Best rts game on pc

You will feel like a ninja. If realism and authentic simulation of World War II battles is your bag, then make sure to check out Steel Division 2. Command amour, infantry, and aerial forces to seize objectives and rout the enemy, paying careful attention to terrain bonuses or hidden enemy forces that may scupper your forward advance. Getting started: Read our Hearts of Iron 4 tutorial. Steel Division is the soul of hardcore hex-and-counter wargame, converted to the fluidity of a fully-realised 3D on-screen battlemap, and spruced with some real-time flavour.

Its emphasis is on the operational battlefield, though, and functions as a perfect mid-point between hardcore wargamers and traditional RTS-lovers. Oh, and kill lots of people. Your units are continuously out-gunned and out-manned, having to rely on their tactical wits to evade or stealthily dispatch combatants. Its gorgeous isometric environments span everything from castles to U-boats, and the array of commandos in your squad each bring different abilities to the mission — the Spy can equip enemy uniforms and waltz around as an officer to enter covert areas or provide a distraction, while the Marine can dive underwater and pilot boats for aquatic infiltration.

Brilliant for some nostalgic, tactile fun. The basics of Northgard will be familiar to old hands of the historical RTS games of the early s. The selection of playable clans each bring particular strengths and playstyles — some hot-headed warriors, others peaceable diplomats — and unique units, including Valkyries or Berserkers.

But Northgard places a bigger focus on base-building and resource management than the Age of Empireses or Settlerses before it. Ensure you have supplies to survive the winter and expand your colony sparingly.

If you spread yourself too thin, your resources might wane and fizzle, leaving you shivering and vulnerable in the chill winter winds. Serious, intense, and overflowing with operational possibilities, Wargame: Red Dragon does a superb job of translating the best parts of the wargaming hobby into a streamlined tactical operation that is as attractive as it is spectacular.

On the battlefield, it plays much like a typical wargame. Land, naval, and air units are selected and deployed before battle starts, with each opponent lined up at either end of a gargantuan map. Move units to exploit their flanks, and coordinate comprehensive assaults to break enemy ranks. Bear in mind, Wargame: Red Dragon can be overwhelming. With 17 playable nations fielding a total of 1, units, the game is not easy to dive into for quick skirmish, nor is it intended to be.

The ravaged battlefields of World War 1 are familiar to the popular imagination. Hollowed villages left only with the shells of their former homes; crisp husks of burning vehicles long since abandoned, mile-long stretches of narrow trenches.

And, of course, bipedal dieselpunk mechs, hulking across fields to level trees and brazenly crush buildings under their feet. Weaponry can be changed and upgraded, but the most focus is on the fight, with base-building taking a back seat. A central campaign provides an enjoyable story, and the opportunity to play each mission with a co-op buddy is a welcome addition to an otherwise competitive-heavy genre.

A few bugs and unit pathing issues at launch held Iron Harvest back. Most have been resolved now, however, and the game makes for quite the dieselpunk caper.

Best known for its once-vibrant esports community and international championships that were as grandly obtuse as they were violently serious, its multiplayer scene remains strong today. Plenty of big guns, alien horrors, and archaic spiritual technology to suit your sci-fi leanings. But the single-player is too often overlooked. The Zerg, Protoss, and Terran all play as wonderfully different factions with enough mechanical differences to match their visual disparities, and sufficient shared content to make mastering each race an enjoyable challenge rather than a cumbersome chore.

Now you have no excuse not to meet the Queen of Blades. Don't be afraid to join the fray! Be part of the conversation by heading over to our Facebook page, Discord , or forum. To stay informed on all the latest wargaming and tabletop games guides, news, and reviews, follow Wargamer on Twitter and Steam News Hub. We sometimes include relevant affiliate links in articles, from which we earn a small commission.

Any stated prices are correct at the time of publication. For more information, click here. Callum Bains Staff Writer. Updated: Jan 11, He helped launch the new Wargamer, and is now a news writer at TechRadarGaming. He's written freelance for TechRadar, GamesIndustry. It's a huge grand strategy RPG, more polished and cohesive than the venerable CK2, and quite a bit easier on the eyes, too. At first glance it might seem a bit too familiar, but an even greater focus on roleplaying and simulating the lifestyles of medieval nobles, along with a big bag of new and reconsidered features, makes it well worth jumping ship to the latest iteration.

It's only going to get larger and more ambitious as the inevitable DLC piles up, but even in its vanilla form CK3 is a ceaseless storyteller supported by countless complex systems that demand to be mucked around with and tweaked. Getting to grips with it is thankfully considerably easier this time around, thanks to a helpful nested tooltip system and plenty of guidance.

And all this soapy dynastic drama just has a brilliant flow to it, carrying you along with it. You can meander through life without any great plan and still find yourself embroiled in countless intrigues, wars and trysts. Total War: Three Kingdoms , the latest historical entry in the series, takes a few nods from Warhammer, which you'll find elsewhere in this list, giving us a sprawling Chinese civil war that's fuelled by its distinct characters, both off and on the battlefield.

Each is part of a complicated web of relationships that affects everything from diplomacy to performance in battle, and like their Warhammer counterparts they're all superhuman warriors. It feels like a leap for the series in the same way the first Rome did, bringing with it some fundemental changes to how diplomacy, trade and combat works.

The fight over China also makes for a compelling campaign, blessed with a kind of dynamism that we've not seen in a Total War before. Since launch, it's also benefited from some great DLC, including a new format that introduces historical bookmarks that expand on different events from the era. The first Total War: Warhammer showed that Games Workshop's fantasy universe was a perfect match for Creative Assembly's massive battles and impressively detailed units.

Total War: Warhammer 2 makes a whole host of improvements, in interface, tweaks to heroes, rogue armies that mix factions together and more. The game's four factions, Skaven, High Elves, Dark Elves and Lizardmen are all meaningfully different from one another, delving deeper into the odd corners of old Warhammer fantasy lore.

If you're looking for a starting point with CA's Warhammer games, this is now the game to get—and if you already own the excellent original, too, the mortal empires campaign will unite both games into one giant map. Paradox's long-running, flagship strategy romp is the ultimate grand strategy game, putting you in charge of a nation from the end of the Middle Ages all the way up to the s. As head honcho, you determine its political strategy, meddle with its economy, command its armies and craft an empire.

Right from the get-go, Europa Universalis 4 lets you start changing history. Maybe England crushes France in the Years War and builds a massive continental empire.

Maybe the Iroquois defeat European colonists, build ships and invade the Old World. It's huge, complex, and through years of expansions has just kept growing. The simulation can sometimes be tough to wrap one's head around, but it's worth diving in and just seeing where alt-history takes you. Few 4X games try to challenge Civ, but Old World already had a leg up thanks designer Soren Johnson's previous relationship with the series.

He was the lead designer on Civ 4, and that legacy is very apparent. But Old World is more than another take on Civ. For one, it's set exclusively in antiquity rather than charting the course of human history, but that change in scope also allows it to focus on people as well as empires. Instead of playing an immortal ruler, you play one who really lives, getting married, having kids and eventually dying. Then you play their heir. You have courtiers, spouses, children and rivals to worry about, and with this exploration of the human side of empire-building also comes a bounty of events, plots and surprises.

You might even find yourself assassinated by a family member. There's more than a hint of Crusader Kings here. You can't have a best strategy games list without a bit of Civ. Civilization 6 is our game of choice in the series right now, especially now that it's seen a couple of expansions. The biggest change this time around is the district system, which unstacks cities in the way that its predecessor unstacked armies. Cities are now these sprawling things full of specialised areas that force you to really think about the future when you developing tiles.

The expansions added some more novel wrinkles that are very welcome but do stop short of revolutionising the venerable series. They introduce the concept of Golden Ages and Dark Ages, giving you bonuses and debuffs depending on your civilisation's development across the years, as well as climate change and environmental disasters.

It's a forward-thinking, modern Civ. This is a game about star-spanning empires that rise, stabilise and fall in the space of an afternoon: and, particularly, about the moment when the vast capital ships of those empires emerge from hyperspace above half-burning worlds.

Diplomacy is an option too, of course, but also: giant spaceships. Play the Rebellion expansion to enlarge said spaceships to ridiculous proportions. Stellaris takes an 'everything and the kicthen sink' approach to the space 4X. It's got a dose of EU4, Paradox's grand strategy game, but applied to a sci-fi game that contains everything from robotic uprisings to aliens living in black holes.

It arguably tries to do to much and lacks the focus of some of the other genre greats, but as a celebration of interstellar sci-fi there are none that come close. It's a liberating sandbox designed to generate a cavalcade of stories as you guide your species and empire through the stars, meddling with their genetic code, enslaving aliens, or consuming the galaxy as a ravenous hive of cunning insects.

Fantasy 4X Endless Legend is proof that you don't need to sacrifice story to make a compelling 4X game. Each of its asymmetrical factions sports all sorts of unique and unusual traits, elevated by story quests featuring some of the best writing in any strategy game.

The Broken Lords, for instance, are vampiric ghosts living in suits of armour, wrestling with their dangerous nature; while the necrophage is a relentless force of nature that just wants to consume, ignoring diplomacy in favour of complete conquest. Including the expansions, there are 13 factions, each blessed or cursed with their own strange quirks. Faction design doesn't get better than this. Civ in space is a convenient shorthand for Alpha Centauri, but a bit reductive.

Brian Reynolds' ambitious 4X journey took us to a mind-worm-infested world and ditched nation states and empires in favour of ideological factions who were adamant that they could guide humanity to its next evolution. The techs, the conflicts, the characters— it was unlike any of its contemporaries and, with only a few exceptions, nobody has really attempted to replicate it.

Not even when Firaxis literally made a Civ in space, which wasn't very good. Alpha Centauri is as fascinating and weird now as it was back in '99, when we were first getting our taste of nerve stapling naughty drones and getting into yet another war with Sister Miriam.

More than 20 years later, some of us are still holding out hope for Alpha Centauri 2. Pick an Age of Wonders and you really can't go wrong. If sci-fi isn't your thing, absolutely give Age of Wonders 3 a try, but it's Age of Wonders: Planetfall that's got us all hot and bothered at the moment.

Set in a galaxy that's waking up after a long period of decline, you've got to squabble over a lively world with a bunch of other ambitious factions that run the gamut from dinosaur-riding Amazons to psychic bugs.

The methodical empire building is a big improvement over its fantastical predecessors, benefiting from big changes to its structure and pace, but just as engaging are the turn-based tactical battles between highly customisable units.

Stick lasers on giant lizards, give everyone jetpacks, and nurture your heroes like they're RPG protagonists—there's so much fiddling to do, and it's all great.

Set in an alternate 's Europe, factions duke it out with squishy soldiers, tanks and, the headline attraction, clunky steampunk mechs. There are plenty of them, from little exosuits to massive, smoke-spewing behemoths, and they're all a lot of fun to play with and, crucially, blow up. Iron Harvest does love its explosions. When the dust settles after a big fight, you'll hardly recognise the area. Thanks to mortars, tank shells and mechs that can walk right through buildings, expect little to remain standing.

The level of destruction is as impressive as it is grim. To cheer yourself up, you can watch a bear fight a mech. Each faction has a heroic unit, each accompanied by their very own pet. All of them have some handy unique abilities, and yes, they can go toe-to-toe with massive war machines. 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.