IsoStrat is a grand strategy game. This means that the game is focused on strategy, not tactics. To put this into military terms, the focus then is not on how the units in an army fight, but on how the army is maintained, organized, and how it campaigns on the highest level -- the details are handled elsewhere or are abstracted. Further, this means that the game does not primarily revolve around fighting -- grand strategy implies attention to economy and politics as well as military matters.
The goal of the game then is not to "fight, win, prevail", in the words of that song in Command Conquer, but to build and manage a polity (a political unit) -- and excell, somehow. Other polities can be dominated economically and diplomatically (and magically?) of course, but direct fighting is not the only (or necessarily optimal) course of action.
Tiles are a necessary abstraction in this game because they quantify the game world in a clear and easily iterated manner. I want to make it a point though not to get caught up in the tile itself as a gameplay mechanic for the sake of itself: This is not a game of tiles, it's a game of grand strategy. It should not be of ultimate importance which tile the player does what with, rather, the game should be about the player's overarching decisions and strategies ... which happen to be simulated in a world built from tiles.
Ideally the game design should work in a completely non-tile, point/vector based world. It just isn't because that might be less efficient and it'd make doing the sort of graphical feeling I'm going for more difficult to manage.
In short: the player controls a character who is the magically-empowered leader of a polity.
Why the Player is magic and how that magic works as well as why the player is a leader can vary -- maybe they discovered a tome of dark magic and used mind-control to manipulate aristocrats to raise themselves to a position of power, maybe they were trained from birth to be the spiritual guide of their nation and are empowered by their respective deity, or maybe they studied long and hard in the magic academy and were chosen to lead from a council of supreme magi -- the player should be allowed to choose any of these background and more.
This notion of identifying with a unique player-character (PC) gives IsoStrat the feeling of a role-playing game in that the player is playing a role as the leader of a polity. The player is a character in the gameworld, not an omnipresent omnipotent force detached and 'above' the world. This should be kept in mind throughout the design of IsoStrat (while being mindful of course, to keep the game fun and straightforward of course).
I quite specifically do not want to make this just-another-generic-fantasy-game-setting.
Rule #1: No Elves!
(Actually I kid. There could be elves, but they are not allowed to be all thin, pale, aristocratic and perfect. They'd have to be downright fey, like weird and magical and hostile -- scary elves that come in the night to steal babies and replace them with dopplegangers and such.)
My point really is that I want to intentionally deny cliche fantasy tropes. "Because that's how games/bad-D&D tie-in novels have always done it" is not a substitute from creativity..
On a positive note, I particularly like the fantasy species made up by China Mieville. Some are just made up, some are references to more obscure mythology, and others are re-thinking of the usual tropes in interesting new ways. There should be magic in the world, not the same-old same-old.
Rule #2: 13th century England is not the only culture that existsI want the world to have more of a pre-Islamic middle eastern feeling, maybe sort of bronze-age like ancient Babyon and Persia with some India and Africa and China and Mesoamerica as well -- in feeling, mind you, not directly. Eurobland settings are done to death (and they really do injustice to the variety and depth of the actual Middle Ages). Other places in the world have their equivalent of castles and warriors and magic and mythology all of their own and they've fascinating.
And the default "race" is not allowed to be "white" 'cause I said so.
Rule #3: Magic is MagicalIf magic was everywhere, well, it wouldn't be magic! Magic should be epic -- in Tolkein, how many Lightning Bolt or Fireball spells did Gandalf cast -- Any? Wizards should not be the equivalent of artillery or machineguns, they should be more subtle, more grand, and larger-minded. They bring down empires, not individual orcs.
And that is how the player's magical aptitude fits in: It is the X-factor to their polity, it is the wedge they have which allows them to be able to leverage events that would otherwise be impossible. Magic should give the player (and their major enemies) the chance to be great. It is the reason the game is about the player.
The working title is "IsoStrat" for "Isometric Strategy Engine". ...I could call it "ISE" or "Ise"... anyway, for a final title I was thinking something like "Mage Lords" could work, though that'd be a bit cliche (and is probably taken). "Magocracy" would be quite good, it's a bit more complex-feeling but makes the point, but that particular title has been used in a (very small text-only) game already. I could just go "IsoStrat: Magocracy" or something, of course, but then it isn't really clear what the IsoStrat part means. Maybe it doesn't matter if anyone knows what it means, it could just be used like a fantasy-themed word: "Isostrat Mageocracy".
"Isostrategem" might work. Is it a strategem? Is it a gem? No one knows -- it's enswathed in mystery.
Include "fantasy" social classes?