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What is less forgivable is when the soldiers seem to be completely dependent on the player for orders, not responding even when under fire from a long ranged unit or even retreating/defending itself from its assailant. There are reasons for soldiers being designed this way: a unit could come under long-ranged fire, respond, and get lured into an ambush. But its still annoying to see your unit get whittled down to nearly no health because you happened to not be around to give the order and the unit just refuses to do anything to save itself.
The small-scale variation of this which pops up in [[Tactical Shooter
Closely related to [[Easy Logistics]]. Much like [[Command and Conquer Economy]] only this applies to units instead of buildings being dependent on the players orders. Usually, all three tropes will be present together.
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This is so common in strategy games that it may be best to save examples for aversions or particularly blatant examples of the trope.
* ''[[Total War]]'' is particularly vulnerable to [[Fridge Logic]] regarding this. A group of highly impetuous knights that are completely embroiled in a chaotic mix of friendly and hostile forces will, at the orders of a general half a battlefield away, break off, reform (a very difficult task for cavalry) and then can be ordered by the same general to circle round the enemy army and attack from the rear. The units in this game also don't respond when under missile attack, but in this case its justified as a group of infantry suddenly charging out to attack some archers would throw a players strategy out of kilter and possibly result in the loss of the battle.
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** Mind you, a turn can represent anything between 1 to 60 years, so it's not entirely unreasonable to expect that some communication would occur in that time.
*** Well it doesn't make sense when you tell a unit to go out and explore only to recall them when they're halfway across the world.
** Making this less a case of
** Well, there's also meeting with other world leaders on a whim (despite in some cases lacking the appropriate technology to go visit them) and news of world wonders being constructed in cities you've never heard of by civilizations you've never met.
* Both blatantly displayed and averted in ''[[Evony]]''. On one hand, you can apparently receive news from players miles away instantly. In the medieval world. On the other hand, armies take realistic amounts of time to travel from place to place. (A real headache for alliances whose members are not close together.)
* Though not a strategy game, this is gratuitously played straight in the ''Warriors'' series (''[[Dynasty Warriors]]'' ''et al''), where hostile commanders can apparently have a ''real-time conversation'' from opposite ends of a raging battlefield.
* ''[[Praetorians]]'' plays this straight mostly, but if your units get embroiled in battle with another unit, you won't be able to give them orders until the hostile unit is dead.
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* ''[[Dominions]]'' probably comes as close to averting this as possible. Instead of commanding your soldiers in battle, you give orders (formation, battle plan, spells to cast, contingencies, etc…) to each unit in a region, and they then carry out the battle automatically whenever they attack or are attacked. In addition, if you want any information to strategize on, you must scout out a region, organize an attack, and hope your intelligence is still good by the time it launches.
** To get reliable intel is almost impossible without special spies that not every nation has access to or spells that costs valuable magic gems. Some scrying spells even risk your casting mage's mind.
* The non-responsiveness problem is heavily averted in ''[[Warcraft]] III'': not only are units able to acquire and attack on their own, the "autocast" feature means that they will use certain abilities whenever appropriate. For instance, a Priest left alone with a group of units would automatically heal any injuries. (This tech actually debuted in ''[[
** The autoretaliation debuted in Warcraft ''[[Older Than They Think|II]]'', if not the first; it also had the feature of an attacking unit revealing itself through the [[Fog of War]].
** Also, Blizzard RTS games were some of the first to implement a "Hold Position" order, where a unit would stay in one spot and engage anything that came into range, but would not leave its position of attacked from range. This was useful if you were massing forces for an attack and didn't want them getting pulled into battle prematurely by enemy units trying to kite them into an ambush.
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* In ''Powermonger'' orders to your other captains are sent by carrier pigeon. If you like you can scroll the map and watch the bird fly to its destination.
* In the American Civil War tactical game ''[[Take Command]]'', messengers on horse are sent out from the field headquarters to the battallions with the planned orders, and these messengers can be killed by the enemy.
* Averted in ''Campaigns on the Danube''. What the player sees, including their own units, is realistically delayed and often inaccurate information. You might order a unit to attack only to find it is no longer capable or that remnants you attack are actually a substantial force.
* In [[Traveller]] the structure of society is based on the lack of communication. While any given planet has real-time from any spot on the world, the Imperium in general strains itself to make up for the fact that messages ''must'' be carried on a starship because they cannot be sent on their own. And the fact that Jump(interstellar drive) space is always approximately one week although some Jump engines are faster then others(I.E. you can have one parsec jumps, two parsec jumps, up to four parsec for a courier vessel and even higher for a warship but always it is a week). Another result is that the prevailing authorities will always be the local ones and the Imperium has limited ability in how much it can micro-manage planets.
* Justified in ''[[
** Also might be justified for the Terran faction - the lower units like marines, firebats etc., who are brainwashed, drugged soldiers in power armors. The higher units like armors, fliers etc. are experienced and ranked. Actually, whenever you select multiple units, one of them (the one with the highest rank) is selected as a "command unit", which communicates with you. And it is in the future with rather few units (max 12 units get commands at the same time) - radio is quite fine for that, especially when you consider that there is hardly any cover and that taking cover with a ton heavy walking behemoth is not all that easy or practical for most cases. And for heroes... do we even have to go there? :)
** The Terrans use Adjutants to control their troops, so it's not infeasible that, in fact, the commander's interface literally looks like an RTS and the AI relays orders. For example, when the commander "selects" a marine and then "selects" an enemy to attack, what actually happens is that the Adjutant translates it into orders communicated through the marine's [[Power Armor]], via either voice or even by highlighting said enemy on the helmet's HUD. The real question here is who controls the units through the "RTS" overview screen in ''[[
*** Usually, missions with Raynor as a playable unit involve him personally leading a small unit. He could just be literally ordering his squad around verbally.
* Anything with massively advanced communications or [[Psychic Powers]] can be expected to use something like this.
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* In ''[[Ender's Game]]'', the Formics were like this due to a [[Hive Mind]], and humans compensated by learning how to create instant communication technology. {{spoiler|Ender in fact commented on how the game he was playing was unrealistic because of the instant communication, when unbeknownst to him, it was actually real. Bean realizes the game is real for this very reason in later a later book, but never informs others}}
** It also ''does'' filter through a chain of command, albeit brief, once he started training with his squad leaders. This is ''usually'' not a problem...
* The EVA units of [[Command & Conquer]] are noted as simplifying command of troops in the field, helping to justify that part of this trope in Tiberian Dawn, and, by extension, Tiberian Sun.<ref>but not Firestorm, where the Brotherhood has no problems commanding units in the field for those two missions where neither CABAL nor a stolen EVA unit is available</ref>
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[[Category:Acceptable Breaks From Reality]]
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