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StarCraft20 years agoGosu "GosuGamers" Gamers

Sun Tzu Wu: SC Strategy

Sun Tzu Wu - The Art of War is a warfare strategy book written almost 2300 years ago. It has played a very important role across the military history of our peace loving race. We found two intelligent and inspirational articles - both making correlations between Sun Tzu and Starcraft, that may be of help in your strategical thinking.

[s]starcraft[/s]Even though Starcraft is a real time strategy game, it emulates war in many aspects but through a rather odd reality of warfare. It differs from reality in various aspects.
One being that it assumes each opposing party has a flawless centralized communication system with instantaneous ability to share information. In a way, a starcraft player compares to a ?telepathic army?.

The other aspect it diverges from reality, is that there is no real-time cost for movement. Thus all the issues of transport of supplies and materials to wage real warfare are resolved by magic. A tank or a marine can run endlessly until terminated. These two differences, among others, make the game radically different than if you were to be given the opportunity to ?play? General and wage real warfare.

And yet it is still a strategy game, and any strategy game will always find correlations with real warfare. This leads me to a book written around 2300 years ago, called Sun Tzu - The Art of War.
It also happens to be in the core of the training curriculum of any respectable military officer's education, all around the world. United States Eoe_mime, a USAF Captain, member of Entropy, refers he not only he had to read it, he had to study it!


suntzu1.jpg


Sun Tzu is the name used by the unknown Chinese authors of the sophisticated treatise on philosophy, logistics, espionage, strategy and tactics known as The Art of War. It includes many commentaries by later Chinese philosophers. The core text though was probably written by one person.

The impact this collective work has had in military history can be seen in almost every book ever written about military strategy. Even the book The Prince, by Machiavelli, which deals mainly in matters of State and politics, draws upon it at times word for word, without of course giving it credit in the best machiavellic style.

What does all this have to do with Starcraft you may ask? Well it just so happens I have come across two articles that make correlations between Sun Tzu and our beloved game. They are not for the light reader but are both a good read on a rainy day.

The first is a concise, intelligent and to the point article by United States o]TK[o, member of Team Areola.
» Teamareola.com

The second is a longer brilliant dissertation by Canada » Hautamaki.
» Hautamaki.isgsa.org

You can also find a copy of The Art of War thanks to the Project Gutenberg at:
» Sun Tzu - The Art of War

Links
Hautamaki.isgsa.org - Hautamaki's Strategy Site
Teamareola.com - o]TK[o's Clan - Look int he Strategy Section
Kimsoft.com - The Art of War

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