Pc real time strategy war games

And you will be called upon to make many tough decisions during the course of the game. Knowing that every little thing you do affects the story gives added weight to these moments, but it also means the game has a high replay value since the story can take so many different turns based on your choices.

Beyond its storytelling element, The Banner Saga 2 offers a turn-based strategy experience that will demand proper planning and foresight on and off the battlefield. The variety of game mechanics also mean that there are many tiny tactical details that are nonetheless very critical to the progression of battle and that serve to keep things interesting. Simple obstacles in the environment can prove to be terrible hindrances or timely helps. The Banner Saga 2 features a charming 2D art style that reminds you of classic Disney animation.

The world of Auriga is dying. Will you be able to escape it? Easily one of the best graphical entries on this list, Endless Legend is a treat for the eyes and is likely to remain so for a while yet, even in the face of changing technologies. The visuals are also bolstered by an amazing soundtrack. Play-wise, Endless Legend is full of diversity, what with its 8 factions and several other minor entities which, while not directly playable, you can assimilate or conquer to give yourself access to a few special units.

Each side is also driven by its own story elements, a fact that makes the game all the more interesting. For instance, you can place your archers high up on impassable cliffs to really punish your foe with little risk to your own units.

All combat must also be resolved within 6 phases, something that really places emphasis on your own tactical and strategic prowess. You can carve any one of several paths to victory including diplomacy, economy, science and building wonders. The world of Auriga is wonderfully rendered with great detail and a lively blend of colours. From the creators of the acclaimed Age of Empires comes the similarly acclaimed Age of Mythology.

A must-play for lovers of mythology, it features the myths, legends, beasts, heroes and gods of 3 civilizations: the Egyptians, the Norse and the Greeks. Follow the adventures of Arkantos, a hero from Atlantis, as he pursues old foes and tries to unravel the mystery that places his homeland in peril. On the way, Arkantos will find himself treading through the foreign sands of Egypt, and even reaching as far north as the Norse lands, finding that they all share a common enemy who must be stopped at all costs.

The game does an amazing job of capturing the style and feel of each of its civilizations, with very specialized units from each civilization that boast exclusive abilities both on and off the battlefield.

It also makes liberal use of the various mythologies, which makes for very interesting story-driven gameplay. Add classical monsters and heroes to your armies to give yourself the edge in combat.

Progress through various ages of each civilization, unlocking new technologies and powers as you go. Enjoy the detailed animations within the game. Experience the world in a time when the gods walked among men and intervened in their affairs at will. Get the expansion packs for even more amazing content. Call upon the gods to access their destructive power in battle. Depicted here is the Meteor power.

Enter — Total War: Warhammer. Amidst the turmoil of a brutal civil war, a new Emperor ascends the throne. His goal—unite his broken empire, consolidate his power and then bring peace to the Old World at large by challenging and subduing his warmongering neighbours. The task ahead is an arduous one, however, as tensions between the Dwarf race and the Greenskins run high, and the Vampires have their own designs on ruling the Empire.

Farther north lies the Chaos faction, bent on destroying everything…. Total War: Warhammer II, the successor to the series, is set to be released later this year and promises to be just as exciting as its forerunner.

In this game, four races will find themselves embroiled in a conflict to either save or destroy the Great Vortex in Ulthuan. The games feature a wide selection of available units; brilliant artwork and animations; and an engaging strategic system of play that focuses on city and unit building, diplomacy and intense tactical army manoeuvring.

Fantasy meets history on a grand scale in this series, and the result is epic! Total War: Warhammer II will have even more narrative focus and introduce even more amazing creatures. Warhammer 40K: Armageddon is a turn-based war game with a lot of spirit.

The fiction associated with Warhammer is strong in the game, and this is one of its best elements. The campaign goes pretty deep and there are hundreds of units to explore. That being said, there is still much room for a nail-biting RTS experience. The maps as well as the enemy units are laid out in a very clever manner, often calling for frantic charges, tactical feints to lure the enemy out of the defensive, and many moments of sudden panic as you realize you only have a few turns left to check some unforeseen development that might cost you the game.

In a world where long-distance space travel has become a reality, humanity has spread its influence across the stars and has set up a thriving galactic empire. Then comes the long-distance space trouble. The result is truly spectacular to behold. This is a game more suited for gamers who are more into thinking about the bigger picture rather than rushing in and handling things on the spur of the moment.

Thought and planning outweighs speed and flair here. The AI is also quite robust, leading to many a good challenge throughout the game. With a game that plays on such a large scale, with thousands of units simultaneously taking the field and vast maps, your choices about what technologies to research, what units to send where and when , and how to manage your economy will prove vital to any hopes of final victory.

Play as several notable heroes from the Star Wars franchise, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader, and command your armies both on land and in the vacuum of space.

Take control of either the Rebel Alliance or the Empire and their iconic leaders; then capture entire planets, which will provide you with the necessary money and resources to fund your armies and take the fight to the enemy.

Research technologies that will give your units the edge in battle, and place powerful heroes at the helm of your units who can use The Force to their advantage. Just make sure you have a powerful army with you at all times.

Wherever you meet the enemy—on land or in space—a battle will ensue, and you can only use the equipment you already have with you. Science fiction buffs will find quite a bit to interest them here. The game begins in the year Starting off with a single planet, a construction ship, a science ship, 3 small warships and a spaceport in your suitcase of grand dreams, you set out to explore and colonize the galaxy, eventually building up an empire.

Exploring this wide world will prove to be a reward in itself. Another great feature about the game is its interesting spin on ideologies. Will your people be a race of xenophobes or will they be a sociable people who welcome contact with alien races? Will you value pacifism or will you lead a militant people? These considerations will factor heavily into your strategies and goals throughout the game, adding a welcome RPG element to the game and making for great replay-ability.

Then it wraps all of this up in a package of pure, fast-paced action. Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2 hits hard and fast. You either keep up or get beat down. That said, Dawn of War 2 does a good job here, with the addictive rush to collect loot, level up units and customize characters that make RPGs so much fun. The RTS element of the game really shines through in the intense multiplayer mode where you get to build up your base and churn out your own units in order to take the fight to the enemy.

The game revolves around capturing and holding nodes which yield resources, and this means players will be constantly at loggerheads as they attempt to maintain control over these nodes and achieve ultimate victory. The fights become brutal and fast-paced, and Dawn of War 2 does a magnificent of really getting you involved in them with great graphics, animations, music and sound.

The three belligerents, appearing fundamentally similar at first glance, possess a number of significant differences, a fact that becomes increasingly obvious as you progress along their individual tech trees. The Aeon Illuminate, the Cybran Nation and the United Earth Federation all boast units with distinctive abilities that add strategic variety to how you can play the game.

There is a way to counter any and all of the weaponry and technologies that each faction can use against you, if only you can answer with the right units. Building a versatile army will be of utmost importance. Simply mounting an assault with a veritable swarm of seasoned warriors and advanced weaponry is no way to go about defeating your foe, however. The sheer scale of the war both you and your rivals can wage thanks to many, varied and useful abilities means that knowing what to anticipate, when and where will do you much more good than randomly throwing your forces about, regardless of how mighty they may be.

More than 15 years after Relic Entertainment first released their head-turning real-time strategy wonder, the game sees a welcome reboot that brings it into the modern world—and what a reintroduction it was! Homeworld Remastered is simply a matter of garbing an older, brilliant interstellar story in the more modern outfit it so easily deserves. Your mothership, the Pride of Hiigara, is the driving force of all your ambitions and the story at large. The Pride must both outrun and outgun her deadly pursuers in order to make it safely back to Hiigara, the homeworld you were thrust out of thousands of years ago.

All of your units and combat capabilities are bound up in the Pride. From your mothership you can spawn tiny vessels dedicated to gathering all-important resources, or fighter ships to defend it and to launch attacks of your own in your quest for vengeance.

Civilian and soldier units you successfully preserve are also carried over from chapter to chapter, which will prove to be critical to an already dangerously depleted species. So, make good use of your resources, fight well and, above all, fight smart—otherwise you may find the game is over before you even knew what hit you.

Homeworld Remastered keeps the tension at a constant high, as your besieged mothership is literally the last hope for your kind. Send rockets and laser beams whizzing through the depths of space as you make space dust of the opposition. Released back in , the game won itself many accolades and multiple awards from the gaming press besides; and even now it remains one of the premiere examples of the RTS genre.

Combining real-time strategy with 4X elements, Sins of a Solar Empire does much to commend both genres. Get ready for an addictive experience that will keep you at your computer screen for hours at a time.

The three opposing groups in-game also lend themselves to individual play styles, and each has their own motivations and goals. Choose from an arsenal of ships of different sizes, suited for different combat situations. A game bursting with character, imagination and depth, Starcraft II is a joy to play and get lost in with its story of three races: the Protoss, the Terrans and the Zerg. So far, the usual, right?

But part of what sets the game apart is the sheer personality of the Terran forces at your command. Their artwork and animation is simply superb, and their personality comes out in everything they do.

Add to that some pretty amazing weapons and technologies and you have a recipe for comic, well-animated and thoroughly enjoyable mayhem. The tale the game weaves is also very well thought out. Starcraft II also brings a lot of imagination in its approach to real-time strategy.

It moves away from the typical formula RTS games have been following for years in a refreshing way. Each of the 27 missions contains a peculiar twist that successfully keeps you guessing and requires constant changes to your play style.

The game keeps you constantly engaged—expect to improvise in order to claim certain victories. Lots of unit variety often makes for tense games spent trying to come up with the perfect counter force.

Take the fight to the Middle East in your bid to liberate the Holy Land, or fight for your freedom instead as the Arabian Sultan, Saladin. Even with outdated graphics, the game retains its charm in how it presents the world of the Middle East overall. The game features over unique skirmish missions and campaigns that follow the stories of the First, Second and Third Crusades.

Build up your cities, get a thriving economy going and recruit soldiers from among your peasants or by hiring more expensive mercenaries. One of the charms of the game is the environment within which you work. Building up a castle is fun, given the level of customization possible—until you must watch it fall at the hands of your detractors. Almost every one of your citizens has something to say if you click on them—and what they say changes based on the state of the economy, etc.

Assassins will be both a powerful tool in your hands and a lethal threat when deployed against you. Total War: Rome II first made its debut to lacklustre reviews. Did it solve the original problem? In a word, yes. With the assassination of the great leader came a brutal power struggle which led to internal turmoil and, of course, external political vultures gathering to pounce on what they fervently hoped was to be the decaying remains of a dead empire.

Otherwise, the game retains its original Grand Campaign option where players can go as far as trying to conquer the world, rewriting the history books in the process. The game at its core has two elements: a turn-based mode where players manage their cities, move armies across the world map and administrate their empire; and a real-time battle mode where they take to the field and assume direct control of their armies in a skirmish.

The game also features a decent AI, lovely graphics and audio, and improvements to buildings and the politics in-game.

Whereas Total War: Rome II — Emperor Edition related the story of the near-death, resurrection and subsequent supremacy of Rome, Total War: Atilla, from the same developers, gives us the story of its ultimate decline. Atilla the Hun burst onto the scene of world history and, along with other Barbarians of the day, proved to be a fatal thorn in the side of the flailing empire. At the dawn of the Dark Ages, a series of volcanic changes plunges the fragile Roman Empire into chaos and seems to presage the coming of some terrible force to assail it.

Enter: Atilla et al. Not much changes if you play from the perspective of most of the other available factions. With all these variables, the campaign proves to be quite dynamic. Total War: Atilla does very well in capturing the socio-political climate of the time.

It also does very well in creating a deep understanding of the issues that faced these ancient peoples, a fact that creates a sense of emotional connection to the story the game tells. This is no pointlessly mad rush to conquer all in sight. There is a sense of necessity and purpose in the various actions undertaken by the several groups.

It also means that strategy and thought take on a new level of importance in-game. This game is unique on this list because of its approach. Strategy in this game takes on a new meaning. Far from being your traditional RTS, Crusader Kings II really digs into the nitty-gritty of power-hungry nobility by placing its focus not only on war but on political relationships and all that comes with them. Neither the sword nor the wallet is all-powerful, after all.

What you need above all is a strategic mind that can concoct brilliant machinations for your benefit. The end result is an often ridiculously hilarious game that nevertheless maintains its claim to being played because of how uncannily accurate it is in its representation of life in the Middle Ages and the art of politicking. Crusader Kings II is a tongue-in-cheek medieval soap opera which remains true-to-life while managing to capture the more serious side of empire-building.

Every decision you make will have some impact on the story, and they range from trivially entertaining to absolutely critical. Navigate the treacherous political landscape of Europe and its environs over a period of centuries.

In combat you micromanage these empowered special forces, timing the flying attack of your Assault Marines and the sniping power of your Scouts with efficient heavy machine gun cover to undo the Ork hordes.

The co-operative Last Stand mode is also immense. If you need a 40K fix, we've also ranked every Warhammer 40, game. Like an adaptation of the tabletop game crossed with the XCOM design template, BattleTech is a deep and complex turn-based game with an impressive campaign system. You control a group of mercenaries, trying to keep the books balanced and upgrading your suite of mechwarriors and battlemechs in the game's strategy layer.

In battle, you target specific parts of enemy mechs, taking into account armor, angle, speed and the surrounding environment, then make difficult choices when the fight isn't going your way. It can initially be overwhelming and it's undeniably a dense game, but if that's what you want from your strategy games or you love this universe, it's a great pick. A beautifully designed, near-perfect slice of tactical mech action from the creators of FTL. Into the Breach challenges you to fend off waves of Vek monsters on eight-by-eight grids populated by tower blocks and a variety of sub objectives.

Obviously you want to wipe out the Vek using mech-punches and artillery strikes, but much of the game is about using the impact of your blows to push enemies around the map and divert their attacks away from your precious buildings.

Civilian buildings provide power, which serves as a health bar for your campaign. Every time a civilian building takes a hit, you're a step closer to losing the war.

Once your power is depleted your team travels back through time to try and save the world again. It's challenging, bite-sized, and dynamic. As you unlock new types of mechs and mech upgrades you gain inventive new ways to toy with your enemies. The game cleverly uses scarcity of opportunity to force you into difficult dilemmas. At any one time you might have only six possible scan sites, while combat encounters are largely meted out by the game, but what you choose to do with this narrow range of options matters enormously.

You need to recruit new rookies; you need an engineer to build a comms facility that will let you contact more territories; you need alien alloys to upgrade your weapons.

You can probably only have one. In Sid Meier described games as "a series of interesting decisions. The War of the Chosen expansion brings even more welcome if frantic changes, like the endlessly chatty titular enemies, memorable nemeses who pop up at different intervals during the campaign with random strengths and weaknesses. Sneaky tactics doesn't come in a slicker package than Invisible Inc. It's a sexy cyberpunk espionage romp blessed with so much tension that you'll be sweating buckets as you slink through corporate strongholds and try very hard to not get caught.

It's tricky, sometimes dauntingly so, but there's a chance you can fix your terrible mistakes by rewinding time, adding some welcome accessibility to the proceedings. First, you manage stockpiles, and position missile sites, nuclear submarines and countermeasures in preparation for armageddon.

This organisation phase is an interesting strategic challenge in itself, but DEFCON is at its most effective when the missiles fly. Blooming blast sites are matched with casualty numbers as city after city experiences obliteration. Once the dust has settled, victory is a mere technicality. Unity of Command was already the perfect entry point into the complex world of wargames, but Unity of Command 2 manages to maintain this while throwing in a host of new features.

It's a tactical puzzle, but a reactive one where you have the freedom to try lots of different solutions to its military conundrums. Not just a great place to start, it's simply a brilliant wargame. Hearts of Iron 4 is a grand strategy wargame hybrid, as comfortable with logistics and precise battle plans as it is with diplomacy and sandboxy weirdness.

Ostensibly game about World War 2, it lets you throw out history as soon as you want. Want to conquer the world as a communist UK? Go for it. Maybe Germany will be knocked out of the war early, leaving Italy to run things. You can even keep things going for as long as you want, leading to a WW2 that continues into the '50s or '60s.

With expansions, it's fleshed out naval battles, espionage and other features so you have control over nearly every aspect of the war. Normandy 44 takes the action back to World War 2 and tears France apart with its gargantuan battles. It's got explosive real-time fights, but with mind-boggling scale and additional complexities ranging from suppression mechanics to morale and shock tactics.

The sequel, Steel Division 2 , brings with it some improvements, but unfortunately the singleplayer experience isn't really up to snuff. In multiplayer, though, it's pretty great. And if the World War 2 setting isn't your cup of tea, the older Wargame series still represents some of the best of both RTS and wargaming, so they're absolutely worth taking for a spin. We're always updating this list, and below are a few upcoming games that we're hoping we'll eventually be able to include.

These are the strategy games we're most looking forward to, so check out what you should be keeping an eye on. There's also a dynamic turn-based campaign, where you can pretty much do everything that's possible in the RTS layer, whether that's dropping artillery strikes on enemy or sending engineers in to deactivate mines.

There's also an expanded destruction system that gives objects, whether they are buildings or foliage, different damage states, so you'll see buildings being slowly eroded and chipped away at before the finally collapse. Other new headline attractions include extremely customisable companies and detachments—you can add a medical detachment to a company and then summon a medical truck mid-battle—and full tactical pause.

It's not coming until , but you can take it for a spin earlier by signing up to Games2Gether, which will let you try out alpha and beta builds. The conclusion to Creative Assembly's Warhammer trilogy is coming this year, and it looks like it's going to be massive. The series has been gearing up for a big confrontation with the forces of Chaos, so Total War: Warhammer 3 will give us a quartet of daemonic armies to fight with, and a pretty different battlefield: the Realm of Chaos.

Kislev, Cathay and the Lands of the East will also be thrown into the mix, and Creative Assembly boasts that it will have an "unprecedented scale". Expect big monsters, and a campaign that's twice the size of Warhammer 2's Eye of the Vortex campaign. Deserts of Kharak was fantastic, which is why you'll find it above, but who hasn't yearned for a true Homeworld sequel?

Blackbird Interactive's Homeworld 3 will have 3D combat with massive scale battles that let you control everything from tiny interceptors to massive motherships, just like you'd expect, as well as moving Homeworld's saga forward. The studio still hasn't revealed much about the sequel, though its broad vision is to capture how the original games looked and played—something it even managed to do with Deserts of Kharak, despite being a ground-based RTS—but with "meaningful improvements.

It's still a long way off, though, with launch not expected until After years of working on its Endless series of games, the best of which you'll find on the list above, Amplitude has now turned its attention to a historical-themed 4X game. Humankind is Amplitude's take on Civilization, featuring dynamic civilisations that are born from culture combos. You might start out playing as the Hittites in the first era, and then pick Romans later on, and then throw the Germans into the mix down the line.

With new eras come new cultures that you can add to the melting pot, unlocking new culture-specific benefits. It also expresses this through its cities, which grow throughout history, swallowing up the land around them.

Some places will retain their historic attributes, like the older quarters of modern cities, while others areas will adapt as the eras progress.

You'll be able to start building your civilisation later this year. Some of our favourite strategy games have spawned enduring modding communities, keeping decade-old game alive with dramatic overhauls that continue to be updated long after the devs have moved on.

As well as celebrating the best strategy games, then, we also want to celebrate a few of our favourite strategy mods. Outstanding visual fidelity powered by Unreal engine 4. Call of War is set in WW2. It is an MMO strategy game in which you can conquer provinces, forge alliances and build up your economy. In this game, you can have up to real opponents per map. With many different maps and scenarios. Regular updates with new content. Foxhole is a massively multiplayer game where you will work with hundreds of players to shape the outcome of a persistent online war.

This is the ultimate war game of cooperative strategy and tactics. Every action you initiate can cause a powerful and lasting effect across a vast world in a constant state of war. This game is a sandbox in which every player influences the outcome. Every soldier is one player, and players are the content.

You influence the story of the game. Squad wants to bridge the gap between military shooters and arcade shooters. Prepare for large scale squad-based combat combined with base building. This is a visceral gaming experience with split-second decision-making in realistic world-scale firefights.

Teamwork and communication are extremely important if you want to take out the enemy. You can accompany your friends to many war locations that are constantly changing and evolving. Join millions of players in naval, land or sky combat and choose from thousands of vehicles. Game modes are divided into three based on support to the player and type of maps and missions played.

Players can be in ground forces or may choose to operate planes only in air fights. They can also control ships and naval forces in sea battles. Arma 3 is a massive military sandbox game with over 20 vehicles and 40 weapons.

Authentic, diverse, open world, Arma sends you to war. Defeat your enemy on a richly detailed battlefield spanning over km2 of Mediterranean Island terrain. Altis and Stratis are two islands that host the war. With a massive arsenal at your disposal, Arma 3 moves you into the world of tactical opportunity. You are Ben Kerry who must Survive, adapt and win. The game is also very moddable with an active modding community.

This is another RTS game. Wargame returns on a grander scale than ever before. In this you are engaged in a large-scale conflict where Western forces clash against the Communists bloc. You can command the military resources of all 17 countries involved. Command tanks, planes, helicopters, new warships, and amphibious units.

Enter ultra-realistic battlefields, dominate the new maritime areas and adjust the course of history.