Each of us at some stage in our life dreamed of leading something, be it a company, army, city, or even an entire state. Among computer games there is a genre that allows you to do this – strategy. We will talk about the best of them in our material.
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Command & Conquer Series – Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert, Generals
Strategy Command & Conquer – classic representatives of the genre. The player appears on the map with the main building, recruits workers, develops the base, extracts resources and produces troops in order to destroy an opponent who has a similar task. All representatives of the series have very similar gameplay and mechanics, but the setting is significantly different.
Red alert – the oldest in the series. The first part was released in 1996, and after it two more were released. The plot is based on an alternative story of the confrontation between two ideologies – the communist USSR and the capitalist West. In the original Red Alert, the player will have to control the Allied forces in order to protect himself from the attack of the USSR, which lost its leader Joseph Stalin in the battle for Moscow. The new government was influenced by absolute evil – the telepath Yuri, who seized control of the mind of the leader of the Soviet Union. In Red Alert 2, there are two campaigns to choose from – for the allies and the social camp. At the same time, several countries represent each side. All of them have unique units like Tesla tanks from the USSR, powerful cannons for defense from France and trucks with explosives from Libya. In the third part, in addition to the USSR and the USA, the Japanese entered the war – this was due to the fact that the leader of the Soviet Union went to the past in a time machine to kill Einstein and prevent the Americans from gaining a technological advantage.
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Generals – a saga about the modern confrontation between the United States and the International Liberation Army, a global terrorist organization that prevents humanity from living with its missiles. In “saving the world”, in addition to the United States, there is another interested party – China. In the arsenal of the player is not only infantry and tanks, but also the special skills of the generals, which can be obtained for success in battle. The weakest abilities call a small group of troops, mine a section of the battlefield, and the most powerful ones can be compared with a superweapon.
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The series has six parts. Three of them are full-fledged license plates, and the same number are add-ons for the first and second Cossacks. They added new countries, units, and single player campaigns.
Warcraft III and StarCraft
Any top strategy just can not do without two creations of Blizzard – Warcraft III and StarCraft. If you do not go into details, then their gameplay is very similar – two types of resources, a very limited limit of troops and factions, each of which has its own characteristics. But still there are fundamental differences between them.
StarCraft is a game about the distant future, where three races from different corners of the universe collided. Zerg is something like parasites that breed at the speed of light and populate all worlds, simultaneously destroying any other life form. Terrans are ordinary people, and protoss are alien creatures gifted with a single mind. Blizzard released two parts of the game and several add-ons that add and replace some units, as well as continue the history of the war between the parties.
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Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
The strategy, created on the basis of the board game of the same name, is also one of the hits in the RTS genre. In the techno-fantasy world, fractions are available to the user for every taste – both familiar orcs and people, as well as alien and ancient races. Each of them has its own characteristics: someone relies on fast production, someone relies on manufacturability, and someone keeps a balance in all characteristics. Compared to the classic RTS, there is another extraction of resources: the player does not need to build harvesters or carry gold from the mines, just keep the energy at the right level, building generators, and expand his influence by capturing points on the map.
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The Stronghold series has eight games. In addition to the storyline campaign and the standard battle, users have access to the siege mode, where they have to play the role of either attacking the fortress or defending themselves.
Age of empires
Age of Empires is a series of historical strategies whose events begin in the Stone Age and end with the 19th century. It consists of three games, in each of which the user has to go through a certain segment of the story. With new parts, developers added more and more mechanics and warring countries, and all of them have their own chips. For example, in the Russian Empire in the third part, units are built immediately by units, and in the Ottoman Empire, settlers are produced for free and endlessly.
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Each player can build up to a thousand units, with up to 12 users on one map. “How can all this really be destroyed?” – you ask. The bottom line is that fighting the enemy with the army is not necessary. If the battle is too long, you can cover it with nuclear weapons. And in Supreme Commander it is much more powerful than in any other RTS.
Company of heroes
Company of Heroes – a series of strategies about the Second World War. In it, the player controls not individual units, but units, which, in addition to health, have an indicator of morality. If it falls too low, then the soldiers will practically cease to cause damage or even begin to run away from the battlefield. The battle system also has its own chips. For example, when hit by machine-gun fire, fighters begin to crawl, which reduces their speed, accuracy and damage. Maps in story mode are not just landscape with buildings. Company of Heroes has various fortifications, such as pillboxes and trenches, which also affect the course of the battle.
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For all the similarities, the differences between these games are fundamental. First of all, actions take place in different eras – at Europa Universalis, the game starts with the Renaissance and great geographical discoveries, and in Hearts of Iron humanity is on the verge of World War II. The gameplay for each game also has its own characteristics: if in EU4 you yourself are free to choose what to do (colonization, diplomacy, isolation, war), then in HoI4 everything is tied to war. The main task in Hearts of Iron IV is to develop the army as soon as possible and direct the economy on a war footing, until the neighbors do it first and destroy you.
Ise of nations
Rise of Nations can in a sense be called Civilization in real time. The essence of the game is to develop your country from the Stone Age to the information era. You just need to build cities, expand territories and pump technology. At any stage, you can attack the opponent and take away his land, destroying or capturing the city and breaking his army.
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The goal of the game is to accumulate as much money as possible on a personal account in a Swiss bank. In the first five parts, this indicator only affected the final score, and in the last sixth part currently, these funds can be used for the election campaign or invested in the state.
Cities: Skylines
The largest cities in the world have been built and developed for centuries. But the larger the city, the more difficult it is to manage and the more issues its administration needs to solve. In Cities: Skylines, you are invited to build your own dream city at a place where there is a maximum freeway at the start. The player will have to competently organize all aspects of urban life, from the location of the districts to interchanges, services, as well as waste recycling and disposal.
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In Total War affected many eras, ranging from antiquity to the Napoleonic Wars. In most of them, the player will not head a huge state with a multi-million army, but a small army of the feudal lord, who seeks to create an empire and unite all the surrounding lands under his command. The gameplay includes two aspects – tactical and strategic. Some issues can be resolved on the global map, but sometimes you have to take part in the battle, controlling the army in RTS mode.
Civilization
A series of turn-based Civilization strategies dates back to 1991. The last part to date – Civilization VI – was released in 2016. The gameplay combines all the components of the 4X genre: study, expansion, operation and destruction. The player’s task is to conduct his civilization from the ancient world to the present.
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The third part of Heroes of Might and Magic is considered the reference in the series. Fans still release modifications and updates for her, and in 2015, 19 years after the release of the original, an HD remaster was released, which without any difficulties runs on modern systems and supports high resolution. In addition, a mobile version is available for iOS and Android.
