I used to play RTS games like Warhammer, then got into Heroes of Might and Magic and its spin-offs like Pennon and Battle. I’ve also played XCOM 2 and Age of Wonders 4. Any other must-play series you’d recommend?
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I haven’t seen Halo Wars mentioned yet so I’ll nominate those games. Both 1 and 2 are insanely fun and they control surprisingly well on Xbox if you dont have access to a PC. I’ve put a couple hundred hours into both games on both Xbox and PC, but I do prefer M&KB controls even if it works very well with a controller.
Cutscenes are fucking awesome in both games as well!
Another game I’d like to bring up is Stellaris. If you’re a sci-fi fan and like 4X strategy games then I can’t recommend this game enough. I’ve put 630 hours into the game since I got it back in 2019, being able to role play a custom or sci-fi inspired empire is great. If the amount of DLC puts you off, then look up cream.api. Getting them for “free” is easy.
Call to Arms: Gates of Hell Ostfront
Yeah that was on sale recently so I finally took the plunge. I’m mostly enjoying skirmishes in the Frontline mode but the campaign is okay as well.
Rise of nations is also really good. Is like Civ in RTS form.
I’m presently replaying Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 and love it. The cast for the FMVs is all-star, the game itself is a super refined version of Red Alert 2 (itself an all-time classic) and the story has no bearing on the rest of the series so it can be played in isolation with no advance knowledge of C&C
It’s not real time but Civilization is a must for any strategy fan. I personally recommend getting V and all its expansions, it’s peak for me still. Some like VI but I could never get into it.
Unciv is a free, open-source reimplementation of Civilization V. It doesn’t have all the eye candy and music and such that the series is famous for but as a result of not having it runs responsively on a phone.
V has the best mods too
For old school RTS, Total Annihilation or if you fancy something a bit different then The Settlers II (Pioneers of Pagonia is a more modern remake). I grew tired of RTS and moved on to turn-based but Stellaris is one that recently drew me back in.
For tactics I’d say Advanced Wars, Fire Emblem and Disgagea are decent shouts. Into The Breach is probably my favourite indie of the genre, a lot of strategy packed into a small game.
If you like turn-based then Civ has always been top of my list.
For old school RTS, Total Annihilation
If you don’t care about the campaign, probably the much-newer games based on Total Annihilation that run on the Spring engine.
Metal Fatigue. It’s like what a Gundam RTS should be. It’s awesome. If I were a billionaire I would remake it.
If you want to try an RTS that does something different, check out Against the Storm. It’s an RTS, but there isn’t an “enemy” so to speak. Instead, you are ‘fighting’ against the environment, trying to solve your economic and social problems before you are overwhelmed by external factors imposed by the level you are building on.
The game continues to evolve as your understanding of its various systems grows.
It’s currently in the Humble monthly bundle.
Warcraft and StarCraft. StarCraft 1 is free and the first campaign of 2 is free as well.
Others are Command & Conquer and Age of Empires.
Even as a Protoss main, Wings of Liberty (the free Terran campaign in SC2) is by far the best in the game. I’ve replayed it at least once a year since it first released. Mass marine/marauder/medic backed by tanks is so much fun to play with.
I should play StarCraft again. BroodWars would be nice.
I usually don’t play strategy. But damn, Broodwar is great!
Beyond All Reason maybe?
RTS: Zero-K
RTT: Steel Division 2 and Warno
TBS: Dominions 6. Songs of Conquest if you want a modern casual HOMM3 clone.
TBT: Battle Brothers and Field of Glory 2
Grand Strategy: Basically everything from Paradox. Victoria 3 is my current favorite.
I’m getting into the Dominions series, recently picked up Dominions 6. You take control of a faction and try to spread your pretender gods influence enough to ascend to be the one true god. Combat is auto resolved but you can watch the combats and the mechanics are very detailed. I made a god that was a sentient glyph that bestowed fire resistance and flaming weapons on my faction of desert dwelling spider riders. Another time I was a sentient fountain of blood with innate abilities to raise an army of mindless skeletons so I could stack troops in masse.
Its a little clunky in the interface but once I learned what did what it because very engrossing
I can’t get over the UI, in sure it’s good like with Dwarf Fortress, but I would ask how long it took you to feel like you had a bearing on what was going on/fun?
I mean, it’s not beautiful, but for strategy games and other high-replayability games, I don’t find that eye candy buys that much. Like, I feel like a good strategy game is one that you should spend a lot of time playing as you master the mechanics, and no matter how pretty the graphics, when you’ve seen them a ton of times…shrugs I think that eye candy works better for genres where you only see something once, like adventure games, so that the novelty is fresh. But what you like is what you like.
If it’s too complicated – and the game does have a lot of mechanics going on, even by strategy game standards – Illwinter also has another series, Conquest of Elysium, which is considerably simpler, albeit more RNG-dependent. I personally prefer the latter, even though I know Dominions. Dominions turns into a micromanagement slogfest when you have a zillion armies moving around later in the game. Especially if you have one of the nations that can induce freespawn, like MA Ermor. Huge amounts of time handling troop movement.
It might be more tolerable if you play against other humans – I mean, if you’re playing one turn a day or something, I imagine that it’s more tolerable to look at what’s going on. But if you’re playing against the computer, which is what I do, it has more micromanagement than I’d like.
Trying to optimize your build is neat, though. There are a lot of mutually-exclusive or semi-compatible strategies to use, lots of levers to play with, which I think is a big part of making a strategy game interesting.
I think that Dwarf Fortress has a higher learning curve, but if you’re wanting a strategy game that has a gentle learning curve, I agree, Dominions probably isn’t the best choice. It also doesn’t have a tutorial/introduction system – it’s got an old-school, nice hefty manual.
The Homeworld series is great with fantastic campaigns (minus Homeworld 3 I’ve heard, not even played that).
I’ll also throw in a classic Imperium Galactica 2 because I still think for a 90s 4X RTS it has so many elements that I’ve just not seen replicated since. Though usually short and quick, it has fully simulated and controllable space and ground battles; espionage; diplomacy; you assign your unlocked tech to hard points on your ships… It’s Stellaris but better in most ways, imo.
I haven’t checked recently but last I heard HW3 was not good. Homeworld is one of the best of all time and even Deserts of Kharak is very good too.
Command and Conquer Generals: Zero Hour.
I mean, obviously play the Red Alert games too. But Generals: Zero Hour was BIG fun in the day. A bit hard to get it to play nice with modern computers, but it was recently added to Steam so its at least legally acquirable again.
Age of Empires 2, obviously. Still the GOAT of Age. Its latest released still gets updates, which is great.
IDK about it being a “must play,” but I actually quite enjoyed the strategic/tactical RPG Tuned Hearts, for the Japanese PC98 series of home computers. Im not much of a fan of turn based games in general, but something about Tuned Hearts kept me playing. IDK if it was the battle art or the hilarious enemy characters, but either way I enjoyed my time with the game.
The PSP had Joan De’Arc, which I think is based on an anime, but I could be wrong. It plays similar to Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem, I think. Not a bad little game.
For 4X, I like playing Stellaris. Granted, every time I play my saves get massively bloated and end game lag is unbearable sometimes due to fleet sizes, and the developers update the game so often that either my save breaks or the systems are vastly different from whenever I played last, but aside from that the game is a lot of fun. If a real time 4X strategy space civilization game sounds interesting to you, I’d give it a shot. Otherwise for turn-based, Galactic Civilizations III from Stardock was my go-to.
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