I have always been a huge fan of RTS TBS and Sim games. All my friends played stupid FPS games on consoles and maybe starcraft if they were really adventurous.

In the decade or so that I have been playing these genres I always thought it would be really cool if you could mix them up.

Many games like Total War and Majesty mixed these kinds of things up but I feel like it wasn't enough. Majesty did the no control over your units thing but they didn't really add any of the cool economic gameplay of Sim games like Emperor:ROTMK or even something like Patrician. Total War was pretty good but it was too far on the TBS side. Also I was always a fan of tech trees and also fantasy or fantasy historical as opposed to pure historical. Still I LOVED the combat system.

I often spend time thinking about what an ideal RTS/RPG/TBS/SIM game would be like. I have particular favorite aspects from each area that I would really like to see together.

From RPG games I would like a hero/avatar style character, something already in some RTS games like the Hero in Warlords BattleCry 3 and TBS games like the Pretender God in Dominions 3. These features work incredibly in these two games, so its clear they can mesh with both tbs and rts mechanics already.

From TBS games I would love to have the complex tech trees and extensive magic systems ala Civilization or Dominions or GalCiv 2. I would also love the extended game length. Obviously this sort of thing would be more conducive to single player, but you could absolutely play it in weekend sessions like a PnP RPG club type thing. Dominions 3 is probably the TBS game with a setting and tech tree/magic system/creature summoning system closest to my ideal game. I guess it is my favorite TBS game that I've ever played.

From SIM games I would love to have the city building from Emperor and the trading fleets from Patrician. Emperor had a fabulous economic system with trade goods and storage and the housing system. But sadly their trade system is just building a trading quay or trading post and maybe a bit of price setting. You also cannot really interact with other cities.

And obviously RTS games would be the backbone of this game style. Real time combat although perhaps less micro heavy ala Majesty but maybe with a group/squad/party/army system, possibly something like the Dominions 3 system with a leader general who gains skill at leadership and with an order system so you have a bit more control than majesty's flags.

Now obviously we have some problems with map sizes and city sizes. One option would be to have a starting city and the option to set up new cities if you want. Cities would exist on a tactical map like in Civ or Emperor or Total War and then the city would be managed Emperor style where you would click on the city to go to a new screen with the city buildings and all the workers and such moving around. You would have to keep up with all the Emperor style management tasks like building inspection and repairs and the food system and such.
Now you would want to do things like build walls and defense towers, again like Emperor and when enemy units reached the spot on the tactical map where the city is they could transfer to the city section of the game.

That solution might present a technical problem so I often try to consider others.

How about you guys? What kind of weird genre mash ups would you like to play? Pretty much every serious gamer has in mind an ideal game that they wish existed. I love to hear the weird and wonderful things that other people come up with.