Strategy games and the patience problem

Most of us play games on phones in a hurry — a few minutes here, a bus ride there. Strategy games push back against that, and the good ones use it deliberately.

Ironline Command is the clearest case I've played recently. Its whole design punishes rushing. Overextend your units past your supply lines and they stall out exactly when you need them. I lost repeatedly before I stopped playing it like an action game.

The trick I eventually learned was to think one turn ahead of where I wanted to be, not where I was. Once that clicked, the same maps that frustrated me became genuinely tense in a good way.

If you bounce off strategy games because they feel slow, that slowness might be the point. Lean into it. The payoff is that click of a plan coming together, which few genres deliver as well.