I've been a fan of strategy games since I was a teenager, but the only game I find myself coming back to has been Tom Clancy's EndWar. Despite the relatively simple combat mechanics and lack of depth, that game made an impression on me because it was the very first strategy game I ever played where it felt like the units under my command were people and not unquestioning slaves.

Prior to EndWar, I played a lot of real-time and turn-based strategy games. While they no doubt had little bits and pieces of dialogue in gameplay, End War was the first one that did a good job at characterizing your units. Part of its success was in the fact that no two units of the same type sounded alike; the tank leader of team ANETO and team JUNGFRAU were distinctly different characters and had their own quotes.

These same units were also willing to question your judgement if you send them into hopeless engagements. Sending APCs to fight main battle tanks is suicidal, and they will let you know. They breathe with relief if you tell them to retreat after getting in a tough spot.

The ambient chatter was pretty good too; soldiers comment on seeing their allies getting wiped out. They give each other pep talks, and complain about the player's obsession with capturing uplinks. Units that survived multiple battles and got promoted also speak with more confidence.

The only other strategy game that comes to mind when it came to humanizing your units was Company of Heroes; the troops there would panic in the middle of firefights and would happily (or angrily) retreat when ordered to. The modern XCOM comes close, but there's something missing there. It might be due to the soldiers not conversing with each other in mid-battle, or making comments about things they find in the environment.

Share with me: Do you know of any other strategy games that do well when it comes to giving the units personality? Especially in mid-gameplay.

You mentioned XCOM, and that is exactly the game I was thinking of that would benefit immensely from something like this. It's not enough to just let you customise the soldiers you are controlling, I want them to have their own personalities and actually have some team interactions during missions and off-duty. Haven't played XCOM 2 though so I don't know if they've done this in the sequel already.

The Wargame series (European Escalation, AirLand Battle, and Red Dragon) are brigade-level modern strategy games that take place on large maps with lots and lots of units. You'd think it would be sterile as a result... and to be fair, a lot of the time it pretty much is.

Despite that scale, though, every single unit is given a random name (squad leaders, crew commanders, etc). Their psychological state is displayed clearly on the UI, like if they're calm or panicking, along with whatever they're trying to do - aim, load, move, etc. It's a slight humanizing of otherwise tiny, distant objects under your command.

What makes it really interesting, though, is at the end of each match. You get to see a big list of all the units which died and who killed them. They're all listed by type and name. It's a weird detail; totally unnecessary, but weirdly satisfying and kinda sobering too.