Reminds me of Balance of Power. You can spend ages ordering a crazy amount of events around the globe (increasing/decreasing aid, staging a coup, etc), with a full menu of possible actions for every each country of the planet. You usually click "next turn" when you're bored.

Even when the action points available for your units are turned to one per turn, economy still plays a part. Knowing when to move and when to perform a task (strike etc) for each piece is still an economic concern, for you could still choose NOT to do anything with a piece in a move to your detriment (thus you must use that one move economically). Strategy and economy is tied together.

I'm not aware of a turn-based game which can remove action economics from the game. If there is an available move, then there will always be a economic (strategic) consideration to make in order to win.

There's one instance I've noticed where action economy might not be as important for all characters.

In Shard of Spring and Demon's Winter, when casting a rune spell, you can spend as many SP as you want, with no maximum other than your current total. (There is a minimum for each spell.) Hence, if you want, you can spend all your SP on a powerful attack spell to kill even the most powerful enemy in one action. The drawback is that you're then out of SP, which means you won't be casting spells for a while, and SP recovery is certainly much slower than the time it takes to get another action.

There are a few other games I've encountered, mainly JRPGs, where you can spend all of your MP (or similar resource) on a single powerful attack, but usually there's the alternative of using weaker but more MP-efficient (but less action-efficient) attacks.

There's also the occasional game where you can get unlimited actions, which breaks the game. This can happen in Final Fantasy Tactics and the Romancing SaGa remake through normal gameplay (though the strategies can be quite complex), and in the second Dark Sun CRPG if you use a cheat to get access to the partially implemented Time Stop spell (but note that said spell can lead to a softlock if you're not careful).

Sounds to me like "action (spell point) economy" is still very important (for all characters).
Since you will be "defenseless" after your powerful attack, and you also won't be a of any more help for your team mates.
Come to think about it: you might even become an additional burden for them in that state.

MP/SP efficiency can affect action economy in the long run.


Persona 5 had a problem with highest tier magic only inflicting about 30% more than their 2nd highest counterparts, while having more than twice the SP cost. In a drawn-out fight that could mean having to give up a turn more often to chug SP-recovery consumable, if available.

Hm. Thinking about this, to have this work, each individual action would have to be relatively minor. So giant HP pools or really weak attacks/heals, things like that. That's usually the opposite of what most people tend to enjoy (and would almost certainly pad out the length).

It'd be a game where you only achieve victory through innumerable small actions, with few to no discrete moments of "that was a turning point" or "that's when victory was achieved". A downside of this kind of game is also when you often then -- late game or late battle -- suffer through "I already know the outcome, but we're still going through all the motions until resolution completes". By that metric, a lot of 4x games fit this: while early game each individual action matters. But late game, it's just clean up and waiting.

I do want to point out the opposite (ish): The recent game Old World. It's a great spin on a 4x game where one of your empire's productions (beside cash, wood, etc...) is "commands" and they clear every turn and certain parts of your economy produce them [rather than other bits]. You're pretty much always strapped for these. You're never going to have enough to do everything every turn. If you're at war and spending your commands on military units, you won't have enough to keep up ordering your workers to do things. Or if you have a major dying-off in your governors/advisors/etc, you're going to be spending your commands filling the vacant seats rather than giving other more direct orders. And of course you can (at a pretty inefficient conversion rate) buy more for when you really need to, or even over-spend commands to push a single unit well beyond its usual per turn limit. And certain actions pre-spend future turns' commands.

It's really elegant and a great departure from the norm. And, depending on your goals, it may achieve some of the emotional goal you're looking for here. (Of course, doing the right things to produce sufficient commands is extremely important -- so it's not at all "action economy is not important" but is very much a different-than-usual action economy.)

EDIT: It's at a more zoomed-in level than most 4x games, so units can move pretty far on a given turn, rather than each individual square of move being critically important. But, during combat, since it's a 1-unit-per-tile game, maneuvering can get expensive and important. I still haven't won a game of it yet; and I've only played through 3 since it came out a month or two ago.
Psionics in D&D 3e.

I noticed that in The 7th Saga.

Note, however, that the game gives you an infinite use item that restores MP at one point and then takes it away later. Then again, this same game has one spell that the priest character learns that restores all HP/MP to a character. It's learned late and is expensive (120 MP), but since it costs only MP, you can have him use it on himself as much as you want. (In any case, this makes MP economy meaningless at those parts of the game.)

Also, in Final Fantasy 7, stronger healing spells are less efficient than Cure. Cure + All is the most efficient practical healing ability. (By "practical", I'm excluding things like Cure + Quadra Magic, which can heal a nice amount of HP for little cost, but you can't choose who gets the healing, making that particular combo useless. Also excluding the free healing you can get with multiple Elemental materia.)

How could you do that? From what I can tell, each power has only a fixed PP cost that doesn't scale. 3.5e psionics (which are generally seen as an improvement and the best iteration of D&D psionics up to that point) does allow you to spend extra PP on many powers to boost their effects, but you still can't spend more than your caster level on a single power.

(The JRPGs that I was thinking of when writing that post were Dragon Quest 6 (Magic Burst does 3x MP in damage (2x in the remakes for whatever reason; one of the questionable balance changes here)) and SaGa Frontier (Tower spends all of the user's JP, and the spent JP is factored into the spell damage formula).)

While you can't quite "blow your whole load" at once, psionics, being point based like that, do let you choose how much to pump into a power each time you use it. "you can’t spend more power points on a power than your manifester level" is present, but you can spend less and scale down when you need.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicFeats.htm#overchannel however, is basically a must-take for every psionic caster.

And, of course, it's built into Wilder with Wild Surge.

I remember there were more shenanigans, but it was a long time ago since I departed 3.5 for Pathfinder. (And didn't use psionics much even first -- it slows down play at the table doing its analysis paralysis during power use since you decide all the variables every use, unlike spell slots that are fixed.)

Edit: I didn't fully address. Psionics in 3.5 are "build your own spell" sort of for most of them. Examples:
* https://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/energyMissile.htm spend extra PP for damage and DC.
* https://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/disable.htm more PP for range and DC
* https://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/astralConstruct.htm totally custom creature each use, based on PP spent