Jobs Of The Past: Strategist

Strategist

The strategist is a job of the past times (like Zelda setting assuming that fairies and demons and Hylians etc. existed) Nowadays you don’t see the strategist that was defined from the past normally.

Mulan is a movie that has no tactics but pure strategy

A strategist is often mistaken to be a tactician, because everybody who plays strategy games are actually playing the role of a tactician not a strategist. Why? This is answered by the definition of the strategist: “Military strategy deals with the planning and conduct of campaigns, the movement and disposition of forces, and the deception of the enemy.”

This is a strategical viewpoint.

The strategist doesn’t actually have to go into battle, but he rather decides which forces go, what weapons they take, and which route they take, but the strategist himself does not go into battle. He organizes the battle, but doesn’t conduct it. To make it simpler, compare the above Wikipedia definition with this one: “Military tactics, the science and art of organizing a military force, are the techniques for using weapons or military units in combination for engaging and defeating an enemy in battle”

 some games mix a few elements of tactics in their strategy game and succeed. Rise Of Nations is pretty cool.

As you see the tactician is the one who actually is present on the battle field. But the strategist still has an important and vital role. A strategist would decide who would go where, and without this, a tactician wouldn’t succeed. That’s why you usually find more tacticians than strategists, because for strategy you don’t need more than a few people but for tactics you need a lot, just in case one dies in the battlefield.

 So does this mean a strategist gets more status than a tactician? Yes it is. And does that also mean some facebook “games” are actually considered strategy? Unfortunately, yes it is. Because you aren’t really dealing with the inner detail of battle, all you do is just choose what are the materials you will spend on which, and where will that go. But in the battlefield of serious games you don’t really control the soldiers because you are a strategist not a tactician. Imperium gives a perfect example of strategy and inventory management. It seems in this game that to the strategist collected loot and death of soldiers seems an uncontrolled variable, or it’s “by chance”. A strategist still has a huge weight on his/her shoulders. But the strategist works on a large scale,and that’s what makes his work even more hard yet look less tiring. He isn’t the one who has to travel and fight all the time. Yet with those words alone it is the truth that the training of a strategist is overlapping with that of a tactician’s, and a good strategist must obviously know the art of war in the battlefield and not just from outside, especially before the invention of technology and cameras.

 I really enjoyed this mini game

  Although a strategist is not the job I really would ever take if I had a time gate to the fantasy past, but I believe a strategist is a honest and honorable job to take. Although it may not be in Zelda games and it is partially expressed in a side quest in Final Fantasy Seven, it would be a good job to take for some of us.

 This is a tactical viewpoint. This isn't real strategy.

Since I don’t have time for the Nintendo Direct, here is the link. A new article should be up soon about it, but I am a little busy lately, sorry. Play More Zelda!