[CONCEPT] for a strategy game

 I am a sucker for military development. I don't know what's up with that very specific niche but thus far, i have based quite a few of my designs over the years on this very concept. There's just something about constantly evolving strategies, political and cultural landscapes and technologies . It's like a puzzle game, but you also get to command your solution. One game which i really enjoyed doing this in is total war: Attila, but to be honest the game isn't made with that concept in mind. It just kinda manifested itself as an accident. It could serve as a basis for our concept today though! So i am pretty much thinking up a new total war game right now. 

So one thing about military development, especially in the pre-modern times, is that culture affected it greatly. There wasn't really an empirical and scientific way of creating tactics, routines or technological advancements. New ideas would pop up and go through the process of memetic darwinism with the winners being adopted as cultural norms, with each warrior or fighter or retainer having them drilled in their head. For example, a viking warband did not need a sergeant to make them close in together and raise their shields in response to the enemy lobbing arrows at them. It's kinda how, when we are kids, while playing certain team games, certain strategies are simply common because some kid did it sometime and the rest of the kids followed suit, with them automatically doing that strategy for every subsequent play session. So today, we are making a culture-first advancement tree.

The concept is simple: instead of having research trees for military units and culture, the player through their decisions and actions influence their peoples' culture and the culture and the circumstances of the people influences their military. This could be possible with a historical game but i would like to go fantasy so the concept isn't limited by anything. Players all get simple, non-distinct tribes and through their decisions slowly make the tribes differentiate from one another. One player may choose to create an agrarian society, organized around strong administrative centers, which would make the population sedentary. War between cities like this would create an arms race for heavier and heavier infantry, able to withstand a siege or fend off lighter attackers, thus creating an army full of heavy infantry. One player may choose to keep their tribe nomadic, with warriors fighting either to drive off other nomads from their territory or to raid and pillage, creating an army of lighter, skirmishing infantry and cavalry. Initial development will create dominant strategies, which will trigger an arms race to develop a counter, which will trigger an arms race to develop a counter to that counter etc. Every now-and-so a new technological advancement enters the scene and shakes the world, starting the cycle all over; and that's the gameplay loop!

It would be really really cool to achieve that in a total war game in my opinion. It would shake up the campaign's battles a bunch and make no two battles the same! That's all for now, though.