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  • 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.

      EDIT: Yeah, another user already recommended Zero-K.

  • 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.

  • Hmm. "Strategy" is pretty broad. Most of the new stuff you have is turn-based, but you've got tactics stuff like X-COM and strategy stuff. If we're including both real-time and turn-based, and both strategy and tactics...What do I enjoy? I tend to lean more towards the milsim side of strategy...

    • Stellaris. Lot of stuff to do here -- follows the Paradox model of a ton of DLCs with content and lots of iteration on the game. Not cheap, though. Turn-based, 4x.
    • Hearts of Iron 4. Another Paradox game. I think unless someone is specifically into World War II grand strategy, I'd recommend Stellaris first, which I'd call a lot more approachable. Real time, grand strategy. I haven't found myself playing this recently -- the sheer scope can be kind of overwhelming, and unlike 4X games like Stellaris, it doesn't "start out small" -- well, not if you're playing the US, at any rate.
    • Carrier Command 2. Feels a little unfinished, but it keeps pulling me back. Really intended to be played multiplayer, but you can play single-player if you can handle the load of playing all of the roles concurrently. Real-time tactics.
    • Rule the Waves 3. Lot of ship design here, fun if you're into gun-era naval combat. Turn-based strategy (light strategy), with real-time tactics combat. Not beautiful. There is a niche of people who are super-into this.
    • I agree with the other user who recommended Steel Division 2. If you've played Wargame: Red Dragon or earlier Eugen games, which are really designed to be played multiplayer, you know that the AI is abysmal. I generally don't like playing multiplayer games, and persisted in playing it single-player. Steel Division 2's AI is actually fun to play against single-player. Real-time tactics, leaning towards the MOBA genre but without heroes and themed with relatively-real-world military hardware.
    • XCOM-alikes. I didn't like XCOM 2 -- it felt way too glizy for me to tolerate, too much time looking at animations, but I may have just not given it a fair chance, as I bailed out after spending only a little time with the game. I have enjoyed turn-based tactics games in the X-COM series and the genre in the past -- squad-based, real-time tactics games. Problem is that I don't know if I can recommend any of them in 2024 -- all the games in that genre I've played are pretty long in the tooth now. Jagged Alliance 2 is fun, but very old. Silent Storm is almost as old, has destructable terrain, but feels low-budget and unpolished. There were a number of attempts to restart the Jagged Alliance series after 2 and a long delay that were not very successful; I understand that Jagged Alliance 3 is supposed to be better, but I don't think I've played through it yet. Wasteland 2 and Wasteland 3 aren't really in the same genre, are more like Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, CRPGs with turn-based tactics combat. But if you enjoy turn-based-tactics, you might also enjoy them, and Wasteland 3 isn't that old.
    • If you like real-time tactics, you might give the Close Combat series a look. I really liked the (now ancient) Close Combat 2. The balance for that game was terrible -- it heavily rewarded use of keeping heavy tanks on hills -- but it was an extremely popular game, and I loved playing it. There are (many) newer games in the series but they started including a strategic layer and a round timer after Close Combat 3. These improved things in the game (and if you like a strategy aspect, you might prefer that), but I just wanted to play the tactics side, and don't feel like the later games every quite had the appeal of the earlier ones. Still, they've certainly had enough to make me come back and replay them.
  • 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.

  • 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

  • One game that we always play at LANs is Spellforce III . It's got a great old school RTS vibe while throwing some new stuff in the mix and there's a free version of the multiplayer which gives it a really low barrier of entry.

  • 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.

  • Metal Fatigue. It's like what a Gundam RTS should be. It's awesome. If I were a billionaire I would remake it.

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