At GDC 2017, longtime strategy game designer Soren Johnson explained how he set out to do just that in Offworld Trading Company, an “economic RTS.”
Johnson’s talk was insightful and intriguing, so don’t miss your chance to watch it for free on the official GDC YouTube channel!
How might you go about creating a real-time strategy game with no actual combat?
At the same time, Johnon broke down how the game’s evolution as an economic strategy game was constrained by the expectations around the RTS genre (relatively short, lively matches, for one).