The most hardcore “map game” I’m playing is Total War (Warhammer these days). I do love me some Starcraft though.
I do think that counts. Medieval 2 had both byzantines and turks in almost perfectly opposite colors, purple vs green
Oh right, there was that one also. Somehow completely forgot about Medieval 2 (was more of a Rome player).
But my knowledge of their existence comes more from the fact that I was dumb enough to take Latin in school. We had to translate letters by the German ambassador (Busbecq) to the Ottoman Empire from when he was sent to Byzantium Constantinople Kostantiniyye Istanbul (the wiki-article about the names of the city alone is fascinating).
Hoi4 Black Ice?
While I love the Total War combo of strategic map play + in the field tactical control, I think there are a good deal of map games even more technically complex, but they are incredibly niche.
Starcraft is an RTS with no real grand strategy, I don’t think that counts as a ‘map game’.
I know that they are quite different, my point was that I don’t play those more complex games and usually prefer other genres. StarCraft was an example of that while limiting it to the Strategy genre as a whole.
