Top 10 strategy games for the pc

The clash of deities isn't a re-skin of monarchs or emperors at war — there are disciples to nurture, totems to worship and all manner of nations that can be subject to the whims of the possibly-tentacled pretenders.

Gears Tactics is, as its name might suggest, a turn-based tactics game set in the beefy, growly world of Gears Of War. An odd combination, you might think, but this is a game whose veins run deep with the same kind of deep, tactical prowess as your X-COMs and, err Against all the odds, it really does turn out that, even in the preposterously hench world of Gears, the mind really is the strongest muscle. The only notable omission is the lack of any strategic or management meta-game once each battle is over.

Instead, it's back to the battlefield with your newly looted gear and skills you've gained from levelling up. That may not be everyone's cup of protein tea, but if you've always tended to enjoy the fights of XCOM rather than spending time hanging around your base, this is the tactics game for you. You play as a faction of deranged cyborg techno-monks, plundering the depths of an alien tomb in search of ancient technologies, enlightenment, or sometimes just additional fuel for your knackered starship.

The various bickering cyber-clerics behind your expedition are genuinely memorable characters, and you find yourself gripped - and occasionally even laughing - as their story unfolds in between missions. On the face of things, BattleTech might look like XCOM with giant robots, but those big metal suits aren't just there for show - they're what makes BattleTech so distinctive. A big ol' mech doesn't much care when it loses an arm, for instance - it just keeps on fighting.

Working out how to down these walking tanks both a permanently and b in a way that preserves enough of it to take home and use as parts to build a new one yourself is the key strategy here.

BattleTech is sometimes too slow for its own good though mods and a patch address this , but stick with it and it becomes an incredibly satisfying game of interplanetary iron warfare and robo-collection.

Men of War is a real-time tactics game that simulates every aspect of the battlefield, from the components of each vehicle to the individual hats on your soldiers' heads. The hats are not a gimmick. Best Way have built a full scale real-time tactical game that simulates its world down to the smallest details.

If you've ever played an RPG and scowled when a giant rat's inventory reveals that it had a pair of leather trousers and a two-handed sword secured beneath its tail, Men Of War will be enormously pleasing.

Ammunition, weaponry and clothing are all persistent objects in the world — if you need an extra clip for your gun, you'll have to find it in the world rather than waiting for a random loot drop. If you need backup, or replacements for fallen men of war , you'll be able to find them in friendly squads who exist as actual entities on the map rather than as abstract numbers in a sidebar. The credibility of the world isn't window-dressing. All of that simulation serves a greater purpose, allowing for desperate vehicle captures, as a seemingly doomed squad realises that they might be able to commandeer the Panzer they took out moments ago, patch it up and continue to fight the good fight.

They Are Billions takes real-time strategy, tower defence and zombie survival, and combines it all into a single punishing, rewarding, delicious experience.

It's one of the rare games that succeeds in its Frankenstein-esque genre splicing, and Numantian Games have only made it bigger and more beautiful since coming out of Early Access. The year is , and after one of those classic zombie apocalypses that ravage the earth, the remnants of this steampunk-infused world now live inside a huge walled city to keep out the undead nasties.

But no more! In They Are Billions' sprawling campaign, you must colonise new outposts in the world around you, building new communities from scratch while protecting them from the hungry hordes. The special thing about They Are Billions, though, is the way it keeps you scared and on your toes even during moments of relative peace. The way it leaves you to slowly explore outwards from the centre of the map and see just how many thousands of zombies are waiting for you, just beyond the borders of your city.

The way it generates such fantastic, characterful anecdotes of Achillean heroism and Sisyphean despair. It all adds up to a delectable experience that keeps you coming back even after it defeats you time and time again and, more importantly, even after you finally complete it, too. It's incredible to think that nobody has taken Jagged Alliance 2 on face to face and come out on top. There are other games with a strategic layer and turn-based tactical combat, sure, and there are plenty of games that treat mercenaries, guns and ammo in an almost fetishistic fashion — but is Jagged Alliance 2 still the best of its kind?

Doubts creep in every once in a while and, inevitably, that leads to a swift re-installation and several days lost in the war for Arulco.

Jagged Alliance 2 is still in a class of its own and despite the years spent in its company, it's hard to articulate the reasons why it has endured. The satisfaction of gaining territory in the slow creep across the map is one reason and the tension of the tactical combat is another. Even the inventory management feels just right, making every squad the equivalent of an RPG's party of adventurers.

But it's the character of the squad members that seals the deal. It'd be easy to dismiss them as a cluster of bad jokes and stereotypes, but each has enough personality to hang a hundred stories on — remember the time Fox bandaged Grunty's wounds in the thick of a firefight a turn before he bled out, or the time Sparky made an uncharacteristically good shot and saved an entire squad's bacon?

If you don't, go play Jagged Alliance 2 and make some memories. It pushes a lot of the same buttons as Total War. You build up persistent multi-unit forces on a campaign layer, then position them on a tactical map and shove them into the enemy in a long, grinding bout of micromanaged carnage. As well as offering competitive real-time city-building against both AI and human opponents, Anno also has an extra layer of built-in maritime RTS where you direct a small fleet of ships to trade, explore, carry out reward-based missions, fight pirates, or assault your competitors.

If you had to describe Neptune's Pride in a few words, it'd sound like almost any other game of galactic conquest. Planets and ships can be upgraded, and, as ever, you'll be trying to gather as much science, industry and money as possible. The twist in this particular tale is the speed of the game — or, perhaps, the distances involved. Sending a fleet to explore, invade or intercept takes hours. There's no way to speed up the passage of time so what to do while waiting?

Neptune's Pride is not one of those freemium games that allow you to buy gems why is it always gems? Instead, most of the game takes place in the gaps between orders, as alliances are forged, promises are made and backs are stabbed.

Due to the long-form nature of a campaign, Neptune's Pride will live with you, needling at the back of your mind, and you'll find yourself switching strategies in the anxious early hours of the morning, betraying friends and playing into the hands of your enemies.

The Banner Saga is an epic turn-based strategy series whose story spans across three separate games. While The Banner Saga 2 is arguably the best one in the trilogy, introducing more enemy types and classes to keep things interesting, this is very much the second act of the game's wider narrative, so it's definitely worth playing right from the start. A disaster-strewn trek across a dying land, multiple, oft-changing perspectives, awful decisions with terrible consequences made at every turn, more a tale of a place than of the individual characters within it.

A few punches are pulled, perhaps, but The Banner Saga has far more substance than might have been expected from a game which seems so very art-led. For five seconds at a time, Frozen Synapse allows you to feel like a tactical genius. You provide orders for your team of soldiers and then watch as enemies waltz right into your line of fire, or find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place, right on the killing floor.

The next five seconds might flip everything around though, leaving you feeling like a dolt. The beauty of Mode 7's clean and colourful game is that it plays on confidence and intuition rather than detailed analysis. Each 1v1 round of battle takes place on a randomised map, both participants draw up their orders and then execute simultaneously. Maybe you'll have to take on the aggressive role, knowing that this particular enemy commander prefers to set up an ambush and wait.

In a few short minutes, you'll perform flanking manoeuvres, lay down covering fire, attempt to breach and clear a room, and watch in horror as everything goes wrong again. But when a plan comes together? You're a genius again, for at least five seconds more. Six Ages works as a strategy game because it's about influencing people, not just accumulating resources. Cattle and horses and food are vital, sure, but they're not everything, and you need to gauge many things that can't be counted.

How the Grey Wings feel about you isn't presented as a number or bar, but what your traders and diplomats have to say. You're leading a village in a dangerous land of magic, religious conflict, and looming environmental crisis. Yes, it has bags of personality as your advisors snark and ramble and complain, and you explore the alien values of this colourful, yet malleable culture, but there are hard strategic decisions to make every year, even if the decision is to stay the course.

Success is about making good decisions in its many events, but also directing your clan's long term efforts behind the scenes. Where do you explore and when? Will your precious magic supplement your crafter this year, or is it time to risk a ride to the gods' realm to secure a special blessing?

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. Measuring all these political, economic, military, religious, and sometimes personal factors up against your long-term plans is a storytelling delight and a cerebral challenge all at once.

Creative Assembly's historical Total War games have been going from strength to strength in recent years, and 's Three Kingdoms is arguably the best one yet. Set during China's titular Three Kingdoms period in the second and third century and based on the fourteenth century novel Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, this is the most dramatic and personal Total War game yet, making for some thrilling, real-time combat and some truly incredible stories.

For the most part, it's classic Total War. A large part of your time will be spent building towns, recruiting soldiers and moving your armies across a map of China as you try and unite your shattered land, but what sets Three Kingdoms apart is its intense focus on your individual clanspeople, giving each campaign a very human and emotional core from which to build your strategy from.

Never before have we felt so invested in our Total War soldiers, and victory has never tasted sweeter or defeat more gut-wrenching as a result.

Sure, it ends up leaning more toward the 'romance' side of history than the cold, hard factual take we're used to seeing from a Total War game, but for us, it's all the better for it. If you're new to the series, Three Kingdoms is also the best place to start by a country mile, as both the campaign and its combat are easier to understand than ever before.

Reinvigorating a sub-genre left dormant since the glory days of Commandos and Desperados, the German studio remind us of the pleasures of shuffling tiny murderers through dioramas, under the watchful - not to mention very green, and triangular - eyes of nervous bandits.

A couple of vital tweaks see the cowboy-flavoured variation win out over the ninja adventure: for starters, the ability to fully freeze the action and program in multiple character moves for grand coordinated takedowns. While a key feature of Shadow Tactics, time continued there, making this the more surgical application.

Achieve it without mind control darts and we salute you. By allowing the player to hand over the reigns of responsibility, Distant Worlds makes everything possible. It's space strategy on a grand scale that mimics the realities of rule better than almost any other game in existence.

And it does that through the simple act of delegation. Rather than insisting that you handle the build queues, ship designs and military actions throughout your potentially vast domain, Distant Worlds allows you to automate any part of the process. If you'd like to sit back and watch, you can automate everything, from individual scout ships to colonisation and tourism. If you're military-minded, let the computer handle the economy and pop on your admiral's stripes.

As well as allowing the game to operate on an absurd scale without demanding too much from the player in the way of micromanagement, Distant Worlds' automation also peels back the layers to reveal the working of the machine. It's a space game with an enormous amount of possibilities and by allowing you to play with the cogs, it manages to convince that all of those possibilities work out just as they should. Europa Universalis IV is far better now than it was at release.

Over the years, Paradox had started to develop a reputation for launching games that required strong post-release support. Even though that's no longer the case and the internal development studio's teams are now in impeccable condition on day one, the strong post-release support continues. Now it's in the form of free patches and paid-for expansions.

The Europa series feels like the tent-pole at the centre of Paradox's grand strategy catalogue. Covering the period from to , it allows players to control almost any nation in the world, and then leaves them to create history. A huge amount of the appeal stems from the freedom — EU IV is a strategic sandbox, in which experimenting with alternate histories is just as if not more entertaining than attempting to pursue any kind of victory. 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. EU IV is also concerned with delivering a believable world, whether that's in terms of historical factors or convincing mechanics. With a host of excellent expansions and an enormous base game as its foundation, this IS one of the most credible and fascinating worlds in gaming.

A duck and a boar walk into a bar Of course, walking in anywhere is ill advised in Mutant Year Zero, a game that hinges on you sneaking through large playpens to choose your angle of attack or pick off stragglers to thin the horde before noisy turn-based tactics commence. How many games in this list can claim that? Watching expert players at work is bewildering, as the clicks per minute rise and the whole game falls into strange and sometimes unreadable patterns.

According to the StarCraft Wiki, a proficient player can perform approximately productive actions per minute. StarCraft II may be included here because it has perfected an art form that only a dedicated few can truly appreciate, but its campaigns contain a bold variety of missions, and bucket loads of enjoyably daft lore.

Though its dour single-player campaign is a big ol' nope in terms of storytelling, most recent expansion Legacy of the Void has an Archon mode that even offers two-player coop, so you can share all of those actions per minute with a chum.

Technically, this game is more like an absolutely titanic piece of DLC for the original Total War: Warhammer than an actual sequel. While it has its own set of factions and its own campaign map, its true glory is arguably in its Mortal Empires campaign, which mashes together the maps and faction sets for both games for a beautifully bloated experience. It would be worth the asking price for that alone.

As well as adding a bewildering variety of fantastical unit types, from dragons to giant spiders and towering undead crabs yes, mate , Warhammers I and II fundamentally changed the dynamics of the battlefield from their historical stablemates. Hero units are of dramatic importance to armies, capable of holding their own against hundreds of bog-standard troops, while a robustly designed magic system allows for game-changing battlefield effects to be deployed, at the cost of yet more micromanagement.

At their worst, these remakes and remasters are simply the bones of games left long behind by the evolution of the strategy genre. AoE2 was the high water mark of the 2D, isometric-ish, gather-and-mangle format. 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. It's a giant sexy Frankenstein, with the contents of five separate expansions four of which were originally made by extremely talented fans , and a whole castle full of brand new content, sewn onto the body of the original game and no, you're wrong: Frankenstein was the monster's name.

Battles and sieges involve thousands of soldiers and involve diplomacy and politics as well as fighting. This intriguing game is based in in an alternative universe in which the Soviet Union does not collapse but instead goes to war with the West and invades Europe and the USA.

Players take the role of an officer in the US Army. Another empire building game, Rise of Nations covers thousands of years with a choice of eight different eras and eighteen nations. Players battle to defend and expand their territory in a similar way to the board game, Risk.

Tropico is a series of strategy games set on a Caribbean island, which includes more humour than many other games in the genre. Best Games Strategy. Top 10 Strategy Games for the PC. Civilization This is one of the most popular and influential strategy games of all time. Age of Empires 2 Players can choose from a range of historic eras, including the Dark Ages and the Renaissance.

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.

The real-time tactical combat manages to be thrilling even when you're commanding the most sluggish of armadas. You need to manage a whole fleet while broadside attacks pound your hulls, enemies start boarding and your own crews turn mutinous. And with all the tabletop factions present, you can experiment with countless fleet configurations and play with all sorts of weird weapons.

Viking-themed RTS Northgard pays dues to Settlers and Age of Empires, but challenged us with its smart expansion systems that force you to plan your growth into new territories carefully. Weather is important, too. You need to prepare for winter carefully, but if you tech up using 'lore' you might have better warm weather gear than your enemies, giving you a strategic advantage.

Skip through the dull story, enjoy the well-designed campaign missions and then start the real fight in the skirmish mode. Mechanically, Homeworld is a phenomenal three-dimensional strategy game, among the first to successfully detach the RTS from a single plane. If you liked the Battlestar Galactica reboot, or just fancy a good yarn in your RTS, you should play this. Thanks to the Homeworld Remastered Collection , it's aged very well.

The remasters maintain Homeworld and its sequel's incredible atmosphere, along with all the other great bits, but with updated art, textures, audio, UI—the lot. Everything is in keeping with the spirit of the original, but it just looks and sounds better.

The different factions are so distinct, and have more personality than they did in the original game—hence Soviet squids and Allied dolphins.