With R.U.S.E. we wanted to make a proper strategy game, as opposed to many other well know games of the genre which are actually more concerned with the tactics of war. Giving a real feeling of strategy meant completely changing several of the pre-established elements of the genre.
Our first thoughts about the Game Design were regarding information. It’s a precious resource in wartime, and we wanted that to be true in R.U.S.E. too. For example, well before the Second World War, military chiefs already had the means to determine the presence of enemy divisions in a given location. However, they were missing much of the more detailed information about what sort of troops were present (cavalry, artillery, infantry) as well is how ready they were to fight. That’s where reconnaissance troops became strategically important. So our first decision was to give the player the same level of information. We decided to abandon the traditional Fog of War and chose to reveal to the player some of what has been hidden in RTS games up until now, such as the opponent’s positions and troop movements, whilst still withholding certain pieces of information such as the unit formations and their condition.
Being able to see what the opponent is doing suddenly changed all our RTS gamer habits. Observation fundamentally changes the way you play. For example, if I build an aerodrome, my opponent will see it, think that I am planning an air attack and probably react by arming his ant-aircraft units.
It’s at this point that we realised that removing the Fog of War and giving a greater amount of information to the players would allow us to use the opponent’s perception of events to manipulate him. If you can’t see what your opponent is doing, and especially if you do not let your opponent see what you are doing, you cannot manipulate them. Take Poker as an example. If all the cards are hidden from the players, luck dominates the game. If everyone knows half of the cards, ruse, bluff and psychology become crucial factors! In this case, you have to play with the way your opponents see your moves, trick them, set traps for them. When we realised the gameplay possibilities that we had created, we decided to go even further and exploit the concept of deception more. That is when we introduced deception cards, based on the tricks used by military chiefs during wartime. The legendary strategist Sun Tzu once wrote “All war is based on deception.” We like to think that we have reached this level of strategy, something that has never been achieved in this sort of game before!