I think you're overestimating the effort necessary to develop such a game. Most grand strategy games are being developed by comparably small teams after all. Let's take a look at Paradox: 23 employees working on four projects at once. Each game is being designed by 3-4 people and supported by three artists in total (that's 0.75 artists per project). Oh yeah, the manpower necessary to develop some of the best and most complex games of the genre is just absolutely incredible.

And "grand strategy" does not imply that such a game has to be huge and extremely complicated. Frankly I believe that this assumption is what's really wrong with the current state of the genre. Many devs tend to "improve" their games by adding features and content until they become both an almost undesignable and unplayable mess. IMO it's quite probable that this genre will be redefined by "small" games that are better designed and more sophisticated while being much smaller and more accessible - stuff that does not require the gigantic manpower that Paradox has with its three people per project. :P
Don't worry, he does not have a point. He doesn't even have a clue. And he's behaving like a complete dick.

That's 22 more than most of these 7 day FPS games had, and Paradox sure as hell takes longer than a month for each game. But that's just simple math, and I'm just some know it all dick. I mean, I'm not the one who resorts to name-calling, but I sure am just a gigantic dick anyway.

So what the fuck does the word grand mean then. Let me just grab my dictionary, because I assumed it was the opposite of small. Maybe I'm wrong, since I'm so delightfully insufferable.

Oh no, grand actually does mean big! And grand strategy is a genre defined by its large scope. Huh how about that?

Yeah, but note that Paradox is creating some of the biggest and most complex games of the genre with such small teams and within months maybe a year or a year and a half? That's not more time and manpower than most indie teams have.

And note that these contests like the one where Europa was posted are rather about developing ideas and prototypes, not games ready for digital distribution. Europa isn't a finished product either. Without a doubt it would be possible to create a playable and enjoyable prototype for a comparably small/simple but yet sophisticated grand strategy game within weeks.

Maybe check what "grand strategy" means. Wikipedia's definition is:
"purposeful employment of all instruments of power available to a security community"

A "grand strategy game" does have a large scale in that it covers all instruments a political power has but it's up to the developer how detailed the presentation of each instrument is. Note how both Paradox' franchises and Civilization cover all these aspects but with a totally different approach, level of abstraction and complexity/depth. One could make such a game even much simpler than Civilization and still cover all these aspects.

And as for the name-calling: you "talked" to Trilarion in a highly insulting and condescending manner - to top it all off while being completely wrong. Yeah, you were being a dick.

How on earth am I completely wrong? Here are objectively true facts:

1) Grand strategy is a more complex genre than an FPS.
2) An indie grand strategy would require a lot more work than an indie FPS.
3) Grand strategies have an exponentially smaller market than an FPS.

I have a great deal of opinions on how FPS is a stale genre that could really use a large input of creative ideas while grand strategy is not, and how an unpolished FPS can still be fun while an unpolished grand strategy would not. Those are subjective, definitely. The above is not. It is not a matter of my opinion vs. yours.

If my boiling rage that comes from seeing dozens of posts like Trilarion's from people wondering why indies do not cater to their niche sensibilities was dickish, then fine. I was mad and I don't care. It's frustrating to see people like that, as I know a lot of small indie developers and I'm very aware of the problems they face when trying to make just enough money to stay afloat. Criticizing indie developers for not taking on risky niche projects, when many of them can't afford to, irks me in a very bad way.

It's not an isolated thing, but this just happens to be the thread that I finally felt provoked enough to respond. Usually I just write an angry profane rant and delete it. But now I'm just fed up.