How does Wayward Strategy define Real-Time Tactics (RTT) versus Real-Time Strategy (RTS)?

Wayward Strategy draws the line between RTT and RTS at where the player's attention and decisions are concentrated. In its article "An Exploration and Definition of the Real-Time Tactics Game Genre," the site argues that Real-Time Tactics focuses primarily on troop positioning and immediate engagements, while Real-Time Strategy emphasizes economic growth and broader strategic planning. That distinction is the site's working definition, and it uses games like Wargame and World in Conflict as RTT examples to show how the two design priorities produce different play experiences.

The core distinction

Wayward Strategy frames the split as a question of what the game asks you to manage in real time:

• RTT (Real-Time Tactics): the primary challenge is where your units are, what they can see, and how an engagement resolves once contact happens. Positioning and timing of individual fights carry the weight.
• RTS (Real-Time Strategy): the primary challenge is building and sustaining an economy while converting that economic advantage into military pressure. Broader planning across the match matters more than any single engagement.

This is a matter of emphasis, not a hard binary. The site's point is that games cluster around one priority or the other, and that clustering shapes everything from unit design to match length.

What the RTT examples show

Wayward Strategy cites Wargame and World in Conflict to illustrate the RTT side. In both, the article's framing suggests the interesting decisions are tactical: how you array forces, what terrain or line of sight you exploit, and how a specific engagement unfolds. Economic management is either absent or heavily abstracted, so the player's real-time attention stays on the battlefield rather than on a base or production queue.

That contrasts with the Command & Conquer-style lineage the site also covers, where expansion, income, and production are live concerns running alongside combat.

What RTS might borrow from RTT

Beyond defining the genres, the article discusses potential lessons RTS could take from RTT design. The implication is that RTS games can lose clarity when economic and strategic layers crowd out the tactical decision-making that makes individual engagements readable. RTT's tighter focus offers a model for making positioning and engagement outcomes matter more legibly.

Which one you might prefer

The useful takeaway is to look at where a game puts its real-time pressure. If most of your attention goes to unit placement and the resolution of contact, you are playing something closer to Wayward Strategy's RTT definition; if it goes to economy and long-range planning, it sits on the RTS side.