The Strategy genre in a lot of ways just doesn't have the popularity it once had. There's even been studies on the subject

Gamers Have Become Less Interested in Strategic Thinking and Planning - Quantic Foundry

So I thought it would be great to have a thread dedicated to all things Strategy games!

Whether you're into Real-Time Strategy (StarCraft, Age of Empires) 4X (Sid Meier's Civilization, Endless Space) Grand Strategy (Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings) Tactical RPGs (Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics) Turn-Based Tactics (XCOM, Battletech) Construction and Managment Simulation (Frostpunk, Cities: Skylines) or franchises that are difficult to describe as just one type of Strategy genre like Total War or Romance of the Three Kingdoms, ALL lovers of Strategy games are welcome!

So please feel free to discuss upcoming Strategy games you're really excited about, nostalgic about Strategy games you used to play back in the day, if the genre partakes in Esports and you want to talk about an upcoming event, or games that may be flying under the radar that you want to bring to the limelight!

I'm pretty vocal on my love for RTS games! Homeworld 3 was really anticipated after over 20 years since Homeworld 2, but seems to have been a bit of a disappointment. 

Several major upcoming RTS releases that I'm looking forward to is Stormgate, Age of Mythology: Retold, and Tempest Rising. 

The former basically being a mix of StarCraft and Warcraft and Tempest Rising looking to be a spiritual successor to Command & Conquer. 

Both games look fantastic! Stormgate and AoM: Retold are releasing just a month apart from each in August and September respectively, so I'm going to playing a LOT of RTS this Fall!

Stormgate marketing is ramping up too

Tempest Rising also just released a new demo after months of radio silence for those who want to check it out!

I would love recommendations for Strategic RPGs like Triangle Strategy, Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, etc

I do have a few recommendations for you off the top of my head!

Unicorn Overlord - Vanillaware's first attempt at a Strategy RPG and it's honestly so far my GOTY for 2024! The battles themselves are actually auto played, so it's very important to select the correct soldiers to your unit to counter the enemies units. And there's a LOT of different unit types, but the game does a fantastic job at consistently bringing in new units throughout the game to the point it never gets repetitive because there's always a new unit to try out. Not to mention, the absolute gorgeous hand drawn visual art style never gets old to look at! Absolute eye candy!

The Banner Saga - So this is actually a trilogy of games based in Norse mythology. Also has his its own gorgeous hand drawn art style that makes you reminisce on 90s animated films, but the story is absolutely amazing! Each game is a direct continuation of the previous games story. They're not particularly long games either, so you can view the entire trilogy as one big game. And like Fire Emblem, you feel pretty bad at failing a major unit when you make a poor tactical decision.

Wasteland 3 - This post-apocalyptic series was actually Fallout before Fallout. It thankfully received a revival when the original developers were able to get a hold of the IP and started making new games. This recent outing was awesome! It doesn't have the end of the world level danger that most other games have, so it's a lot smaller in scale but the combat feels great and it's a genuinely great story with witty writing and some weight to its choices/consequences.

I'm copying this post of mine from a different thread because of how relevant it is:

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a games game! This feels like Capcom at their most creative. I don't think it's going to take off or anything like that as it's a very niche title, but not since Hi-Fi Rush has a game made me feel like it harkens back to a golden era of gaming. I have a good feeling this will age like wine and years down the road, I'll look back on it fondly with nostalgia that will make me want to boot it up again. I can't say that I get that feeling with many games these days.

But it has a great and addicting gameplay loop of part Tower Defense, part Real Time Strategy, and mixed with a little hack n slash combat. There's not much dialogue, at least so far, but the cinematic cutscenes do a great job of visual storytelling where you're able to follow along. Also visually, this has to be one of the best-looking games I've ever seen. The art style plays a big part in that rather than photorealism.

Addicting gameplay loop, eye popping visual art style, satisfying combat, and I'm not sure how many are aware of this, but there's straight up boss battles with their own distinct mechanics in this game! I don't think that aspect was really part of the marketing lol. Loving my time so far and because of the many ways you can build out your defenses and manage the villagers, it encourages multiple playthroughs to try out different strategies.

Shining Force 1 through 3 are obviously old but still excellent.

I also thought Stella Deus was an overlooked gem.

Not quite the same setup and the story isn't as strong but Mario vs Rabbids (both of them) have fantastic gameplay and are great strategies games.  Both are quite lovely.

Excellent call out! Very simple RPG mechanics but the gameplay loop is incredibly addictive. Arguably the best set of Ubisoft games from the past decade lol

I think the "popularity" is still there, the pond is just bigger and it seems more niche compared to the rest of gaming as is such with Sim racing and the like. Perhaps even more people play these games now since there are so many titles and I think the fact that they are often on console now proves that. That said, I lost my own interest in grand strategy cause they are to hard to keep a game going, start something in Civ or Stellaris and you leave it for 2 or 3 days, it's extremely difficult to know what you were at. These games are for when you have a couple of weeks and you can hop on them every day, I'd hope they fix that in the future and make it more accessible with AI that helps keepyour games going over a longer period. These days, my strategy games go no further in complexity than something like Fire Emblem 3 houses, Two point hospital, frost punk and the like. They are just complex enough to have a similar experience yet not so complex it's like being a manager of a real life business. You can pick them up and put them down for a week and remember exactly what you were at. I fucking love Two point hospital, it's so, so much fun. I hear a unicorn Overlord is great too and hope to play that soon although I'd like an option to fast forward through the battles playing out.

I hear Unicorn Overlord is really good. The battles play out themselves but under the surface there is a strategy system that supposed to be super addictive and rewarding.