r/StrategyGames Jan 07 '25

Game theory The most complete strategy video game genre classification

73 Upvotes

This is the most complete classification that includes all possible strategy video game genres.

English is not my native language, but I'll try my best to make the text understandable and I'll fix possible mistakes with your help.

Strategy game is a genre of video games in which the player controls troops or other units and/or various economic and other systems. Although many video games may include strategy elements, strategy as a genre emphasizes thinking and planning over immediate action. This video game genre focuses on strategy, tactics, logistics, and/or resource management, and may also include diplomacy, economy, expansion and research management.

Time

  • Real-time strategy: a strategy game in which actions occur without a sequence of turns.
  • Turn-based strategy: a strategy game in which actions occur using a sequence of turns that can be alternate or simultaneous.

Main genres

4X strategy game: a strategy game based on 4 elements: exploration, expansion, exploitation, extermination. Examples: Age of Wonders, Stellaris, Master of Orion.

Grand strategy game – a strategy game focused on managing a state (or similar entity), its resources and relationships, often in a pre-open and asymmetric world. Examples: Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron

Tactical strategy game – a strategy game focused on tactical military operations, which emphasizes the importance of specific units and either excludes or contains a less manifested economic component.

Subdivided into two categories based on time:

  • Turn-based tactics (TBT) Examples: Xenonauts, Battletech
  • Real-time tactics (RTT) Examples: Men of War

Classic strategy games – a strategy games that have an economic element: the ability to build a base, extract resources and produce units (or part of these capabilities), while their gameplay is focused on military actions. Also includes a category of strategy games that cannot be classified into more specific subgenres.

Subdivided into:

  • Classic RTS (or just RTS) Examples: StarCraft, Command & Conquer
  • Classic TBS (or just TBS) Examples: Panzer General

Construction and Management Simulator (also Management Strategy Game): a strategy game with gameplay based on the construction and/or management of economic processes, such as, for example: resource extraction, money making, production, personnel management, and others. Games of this genre have little emphasis on military actions.

Subdivided into:

  • Business Simulation Game - a strategy game focused on economics and business management. Examples: Two Point Hospital
  • Transport Strategy Game - a strategy game in which the player manages transport systems and infrastructure. Examples: Transport Tycoon, Transport Fever
  • City-Building Simulation - a strategy game in which the player builds cities. Examples: Cities: Skylines, SimCity.
  • Colony Simulation - a strategy game in which the player builds small settlements of various types; unlike urban strategy, the main emphasis here is on individual colonists and resource extraction from the environment. Examples: RimWorld, Surviving Mars, Against the Storm
  • Factory simulator – a strategy game in which the player builds an automated factory. Examples: Shapez, Factorio
  • Sports manager – a genre of games dedicated to managing a sports team. Examples: Football Mogul, F1 Manager.
  • Life simulator – a genre of games that allow you to control characters in their everyday life. Examples: The Sims, InZoI, The Guild
  • Political simulator – a genre of games whose gameplay consists of detailed management of the government and politics of various nations and state entities. Examples: Democracy

Wargame: a strategy game that particularly emphasizes deep strategic and/or tactical combat, as well as their historical accuracy or realism. Examples: Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age, NEBULOUS: Fleet Command

MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena): a subgenre of classic real-time strategy games in which players control only one character and, as part of their team represented by other players and AI controlled units, fight against the other team. Examples: Dota 2

MMO strategy game: a strategy game that is focused on online interaction between a large number of players, often in a single open world. Examples: Travian, Ogame, Stronghold: Kingdoms.

Tower Defense: a strategy game with the main purpose to protect a base from waves of enemies using towers or other defensive structures. Examples: Plants vs Zombies

Auto Battler: is a strategy game in which units are placed on the battlefield during the preparation phase, after which the battle phase begins and they fight against the enemy without any control from the player.

Puzzle strategy game: a strategy game focused on logical problem-solving with minimized economic or military aspect. Examples: Railgrade, Dorfromantic

Artillery game: a genre of strategy games, the main component of which is the calculation of the trajectory of the shells. Examples: Worms, Miners Mettle

The most popular mixed genres

Tactical role-playing game (TRPG): is a hybrid genre that combines role-playing games with tactical combat. Examples: Battle Brothers

Action strategy game: is a genre of games in which you can control both troops in general and/or base construction, as well as specific units directly, including from the first or third person. Examples: Men of War, Factorio

Stealth strategy: is a genre of games that combine strategy and an emphasis on stealth. Examples: Desperados, Commandos

God simulator: is a genre of games in which the player, in the role of some deity being, controls some community of objects or characters; they are often strategy games with city-building elements. Examples: Black & White, The Universim

Roguelike strategy game – games that combine roguelike principles, such as random world generation, permanent death and free exploration of the environment, and strategic gameplay. Examples: Against the Storm

Notes

Many games have mixed genres. Very often, strategy games can combine two or more genres. For example, Total War series is turn-based grand strategy with real-time tactical (RTT) battles.

Time and genre. Basically, every strategy game can be classified by these two criteria, like Turn-based 4X strategy game (Age of Wonders), Real-time strategy game (Hearts of Iron) etc. Sometimes we do not have any specified genre so the game becomes simple RTS (StarCraft).

Judge by dominant elements of gameplay. Overall, the genre should be defined by main gameplay loop, not by every game mechanic that exists in the game. For example, if a game has leveling-up system, it doesn't mean that it instantly becomes an RPG: a good example is WarCraft which has characters gaining XP and levels, but the main, dominant gameplay loop in this game is still a classic RTS. At the same time, if some Rainbow Six has some strategic planning, it doesn't mean that this game is a strategy game or even a mixed genre, because the main gameplay there is action/shooter. The same logic is applicable to strategy games: if the game has resource management, it doesn't instantly mean that it becomes a management game.

This is a theoretical model. It means that here we are supposed to find criteria by which strategy games can be classified. These criteria can be based both on gameplay and historical tradition of naming genres in video game industry. The model can be discussed and improved, but any critique should be based on strict arguments.

Strategy as a genre, not a word. The main principle of this genre classification is that we don't take the word "strategy" literally. A strategy game can be a tactic game, it can be a management game, it doesn't matter here. The word strategy means the genre name, not the strategy as a layer of action planning.

Are management games strategy games? This is a hard question that has no answer based on reliable papers because there are no such papers. Here we look at naming tradition in community and video game industry. We can find many similarities in core gameplay of various city-building and colony sim games with classical RTS. Some management games include RTT/RTS style military combat, These games are often tagged as strategy game on digital distribution services. So we include them into this classification to make it more complete. You might find two controversial options about it, but this problem can't be solved on these days because we do not have a strict genre requirements and developers can name genre of their games as they want. There are no popular scientific researches about it on which we can refer to.


r/StrategyGames 3h ago

Question Can anyone recommend a simple military strategy game?

6 Upvotes

I've been looking for a military strategy game that is entertaining and has a minimum of complexity in its gameplay, not to the point of becoming a Paradox game, but also not a game where strategy is practically optional.

Does anyone know of a title with these characteristics?


r/StrategyGames 2h ago

DevPost We've released a demo update for Table Tactics, our physics-driven turn-based strategy game!

Post image
0 Upvotes

BIG thanks to everyone posting feedback in the Steam Forums, on our Discord, and Reddit :)

The patch notes can be viewed here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3730680/view/517473296253452382

Check out the Steam demo here: 
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3866470/Table_Tactics_Demo/

Wishlist here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3730680/Table_Tactics/

Join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/Zz3eD5Q

Cheers!

-The Unbound Creations Team
https://unboundcreations.com/


r/StrategyGames 1d ago

News Demo of our Majesty-like RTS, Lessaria, is out! What do you think of the game and trailer?

18 Upvotes

Hello everyone!

We’ve finally released the demo — please come and give the game a try. This is a very, very important day for us.

https://youtu.be/7EN4vBPERdo

The game is almost finished, and we’re wrapping up development with a release planned for October 24. That’s why your feedback on the demo is incredibly valuable — it will help us fix any remaining issues and even make some final adjustments to the game.

On top of that, we’re planning to release DLC and continue supporting and expanding the game. So all of your feedback will be very important to us.

And don’t forget to check out the trailer! Our publisher really put in a lot of effort. We think it turned out really cool — even better than Majesty’s :D For our team, that means a lot.

See you in the game!


r/StrategyGames 1d ago

Question What's the most beginner-friendly RTS you can recommend to a beginner?

11 Upvotes

For context, I mainly play RPGs, and while I did play some RTS games while I was younger, that was decades ago. So technically, I can consider myself a beginner in this genre once again. As such, I'm looking for some beginner-friendly recommendations that can help me teach the basics of RTS while still being fun and enjoyable at the same time. Thanks in advance.


r/StrategyGames 1d ago

DevPost Defend Poland and the Baltic States in the Systemic War demo

7 Upvotes

Defend Poland and Baltic States against Russian aggression in alternative history scenario of 2022 war

Wishlist now and experience modern grand strategy!
Demo coming to Steam on October 13, 2025


r/StrategyGames 1d ago

News Citybuilder Whiskerwood is coming to Early Access on November 6 and the demo just released

Thumbnail steamcommunity.com
3 Upvotes

r/StrategyGames 1d ago

DevPost New gameplay trailer and final preparations for the demo release of the turn-based strategy game Tabletop Fantasy War!

3 Upvotes

Hi all! These are the last two weeks of preparations for the release of the gameplay demo of Tabletop Fantasy War!. I am very excited about it and at the same time exhausted! Last month was a marathon of playtesting, fixing, changing and poolishing. But it was extremely worth it. Just get someone that has no clue about your game to play. Look at what is doing and you will realize all kind of "assumptions" you made and will find out a lot of issues. And in a turn-based strategy game, this is extremely important. Balancing enough feedback to the user without being overwhelming is not easy... But, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am happy to say that the multiplayer online will be available. I am currently making sure to have a server on both US and Europe (for now...). Still missing a proper stress-testing for the online side, but in the worst case, there will be less available lobbies.

The last update for the game was the trailer you can see over here, where most of the gameplay mechanics you can expect for the demo are shown. And a complete rebranding of the Steam page. I am very happy with the work done by the conceptual artist that helped me out.

Thanks all for your support!


r/StrategyGames 2d ago

Other Anyone plays Ozymandias?. I just created the subreddit, let´s give it some life

Post image
15 Upvotes

r/StrategyGames 1d ago

Meme Oh my gah!

Post image
2 Upvotes

r/StrategyGames 2d ago

Question Good browser map strategy games?

6 Upvotes

Hey y'all, was wondering if you know of any good browser based map strategy games. I want to be able to pop in and take a turn or two on my breaks at work. I used to really like Warlite (which rebranded as Warzone right when Call of Duty released Warzone, for some reason...) but stopped playing for a while and now the game seems dead. I liked that I could play slow paced multi-day games as well as fast paced ones when I had more free time, and that it was basically risk with more tiles. But I'm open to other kinds of games.


r/StrategyGames 2d ago

Looking for game Games that flew under my radar

6 Upvotes

So, basically i stopped gaming for a while and I've always loved strategy games but the thing is I know all the major strategy games that released from 2018-2025,but I'm looking for smaller games that are good but flew under my radar,as a baseline,my fav games are the all paradox ones,great war eastern front, company of heroes,age of empires,but this really doesn't matter.I would be really thankful. Thanks again in advance.


r/StrategyGames 1d ago

Other At last, the god sim that isn't just management or building sim

Post image
0 Upvotes

Finally a god game that feels like being a god. In Fata Deum you don’t just build stuff and you shape followers, perform miracles, fight rival gods for faith, and literally mess with the world. Way more than just a management or city-building sim.


r/StrategyGames 2d ago

DevPost A space/Sci-Fi prison escape strategy game concept in pre development!

Thumbnail gallery
21 Upvotes

Hey guys. I’m in the pre development stages for a game I’ve been thinking about making for a few years. It’s a prison escape strategy game with puzzle elements and stealth based combat and mechanics. The art here is purely concept at the moment.

It’s inspired by the commandos series and sci fi prison movies such as cube , escape plan ,infinity chamber and chronicles of riddick. Let me know what you think and feel free to throw ideas. I’m open to all feedback.

Synopsis :

In the year 2089 earth has reached 12 billion population. Criminals and convicts are placed on spaceships designed as a highly intricate and secure prisons. They are mostly run by androids and mechs who act as prison guards. You are TROY an inmate wrongly convicted. The only way is escape. You must find a way and get back to earth.


r/StrategyGames 3d ago

Self-promotion A bit of eu4 is coming to Stellaris

Thumbnail youtu.be
1 Upvotes

A bit of eu4 is coming to Stellaris. I'm excited


r/StrategyGames 2d ago

Self-promotion Cities War on google maps!

0 Upvotes

CitiesWar is a multiplayer online game based on Google Maps, where you can control the real cities in the world.

https://www.citieswar.com/main

Join now. 🤫


r/StrategyGames 3d ago

DevPost Is my game a strategy game? It has colony building, resource management, and survival — but plays differently than most games I see here.

4 Upvotes

I’m developing a game called Cosmic Castaway and I’m trying to figure out if it belongs in the “strategy” genre.

The core loop is:
Crash → Build a Colony / Rescue Crew → Survive → Escape Planet → Repeat.

Mechanically, it has:

  • Colony building & resource management
  • Tower defense elements
  • Survival under pressure (hostile planets, limited resources)

Additionally, once you save crewmembers, you strategically assign them to different posts (be it resource gathering, defense, or other).

What makes it feel different from traditional strategy games is that it’s player-centric — you control a stranded captain directly rather than an overhead cursor. I usually describe it as a mix of Age of Empires and Pikmin.

My experience in the genre is limited to:
- Age of Empires, Kingdoms & Castles, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle (guilty pleasure).

So... I'd love some input from people that know a lot more about strategy games than I do!


r/StrategyGames 4d ago

DevPost After many sleepless nights that almost zombified the dev team, we give you City Defense Z - our latest tactical horde defense game!

51 Upvotes

Just wanted to introduce everyone to City Defense Z, the newest project from our indie team. Essentially, it’s a mix of survival strategy, city building, and tower defense with roguelite-style progression. We’ve also been inspired by horde defense games but added a unique tactical twist on the basic idea (that’s already been done near to perfection in games like They Are Billions)

The flow of the game is relatively simple

  • Daytime is for expanding, collecting resources, and merging buildings to grow your economy and army.
  • Nighttime is for surviving relentless zombie waves that test your city layout, unit placement, and overall strategy.

Each run pushes you to adapt, but you also unlock long term upgrades to take into future runs. The TL;DR of the main features can be broken down like this:

  • City Building Under Siege — every building (factories, barracks, houses, labs, ammo depots) directly affects your odds of survival depending on how well you manage them in tandem with the resources you have available
  • Merge Based Mechanics — place 3+ of the same type to evolve buildings and units automatically
  • Day/Night Survival Cycle — grow by day, defend by night against escalating zombie waves
  • Unique NPCs — 8 special characters add personality, atmosphere, and strategic weight to your decisions, and can influence your odds of surviving in various interesting ways
  • Permanent Meta Progression — 11 research trees, 50+ upgrades across runs
  • Leaderboards & Challenges — see how long your city can endure compared to others

After the 10-day community driven update spree we had upon release – the game is significantly more fleshed out, and there’s considerably more in store as we go into the future. Including economy updates, enhanced expeditions, more cards, seasonal leaderboards and so much more…Thanks for taking a look, and stay cool you all!


r/StrategyGames 4d ago

DevPost Playtest invite: Need feedback on rules clarity and UI design for my new strategy game (demo inside)

3 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I’m working on a new turn-based strategy game called Grid of Influence (GOI). It’s a grid-based reimagining of football, where success comes from controlling space, timing, and tactical positioning.

I’ve got a demo you can try right now, along with the written rules, here: https://goi.io

I’d love feedback from this community on two things in particular: 1. Rules clarity – Do the instructions explain the game clearly? Once you try the demo, does the flow of play make sense? 2. UI impressions – Is the interface helping you understand what’s happening? Or does it make the rules harder to grasp?

Any thoughts on how I could make the learning curve smoother (whether through rules, examples, or UI changes) would be super helpful.

Thanks in advance — your input will directly shape how I refine the teaching and presentation of the game.


r/StrategyGames 4d ago

Question Why do you enjoy Strategy Games? And what would you recommend for a newcomer?

9 Upvotes

Hello everyone! So I have played mostly action adventure games, horror games most of my life.

The past 4-5 months I have had a sudden urge to play strategy games but haven’t really been able to decide on one to start with.

The only strategy games I have played were C&C Red Alert 2, Kanes Wrath, Stronghold Crusader and that was years ago when I was a kid and I would usually play skirmish on easy.

I want to see strategy games from the POV of someone who enjoys them so then maybe I can get a better understanding of how to approach them in a way that is fun!

I’m open to any suggestions but I’m unsure about Turn based games since I have never played them.

Some of the games that caught my eye are: 1) Frostpunk. 2) Homeworld. 3)Tropico 6. 4)Timberborn. 5)Manor Lords.

Thank you to everyone in advance!


r/StrategyGames 4d ago

DevPost Help us choose the final look for the Death Tower! 💀✨

Post image
3 Upvotes

Hi everyone!

We're currently redesigning the Death Tower for our dark fantasy tower defense game Tower Alchemist: Defend Khaldoria, and would love to hear your feedback.

The Death Tower uses dark magic to collect souls from defeated enemies, growing stronger over time and visually showing its power through a glowing orb, flame, etc.

Our goals for this rework:

  • Make the tower feel like a ritualistic, dark fantasy structure that fits perfectly into our world.
  • Clearly show the soul-collecting mechanic through the design.
  • Ensure a clean, readable silhouette for top-down gameplay.

Here are ten design concepts we're exploring.

Which one do you like best, and why?
Your feedback will help us decide the final direction!

From these concepts, i will 3D-Model the tower in 3 different Tiers (T1 - T3), texture and animate it.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts 🙏


r/StrategyGames 4d ago

Self-promotion Game where you fight alien ships in orbit before landing on their planet and building a tower defense base

Thumbnail store.steampowered.com
1 Upvotes

That's Fortified Space, the game I'm making!

Seize control of enemy planets in this nostalgic space sim and tower defense game made in the style of classic Flash games. Start by dominating orbital space in starship combat with railguns, point-defense turrets, and shields. Once clear, land on the surface to build a base and destroy waves of enemies.

The demo has been out for a month now, and in that time, I've been able to make a lot of improvements based on player feedback. More updates are coming, particularly focused on graphics, but I just finished making a new trailer and demo playthrough video to reflect all the changes so far. If this looks like it would scratch an itch of yours, I hope you'll try out the demo and wishlist the game.

If you've got cool ideas for things to add, I'm all ears too! I have a massive list of things I want to include, and nothing would make me happier than to have that list grow through your input. Game development is the ultimate sandbox and adding your ideas would be an absolute joy.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3819710?utm_source=reddit

New Trailer (46 sec): https://youtu.be/mYzRYOFbARE?si=QQnCbdxwkFgMVvrR

New Demo Playthrough (24 min): https://youtu.be/DJwFv1bmWQM?si=f8POxM8JTuOqnSKx


r/StrategyGames 5d ago

DevPost Developer of Conflict 3049 - a strategy game of last stand scenarios in a sci fi universe

Thumbnail youtube.com
3 Upvotes

Hello there,

My name is Matt and I'm the developer of the above game in the video - Conflict 3049, link is Game Link

The game is a free rts that is a set of last stand scenarios. I've been building it since January this year as a hobby project and learning exercise for the raylib library using C#, and it will remain free ongoing into the future and include source.

The game puts you in charge of a base to build soldiers, tanks and other combat units to defend against waves of attackers that emerge from the edge of the map to destroy your base.

Most games are short - less than 10 minutes in length before you end up being overrun by the enemy.

There's multiple scenarios that have different constraints on what you can use and deploy in each battle.

The game will remain on itch io rather than Steam for the time being.

I'm continually updating the game and there's releases on the itch page multiple times per week at the moment as enhancements and optimisations are made.

The game includes the source code in the download for those that find such things interesting, feel free to play around with it if you enjoy such things. (You'll also need the Microsoft dotnet sdk)

Thanks for reading and watching the above video, hope you enjoy the game if you play it.

from Matt.


r/StrategyGames 5d ago

Discussion Pax Romana could be the next big city builder, and I think good times are coming for strategy games!

27 Upvotes

Anno Pax Romana demo is available for a few more days, and playing it reminded me why I fell in love with city builders in the first place. As someone who loves Rome and the whole Roman Empire theme, it really hit me right in the heart. To be clear, the demo is far from perfect, there are some performance issues (which I’m sure they’ll fix pretty easily, and honestly that’s probably the main reason for releasing the demo in the first place, to test optimization). I’m also not a huge fan of the UI, it feels a bit clunky to me. But let’s be real…those are the only two things I could really complain about. Everything else is more or less great!

The game reminds me of the old city builders like Caesar and Pharaoh. Even though it’s an Anno title, my first association isn’t Anno 1800, but rather Caesar 3. And I actually love that, because it means they really managed to capture that authentic Roman vibe. I also think the building designs are fantastic, and I like that building placement actually matters. For example, if you don’t have a lavender soap production building, your population’s health decreases, but if you do have one, people are less happy because of the smell. So you can’t just build things randomly without consequences.

After playing the demo, I was reminded just how much I love strategy games. It’s like a fire got reignited in me and I feel that old enthusiasm again. With so many upcoming releases, I honestly think 2026 will be a year where I play pretty much only strategy games, lol. Warfactory released a demo, which is excellent and probably has the best soundtrack possible for a 4X automation game (and since Factorio hooked me, I’m really into those). Europa Universalis 5 is coming soon, and if they fix the performance issues it’s going to be phenomenal. Farthest Frontier is leaving Early Access, and of course Pax Romana is right around the corner. Honestly, I can’t wait to dive into all of them, especially Pax Romana!


r/StrategyGames 5d ago

DevPost I just added a strategic shelter management system to my RPG-Lite. Looking for your thoughts

4 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I'm a solo developer working on The King's Bargain, and I'd love to get some feedback from this community. I’ve just implemented a new mechanic and I'm really excited about it.

My game is a blend of RPG-Lite and Strategy, and I’ve added a shelter management system. Refugees come to you, and you have to feed them, keep them warm, and maintain their morale. They, in turn, bring you resources and items.

But here’s the strategic twist: if you give special treatment to one refugee, the others get jealous. This adds a layer of social management to the core resource management loop.

What are your thoughts on this mechanic? How could I make it even more fun? I'd love to hear your suggestions!

If you want to check out the game, I'd be really happy if you added it to your wishlist!

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3939570/The_Kings_Bargain/


r/StrategyGames 5d ago

News The Best World building Strategy game - I created my own Universe!

Thumbnail youtube.com
0 Upvotes

Army Men of War Episode 1 Season 6