I love grand strategy games. But I have noticed that there is not a lot of variety in the settings for these games. Most are historical with a couple generic space empire and a few generic fantasy kingdom games floating around. I would like to see more done with the grand strategy games genre.

For example a grand strategy game that revolved around the UN and the goal is to avert/end wars and respond to global crisis. Or a grand strategy focused on a single country and you are trying to control an epidemic outbreak (or you could even jazz it up and have it be a zombie outbreak). And I would love to see a grand strategy game that was alien invasion simulator (Think X-com meets Hearts of Iron).

Are there any grand strategy games out there with unique setting or creative game concepts?

I'm interested to know too :)

I actually started a vaguely smilar post to this several days ago but it was mostly centered around my gripe about too many wizards and dragons and crap. You are asking for actual examples of something else, so this should be fascinating to see. Right now I am a total blank and I play A LOT of RPGs.

Hmm - yes they are all pretty much in the serttings you describe.

However, grand strategy almost by defniition requires long time frames, several protragonists with multi-faceted relationships between those protragonists. Hence: historical, future history (space), alternative history (fantasy) - the common factor really being "history" to give it that epic time span.

The alternatives yuo mention seem, to me, to lose that time span aspect and is perhaps why they havent been tried. They would seem to be more situations that might arise within a grand strategy rather then the whole picture.

So, how else might you "break the mould"? Perhaps drop the other thinly veiled common aspect - human relationships (either actual human, or human projected into alien or fantasy bodies) and drop it into some other life form entirely with differing drives and needs.

I'll think about that whilst I'm out and about today and see what comes to mind.

I like that idea, what about a game where instead of being a general of armies or a leader of a nations you manage a human immune system and homeostasis? So the point of the game would be to maintain the health of a body as it ages and receives injuries, gets ill and weakens over time. Granted it would be abstraction of reality but all grand strategy games are. I think it would be a fascinating thing to simulate.

Well, you would have to change the time scale from months and years to minutes and hours to achieve the "grand" time scales required. Exploration and discovery could be other areas of the body. You could play both "sides" - the invading organism/infection. Research would be mutation based. Not sure how you would map diplomacy across tho'

Another alternative could be various fungal based life forms spreading across a area of land - tiny to us huge to them. Mutation again for research. Perhaps opportunity for more factions in the shape of other organisms with differring characteristics. Also this one has perhaps grater potential for "environmental" conflict with external fators such as floods, droughts, someone stepping on the path of ground, etc. Choosing to ally with another fungus could result in new mutations through exchange of genetic code.

There's a mod for civ 3 on the civfanatics forums which basically does that, as far as the game engine and modmaking tools allow. 'The human body mod' or something like that.

I'm fairly sure civ 3 or 4 has a mod based on War of the Worlds, too.

Fallen Enchantress is fantasy, but set in a post (fantasy) apocalyptic world rather than a 'generic fantasy kingdom'.

Oh, and not to forget Alpha Centauri, which isn't really 'space' or 'generic', either.

I assume that was the sort of game you meant by 'grand strategy'

Symbiosis. There are, for example, certain bacteria that the human body simply cannot live without (unless it wants to develop medical issues).