead of all acting at once. Unit priority order means that a player takes a turn for each unit in the game, based on the priority of that unit, so a player may have multiple turns over the course of the round.

Odds are every strategy game ever created features units! I assume the term comes from ‘military unit’, which probably means the term has its origin in war games.

Stacking units is a relatively abstract mechanic that is unique to turn-based strategy games. It abstracts large formations of units by representing them as a single unit along with a count of the units in the stack.