RTS

Oh, I get it. Economics is the study of Starcraft. "Because consumer goods satisfy our wants directly, any movement toward [more consumer goods] looks tempting. In producing more pizzas, society increases the satisfaction of its current wants. But there is a cost: More pizzas mean fewer industrial robots. This shift of resources to consumer goods catches up with society over time because the stock of capital goods expands more slowly, thereby reducing potential future production. By moving toward alternative [more consumer goods], society chooses “more now” at the expense of “much more later.”"

When you're starting up in Starcraft you don't have any soldiers to defend your base. There's no requirement to train any, you can just focus resources on developing your tech tree if you want to.

 

But what happens?  What always happens.  You get rushed by the Zerg player who picked the opposite end of the spectrum and focused all his resources on consumer goods (zerglings).

If you can outlast the rush in the beginning, you have a decided advantage tactically because of your capital goods (factories that produce giant tanks).  There's a time and place for either strategy, and there's no clear favorite guaranteed anything.  Still, it's hard not to draw an analogy with the quicker, easier dark side of the force.  As any veteran player will vouch for, a zerg rush done properly is not easy to execute.  It is, I would argue, easier than managing a long-term complex production line with many diverse elements.  It's also interesting to note that consistency rarely gets a statue built of it; certainly when compared to the number of statues celebrating passion.

-J