CIV 5 AS A STRATEGIC WAR GAME PC

One of the earliest games to jump on board the X-COM tactics train (and also one of the best), Invisible, Inc is a turn-based spy-‘em-up that sees your team of ragtag espionage agents using their sneaking and hacking skills to steal from powerful mega-corporations. It received mixed reviews on launch due to bugs, but may be worth a revisit now. A sequel was released in 2018, boasting a slicker version of the original game’s combat with a much broader strategy campaign over the top. You might think you know what your opponent is going to do, but what if they also think you think that? Should you therefore second-guess them and opt for a completely different tactic? But what if they’ve third-guessed you? Oh no, my brain…Īll of this makes Frozen Synapse one of the most captivating small-scale strategy games around. What results from this is a fantastically captivating guessing-game. You need to try to figure out which direction they might move their soldiers, the angles at which they might shoot, even whether they might pause at certain points before continuing their order. Player cannot see what moves their opponent is making, but they can try to predict those moves by plotting out potential enemy team manoeuvres themselves. Neither turn-based nor real-time, Frozen Synapse’s action takes place in five-second increments. Its basic concept sees two special forces teams squaring off inside ice-blue building blueprints viewed from the top-down, with each player plotting move and fire orders for their squad to be executed at varying times. Released back in 2011, Frozen Synapse is one of the more original concepts for a strategy game. By this point, those are functionally a different genre, which we’ll cover in a separate rundown at some point in the future. Note that while our definition of “strategy” is fairly broad, we won’t be including any management games in the article. So in this article, we’ll celebrate the best that strategy gaming has delivered over the course of the last ten years. Former titans of the genre like Real Time Strategy have fallen from their pedestals, while the previously obscure turn-based-tactics genre has exploded in the wake of 2012’s X-COM: Enemy Unknown. The genre has grown and diversified enormously, expanding to include life-consuming grand strategies like Crusader Kings and tiny, experimental indie experiences like Into the Breach.

CIV 5 AS A STRATEGIC WAR GAME PC

From Populous to Command and Conquer to Total War, PC gaming has sent countless tiny men and women live, work and die at the click of a mouse button.īut strategy games have changed a lot in the last decade or so.

More than any other genre, the PC is the home of the strategy game.

Civ 5 as a strategic war game