Great free pc strategy games

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. They found the right tonal balance between self-awareness and sincerity in the cutscenes, as well—they're played for laughs, but still entertain and engage. Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak sounded almost sacrilegious at first. Over a decade since the last Homeworld game, it was going to take a game remembered for its spaceships and 3D movement and turn it into a ground-based RTS with tanks?

And it was a prequel? Yet in spite of all the ways this could have gone horribly wrong, Deserts of Kharak succeeds on almost every count.

It's not only a terrific RTS that sets itself apart from the rest of the genre's recent games, but it's also an excellent Homeworld game that reinvents the series while also recapturing its magic. Only Total War can compete with the scale of Supreme Commander 's real-time battles. In addition to being the preeminent competitive strategy game of the last decade, StarCraft 2 deserves credit for rethinking how a traditional RTS campaign is structured.

Heart of the Swarm is a good example of this, but the human-centric Wings of Liberty instalment is the place to start: an inventive adventure that mixes up the familiar formula at every stage. In , Blizzard finally decided to wind down development on StarCraft 2 , announcing that no new additions would be coming, aside from things like balance fixes.

The competitive scene is still very much alive, however, and you'll still find few singleplayer campaigns as good as these ones. Most notable today for being the point of origin for the entire MOBA genre, Warcraft III is also an inventive, ambitious strategy game in its own right, which took the genre beyond anonymous little sprites and into the realm of cinematic fantasy.

The pioneering inclusion of RPG elements in the form of heroes and neutral monsters adds a degree of unitspecific depth not present in its sci-fi stablemate, and the sprawling campaign delivers a fantasy story that—if not quite novel—is thorough and exciting in its execution. Shame about Warcraft 3: Reforged , it's not-so-great remake. Some games would try to step away from the emotional aspect of a war that happened in living memory.

Not Company of Heroes. Age of Empires gave us the chance to encompass centuries of military progress in half-hour battles, but Rise of Nations does it better, and smartly introduces elements from turn-based strategy games like Civ. When borders collide civs race through the ages and try to out-tech each other in a hidden war for influence, all while trying to deliver a knockout military blow with javelins and jets.

It was tempting to put the excellent first Dawn of War on the list, but the box-select, right-click to kill formula is well represented.

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. Viking Saga. Ancient Rome 2. Adelantado Trilogy: Book One. Island Tribe.

Rush for Glory. Northern Tale 4. Adelantado Trilogy: Book Two. Island Tribe 2. Shakes and Fidget. Northern Tale 3. Ancient Rome. Island Tribe 4. Viking Saga: New World. When in Rome. Funny Hell. Call of War: Island Tribe 3. Heroic Dungeon. All My Gods. Be a King 2. Arkheim - Realms at War. Moai 3: Trade Mission. The Chronicles of Confucius' Journey. Weather Lord: The Successor's Path. Rose Riddle: The Fairytale Detective.

Claws and Feathers 3. Deluxe Rating 4. Time Management. Have fun! You can use diplomacy or more non-diplomatic approaches towards your enemies! What is this game exactly about? This is the perfect game for people who live off of minimum wage and eat ramen noodles on daily basis.

Build your own deck and face your opponents, come up with your own deck or follow the meta and have countless hours of fun! Action-packed RTS, with the possibility of playing with your buddies. Develop your army and make it stronger till you become unbeatable, controls are pretty decent and you can also plug in your controller if you think that keyboards suck. And you know what? Pick your favorite race and engage in combat with other armies.

You have around 12 seconds to prepare your battle move, the primary goal is to destroy the enemy turrets 3 in total and eventually destroy the base. A fantasy game with turn-based gameplay. You can play this game both in single-player and multiplayer and play countless campaigns that will immerse you in the world of Wesnoth. Become a mage and save the world today! A fancy game that takes place in a galaxy, with a large sum of players to battle with.

The game lets you build your space empire and lets you colonize other planets, create new trading routes and discover new alien ships and sometimes battle other players - cool game, worth your time!

I know Hearthstone. I played this game for a long time and many keyboards of mine were KIA when I was being punished for making decent plays, getting top-decked with Pyroblasts, and perfect curves from my opponents.

More on this topic: strategy. No regrets. Gamer Since: Log in or register to post comments. More Top Stories. 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 Join the video game revolution, and see your fantasies come to life. Video games have never been more prevalent in society, but if you are a new gamer where do you start?

With so many sequels and expansions the whole experience can be overwhelming. Well here are 11 games that are a good jumping Whether you are controlling entire nations or dynasties in grand strategy games, or just constructing a town in city builders, or maybe even just commanding a squad of troops, strategy games truly have something for everybody.

Since strategy games are based on careful and tactical approaches, TBS has been around for what feels like forever. I mean, technically it all started with Top 25 Most Popular Strategy Games in With thousands of startegy games to choose from, these few make the best. Manage the station and work together with your crew to Take a look at some of the best LoL strategy What are grand strategy games? Well, that depends on who you ask, but for most people, those are games that include controlling land, waging war, and engaging in diplomacy.

While this is a very broad definition, it's the only one that encompasses all the games below. It separates it nicely from Top 10 Best Paradox Games, Ranked. They push out several titles per year, and many of them become player favorites. Here are the 10 best Paradox Interactive games that you can play. Surviving Mars 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 Civ 5 Tier List Best Civilizations. Civ 5 is a complicated game with hundreds of different variables, but that doesn't mean you need to pick your nation blindly when setting up a game.