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Just noticing that people use 'strategy' tag very loosely for starcraft 2 questions. I recommend that we use our brains and start using the 'tactics' tag when it makes more sense. Anyone disagree?

The terms tactic and strategy are often confused: tactics are the actual means used to gain an objective, while strategy is the overall campaign plan, which may involve complex operational patterns, activity, and decision-making that lead to tactical execution.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactic_(method)#Strategy_versus_tactic

EDIT: I can't figure out if this is better as a META post or actually in the real site since it is directly talking about SC2, thoughts?

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    This belongs here on Meta
    – Ivo Flipse
    Aug 13, 2010 at 19:03
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    Belongs on Meta, but technically a lot of this concern would apply to the whole gamut of RTS games, not just SC2, neh?
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Aug 13, 2010 at 19:08
  • Also, one note: we have [strategy] with an incoming synonym of [strategies], but we have two separate tags for [tactic] and [tactics]. Which do we want?
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Aug 13, 2010 at 19:16
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    @Grace good question, I suppose the plurality could be determined by the question, if I'm talking about what are some good tactics or sharing some tactics, or just one... but if we were to just pick one I'd say 'tactics' plural would be best, and 'strategy' singular, seems to be the most versatile and linguistically sound options IMO.
    – MetaGuru
    Aug 13, 2010 at 21:10
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    Picking a single one would be better when it comes to any tag. Singular is typically shorter, while the plural is more categorizey (i.e. you would file a document about a specific tactic in a folder called "tactics"). As a result, it is unreasonable to expect all users to remember to use which tag based on how many tactics are being spoken of. As now, we actually don't have any questions tagged [tactics], so I can't actually propose a synonym.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Aug 16, 2010 at 12:26
  • It's unfortunate that the Starcraft community misuses the term "strategy", however its misuse seems be heavily ingrained within the community. As far as language correctness goes, tactics would be the correct term. However, I would expect repeated confusion of the terms, from a large portion of people. If there isn't enough need to disambiguate strategy/tactics, I would go with a combined tag.
    – chobok
    Apr 27, 2012 at 6:35
  • Actually, I get the sense that tactics/strategy are often confused and used interchangeably within the general population.
    – chobok
    Apr 27, 2012 at 6:43

1 Answer 1

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As the Wiki pages says:

  • tactics is asking for the specific steps on how to do something

  • strategy is asking for theories on how something could be done

So for me it seems pretty clear when to ask for one or the other, though personally I'd prefer tactics, as they are tend to be less subjective or argumentative.

And yes, we should check these tags to make sure whether they are correct, though you might even view them as meta tags...

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  • I wouldn't call them meta-tags per se, since the question could in fact be asking about tactics/strategy. That said, there has been some discussion about their utility.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Aug 13, 2010 at 19:15
  • Strategy is the core objective. E.g. damage an opponents infrastructure in order to reduce their production of arms, and hence their ability to fight. Tactics is the implementation of that objective. E.g. How to approach a tank factory, blow it up, and how to get out. Tactics have a theoretical aspect to them e.g. textbook flanking manoeuvres.
    – chobok
    Apr 27, 2012 at 6:41
  • I think the definition of tactics/strategy in this answer isn't entirely clear or correct.
    – chobok
    Apr 27, 2012 at 6:42
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    Then propose another @chobok :-)
    – Ivo Flipse
    Apr 27, 2012 at 8:57

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