There's not a lot in the way of new ideas here, but it's a nice distillation of bits and pieces that I've seen incorporated into other games. The web-based hal

There's not a lot in the way of new ideas here, but it's a nice distillation of bits and pieces that I've seen incorporated into other games. The web-based half RTS/half TBS genre has incorporated the idea of X command points per Y time period as part of the norm for a long while (Travian, et. al.) Turns in such games are generally not immediately exposed as mechanics (if they, in fact, exist at all). I recall an old space based RTS (the name escapes me, sorry) which exposed the amount of time left until the next tick, at which point all players would get more command points, while Travian appears to have a tick per second, with long waiting periods (relative to tick length) between updating command resources. One thing which might be useful as a thought experiment to further this article is to look at TBS games which aren't dying--why is Civ V still popular? Or, to get even more basic, why is baduk still widely popular? Some thoughts regarding the latter: each move is very granular, which keeps the game moving foreward. Each move has an immediate impact on the game state (this relates to your point that "nothing happens in the first move.") There is a deep element of strategy, which is augmented by a need for strict time management. It's easy to review games and find mistakes, as well as to review games of higher level players to find new ideas and strategies.