Strategy game pc list

While there is not always the thrill of the fight, there is often a deep satisfaction achieved from outsmarting both other players and particularly AI. Here are some of the most favored titles in recent years, in no particular order.

In strategy games, the user interface more or less requires point-and-click interaction, which controllers struggle to provide. Only a few games are designed with controller support.

In this list, we take a look at 25 of the best strategy games that stand the test of time. Battlefleet Gothic: Armada is a real-time space strategy game set in the universe of Warhammer 40,, where evil lurks around every corner of the galaxy and alien races do just about everything to try and kill each other. The game is a tribute to its source material and one that will test even the most exceptional admirals out there.

Factorio is a game in which you build, manage, and organize automated factories within an infinite 2D world. The factories you construct are of increasing complexity, requiring more and varied resources to produce an equally diverse set of items.

These items, in turn, allow you to produce even more stuff. Players are invited to use their imagination to design their own factories, combining simple elements into complex structures—and protecting all of it from the monsters that want to destroy it all.

In the game, players fight for survival on a planetary oasis by commanding one of three factions: the defense-oriented Humans, the versatile Beta, or the all consuming Goo. The game caters to a myriad of play styles, including the ability to turtle, by offering players the ability to construct impenetrable walls, dominate from strategic outposts—or become the Goo and overrun your enemies.

In this prequel to the interstellar series of space strategy games, you take on the role of the scientist leading an expedition into the harsh and unforgiving deserts of Kharak to recover an ancient artifact that will come to be the salvation of your people. Made by the masters of grand strategy games, Paradox Interactive, Crusader Kings II explores one of the defining periods in world history.

Beyond Earth is a science fiction take on the tried and tested Civilization formula of turn-based grand strategy games. As part of an expeditio nto find a home beyond an overpopulated Earth, players must lead their people into a new frontier, explore and colonize an alien planet and create a new civilization in space.

Set in the Endless Universe, in which Endless Legend also takes place, Endless Space is a turn-based 4X strategy game in which players take on the role of one of many spacefaring civilizations.

You can control every aspect of your civilization as you strive for galactic dominion. Sorcerer King is a fantasy turn-based strategy title in the vein of 4X games like the classic Master of Magic. In the game, players must build a kingdom and raise a force powerful enough to challenge the eponymous Sorcerer King. Players will begin a civilization of their own creation in a randomly generated universe, exploring new worlds, encountering aliens, and facing the challenges of running an intergalactic civilization replete with war, diplomacy, and everything else.

Remastered with new visuals and gameplay improvements, the two games are designed to run fluidly on modern systems and make full use of everything the new hardware has to offer. These classic titles offer timeless gameplay and certainly stand the test of time. Endless Legend is a fantasy-themed 4X turn-based strategy game from the creators of Endless Space and Dungeon of the Endless. The game is the fantasy follow up to Endless Space replacing the surreal beauty of a tactically significant vacuum with vibrant, terrain-filled hexagons.

In Endless Legend, players control every aspect of their civilization as they struggle to save their homeworld of Auriga. Read our review of the title here. Developed by Stardock Entertainment, Galactic Civilizations 3 is a 4X space strategy game and the latest installment in one of the highest-rated strategy series of all time.

The basics of playing creatures, tipping a scale, and proceeding to the next fight rarely change, but the way Inscryption constantly reinvents all of the systems around those fundamentals is truly incredible. Have you played Age of Empires IV? Wildermyth takes that idea to its logical extreme and beyond, turning crews of squadmates into the heroes of procedurally generated fantasy stories.

They can fall in love, have children, and even retire through old age. Best of all, they can live to become legends, their tales whispered about in entirely new campaigns down the line.

For more, check out IGN's Wildermyth review. Its card fights are a ton of fun, split across two different decks for whether you decide to approach a situation diplomatically or go in guns blazing.

Hades did an incredible job of elevating its roguelike structure with a persistent story, but Griftlands manages to do the same with one that will never be quite the same twice.

We had to wait more than 15 years for a new main entry in the Age of Empires franchise, but for old school, RTS fans, Relic's Age of Empires 4 was practically made to order. Bringing an updated, highly readable look and an effective modern interface to the classic Age formula, the medieval sieges and skirmishes stuck close to their roots and proved that the RTS is far from dead.

Choosing to focus on a smaller number of civilizations but making them play wildly differently was the right call — from the nomadic Mongols to the stalwart English, each has so many small nuances to master that each new match is full of exciting tactics to try.

Total War: Three Kingdoms , the latest historical entry in the series, takes a few nods from Warhammer, which you'll find elsewhere in this list, giving us a sprawling Chinese civil war that's fuelled by its distinct characters, both off and on the battlefield. Each is part of a complicated web of relationships that affects everything from diplomacy to performance in battle, and like their Warhammer counterparts they're all superhuman warriors.

It feels like a leap for the series in the same way the first Rome did, bringing with it some fundemental changes to how diplomacy, trade and combat works. The fight over China also makes for a compelling campaign, blessed with a kind of dynamism that we've not seen in a Total War before. Since launch, it's also benefited from some great DLC, including a new format that introduces historical bookmarks that expand on different events from the era.

The first Total War: Warhammer showed that Games Workshop's fantasy universe was a perfect match for Creative Assembly's massive battles and impressively detailed units. Total War: Warhammer 2 makes a whole host of improvements, in interface, tweaks to heroes, rogue armies that mix factions together and more.

The game's four factions, Skaven, High Elves, Dark Elves and Lizardmen are all meaningfully different from one another, delving deeper into the odd corners of old Warhammer fantasy lore. If you're looking for a starting point with CA's Warhammer games, this is now the game to get—and if you already own the excellent original, too, the mortal empires campaign will unite both games into one giant map.

Paradox's long-running, flagship strategy romp is the ultimate grand strategy game, putting you in charge of a nation from the end of the Middle Ages all the way up to the s. As head honcho, you determine its political strategy, meddle with its economy, command its armies and craft an empire.

Right from the get-go, Europa Universalis 4 lets you start changing history. Maybe England crushes France in the Years War and builds a massive continental empire. Maybe the Iroquois defeat European colonists, build ships and invade the Old World. It's huge, complex, and through years of expansions has just kept growing. The simulation can sometimes be tough to wrap one's head around, but it's worth diving in and just seeing where alt-history takes you.

Few 4X games try to challenge Civ, but Old World already had a leg up thanks designer Soren Johnson's previous relationship with the series. He was the lead designer on Civ 4, and that legacy is very apparent. But Old World is more than another take on Civ. For one, it's set exclusively in antiquity rather than charting the course of human history, but that change in scope also allows it to focus on people as well as empires.

Instead of playing an immortal ruler, you play one who really lives, getting married, having kids and eventually dying. Then you play their heir. You have courtiers, spouses, children and rivals to worry about, and with this exploration of the human side of empire-building also comes a bounty of events, plots and surprises.

You might even find yourself assassinated by a family member. There's more than a hint of Crusader Kings here. You can't have a best strategy games list without a bit of Civ. Civilization 6 is our game of choice in the series right now, especially now that it's seen a couple of expansions.

The biggest change this time around is the district system, which unstacks cities in the way that its predecessor unstacked armies. Cities are now these sprawling things full of specialised areas that force you to really think about the future when you developing tiles. The expansions added some more novel wrinkles that are very welcome but do stop short of revolutionising the venerable series.

They introduce the concept of Golden Ages and Dark Ages, giving you bonuses and debuffs depending on your civilisation's development across the years, as well as climate change and environmental disasters. It's a forward-thinking, modern Civ. This is a game about star-spanning empires that rise, stabilise and fall in the space of an afternoon: and, particularly, about the moment when the vast capital ships of those empires emerge from hyperspace above half-burning worlds.

Diplomacy is an option too, of course, but also: giant spaceships. Play the Rebellion expansion to enlarge said spaceships to ridiculous proportions. Stellaris takes an 'everything and the kicthen sink' approach to the space 4X. It's got a dose of EU4, Paradox's grand strategy game, but applied to a sci-fi game that contains everything from robotic uprisings to aliens living in black holes. It arguably tries to do to much and lacks the focus of some of the other genre greats, but as a celebration of interstellar sci-fi there are none that come close.

It's a liberating sandbox designed to generate a cavalcade of stories as you guide your species and empire through the stars, meddling with their genetic code, enslaving aliens, or consuming the galaxy as a ravenous hive of cunning insects. Fantasy 4X Endless Legend is proof that you don't need to sacrifice story to make a compelling 4X game. Each of its asymmetrical factions sports all sorts of unique and unusual traits, elevated by story quests featuring some of the best writing in any strategy game.

The Broken Lords, for instance, are vampiric ghosts living in suits of armour, wrestling with their dangerous nature; while the necrophage is a relentless force of nature that just wants to consume, ignoring diplomacy in favour of complete conquest. Including the expansions, there are 13 factions, each blessed or cursed with their own strange quirks.

Faction design doesn't get better than this. Civ in space is a convenient shorthand for Alpha Centauri, but a bit reductive. Brian Reynolds' ambitious 4X journey took us to a mind-worm-infested world and ditched nation states and empires in favour of ideological factions who were adamant that they could guide humanity to its next evolution.

The techs, the conflicts, the characters— it was unlike any of its contemporaries and, with only a few exceptions, nobody has really attempted to replicate it. Not even when Firaxis literally made a Civ in space, which wasn't very good. Alpha Centauri is as fascinating and weird now as it was back in '99, when we were first getting our taste of nerve stapling naughty drones and getting into yet another war with Sister Miriam.

More than 20 years later, some of us are still holding out hope for Alpha Centauri 2. Pick an Age of Wonders and you really can't go wrong. If sci-fi isn't your thing, absolutely give Age of Wonders 3 a try, but it's Age of Wonders: Planetfall that's got us all hot and bothered at the moment. Set in a galaxy that's waking up after a long period of decline, you've got to squabble over a lively world with a bunch of other ambitious factions that run the gamut from dinosaur-riding Amazons to psychic bugs.

The methodical empire building is a big improvement over its fantastical predecessors, benefiting from big changes to its structure and pace, but just as engaging are the turn-based tactical battles between highly customisable units. Stick lasers on giant lizards, give everyone jetpacks, and nurture your heroes like they're RPG protagonists—there's so much fiddling to do, and it's all great.

Set in an alternate 's Europe, factions duke it out with squishy soldiers, tanks and, the headline attraction, clunky steampunk mechs. There are plenty of them, from little exosuits to massive, smoke-spewing behemoths, and they're all a lot of fun to play with and, crucially, blow up. Iron Harvest does love its explosions. When the dust settles after a big fight, you'll hardly recognise the area.

Thanks to mortars, tank shells and mechs that can walk right through buildings, expect little to remain standing. The level of destruction is as impressive as it is grim. To cheer yourself up, you can watch a bear fight a mech. Each faction has a heroic unit, each accompanied by their very own pet. All of them have some handy unique abilities, and yes, they can go toe-to-toe with massive war machines.

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 's cosmic battles are spectacular. There's a trio of vaguely 4X-y campaigns following the three of the Warhammer 40K factions: The Imperium, Necron Empire and the nasty Tyranid Hives, but you can ignore them if you want and just dive into some messy skirmishes full of spiky space cathedrals colliding with giant, tentacle-covered leviathans.