Re: Supreme Commander 2 DLC Infinite War Battle Pack-SKIDROW.torrent
Berry Spitsberg
Earlier this month, we asked you to vote for your favourite strategy games of all time to celebrate the launch (and glorious return) of several strategy classics this month, including Relic's WW2 RTS Company Of Heroes 3, Blue Byte's The Settlers: New Allies and Cyanide's fantasy Warhamball Blood Bowl 3. And cor, I've never seen such love for individual expansions and total conversion mods among mainline RTS games and 4Xs. As with all strategy games, however, there can only be one victor - and you can find out what that single strategy game to rule them all is right here. Here are your 50 favourite strategy games of all time, as voted for by you, the RPS readership.
Naturally, with so many mods and expansions coming up on the list, the number of votes for certain games has ended up becoming quite diluted in places. I won't spoil which game received the highest number of votes up top here, but let's just say if I was ranking this list by series, we'd have a very different top ten. StarCraft would be sitting at number one, followed by Command & Conquer, Civilization, Supreme Commander, Age Of Empires, XCOM, Total War and Warcraft, with two more individual games that I won't name here because, you know, spoilers. That some games in these respective series still broke into the top ten all on their own is testament to their enduring appeal, of course, and I'm dead keen to see what you make of this list in the comments below.
Importantly, it's a very different ranking to our own best strategy games list, which is great! I love seeing such a variety of different games and tastes come to the fore here, and thank you to everyone who wrote in to tell us about their favourite strategy game as well - your words will forever be enshrined in the list below, just like our RPS 100: Reader Edition.
dglenny: Clearly defined factions and asymmetric mechanics and a great big my-goodness-I'm-so-powerful-now. And so beautiful. Just so beautiful. Shame about the last DLC, but let's just agree to ignore that.
nitric22: The push and pull dynamics of holding and taking the gravity wells along the travel lanes in these monstrous maps is what really made Sins Of A Solar Empire special. This really felt like space. As in, if my fleet is caught two or three jumps away from a key battle, I can count them out already. Positional planning matters. The sluggish pace of traversing the maps and the intense heated combat of multiple capital ships, corvettes, and support ships just felt so satisfying.
phuzz: OK, I was torn between The Settlers I and II, but really my love for these games is in the things they have in common. Low pressure, just keep trying to optimise your road network, and watch your little people go about their jobs :)
GB#9133: Zero-K is the first game I played since I started gaming on PC two years. Yet until today, even though it might not have the best graphics when it comes to RTS games, the fact that this free, open source game can offer so much content is amazing, with the game having no monetization other then optional donations used to maintain the game's servers.
Matt M: Civilization is an excellent balance between grand strategy and micro-management, especially in the earlier games of the series up to about IV. Outsmarting devious and persistent AI characters and avoiding the nuclear rage policies of Ghandi have always been a fun challenge. To sum this game up: I had to uninstall it and ban myself from playing it at times because it was too addicting.
lglethal: It is the perfect blend of risk-reward gameplay. It has a wide array of enemies, a good blend of gameplay tactics, and a perfect just one more turn feeling. Absolutely Perfect Game (especially when expanded with mods!).
Stuart: This vote is really for the whole series, ever since getting Warhammer I at release it's been my go to strategy game. Total War: Warhammer III just keeps adding more stuff on top. While the cost of entry for new users may be unresonably high if you want to have access to all the factions for those of us hat have been along from the start the gradual building of more and more toys to the toybox is just enough to keep me gripped.
ggscv: It was the first esport to reach mainstream success (in South Korea) and still to this day plays extremely well, single player and multiplayer. One of the finest RTS's out there.
alien: It was the first game I ever played on PC, and introduced me to strategy games as a whole. It managed to be a strong contender to many modern RTS games for me in its base gameplay as well as all the great mods that were made for the game that added even more content.
Fett von Speck: Jagged Alliance 2 is a real time mercenary management simulation with open world and sandbox characteristics, and at the same time a turn-based tactical RPG. The attention to detail is enormous and until today unsurpassed.
DEspresso: Combine memorable characters, excellent turn-based combat add a decent story, a lot of Easter eggs and weave it together under an umbrella of economic management sim, resulting in one of the few games with different systems that work.
XJ220: The micro-management: who gets which armor, who carries which spare equipment, who uses which gun with which ammo and accessories, who assumes which stance and covers which sector during combat etc. Also, of course, the personalities and their interactions. Characters who are the definition of vanity or simply hate one another or who cheer each other up. And, of course, Deidranna and her advisor Elliot, "the idiot". Simply brilliant! Even more so with the 1.13 mod.
Caesar: When I started playing Hearts Of Iron, I liked the idea of expanding your territories by waging war on your neighbours, then I continued to play HOI for the variety of stuff within the game like tank, airplane and ship designing, template designing, researching tech, air and naval superiority, terrain modifiers, resistance systems etc, in addition to how many paths you can take per country, all of those things make the game so replayable and doesn't feel the same every time.
Gumundur: I've played too much of Warhammer II through the years and now I'm getting stuck in III, I love how I can play so many different styles in one game with utterly ridiculous units and completely nuts story/characters the Warhammer universe is bonkers which is why I love it. Yeah, I really do love those pompous Elf princes that ride dragons or skewer everything from afar :D
Blah64: Massive map filled with many playable factions with varying forms of gameplay. Campaign map lets me watch numbers go up. Battle map lets me watch epic battles of coordinated units.
Old_Man_Gaming: The first XCOM after the expansion is brilliant. The game is hard enough to present a real challenge, with all the tense, tactical battles from the base game given a keener edge by the additions in the expansion. The desire to collect Meld makes you play more aggressively, the missions against EXALT stretch your resources and the new tech trees give you hard base building choices. All while obeying my strategy game rules - failure is the player's fault and every choice feels crucial. When XCOM calls I always say, 'Yes, Commander'.
krazha: Europa Universalis III was one of my first strategy game loves, and Europa Universalis IV is an iterative improvement on it in almost every way, with a few small exceptions. The great advantage of all the historical grand strategy games is that every decision the player makes is grounded in the greater narrative about the course of world history in that particular game. EU4 does this best - its starting point is distant enough for the results to not be uncanny, but close enough that the implications of the differences from our world are comprehensible. Beyond this the modding community, especially Anbennar, has injected tons of replayability and new adventures into this particular old dog.
Cathal: All Paradox games are in a class of their own but, with more than a decade of love and support, EU4 is a cut above the rest. Crusader Kings II is its closest competition but whereas that focuses on roleplay, EU4 leans more towards strategy with its countless interlocking systems. The end result: a game where you will still be learning new things in your thousandth hour!
Paranoid: Beyond All Reason is a community led remake of Total Annihilation, backed up by an extremely sophisticated game and physics engine that simulates every shots trajectory in huge 16-player battles. The game also features a truly next generation UI for controlling units, allowing even those who are slowing down a little to compete at the highest levels.
Teppic: The #1 game is an outstanding fan made successor to the absolute classic that is Total Annihilation, made multiplayer and giving a virtual infinity of strategies to realize, while governing the production and actions of more units that you can fathom. Micro and macro management, adjustable resource sharing within teams... They have it all. A must see for someone who appreciates classics.
Grumpy: Beyond All Reason, the real-time strategy game that has me hooked for hours on end. The ability to build and manage my own faction, gather resources, and wage war against other factions is just so satisfying. What sets this game apart is its unique technology tree system, allowing me to shape my faction in a multitude of ways. It is an enjoyable and challenging strategy game that may appeal to fans of similar games like Planetary Annihilation or Supreme Commander.
Cognac McCarthy : Company Of Heroes' single-player campaign is one of the best I've ever played. The missions are varied enough to keep it interesting throughout, and the sound and cinematic feel are intense enough that it never feels like you're playing with army men. It's an action game that just happens to be shown from above. Homeworld (my #2) had the better story, but COH wins thanks to its online play. It was the first RTS I ever comfortable enough with to try my hand at competitive multiplayer. Its emphasis on micromanagement and complementary army rosters over basebuilding and APM meant if I lost, I usually felt like I got outsmarted, not outpaced. COH2 offered real UI and technical improvements but I can't put it ahead of the original. Looking forward to COH3!
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