But you need the workers to bring in fuel and food to keep everyone else alive. Do you let the ill heal — or do you amputate? What about children?

More hands on deck, or is having a childhood more important? Frostpunk is management on the edge, where almost every decision you take — almost every building you erect — is a huge risk.

It can be mastered in time, but until then, it is desperate, harrowing and a deft inversion of the usual race-to-riches approach. Theme Hospital might be the first popular management game to dwell on the dark side of profiteering, but Prison Architect is an even darker proposition.

Can you keep your inmates happy? Can you make a profit? How important is it to process death row residents efficiently? What happens when a riot breaks out?

Like the best management games, it allows you to create a smoothly running machine, but it also embraces chaos and roleplaying.

This is more of a toy box to rummage in than it is a strategic puzzle, but it has an extra layer of mild moral dilemmas that keep you hooked.

For instance, the exile or death of troublemakers, bribing protesters, ignoring environmental concerns, rigging elections or cramming people into dangerous housing.

Or you could stay the course, do the right thing and hope that it will all come good in the end. Tagged with Bestest Bests , feature , Anno , Banished , Cities: Skylines , Dungeon Keeper , Dwarf Fortress , Factorio , Frostpunk , Megaquarium , Oxygen Not Included , Planet Coaster , Prison Architect , RimWorld , Slime Rancher , Stardew Valley , Surviving Mars , The Sims 4 , Tropico 6 , Two Point Hospital , Zeus: Master of Olympus.

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Wot I Think: Anno Anno has a demo, but only for one week. For fans of Railroad Tycoon II who may have exhausted the original scenarios and campaigns, The Second Century adds some hefty new challenges.

Winning design, powerful artificial intelligence, and a great sense of humor make The Corporate Machine one of the best strategy games so far this year.

It's a testament to Startopia's fundamentally sound design and attractive presentation that you'll enjoy it despite the fact that, at times, it'll make you feel slightly alienated.

You can control an entire movie studio and make your own films in the strategy game The Movies. You can play as a movie mogul from the early days of Best PC Management Games.

Games 9. Railroad Tycoon II First Released Nov 2, released. Football Manager First Released Oct 30, released. Planet Coaster First Released Nov 17, released.

Offworld Trading Company First Released Feb 12, released. Tournament Dreams College Basketball First Released December unreleased.

Railroad Tycoon 3 First Released Oct 23, released. Hearts of Iron 4 is a grand strategy wargame hybrid, as comfortable with logistics and precise battle plans as it is with diplomacy and sandboxy weirdness.

Want to conquer the world as a communist UK? Go for it. Maybe Germany will be knocked out of the war early, leaving Italy to run things.

You can even keep things going for as long as you want, leading to a WW2 that continues into the '50s or '60s. With expansions, it's fleshed out naval battles, espionage and other features so you have control over nearly every aspect of the war.

Steel Division: Normandy 44 takes its cues from Eugen Systems' exceptional Wargame series , combining the titular subgenre with loads of RTS goodness.

Normandy 44 takes the action back to World War 2 and tears France apart with its gargantuan battles. It's got explosive real-time fights, but with mind-boggling scale and additional complexities ranging from suppression mechanics to morale and shock tactics.

The sequel, Steel Division 2 , brings with it some improvements, but unfortunately the singleplayer experience isn't really up to snuff. In multiplayer, though, it's pretty great.

And if the World War 2 setting isn't your cup of tea, the older Wargame series still represents some of the best of both RTS and wargaming, so they're absolutely worth taking for a spin.

We're always updating this list, and below are a few upcoming games that we're hoping we'll eventually be able to include.

These are the strategy games we're most looking forward to, so check out what you should be keeping an eye on.

After eight years of updating and expanding Crusader Kings 2, Paradox is finally making a sequel. Crusader Kings 3 is expected to have almost all of its predecessor's systems, but on a greatly expanded map that's four times larger, and with a greater focus on roleplaying.

The stories of idiot nobles, families assassinating each other and romances with horses made CK2 such a singular strategy game, and leaning into these emergent character-driven narratives even more can only be a good thing.

This time, it's even using a character progression system that would look right at home in a traditional RPG. Characters can work their way down different lifestyle trees, unlocking perks that further specialise them and give them new abilities.

Even the dynasties themselves can level up and gain helpful boons. But Paradox says it won't be shedding any of its grand strategy elements, which it's also been tweaking and, in some cases, overhauling.

It's due out this year. Deserts of Kharak was fantastic, which is why you'll find it above, but who hasn't yearned for a true Homeworld sequel?

Blackbird Interactive's Homeworld 3 will have 3D combat with massive scale battles that let you control everything from tiny interceptors to massive motherships, just like you'd expect, as well as moving Homeworld's saga forward.

The studio still hasn't revealed much about the sequel, though its broad vision is to capture how the original games looked and played—something it even managed to do with Deserts of Kharak, despite being a ground-based RTS—but with "meaningful improvements.

It's still a long way off, though, with launch not expected until After years of working on its Endless series of games, the best of which you'll find on the list above, Amplitude has now turned its attention to a historical-themed 4X game.

Humankind is Amplitude's take on Civilization, featuring dynamic civilisations that are born from culture combos. You might start out playing as the Hittites in the first era, and then pick Romans later on, and then throw the Germans into the mix down the line.

With new eras come new cultures that you can add to the melting pot, unlocking new culture-specific benefits. It also expresses this through its cities, which grow throughout history, swallowing up the land around them.

Some places will retain their historic attributes, like the older quarters of modern cities, while others areas will adapt as the eras progress.

You'll be able to start building your civilisation later this year. Some of our favourite strategy games have spawned enduring modding communities, keeping decade-old game alive with dramatic overhauls that continue to be updated long after the devs have moved on.

As well as celebrating the best strategy games, then, we also want to celebrate a few of our favourite strategy mods.

Until Total War: Warhammer, we had to rely on mods to get our fantasy Total War kicks, but with mods as good as Third Age , that wasn't too much of a sacrifice.

It's a Medieval 2 overhaul that recreates the third age of Middle-earth, including cities, landmarks and all the ents and orcs you could hope you fight or befriend.

Lord of the Rings has inspired countless mods, but this remains one of the best. XCOM: Long War could have been an expansion. It throws in so much and tweaks pretty much everything, but it never compromises the game it's built on.

XCOM was great, but it was quite a bit more streamlined than original X-COM designer Julian Gollop's vision of the series.

Long War merged them, giving fans of the older games something trickier and meatier to play with, but it still felt modern and polished.

Firaxis developers even got involved, and for XCOM 2 the team created some official add-ons, before following up the mod with Long War 2.

Crusader Kings 2 is pretty much the perfect platform for a Game of Thrones strategy game. It's fat with intrigue, warring nobles and mad monarchs tearing kingdoms apart.

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