The Real-Time Strategy genre immerses players in the complexities of warfare. These games unfold in real-time, demanding strategic thinking, resource allocation, and the ability to adapt to battlefield scenarios.
From the intricacies of base-building and city-constructing to orchestrating large-scale battles, real-time strategy games offer a nuanced and challenging experience. Some notable entries in the real-time strategy genre mash styles or provide a blueprint for games emerging in the future, giving players the ability to grasp power in their own hands.
1. StarCraft & StarCraft II
StarCraft and StarCraft II play similarly to each other and provide an amazing real-time strategy experience with deep lore and easy-to-learn mechanics. In 1998, StarCraft broke through the genre with an amazing foothold in unique playable factions with diverse play styles: the human race called Terran, the infectious insect race called the Zerg, and the ancient alien zealots named the Protoss.
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, released in 2010, extends the campaign of the first, and updates the graphics and quality of some mechanics. Both of these games represent the best of the narrative and mechanical strengths of the genre. StarCraft 1 and 2 offer spectacular single-player, player-versus-player, or co-op opportunities, transcending time with their high-quality experiences.
2. Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition
Age of Empires II stands as one of the greatest historical real-time strategy games, featuring thirteen playable civilizations from the Middle Ages. The Definitive Edition, released in 2019, updates the graphics for high-resolution displays and includes expansions and new campaigns. Players aim to gather resources to build towns, create armies, and defeat their enemies.
During each match, empires advance through four “Ages”: the Dark Age, the Feudal Age, the Castle Age, and the Imperial Age, unlocking new units, structures, and technologies. This game provides fun for friends and strangers and includes historically-based campaigns and other single-player modes. The cheat code “how do you turn this on” spawns a sports car with a machine gun, “Vrooom!”
3. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
This dynamic military science fiction real-time strategy masterpiece sets place in Games Workshop’s renowned tabletop wargame, Warhammer 40,000’s universe. This game revolves around capturing and securing key locations on the battlefield, using infantry squads to seize control points that unlock resources for unit construction and tech tree advancements. Victory takes hold for the side that dominates the most control points or obliterates the enemy’s HQ structures.
Dawn of War features a campaign set on the planet Tartarus under siege by Ork invaders, with players taking on the role of the Space Marines’ Blood Ravens 3rd Company, setting the stage for the events in Dawn of War II: Retribution, also worth playing.
4. Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, released in 2007 as a standalone expansion to Supreme Commander, adds another amazing entry into the RTS military sci-fi genre. With an immense scale of warfare and interesting factions with an intense story, this game stands strong as its own title. Players use a giant bipedal mech called an Armored Command Unit to build an army and conquer their opponents.
Players traverse multiple battlespaces, such as air, land, sea, and information, using layered strategic thinking to encroach onto enemy territories. This version sees a new faction called the Seraphim and updates controls and the interface for modernization’s sake.
5. Homeworld Remastered Collection
Initially released in 1999, Homeworld saw a remastered version released in 2015, which features Homeworld and Homeworld 2, two epic space strategy games that reshaped the RTS genre. It presents 30 levels to journey through, each involving resource gathering, fleet construction, and strategic deployment to vanquish enemy vessels. The player’s home spacecraft carries across levels and moves in fully 3D space instead of the usual 2D plane, creating a refreshing and dynamic RTS gaming experience.
6. Rise of Nations: Extended Edition
The gameplay of Rise of Nations centers around the territory defined by the player’s settlements and expansions. This game supplies six infinite resource types for players to manage while expanding territories and building on their land. Nations, independent of actual historical fate, can be chosen to play in any age of history.
The game draws inspiration from the real world by featuring 18 civilizations, each with 4 to 8 unique units. The single-player mode called “Conquer the World” plays like Risk, integrating real-time battles in place of rolling dice on territory, making the gameplay last longer depending on the scenario
7. Total War: Three Kingdoms
Total War: Three Kingdoms takes place in the Three Kingdoms period of 220-280, where players assume the role of one of twelve factions, vying to eliminate their rivals and unify China under one rule. The game features real Chinese warlords like Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Quan, where players can lead them into battle while strategically commanding their infantry and cavalry units. Units organize into different groups under each powerful general, with up to three generals able to deploy at once.
Aside from the main game mode, the game also contributes a “Romance” mode, based on the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, in which generals are nearly superhuman. And based on the Record of the Three Kingdoms, the “Records” game mode presents a historically authentic version of the game without the gamey all-powerful generals.
8. Tooth and Tail
Tooth and Tail takes place in the 19th Century in a world of anthropomorphic animals, revealing a society grappling with food shortages, sparking political uprisings with clashing ideologies on acquiring food. The game features single-player and multiplayer modes, including online ranked and unranked matches and local battles.
Players select six units from a pool of twenty, embarking on a mission to destroy the opponent’s resources through strategic structure-building and unit creation. Each player directs a commander and maneuvers through the world with them instead of moving a camera around like in traditional top-down views.
9. Star Wars: Empire at War
With the story set between Episode III and Episode IV, Star Wars: Empire at War immerses players in the epic clash between the Empire and Rebels. The game offers three dynamic modes: Campaign, Galactic Conquest, and Skirmish.
Battles unfold on planets with infantry or above planets in intense space confrontations with starfighter squads and massive space crafts. Since 2017, the Steam version now boasts multiplayer modes and workshop support. This game offers the Star Wars universe’s best strategic gaming experience.
10. Stellaris
Stellaris places players at the helm of an interstellar civilization capable of FTL travel, tasking them with exploration, colonization, and resource management. Players encounter other civilizations and shape the balance of power structures by engaging in diplomacy, trade, or warfare.
Players navigate a Milky Way galaxy map with star systems represented as 2D tiles. They win by maintaining a lead on military, technology, and economic stability. Gamers must forge alliances for each game to win or conquer every other empire while navigating a dangerous galaxy.
11. The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II
The Battle for Middle-Earth II provides Good and Evil campaigns, with the Good following the elf Glorfindel safeguarding Rivendell and Evil following Sauron deploying the Mouth of Sauron and Nazgûl to amass Goblins to annihilate the North. This real-time strategy game introduces three new factions with distinct units and heroes: Goblins, Dwarves, and Elves. Up to four players can battle online in this epic recreation of The Lord of the Rings.
12. Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
In Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, players assume command of a futuristic spacefaring empire, undertaking the challenge of dominating star systems through military, economic, and diplomatic strategies. The game includes three distinct races—industrial TEC, the psychic Advent, and alien Vasari. The expansive playing field consists of a 3D web of planets and celestial bodies orbiting one or more stars.
Players conquer neighboring planets and explore anomalies within a massively scaled universe featuring entire galaxies. Although lacking a single-player campaign story, the game offers AI opponents and online multiplayer, making any game possibly last a long time.
13. Anno 1800
As the seventh installment in the Anno series, Anno 1800 embraces a historical backdrop, transporting players to the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. Departing from the futuristic themes of the previous couple of installments, gameplay reverts to conventional city-building and ocean combat mechanics while introducing new gameplay elements, including tourism, blueprinting, and societal impacts of industrialization on island inhabitants.
The central gameplay unfolds in the Old World, emphasizing the need for managing citizens, workers, and artisans to create supply chains for the New World of industrialization. The new Blueprinting feature allows players to plan their cities without expending resources, enhancing strategic decision-making.
14. Stronghold: Crusader HD
Stronghold: Crusader shares similarities to the original Stronghold, but now set in the Middle East setting during the Crusades. This game’s resource dynamic differs from the previous one by restricting farms to oasis grass, limiting the area for players to manage their crops.
The game documents events like the First and Third Crusades and conflicts within the Crusader states, engaging in battles including Nicaea, Heraclea, the Siege of Antioch, Krak des Chevaliers, and the Siege of Jerusalem. The single-player campaign mode “Crusader Trail” holds 50 linked missions and an extra 30 missions in the “Stronghold Warchest.”
15. Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection
Command & Conquer requires players to strategically construct a base and manage resources to dominate opponents in a near future setting. This remastered collection of the first two titles features rebuilt graphics, sound improvements, and bonus materials, including three expansion packs—”The Covert Operations,” “Counterstrike,” and “The Aftermath”- and missions and briefing videos from Nintendo 64 and PlayStation ports. The game includes about 100 campaign missions to experience, and still worth playing today.
16. Northgard
Inspired by Nordic mythology, Northgard follows a Viking clan trying to take control over a wild continent. Providing both single-player and multiplayer modes, including a narrative-driven campaign with increasingly complex missions, the game offers a multifaceted gaming experience. The maps segment into regions, each housing unique resources and limitations on building capacity.
Players see a season system that affects gameplay dynamics, such as farms ceasing food production while wood consumption increases during winter.
17. Steel Division 2
Set during the Soviet Byelorussian strategic offensive operation, Operation Bagration, Steel Division 2 includes multiplayer up to twenty players in 10v10 battles across 25 maps scaled to real life featuring details of battles that took place during the operation.
Players play the Allied or Axis powers, choosing one of eighteen available divisions with over six hundred units when building a deck. During the game, players build decks, and the only deployable units exist within the deck, making troop management an elaborate and progressive task.
18. They Are Billions
They Are Billions sends players into a post-apocalyptic steampunk world featuring a mash of RTS and survival gameplay. Set in a randomly generated environment infested with zombies, players construct a base by strategically planning defensive layouts, exploring the map, and gathering resources. Gold, food, workers, wood, stone, iron, oil, and energy exist across the map for players to gather to build structures and units.
Zombies pose threats large and small, with random attacks and set horde scenarios, culminating in a “final horde” moment at the end. Similar to how players have varying unit types, zombies vary, ranging between slow and fast, highly resistant, or massive in size.
19. Dune: Spice Wars
In Dune: Spice Wars, players use diplomatic or military approaches to dominate the planet of Arrakis. Resources like spice and minerals lay about the map on specific tiles, between unique areas that require research to traverse, like the deep desert or oceans.
The game features six factions: House Atreides, House Harkonnen, House Corrino, House Ecaz, the Smugglers, and the Fremen. When players recruit agents, they send them to invest in different factions and research areas. Sandworms lay in wait throughout the desert, ready to pop out and gobble up troops.
20. Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor
Like the first Company of Heroes, Tales of Valor brings players into a strategic game about constructing base structures, making new units, and duking it out against AI or other players in WW2, where players can take the role of any side.
The game offers three single-player campaigns: “Tiger Ace” draws inspiration from the historical exploits of a German captain in Normandy, “Causeway” follows a company of American paratroopers in Normandy, and Falaise Pocket imagines the story of the soldiers caught in Falaise, France.
An expansion pack introduced three multiplayer modes, Assault, Stonewall, and a tank war, offering different styles of RTS combat.
