Soren Johnson has posted his “seven deadly sins” of strategy game design, a column that (I think) premiered in an issue of Game Developer magazine earlier this year.

His point on scripting (#1) and on story (#7) are two sides of the same coin. If you have a story based campaign, like his examples World in Conflict and Rise of Legends did, then some level of scripting is unavoidable. But I can remember my great disappointment once it became clear that my AI “allies” in the World in Conflict campaign were just Potemkin village idiots – it looked like they were fighting, but they would never do any decisive in the battle since they weren’t supposed to. Once the scripting became obvious, I found it very hard to enjoy the story I was being told.