Best strategy games
We have drawn some boundaries, however.
Frozen Synapse
For five seconds at a time,Frozen Synapseallows you to feel like a tactical genius.
The next five seconds might flip everything around though, leaving you feeling like a dolt.
But when a plan comes together?
You’re a genius again, for at least five seconds more.
Company Of Heroes
Company Of Heroes made World War II seem like new territory.
It manages to marry the humanity of Band of Brothers with the ingredients of an RTS.
Has any RTS game handled both the calm and the storm as well as Company Of Heroes?
DEFCON
DEFCON is the strategy game most likely to make you wake up in a cold sweat.
It’s a game in which people are reduced to numbers (and ashes).
The value of life.
The closest strategy gaming comes to horror.
That doesn’t mean Midnight Suns is a pushover, though.
Far from it, as its waves of swelling enemy ranks can attest.
It’ll make you want to pump your own fists straight into the air.
Unity Of Command
The perfect gateway game.
It models all the smart stuff, including supply lines, but doesn’t drown players in the details.
There’s plenty for experienced war gamers to enjoy as well.
Why is it possible to send soldiers into battle without a weapon?
Why is the interface so unfriendly to newcomers?
Indeed, UFO is riddled with irritations.
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance
In the beginning, there was Total Annihilation.
The year is 1997, the year that Duke Nukem Forever went into production.
Supreme Commander followed ten years later.
Initially, it’s the scale that impresses.
The digital adaptation is strong, with swift tutorials that guide you through the initially intimidating interface.
It’s designed for 2-4 players, but making up the numbers with bots works great.
There’s really no excuse not to play it.
Slipways
Some might call Slipways a 4X-lite.
We prefer the term ‘grand-strategy-themed puzzle game’.
Dominions IV
From archfiends to gods.
Dominions IV, like Solium Infernum, can be off-putting at first.
There are cities to build, victory points to secure and armies to move around the randomly generated maps.
Or perhaps it’s that there are no basics.
Break through the hard crust, however, and there are rich veins to tap into.
Endless Legend
Endless Legend is unspeakably beautiful.
Each world asks to be revealed, each faction stokes curiosity.
They’re nomads obsessed with collecting dust to unlock its true power.
Even so, it’s got that level of internal consistency that suspends all disbelief.
However and whatever you choose to play, you’re guaranteed one hell of a light show.
Galactic Civilizations 2: Endless Universe
Galactic Civilizations 2 succeeds by sticking to the basics.
You take control of a space-faring race and you conquer the galaxy, just as the 4X gods intended.
The AI is notable, both for the challenge it offers and the way that it operates.
Heroes of Might and Magic III
Heroes of Might and Magic III is almost perfect.
A huge part of the game’s success lies in its approach to progression.
That’s how football works, yes?
If you’ve not dipped into it so far, now’s a good time.
But it’s the character of the squad members that seals the deal.
If you don’t, go play Jagged Alliance 2 and make some memories.
It’s a great package - and heck, worth it for the remastered music alone.
The only notable omission is the lack of any strategic or management meta-game once each battle is over.
The Banner Saga
The Banner Saga is an epic turn-based strategy series whose story spans across three separate games.
Thefeelof Banner Saga is what’s most memorable, elevating choose-your-own-adventure tropes into real atmosphere.
The core appeal of the format nevertheless remains the same.
The way it generates such fantastic, characterful anecdotes of Achillean heroism and Sisyphean despair.
You’re leading a village in a dangerous land of magic, religious conflict, and looming environmental crisis.
Where do you explore and when?
And those decisions can never be fully divorced from the wider situation.
The ideal solution might be obvious but unaffordable, or contradict another plan you have going.
For the most part, it’s classic Total War.
Offworld Trading Company is one such game.
It’s about offworld colonies, except you’re not worrying about keeping your population happy and healthy.
It’s about making big profits, but money is a fluid thing rather than the central resource.
And it does that through the simple act of delegation.
If you’re military-minded, let the computer handle the economy and pop on your admiral’s stripes.
Europa Universalis IV
The Europa series feels like the tent-pole at the centre of Paradox’s grand strategy catalogue.
Not that there is such a thing as a hardcoded victory.
Providing the player with freedom is just one part of the Paradox philosophy though.
It’s funny and light on its feet, and how many games in this list can claim that?
For extra fun, get the Seed of Evil DLC, too - it has a fire-breathing moose.
How many games in this list can claimthat?
StarCraft II
StarCraft II is the Platonic ideal of the micro-heavy multiplayer RTS game.
According to the StarCraft Wiki, a proficient player can perform approximately 150 productive actions per minute.
Total War: Warhammer II, however, solves the series' Vitamin M deficiency with aplomb.
It would be worth the asking price for that alone.
It was superbly balanced, perfectly paced, and offered just the right mix of economic and military play.
Definitive Edition, however, is more than just AoE2’s glammed-up zombie.
The scientist was called Microsoft).
Long live the (age of) king(s).
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri
After Earth, the stars.
The release of the disappointing Civilization: Beyond Earth has only served to improved Alpha Centauri’s stock.
It is a complete thing, and several grades above the usual space opera hokum.
You are creating a paradise rather than working one into destruction, or so it seems.
Of course, that’s not the whole story.
Whole systems have been ripped out and replaced in the name of slicker and smarter galactic empire-building.
This empire has very much struck back.
Sid Meier’s Civilization VI
It’s easy to dismiss the value of incremental improvements.
We’re drawn to the flashy and the new, to innovations that light the touchpaper of change.
The old draw is still there.
You get to take a nation from conception to robot-aided world domination.
Win the space race, infect the world with (your) culture.
Get nuked by Gandhi.
It’s a marriage of scope and personality that surpasses most game’s attempts at either.
Civ VI funnels that grand strategy through smaller milestones.
City-planning matters more, thanks to specialised districts with adjacency bonuses.
It refines ideas the series has been playing around with for decades.
No one change is revolutionary, and nor is their cumulative impact.
They still make it the best Civ by far, and Civ games are fantastic.
While a key feature of Shadow Tactics, time continued there, making this the more surgical software.
Achieve it without mind control darts and we salute you.
Yep: Desperados III is rootin' tootin' grade-A snoopin'.
Crusader Kings 3
The Crusader Kings games are strategy/RPG hybrids.
What’s more, its refined interface makes it a much more enjoyable game to play than its predecessor.
If you’ve not played a Crusader Kings game before then CK3 is where you should start.
But when the time does come for you to move on, Crusader Kings 3 is a worthy heir.
FTL revels in creating science fiction scenarios like this.
It’s a roguelike in which you control small spaceships and their crew from a top-down perspective.
You’ll be attacked by slavers in an area where solar flares periodically damage your ship.
Two minutes later, the slavers are destroyed, but your engines were damaged in the fight.
War Of The Chosen is the superheroic cheese to XCOM 2’s guerilla tactics chalk.
That harlequin nature is at least part of the charm.
There is no other answer - especially with the recent addition of its free Advanced Edition update.
Action counts in Into The Breach.
Failing to do something useful with one of your three units almost always spells doom.
An instant-classic masterpiece that doesn’t even remotely make a run at tell us it’s a masterpiece.
It just gets on with the job.
Despite this, the changes are not sweeping.
