Looking back at it now, 2020 doesn’t feel like a banner year for strategy games, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been a few gems. The list below – gathered by a panel of experts and regularly updated – contains games from as recently as 12 months ago alongside classics from as far back as 28 years ago. They’re all games we think you could play and love right now.

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For a time it looked as though strategy games had sunk into a kind of deathly malaise, unsure which territory to claim next and which ones it should leave well and truly alone. Fast forward to 2020, though, and strategy games have never looked healthier, which is why we’ve compiled this best strategy games list of all time. Whether you want to conquer the depths of space, wage historical warfare or hulk around in big mechanical robots, there’s a strategy game for you below.

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You’ll ocassionally find someone on the internet sounding off about how the strategy genre is dead. If you see such a person in the future, send them this list of the best strategy games ever made.

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This is the hAcKeR collective {{Synonymous Bosch}}. We have taken control of this aRt1cLe. Three years ago it was written by the untalented and scurrilous journalist Brendan Caldwell, a man lacking in both knowledge and substance. But we have gained access in order to correct his egregious errors. It s a hack of a hack! Ha ha ha. We had our best joke cell work on that for three nights. Please laugh. Our detractors may say Mr Caldwell got it mostly right, and that may be the case, yes. But the order is aLL Wr0nG. And he has neglected to update it with a recent hit. We cannot let this stand. Here is an updated list which, actually, looking at it now, is still mostly Mr Caldwell s words and I guess they re okay. Sorry we said those nasty things. We are {{Synonymous Bosch}}. We sometimes forgive. We often forget.

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An entirely objective ranking of the 50 best PC strategy games ever made, now freshened up to include everything from 2017 and 2018. From intricate, global-scale wargames to the tight thrills of guerrilla squads, the broad expanse of the genre contains something for everyone, and we’ve gathered the best of the best.

The vast majority are available to buy digitally, a few are free to download and play forever. They’re all brilliant.

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Civilization VI: Rise and Fall wants to solve a problem. That problem is perpetual growth, and it plagues many 4X games. Whether your aim is world conquest or cultural hegemony, victory in Civilization and many of its cohorts depends on domination. However peacefully you try to play, you’re often straight-jacketed into a utilitarian-psychotic view where all resources and people are just raw material to be assimilated, Borg-like, until the whole map is monochrome.

But as the early excitement of exploration and expansion ebbs to late game stagnation, the fun runs out. Historically, stagnating empires tend to fragment and collapse. But in Civilization VI, like many games, you’re the star of the show and there’s nowhere to go but up.

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As anyone who watches their feeds knows, we live in a constantly evolving cyberpunk dystopia. They’re connecting toilets to the internet, for heavens sake. If this Gibsonist world is just too REAL for you, we have put together the ten best videogames about hacking, programming and computing so you can escape into meta-dystopia. Which I’m sure is a much better place.

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Hello. This is Spawn Point, a new not-quite-regular feature in which we take a genre, series or other facet of gaming culture, and try to convince you to give it a shot. It might be those hero shooters you ve always wanted to get into, or that terrifying space game played by thousands of jerks. We ll briefly explain the thing, followed by some ways for you to breach it.

First up, it s… the real-time strategy. (more…)

Introversion Software’s seminal hacking sim Uplink may be fifteen years old but it’s still one of the finest hacks ’em ups, Brendan will tell you. It’s now looking super-fresh too, thanks to the amazing makeover mod UplinkOS [official site]. Along with a new look, UplinkOS brings fab features like support for opening multiple windows at once, now draggable and with tabs. Fancy! We’ve mentioned UplinkOS before but now, after several months of beta, a final release has arrived. Here, look at this swish style: … [visit site to read more]

If you fancy a break from watching the crawl towards nuclear annihilation live on TV, you can now jack into virtual reality and watch it sped-up in Defcon VR [official site]. Introversion Software today launched the free VR doodad, which lets goggheads enter a virtual war room to spectate matches in the nuclear war RTS Defcon. Our Adam will tell you Defcon is one of the best strategy games, and I… don’t disagree but don’t have the stomach to play again. Watching wars with your chums in cyberspace seems deliciously wicked and fitting for something so awful. … [visit site to read more]