Strategy war games on computer

Navigate the treacherous political landscape of Europe and its environs over a period of centuries. You know—just for kicks. Given the reigns of a nation, you are tasked with making your country into a world power through military might, diplomacy or trade. But best of all, you are also given immense freedom to rewrite the history books. Still, the game checks this power with very effective mechanics reminiscent of real-world realities that ultimately prevent you from simply steamrolling over everyone else like you normally would in other games of the same sort.

Build up your empire and take over new territory—but beware of your neighbours who, through fear of your aggressive expansionist tendencies—will grow to hate you and form coalitions against you to check your power. Your own people and armies may become disillusioned with your endless quest for power and abandon you, swiftly bringing your plans to a grinding halt. Beyond details like that, feel free to shape the world as you see fit.

Make England into a leftist, totalitarian state instead of the paragon of democracy. The game will also spawn random events designed to force hard decisions upon you or simply to add to the realism of the tale.

That being said, the mechanics work in a way that constantly steer the game away from becoming too capricious in its logic. You can exercise a staggering amount of control over the history of your chosen nation and those around you by the choices you make.

Chart a course through Europe, the Middle East, Africa and even the New World in your quest for territory, power and dominance. Medieval 2: Total War, developed by Creative Assembly, focuses on warfare, religion, politics and the overall struggle for supremacy during the Medieval period of world history.

As Sovereign to your country, you must delicately handle the balance of power both at home and abroad. From maintaining the loyalty of your generals to stamping out the menace of witchcraft to warring with neighbouring rivals to electing the new pope, virtually every aspect of medieval life is touched upon.

Your hands will be full trying to tap into resources for much-needed gold, marrying off princesses to cement alliances, training and equipping a mighty army for both attack and defence, and general power-brokering across the entire region.

The game does an excellent job of presenting itself, whether on the turn-based world map where most of your managing duties take place or on the real-time battlefield where your armies duke it out against your sworn enemies. The single-player campaign has a short campaign and a long one—and the short one can easily span a week of gaming.

For any hard-core RTS fan, though, this is hardly an issue since the game is so good. There are plenty of factions, units, dynamics, goals and battles to keep you entertained for a long time.

Battles in Medieval 2: Total War are intense affairs that never fail to leave an impact for their sheer scale and intricacy. A pioneer in the arena of turn-based strategy, the series has never looked back from earlier successes, and Civ 5 is light years away from being an exception to this rule. Guide your chosen people over a period of thousands of years, starting from prehistoric times and stretching forward into the distant future.

The maps are procedurally generated, making for consistently interesting gameplay. The units are many, varied and beautifully animated. The attention to detail all across the world map is delightful.

Choose your own path to victory. The world of Civ 5 is easily one of the greatest graphical achievements of modern gaming. If you enjoyed poring through this list of strategy games, or if you discovered a gem you simply must add to your shopping list, then check out these other top listings:.

Skip to main content. Level up. Earn rewards. Your XP: 0. Updated: 29 Jul pm. War games plunge us into the chaos of the battlefield with limited weapons and one overriding task: survive! BY: Aldane Walker. Then, without further ado, we give you the best strategy war games for PC. Military Strategy War Games 7. Steel Division: Normandy More on this topic: best strategy war games best war games best war game war games wargame wargames strategy battle.

Every day Aldane rises to do battle with the Space Monkeys from Outworld 62 alongside his trusty sidekicks, Chronius and Patience. His superpowers include flight, the Midas Touch and imaginaaation.

Gamer Since: Log in or register to post comments. More Top Stories. The drums of war are pounding in these excellent strategy war games!

Global conflict is something we all dread. We previously made a list of the military strategy games that explored These Are The Best Steam RTS Games The RTS genre offers a unique experience unlike any other as it gives you full control of your bases and armies while having you manage resources, land, and the movements of your army.

Here are 11 of the best RTS games on Steam. Wargame: Airland For Honor, For Country. During this terrible war, many countries went to battle with each other, offering the perfect setting to There are a plethora of strategy games out there.

Some fall outside the realm of war, but for the most past, they are by far and large aimed in the direction of battle. From fantasy to reality, these are the Crush your enemies in these amazing strategy games similar to Starcraft! Once the most popular thing around, the RTS genre seems to be slowly dying out.

Superheroes have been on-screen since the early days of cinema. Many gamers love playing all of these in addition to RTSs. The 15 Best Turn Based Strategy Games MOBAs and battle royales are everywhere you turn but fear not, brave game developers are still making brilliant games for those resisting this zombie gamer apocalypse. Here is a list of the best turn based strategy games to keep your brain from going mush Fight in history's most epic battles with the best ranked war games on Steam!

Over the years, war games have consistently dominated the gaming industry. The year is not going to be any different. Prepare your game pads, people, because terrific war games are coming your way.

You might be Step into the world of strategy board games Do you like a challenge? How about games that make you think a little rather than just use brute force to win? There are many great board games that are strategic in nature. And strategy quenches that thirst for a deeper thought-provoking The latest installment of Sim City ended up being a huge disappointment for many, and Cities in Motion were unable to scratch that itch for a real The Best Killing Games.

Violence in video games has always been of great controversy. Ever since the first Mortal Kombat game, the world has been in awe and disgust at the depth of realism when it comes to violence in video games. But no matter how much the world tries to refuse it, video Need a game likeStellaris for your space conqueror fix?

We got you covered. Stellaris injected new life into the space strategy genre, but it is hardly the only spacefaring war game out there.

People have been establishing despotic machine states and peaceful federations for years thanks to a Why is Blizzard Removing its Battle.

Blizzard have revealed that they wish to re-brand their Battle. When was this name change decided? You need to think tactically when it comes to surviving and thriving among the stars. In these strategy games your planning skills will be tested. Whether by resource Experience magic, monsters, and mayhem in the best fantasy war games you can play in ! Sometimes, all a war game needs is a little magic. Like, spells-that-can-turn-you-inside-out kind of magic.

Or fire-breathing dragons that can turn soldiers into armies of burnt matchsticks. You have to How to choose the best graphics card for gaming? Each move must be well thought out and made carefully or else defeat is certain.

Here are 13 games that have embodied the spirit of turn based In our case, we think of games, and let me tell you the future looks bright for us gamers, as several promising games are being announced for No, I'm not talking about spreadsheets Sorry for disappointing. For this reason, I'm bringing you… Yes, you.

Have you ever played a video game before that revolved around strategizing your every move? If not, then I shall give you a lengthy list of video games that you might enjoy. No consoles needed here; just me, my PC, and endless hours of awesome! Today there are so many options for how to get your game fix, but being a PC gamer is the most satisfying.

You get the best graphics, early release access, more quality games titles, and, with a good rig, portability that Stalk the night to quench a wicked thirst with the top 10 vampire games everyone can play right now!

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 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. Until Total War: Warhammer, we had to rely on mods to get our fantasy Total War kicks, but with mods as good as Third Age , that wasn't too much of a sacrifice. It's a Medieval 2 overhaul that recreates the third age of Middle-earth, including cities, landmarks and all the ents and orcs you could hope you fight or befriend.

Skip to main content. Level up. Earn rewards. Your XP: 0. Updated: 01 Sep pm. Holdfast: Nations At War. More on this topic: Best War Strategy Games. No regrets. Gamer Since: Total War: Warhammer 2. 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. This game is thrilling in its single-player mode and also has multiplayer where up to 20 players can play.

You will struggle with lack of food, medicine and constant danger from snipers and scavengers. This is an experience of war seen from a completely different angle. The pace of the game depends on day and night cycle, in the daylight snipers restrict you from abandoning your hideout and in the night you go outside to search for items that can help you survive.

This game is inspired by real-life events. Craft beds and stoves, weapons or alcohol, anything that can help you survive. Make decisions that can be emotionally tough, but necessary for survival. This is a tactical war game.

You will experience the bloodiest period in American history, the war between north and south from The campaign depends on player actions and battle results. Historical battles can be engaged in separately. You are the general and have full control over army composition. This game is not focused on guns, as it takes us back to swords and spears and arrows. An empire is torn by civil war and behind its borders, other factions rise. Take your armor and sword and participate in battles to defend your kingdom.

Establish your rule in Calradia and create a new world from the ashes of the old. It expands the combat system and the world of Calradia.

Get diplomatic and carry out decisions that have consequences in the world or just engage in battles. Continuing in the strategy genre, we have Total War: Napoleon campaigns. This game opens up a narrative layer to the franchise. Experience 3 new episodic campaigns: Egypt, Italy mastery of Europe. Cutting edge multiplayer battles with new Napoleonic units.