The 15 Best Strategy Games of The Year Missing on Your Devices

If you were to ask what is the best strategy game, you may receive a million answers with different games. Of course, with a huge number of strategy games available on different platforms, picking the best one can get tricky. Moreover, the strategy games genre is believed to be more suited for PC, but there are plenty of strategy games that you can play on mobile devices and other gaming consoles as well.

In essence, strategy games are those games that involve planning and skilful thinking to achieve the objective. They are usually turn-based, real-time or a combination of both and include other game elements such as economics, tactics, direct action, diplomacy, and exploration. Many strategy games are also adventure games due to the action and characters involved.

Without further ado, here’s a list of 15 of the best strategy games you can play on Android, iOS, PC, and other gaming consoles. The list includes free-to-play games, free games with in-app purchases, and paid games to suit each one’s preference.

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Best Strategy Games For Mobile & PC

Best Strategy Games for Android & iOS

Card Thief

Price: Free/$1.99/Google Play Pass

Platform: Android & iOS

Card thief is a solitaire-style strategy game played with a deck of cards. In this game, you are a thief who must move in stealth through the cards and avoid being caught. You are given the necessary equipment, stealth points, etc., to hide from the guards and complete the level.

Steal treasures, pickpockets, sneak in the shadows, and extinguish the torches in this solitaire-style card game to complete fun heists. Each Card Thief game lasts for two to three minutes for each level which is great if you are looking to play a quick game during small breaks. The game is available for free for download on Android and iOS devices, with an option to unlock the full version for $1.99.

Key Features:

• Four heists with different enemies and obstacles
• 12 unlockable equipment cards
• Time-based
• Solitaire-style gameplay

Speed Chess

Price: Free/Cash Games

Platform: Android & iOS

It’s a known fact that chess is one of the best and oldest strategy games that offers a different thrill to players. Speed Chess by MPL is a variation of chess that is fast-paced and involves a timer. The game guarantees an adrenaline rush as you need to make quick moves with a grand strategy to defeat your opponent.

MPL offers 1v1 free Speed Chess games for beginners and players looking to play for leisure. You can also play speed chess games for cash against a real online player if you are a skilled chess player. The game pits you against a player, and each player is given 3 minutes to checkmate the opponent. Every moves adds 2 seconds to your time. If you checkmate the opponent before the timer ends, you win the game. If your time ends before the opponent’s time, you lose.

With the timer ticking off, taking time to strategise each move is not quite possible. However, it’s difficult to win the game without good strategy and tactics. But if you win cash games, you also win real money.

Key Features:

• Free & cash games
• Timer-based
• Tap-style controls
• Real cash prizes

Heroes of Flatlandia

Price: Free Demo/$2.49

Platform: Android & iOS

Heroes of Flatlandia is a fun turn-based strategy game that takes you into a fantasy world of heroes, kingdoms, rival hood, tactical battles, and more. In the game, you will find yourself leading a kingdom of dwarfs, noble elves, bloodthirsty orcs, or dreadful undeads where your objective is to create armies to fight against enemies in tactical battles.

The game features about four different races of orcs, dwarfs, elves, and undeads. You will have multiple spells and special abilities to use while crashing your enemies, exploring the world, etc. The game can be played in a hot-seat multiplayer mode with friends or against a computer AI, ensuring maximum fun at your convenient time.

Key Features:

• Fantasy turn-based strategy
• Eight playable heroes and 30 different units
• Multiple spells and special abilities
• Impressive fairy-tale graphics

Northgard

Price: $8.99

Platform: Android, PS4, PC, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

Launched in 2021 for mobile, Northgard is one of the best strategy games (identical to the PC version but with touch controls) you can play on your Android devices.

This game lets you control a Clan of Vikings while you fight for a newly discovered continent filled with treasures, dangers, and mystery. You build your clan, train your army, manage resources, and defend yourself from the enemies.

Key Features:

• Online multiplayer with up to 6 players
• Duel, free-for-all, teamplay modes
• Story mode
• Multiple clans to choose from

Rome: Total War

Price: $9.99 + $4.99 9 (Each DLC)

Platform: Android, iOS, macOS, PC

Does the ancient world pique your interest? Rome: Total War is one of the best strategy games for players intrigued by ancient war-type games. This is a real-time strategy game that involves thrilling battles and making strategies to build and train troops, fight opponents, and safeguard your kingdom to dominate the world.

You will be fighting real-time battles in a turn-based campaign, managing your kingdom’s civil, economic, religious affairs. The game features 19 different factions such as Greek cities, Egypt, Spain, etc. It also has two standalone DLCs, including Alexander and Barbarian Invasion. The game is paid, with each DLC running $4.99.

Key Features:

• 19 playable factions
• Touch-screen interface
• Turn-based gameplay
• Real-time battles

Rebel Inc and Plague Inc

Price: Free with in-app purchases

Platform: Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Microsoft Windows

Rebel Inc and Plague Inc are two different strategy games that are free-to-play but feature in-app purchases.

Rebel inc Is an engaging political/military strategic simulation game that needs to be stabilised post-war. The game will take you through the complexities and consequences of modern counter-insurgency with about seven richly-modelled regions to stabilise. Ease the unrest in the regions by quelling rebellions and fund initiatives to empower the government.

Plague Inc is a blend of high strategy and realistic simulation where the players are infecting the world by creating viruses. Featuring thrilling and realistic scenarios such as the zombie-producing Necroa Virus, mind-controlling Neurax Worm, speed runs, and other real-life Scenarios, your mission is to stop the deadly plague and save the world.

Key Features:

• Hyper-realistic world
• In-game tutorial
• Strategic and tactical AI
• Full save/load functionality

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The Escapists 1 & 2

Price: $6.49-$6.99 each, Free with Google Play Pass

Platform: Android, iOS, macOS, PC, Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360

The Escapists series offers one of the best strategy games you can play on Android and iOS devices. The game is a prison escape sandbox game that involves a survival strategy after you commit a crime and go through prison time.

As a player, you collect different items in prison and use them to plan your escape. You also need to keep a low profile while planning your escape. Experience the life behind bars and immerse in this thrilling game where you strategise your escape from the world of prisoners and a rigid daily routine.

The Escapists 1 & 2 are quite similar in gameplay, with the difference of larger prisons to escape from and more scenarios in the second series. The games are paid but don’t involve ads or in-app purchases

Key Features:

• 6+ themed prisons
• Prison simulator games
• Survival-based

Pocket City

Price: Free/$3.99

Platform: Android & iOS

Heard of or played Sim City before? Pocket City is a similar strategy simulation game where you get to build your own city. There’s nothing you can dislike about this game.

As a mayor, you create a city with commercial, residential, industrial zones, parks, and recreation places. You get to control the traffic, cash flow, citizens, crimes, and fun events in your city. Complete levels and quests to each money or XP points and unlock new lands and advanced buildings.

You can play the free version with ads or purchase the premium version for a seamless gaming experience.

Key Features:

• Offline & Online play
• Portrait and landscape mode
• Touch-based city building
• Complete quests to win XP and money

Best Strategy Games on PC

Total War: Warhammer 2

Platform: Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux

Total War: Warhammer 2 is a turn-based strategy game that involves real-time tactics. Warhammer 2 is perhaps the best Total War game featuring the Warhammer Fantasy universe with massive battles, rogue armies, and impressive upgrades in the first version of the game. Basically, Warhammer 2 is a huge improvement in every aspect of its predecessor – more intuitive, easy UI and unique factions such as High Elves, Skaven, Dark Elves, and Lizardmen.

If you are all up for exploration, expansion and conquest in a fantasy fictional world, this is the best strategy game to opt for. The game involves real-time strategy battles and turn-based civilisation management with an army of bewildering monsters at your command.

Total War: Three Kingdoms

Platform: Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux

Launched in 2019, Total War’s Three Kingdoms is the most enjoyable and dramatic grand strategy game. The game is set in the period of China’s titular Three Kingdoms of the 2nd and 3rd century and based on the Romance of The Three Kingdoms novel of the 14th century. When you play this game, you’re in for thrilling, real-time combat with incredible storytelling and distinct characters.

You will find yourself recruiting soldiers to build your army, building towns, moving your army across the Chinese map to unite the shattered land. The game also instils an emotional and human angle in every campaign from which you must build your strategy. Each campaign features a web of relationships that impact performance in battles and diplomacy between the superhuman warriors. Total War Three Kingdoms is an intense yet gruelling game that occasionally dives into a fantasy world during the Chinese civil war.

Crusader Kings 3

Platform: Xbox Series X and S, PS 5, macOS, Microsoft Windows, Linux

One of the best strategy RPG games, Crusader Kings 3, is even bigger and better than its predecessor, Crusader 2. Similar to Total War Warhammer 2, the game offers easy navigation, impressive UI, and a much better storyline. In this game, you will be commanding your troops and conquering territories while also running your daily life as a ruler.

If you have played Crusader Kings earlier, this game might seem familiar at first, but the awesome newly added features, better storytelling and roleplaying, lifestyles of medieval novels and much more will make the game quite enjoyable for you. Every character you assume in the game will have its own lifestyle focus and unique personality, making secret plots as serious as a war between two nations.

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Endless Legend

Platforms: Microsoft Windows, macOS

Endless Legend is counted amongst some of the best 4x games in a fantasy world setting owing to a large variety of factions and maps. You will come across multiple side quests while you are exploring this fantasy world. The game is a perfect blend of fantasy and sci-fi, battles and diplomatic relations with superhuman races from Total War and Civ.

This 4X turn-based strategy game features single-player and multiplayer modes. The objective in the game is to dominate the land of Auriga along with your army built from the fourteen different factions. You dominate the world through battles and diplomacy while exploring new lands, finding new cities, and developing technologies. You establish an expire in the land of Auriga through conquests, diplomacy, exploration, and research.

Age Of Empires II: Definitive Edition

Platforms: Microsoft Windows

Age of Empires II is a real-time strategy game with the perfect mix of military and economic play. It is a remastered version of the Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings from 1999. The game offers additions such as Empire Wars and The Last Khans, which adds four new civilisations – Cumans, Bulgarians, Tatars, and Lithuanians.

Some of the best features in this remaster include improved visuals for troops and buildings, 4K graphics, zoom in and zoom out, and a new spectator mode. Overall, the game offers 35 playable civilisations, 135 missions over 24 campaigns to play in a single-player mode, multiplayer maps, and a training mode to practice for multiplayer mode.

XCOM 2

Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PS 4, Xbox One, Android, macOS, iOS, Microsoft Windows, Linux

XCOM 2 is for all the players who enjoy turn-based tactics. It is one of the finest and best strategy games that shoves you into difficult dilemmas with devious aliens, a group of heroes, and tactical battles. You will enjoy the thrill of the challenging battles full of surprises and tricks while travelling the world, infiltrating black sites, setting up cells, and hunting for more weapons and tools to increase your power.

In a game where you need to recruit new rookies, such as an engineer, to build a communication facility for you to contact territories and alien alloys to upgrade weapons, you have to make difficult choices of picking only one amongst your needs.

After the prevention of an alien invasion in the XCOM 2 predecessor XCOM: Enemy Unknown, this game gives you an opportunity to command the remaining forces and defend yourself from the aliens who now rule the Earth. Every choice in this game could lead to disastrous consequences for your army, so make your choices wisely and strategically.

Gears Tactics

Platforms: Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows

Gear Tactics is a turn-based tactics game where players command a squad of soldiers to eliminate any hostility they spot on the map and complete other objectives. The game is played with a top-down perspective, rewards risk-taking and offers an interesting blend of skills between the members of your squad.

If you hate being confined to a map or grid and want to explore the map freely, Gear Tactics offers you that opportunity to explore the map to your heart’s content. Every character in the game can take cover, remain in stealth to shoot moving enemies, or attack enemies. The game also features five different character classes with their own unique abilities and customisations. Does this game ring a bell?

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FAQs

What is the most complex strategy game?

Strategy games can all be complex as they require a lot of brainstorming and planning to accomplish the game objectives and win. The real-time strategy genre features some of the most complex strategy games out of all the strategy games genres. A few of these challenging strategy games include games like Age of Empires 2, Sudden Strike, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, Distant Worlds, Aurora 4x, StarCraft 2, etc.

What is the best strategy board game?

Undoubtedly, Chess is the best strategy board game of all time as it never seems to lose popularity. Apart from chess, several online games such as Risk, Catan Universe, Monopoly, Scythe, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, etc.