Unlike in almosts all video games, real warfare is not over getting the best kill to death ratio, capturing a flag, or just for the sake of fighting. Instead, warfare IRL is about gaining or protecting resources or protecting or spreading ideologies, which are valued either on their own right or are used to gain something else (e.g. an improved standard of living). I would like to see what (preferably free) games are like this. Below I describe the games I have found that best meet this requirement, though are still quite lacking.
The wars in the Total War games can be seen as wars over territory, which contain resources. However, as far as I know, players use the resources in the territories to do anything other than acquire more territory. Thus, wars in Total War games are really just about fighting for the sake of fighting.
The battles in Unturned, a zombie survival game, could theoretically be about obtaining resources from other players and protecting one's own. Indeed, after killing a player, it would be unusual to walk away victoriously from a battle without first looting the enemy for supplies to improve one's standard of living. However, in my experience, it is much easier to improve one's standard of living (get food, water, avoid disease, and stay safe) from simply foraging, rather than risking death in combat. Thus, for the most part, battles in Unturned are fought just for fun.
In Minecraft PVP servers, players can and do fight and kill other players for resources. However, in my experience, this is extremely rare on vanilla and factions servers. Instead, players tend to loot bases while the players in the base are offline, and players tend to travel to very isolated regions to hide their bases. Like in Unturned, with rare exceptions, it's simply more practical to gain resources by mining, finding, or creating them oneself. Thus, combat in Minecraft is almost always not for resources.
Edit: Many other games include fighting for resources, but do so as part of the story, rather than arising organically from player interactions, like it does in real life. This is not what I am looking for.
So, do you know of any games that have combat truly over resources or spreading ideologies, rather than combat for the sake of combat?
The wars in the Total War games can be seen as wars over territory, which contain resources. However, as far as I know, players use the resources in the territories to do anything other than acquire more territory. Thus, wars in Total War games are really just about fighting for the sake of fighting.
The battles in Unturned, a zombie survival game, could theoretically be about obtaining resources from other players and protecting one's own. Indeed, after killing a player, it would be unusual to walk away victoriously from a battle without first looting the enemy for supplies to improve one's standard of living. However, in my experience, it is much easier to improve one's standard of living (get food, water, avoid disease, and stay safe) from simply foraging, rather than risking death in combat. Thus, for the most part, battles in Unturned are fought just for fun.
In Minecraft PVP servers, players can and do fight and kill other players for resources. However, in my experience, this is extremely rare on vanilla and factions servers. Instead, players tend to loot bases while the players in the base are offline, and players tend to travel to very isolated regions to hide their bases. Like in Unturned, with rare exceptions, it's simply more practical to gain resources by mining, finding, or creating them oneself. Thus, combat in Minecraft is almost always not for resources.
Edit: Many other games include fighting for resources, but do so as part of the story, rather than arising organically from player interactions, like it does in real life. This is not what I am looking for.
So, do you know of any games that have combat truly over resources or spreading ideologies, rather than combat for the sake of combat?
