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The origin of strategy games is rooted in their close cousins, board games. If there is any format of game that is closest to the original precomputer form (where that existed), it is the strategy game. This chapter is the most PC-centric chapter in the entire book, but for good reason: Most strategy games are released for the PC. Console efforts so far have been few and far between.
The benefits that the computer has brought to the strategy game genre include the capability to impartially manage complex rule-sets that would be next to impossible for a human to manage without bogging down the game to a level at which it is no longer fun to play.