Got any must-play games for strategy fans?

Beyond All Reason maybe?

Hell yeah, my group has been playing that for a few months now. I should donate to the devs because it's such a great free game.

It's not real time but Civilization is a must for any strategy fan. I personally recommend getting V and all its expansions, it's peak for me still. Some like VI but I could never get into it.

Unciv is a free, open-source reimplementation of Civilization V. It doesn't have all the eye candy and music and such that the series is famous for but as a result of not having it runs responsively on a phone.
V has the best mods too
- No, Civ IV has the best mods because the game was designed to support them.

For old school RTS, Total Annihilation or if you fancy something a bit different then The Settlers II (Pioneers of Pagonia is a more modern remake). I grew tired of RTS and moved on to turn-based but Stellaris is one that recently drew me back in.

For tactics I'd say Advanced Wars, Fire Emblem and Disgagea are decent shouts. Into The Breach is probably my favourite indie of the genre, a lot of strategy packed into a small game.

If you like turn-based then Civ has always been top of my list.

For old school RTS, Total Annihilation

If you don't care about the campaign, probably the much-newer games based on Total Annihilation that run on the Spring engine.

EDIT: Yeah, another user already recommended Zero-K.

Warcraft and StarCraft. StarCraft 1 is free and the first campaign of 2 is free as well.

Others are Command & Conquer and Age of Empires.

I should play StarCraft again. BroodWars would be nice.
- I usually don't play strategy. But damn, Broodwar is great!
Even as a Protoss main, Wings of Liberty (the free Terran campaign in SC2) is by far the best in the game. I've replayed it at least once a year since it first released. Mass marine/marauder/medic backed by tanks is so much fun to play with.

If you want to try an RTS that does something different, check out Against the Storm. It's an RTS, but there isn't an "enemy" so to speak. Instead, you are 'fighting' against the environment, trying to solve your economic and social problems before you are overwhelmed by external factors imposed by the level you are building on.

The game continues to evolve as your understanding of its various systems grows.

FWIW: It's currently in the Humble monthly bundle.

RTS: Zero-K

RTT: Steel Division 2 and Warno

TBS: Dominions 6. Songs of Conquest if you want a modern casual HOMM3 clone.

TBT: Battle Brothers and Field of Glory 2

Grand Strategy: Basically everything from Paradox. Victoria 3 is my current favorite.

Hmm. "Strategy" is pretty broad. Most of the new stuff you have is turn-based, but you've got tactics stuff like X-COM and strategy stuff. If we're including both real-time and turn-based, and both strategy and tactics...What do I enjoy? I tend to lean more towards the milsim side of strategy...

Stellaris. Lot of stuff to do here -- follows the Paradox model of a ton of DLCs with content and lots of iteration on the game. Not cheap, though. Turn-based, 4x.
Hearts of Iron 4. Another Paradox game. I think unless someone is specifically into World War II grand strategy, I'd recommend Stellaris first, which I'd call a lot more approachable. Real time, grand strategy. I haven't found myself playing this recently -- the sheer scope can be kind of overwhelming, and unlike 4X games like Stellaris, it doesn't "start out small" -- well, not if you're playing the US, at any rate.
Carrier Command 2. Feels a little unfinished, but it keeps pulling me back. Really intended to be played multiplayer, but you can play single-player if you can handle the load of playing all of the roles concurrently. Real-time tactics.
Rule the Waves 3. Lot of ship design here, fun if you're into gun-era naval combat. Turn-based strategy (light strategy), with real-time tactics combat. Not beautiful. There is a niche of people who are super-into this.
I agree with the other user who recommended Steel Division 2. If you've played Wargame: Red Dragon or earlier Eugen games, which are really designed to be played multiplayer, you know that the AI is abysmal. I generally don't like playing multiplayer games, and persisted in playing it single-player. Steel Division 2's AI is actually fun to play against single-player. Real-time tactics, leaning towards the MOBA genre but without heroes and themed with relatively-real-world military hardware.
XCOM-alikes. I didn't like XCOM 2 -- it felt way too glizy for me to tolerate, too much time looking at animations, but I may have just not given it a fair chance, as I bailed out after spending only a little time with the game. I have enjoyed turn-based tactics games in the X-COM series and the genre in the past -- squad-based, real-time tactics games. Problem is that I don't know if I can recommend any of them in 2024 -- all the games in that genre I've played are pretty long in the tooth now. Jagged Alliance 2 is fun, but very old. Silent Storm is almost as old, has destructable terrain, but feels low-budget and unpolished. There were a number of attempts to restart the Jagged Alliance series after 2 and a long delay that were not very successful; I understand that Jagged Alliance 3 is supposed to be better, but I don't think I've played through it yet. Wasteland 2 and Wasteland 3 aren't really in the same genre, are more like Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, CRPGs with turn-based tactics combat. But if you enjoy turn-based-tactics, you might also enjoy them, and Wasteland 3 isn't that old.
If you like real-time tactics, you might give the Close Combat series a look. I really liked the (now ancient) Close Combat 2. The balance for that game was terrible -- it heavily rewarded use of keeping heavy tanks on hills -- but it was an extremely popular game, and I loved playing it. There are (many) newer games in the series but they started including a strategic layer and a round timer after Close Combat 3. These improved things in the game (and if you like a strategy aspect, you might prefer that), but I just wanted to play the tactics side, and don't feel like the later games every quite had the appeal of the earlier ones. Still, they've certainly had enough to make me come back and replay them.

Jagged alliance 3 is a very solid sequel, it is very long though.

There's also a mod to fix the portraits which imo look awful in vanilla.
Add Warno too, it's SD2 but in 1989.
- For some reason, Warno didn't grab me and Steel Division 2 did. That being said, I may not have given it a fair chance -- I bailed out on it after a short period of time, probably because SD2 was also available at about the same time. It is true that it's one of the few options out there with a late Cold War setting, like Wargame, so if you like that setting over WW2 -- which is refreshing -- it's certainly worth looking into.
  
  IIRC, one thing that was a little disappointing was that the unit database was a lot smaller than in Wargame: Red Dragon -- I'd kind of taken that, which had been built up across multiple Wargame games, for granted.
Upvoted for Stellaris, Hearts of Iron 4 and Steel Division 2. I've drained too many night hours on these games.

I'm getting into the Dominions series, recently picked up Dominions 6. You take control of a faction and try to spread your pretender gods influence enough to ascend to be the one true god. Combat is auto resolved but you can watch the combats and the mechanics are very detailed. I made a god that was a sentient glyph that bestowed fire resistance and flaming weapons on my faction of desert dwelling spider riders. Another time I was a sentient fountain of blood with innate abilities to raise an army of mindless skeletons so I could stack troops in masse.

Its a little clunky in the interface but once I learned what did what it because very engrossing

I can't get over the UI, in sure it's good like with Dwarf Fortress, but I would ask how long it took you to feel like you had a bearing on what was going on/fun?
- Oh not as long as original Dwarf Fortress, that's for sure!
  
  I had a friend who has some experience explain how to navigate the interface, and generally what each resource does, and after an hour or two of fussing about I got used to it. Some times I will misclick, because right click is sometimes "go back" and sometimes "show more detail" but aside from that its easy enough.
  
  The core mechanics are very easy. Conquer provinces to increase your domain, build stacks of units to fight battle and test different strategies for what works against what.
  
  I can go into more detail if you like?
- I mean, it's not beautiful, but for strategy games and other high-replayability games, I don't find that eye candy buys that much. Like, I feel like a good strategy game is one that you should spend a lot of time playing as you master the mechanics, and no matter how pretty the graphics, when you've seen them a ton of times...shrugs I think that eye candy works better for genres where you only see something once, like adventure games, so that the novelty is fresh. But what you like is what you like.
  
  If it's too complicated -- and the game does have a lot of mechanics going on, even by strategy game standards -- Illwinter also has another series, Conquest of Elysium, which is considerably simpler, albeit more RNG-dependent. I personally prefer the latter, even though I know Dominions. Dominions turns into a micromanagement slogfest when you have a zillion armies moving around later in the game. Especially if you have one of the nations that can induce freespawn, like MA Ermor. Huge amounts of time handling troop movement.
  
  It might be more tolerable if you play against other humans -- I mean, if you're playing one turn a day or something, I imagine that it's more tolerable to look at what's going on. But if you're playing against the computer, which is what I do, it has more micromanagement than I'd like.
  
  Trying to optimize your build is neat, though. There are a lot of mutually-exclusive or semi-compatible strategies to use, lots of levers to play with, which I think is a big part of making a strategy game interesting.
  
  I think that Dwarf Fortress has a higher learning curve, but if you're wanting a strategy game that has a gentle learning curve, I agree, Dominions probably isn't the best choice. It also doesn't have a tutorial/introduction system -- it's got an old-school, nice hefty manual.

The Homeworld series is great with fantastic campaigns (minus Homeworld 3 I've heard, not even played that).

I'll also throw in a classic Imperium Galactica 2 because I still think for a 90s 4X RTS it has so many elements that I've just not seen replicated since. Though usually short and quick, it has fully simulated and controllable space and ground battles; espionage; diplomacy; you assign your unlocked tech to hard points on your ships... It's Stellaris but better in most ways, imo.

Yeah, I recently replayed homeworld 1 and 2 and they hold up well. Still haven't played Deserts of Kharak but that looks good too. I've not played 3 either but unfortunately I've heard it's not great.
I haven't checked recently but last I heard HW3 was not good. Homeworld is one of the best of all time and even Deserts of Kharak is very good too.

Command and Conquer Generals: Zero Hour.

I mean, obviously play the Red Alert games too. But Generals: Zero Hour was BIG fun in the day. A bit hard to get it to play nice with modern computers, but it was recently added to Steam so its at least legally acquirable again.

Age of Empires 2, obviously. Still the GOAT of Age. Its latest released still gets updates, which is great.

IDK about it being a "must play," but I actually quite enjoyed the strategic/tactical RPG Tuned Hearts, for the Japanese PC98 series of home computers. Im not much of a fan of turn based games in general, but something about Tuned Hearts kept me playing. IDK if it was the battle art or the hilarious enemy characters, but either way I enjoyed my time with the game.

The PSP had Joan De'Arc, which I think is based on an anime, but I could be wrong. It plays similar to Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem, I think. Not a bad little game.

For 4X, I like playing Stellaris. Granted, every time I play my saves get massively bloated and end game lag is unbearable sometimes due to fleet sizes, and the developers update the game so often that either my save breaks or the systems are vastly different from whenever I played last, but aside from that the game is a lot of fun. If a real time 4X strategy space civilization game sounds interesting to you, I'd give it a shot. Otherwise for turn-based, Galactic Civilizations III from Stardock was my go-to.

One game that we always play at LANs is Spellforce III . It's got a great old school RTS vibe while throwing some new stuff in the mix and there's a free version of the multiplayer which gives it a really low barrier of entry.

I haven't seen Halo Wars mentioned yet so I'll nominate those games. Both 1 and 2 are insanely fun and they control surprisingly well on Xbox if you dont have access to a PC. I've put a couple hundred hours into both games on both Xbox and PC, but I do prefer M&KB controls even if it works very well with a controller.

Cutscenes are fucking awesome in both games as well!

Another game I'd like to bring up is Stellaris. If you're a sci-fi fan and like 4X strategy games then I can't recommend this game enough. I've put 630 hours into the game since I got it back in 2019, being able to role play a custom or sci-fi inspired empire is great. If the amount of DLC puts you off, then look up cream.api. Getting them for "free" is easy.

Call to Arms: Gates of Hell Ostfront

Yeah that was on sale recently so I finally took the plunge. I'm mostly enjoying skirmishes in the Frontline mode but the campaign is okay as well.
- Some of the campaign missions are really good with a nice variety too. I've been re-playing some on the hardest difficulty and it's a real time hog but good fun to spend 2 hours on a mission!

Rise of nations is also really good. Is like Civ in RTS form.

I'm presently replaying Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 and love it. The cast for the FMVs is all-star, the game itself is a super refined version of Red Alert 2 (itself an all-time classic) and the story has no bearing on the rest of the series so it can be played in isolation with no advance knowledge of C&C

Medieval 2 Total War. It's the best Total War game and one of the oldest. It has a basic campaign map where you create and manage armies which you then use to go into a real time battle with thousands of units. There is nothing as satisfying as routing the enemy with a massive cavalry charge into the rear when they're in hand to hand infantry combat.

cracktorio

Metal Fatigue. It's like what a Gundam RTS should be. It's awesome. If I were a billionaire I would remake it.

While it might not fit the vibe (and you might already know it), I feel like Songs of Conquest needs to be mentioned, being a Heroes spinoff. It's an interesting twist on the formula, with lovely graphics, some things streamlined and some interesting new mechanics (like the essences for spellcasting).

Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun

StarCraft (not sure how the remaster is but the OG is something I would consider a "must play" game)

On top of what was recommended here, Total War: Warhammer 3 is pretty much back since the updates done in 2024!

While it's not exactly a good game, I had a lot of fun with Heroes of Annihilated Empires and enjoyed it even though parts of it can be difficult or clunky and I couldn't even finish it. It was kind of like high fantasy RPG RTS.

The Dungeons series is fun.

Some might not call Mindustry an RTS, but it's similar and a lot of fun.

I also felt Company of Heroes 2 was a good story and had a lot of playability.

Circle Empires again isn't exactly RTS, but is similar and a unique take on the concept.

Also you can't go wrong with most Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, and Halo Wars.

Knights and Merchants 😉 Older classic, but there's a remake that makes it more playable on modern machines