36 Best RTS Games of All Time: Click, Click, Die – Gameranx

Curious about the best Real Time Strategy games of all time? Well, we’ve got you covered. You’ll find no better RTS games than the ones on this list.

Since the mid-90s, real-time strategy games have become a video game staple, particularly on the PC due to the mouse and keyboard controls which allow players to point at units, drag their mouse across the screen, and select the armies they’ll use to attack other units.

The games belong to the domain of PC gamers, giving the PC platform an edge against their counterparts well beyond just having better superior hardware.

Regardless of the genre’s love affair with the PC, the decades have been kind to the genre, offering gamers with everything from ultra-competitive titles like Starcraft to more toned-down real-time strategy games like Gene Wars (which isn’t on this list, because it kind of sucked) and even casual titles like The Baldies and Nintendo’s Pikmin series of games. Even the Nintendo DS played host to several RTS games, including a Final Fantasy title.

You’ll find none of those mediocre titles here, as we’re only interested in writing about the best of the best in the RTS genre. Expect to find some fan favorites and more than a few games that flew under everyone’s radar. We’re including them here because that’s where they belong.

We’ve decided to catalogue the best real-time strategy games of all time. These date back from way before RTS became a popular genre along with more recent games to have come out into the marketplace. There’s no specific ranking here, instead these are all just solid RTS games.

#36 Starship Troopers: Terran Command

Set in the same universe as the Starship Troopers movies, Starship Troopers: Terran Command is a highly enjoyable real-time strategy game that players who enjoy the genre will love. As commanders of the Mobile Infantry, players will be able to execute tactical maneuvers against the Arachnid threat that intends to dominate humanity. The game itself has some gorgeously detailed graphics and features top-down combat action that feels highly immersive. Starship Troopers: Terran Command makes use of an engaging storyline for players to connect with and includes dozens of different specialized unit types for players to get to grips with as they build and refine their armies.

#35 Farthest Frontier

A recently-released real-time strategy game, Farthest Frontier gives players the power to forge their own destiny as leaders of their own small band of settlers. With the goal of rebuilding a settlement at the edge of the known world, it’ll be down to players to manage their new home’s inhabitants and ensure that civilization flourishes under their direction. Fishing, foraging, crafting and building are all core components of Farthest Frontier, which features an advanced and strategically intense farming system that players will need to master to ensure their town’s crops thrive. All aspects of managing a town have been thought of in this game, with players needing to manage resources, build an economy and ensure infrastructure is in place to combat diseases, fend off predators and ensure the evolution of your settlement.

#34 Evil Genius 2: World Domination

A sci-fi lair builder where you take the role of the criminal mastermind. Construct your base, train minions, defend your establishment and achieve global domination. Research and develop your very own devices to assist you in your battles and complete hundreds of missions.

#33 Diplomacy is Not an Option

Born a feudal lord, partake in hundreds of battles to prove your worth! Experience warfare with over 10 thousand enemy units, with the freedom to act how you would prefer. Various modes will keep you occupied in this indie Real time strategy game.

#32 Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun – Aiko’s Choice

The standalone expansion to Shadow Tactics, this one is set in Edo in Japan. Take control of the skilful Aiko, a highly skilled assassin that is on a mission to hunt down the ghosts of the past. Play a team of five unique assassins to take down dozens of enemies through this deadly adventure.

#31 Age of Empires 4

The fourth installment of the real-time strategy game released in October last year and remains just as popular as it was when it released. Be at the center of historical battles that shaped the world and choose you path to greatness. Customize your game with mods and even play online in PVP and PVE battles.

#30 Total War: Warhammer 2

Total War: Warhammer 2 is quite the beloved video game installment and chances are if you’re an RTS fan then you’ve already been enjoying this game for a good while now. Here the game has players waging a war in a fantasy world with several different factions. It’s all about diplomacy, building an empire, and setting off to conquer. There’s also a narrative campaign here as well with the base game, but over the years the studio has received plenty of DLC updates to bring out even more content into the game. We have another DLC in the works right now that will be hitting the game this July 2021 so you can expect there to be an active community for a good while as we wait for the next thrilling installment to hit the marketplace.

#29 They Are Billions

They Are Billions is a game that came out in 2019 that offers a steampunk parallel universe. In this game, we’re left in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has been enduring a zombie apocalypse. What’s left of humanity has banded together in small little cities that aim to stand against the ongoing flood of undead monsters flooding into the area. Here you’ll need to build up a colony as you attempt to allow the human colony to flourish but you’ll also need to create enough defenses to fight back against the hordes of undead. If you’re not careful, a zombie horde could easily slip right into the colony and from there it’s a tough battle to contain the area.

#28 Minion Masters

Minion Masters is a fun free to play RTS title that you can play right now. This game, it’s a mixture of deck building and tower defense as you craft up your deck with cards to layout onto the battlefield. From there the card comes to life with a minion to battle against the enemy forces or attempt to take out their tower to win the game. Meanwhile, players are also picking a hero that has their attributes to aid during the battle as well. Within the game, you can participate in single battles or even 2v2 skirmishes if you like to get paired off with another player online or join in with some friends.

#27 8-bit Armies

From the makers of Command & Conquer comes this Minecraft-looking game that pits polygonal tanks and vehicles against one another. It’s minimalist, but it’s a great RTS experience that takes the whole real-time strategy thing way back to its roots. It doesn’t have a story, but you’ll be so caught up in the gameplay that you won’t even think about it.

#26 Ashes of the Singularity

This 2016 release reinvigorates the RTS genre with all the gameplay and UI aspects that one can come to expect from a modern game. It’s basically a new take on sci-fi classics like Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation, and it delivers this sort of mass, macro RTS gameplay in spades. Players choose from two distinct factions and wage war over large swaths of ground to control the map.

Ashes of the Singularity is real-time strategy on a grand scale, with large-scale battles taking place across enormous tracts of land. Players build gigantic bases and control hundreds of units and send them to war against each other. It’s like everything 8-year-old me imagined while playing with toy soldiers.

#25 Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is the prequel that takes place in the events leading up to Homeworld. A planet is dying, and its inhabitants’ only salvation is a mysterious and ancient derelict spaceship found in the desert. In this prequel to the interstellar series of space strategy games, you take on the role of the scientist leading an expedition into the harsh and unforgiving deserts of Kharak to recover an ancient artifact that will come to be the salvation of your people.

 

#24 Grey Goo

Developed by Petroglyph, the makers of Command & Conquer, Grey Goo is a return to form. In the game, players fight for survival on a planetary oasis by commanding one of three factions: the defense-oriented Humans, the versatile Beta, or the all consuming Goo. The game caters to a myriad of play styles, including the ability to turtle, by offering players the ability to construct impenetrable walls, dominate from strategic outposts—or become the Goo and overrun your enemies.

#23 Total War: Attila

Set during the Dark Ages against a background of famine, disease, and war, a new power of steppe warriors rises in the East that threatens to overrun the fallen kingdoms of the classical world. The warrior king approaches, and he has his sights set on conquering Rome.

#22 Planetary Annihilation

Planetary Annihilation can be best described as the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation. Within the game, players can colonize solar systems, lay waste to entire planets, and crush their foes in epic battles with multiple players and thousands of units in the field. The game is made even bigger with the release of the Titans expansion pack.

#21 Company of Heroes 2

Company of Heroes 2 is the sequel to the World War II RTS that made headlines years ago. It features a huge single-player campaign, cooperative play and a host of standalone expansions allowing players to go head to head in cooperative online mode.

#20 Dune 2

Dune 2: Battle for Arrakis is the game that started it all. Developed by Westwood Studios, and set in Frank Herbert’s fantastic Dune series of novels, players took control of one of the great houses: Atreides, Harkonnen, or Ordos—the last of which was invented by the game developers and not original to the series.

As the patron of your house, you commanded armies to march across the face of Arrakis to conquer the flow of spice—for he who controls the spice, controls the universe.

Although simplistic by today’s standards of RTS, Dune 2 was the first of its kind and established Westwood Studios as an RTS developer.

#19 Warzone 2100

Warzone 2100 was set in the aftermath of a technological apocalypse that left humanity in tatters . You play one of the remaining human factions who attempts to reunite the survivors and bring peace to the wasteland, and discover the cause of the apocalypse.

The little known game wasn’t a typical RTS. Although it played very much like every other RTS on the market at the time, it contained a persistent single-player campaign that allowed you to salvage the technology of enemy units to incorporate into your own armies and use as an edge against enemies.

#18 Ground Control

Ground Control is one of the earliest RTS games that put players in control of a set amount of units in each mission instead of getting players to construct buildings or worry about build queues.

Instead, you were given a set of units in each mission that you had to use to properly defeat your enemies without taking too many losses, as losing your dudes early on severely handicapped you later in the mission. The game was very much a tactical challenge.

#17 World in Conflict

What Ground Control started, World in Conflict perfected. Set in a scenario in which the Cold War became very much a Hot War, seeing both Europe and America invaded by the Soviets, World in Conflict puts players in the role of an American commander who must take charge of the remnants of the US army and drive back the Soviet invaders–first by activating the nuclear arsenal and then through ground-pounding force.

Like Ground Control, also made by Massive Entertainment, World in Conflict sees players take charge of a small company of units and exercise tactical superiority instead of worrying about build orders and the like. It’s a game that very much puts you on the front lines.

#16 Command & Conquer 2: Tiberian Sun

Tiberian Sun was the long-awaited sequel to the first Command & Conquer, and one of the first games to use voxel graphics ahead of 2D sprites, or even 3D polygons. The game’s use of voxels gave it an impressively unique aesthetic that lent a ton of charm to the game as a whole.

Like the first game, the game offered two campaigns split between separate discs that put you in command of the Brotherhood of Nod or the GDI. It was one of the first games to make heavy use of the environment by allowing your soldiers to become poisoned, and even mutated by Tiberium fields. Ice and destructible terrain also played a role in the game, by allowing you to knock out bridges to close off approaches or funnel the enemy units towards a killzone.

#15 Supreme Commander

Supreme Commander is the spiritual sequel to Total Annihilation. It offers ultra large maps and equally huge robotic armies that march across the battlefield. The game allows you to get down and dirty by zooming close into your units or a strategic overview that sees you controlling icons that represent your units from way above.

Playable across multiple monitors, the game offers a sense of scale missing from almost every other real-time strategy game as you send hundreds of units to battle countless others—all of whom are dwarfed by some super gigantic units that walk across the battlefield like titans.

#14 Total War: Shogun 2

Total War: Shogun 2 revisits the setting from which the first Total War originated—Japan. Like the original game, you take charge of a Daimyo pursuing the position of Shogun—or overlord of Japan.

Throughout the game, you’re tasked with managing your cities and your territory while commanding your army into battle against enemy samurai and their peasant followers. Depending on which territory you start in, you will possess a multitude of strengths, as well as weaknesses to contend with. Conquering territories will gain you access to more units, wealth, and better technology to use against your opponents.

#13 Command & Conquer: Red Alert

Red Alert is the not-quite-sequel to Command & Conquer. Why, it isn’t even set in the same universe. Instead, we’re presented with a Cold War-themed world in which Hitler never rose to power because Einstein, in all his intelligence, decided to shake hands with the dictator before he rose to power and extinguish him from history. His actions had irreversible consequences that caused the Soviets to rise to power instead of being diminished and set back by the Germans during the Second World War.

Predictably, the Soviets construct a war machine larger than anything Hitler could’ve envisioned and stage the invasion of Europe.

Like the original Command & Conquer, the game’s campaign is split across two discs and allows you to tell two versions of the story based on which army you decide to command.

 

#12 Rise of Nations

The success of Age of Empires 2 gave rise to many copycats, but Rise of Nations stood above the rest by actually being its own thing instead of copying Age of Empires feature by feature.

The game offered a persistent campaign that enabled your conquest of the world turn by turn. Every decision you made counted towards (or against) your absolute victory as you rose through the ages from prehistory to the modern age.

#11 Medieval: Total War

Medieval: Total War is arguably the best game in the long-running series of war games by Creative Assembly. You play the role of a monarch of one of the many kingdoms that ruled during the middle ages, and it’s your task to expand your kingdom and conquer the known world by establishing a dominion larger than any other in history.

Throughout the game, you’ll research technology to aid you in your conquests and take command of armies of thousands of soldiers to pillage your opponents’ kingdoms and decimate their armies—all the while attempting to keep the peace with Rome, so they don’t dispatch an army after you.

#10 Dungeon Keeper

Dungeon Keeper is one of Peter Molyneux’s last great games, and one that defined his career as a kickass game developer. The game puts you in the role of a Dungeon Keeper—an overlord, a boss, and fascist king dictator of a monster-filled dungeon.

With the help of your monsters, you must expand your dungeon by digging through the earth, uncovering treasure and mining for gold, and making it a desirable place to live for your evil minions. Having a successful dungeon also makes it an enticing target for the goodly terrestrial heroes who want nothing more than to claim a slice of your treasure and extinguish the beating heart of your dungeon. To that end, you have to construct elaborate traps and hire minions capable of falling even the mightiest knights—or better yet, turning them to your cause.

#9 Homeworld

One of the most epic stories ever told in the history of games, Homeworld is also the first of its kind—a space RTS which takes place in three dimensions, as opposed to a two dimensional plane. The game tells the story about a race of humans in the far-flung future who discover a buried alien spaceship in the desert of their planet—a relic of their distant, spacefaring past. In their wisdom, they decide to get off their rock and find their way back home by following interstellar markers left by their ancestors.

As their home planet is destroyed by a race of other hostile aliens, they have little choice but to proceed on their voyage. They must elude hostiles, make contact with benevolent alien races, and uncover the secrets of their heritage on the way home.

#8 Myth: The Fallen Lords

Myth: The Fallen Lords is a little known game by Bungie (yes, the same Bungie that made Halo) that puts players in control of a commander of a unit not unlike the Black Company in the eponymous series of books by Glen Cook. Like other Bungie titles, it’s very heavy on story.

The game features highly detailed 2D sprites within a three dimensional environment, which allows you to deform the terrain with explosives, bounce or roll grenades off hills, or even blow up your own units by accident if they stand in the way of the throw.

#7 Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2

It’d be an injustice to Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2 to describe it as Company of Heroes with a Warhammer 40K skin. We understand that such claims would be made given that they’re both from the same developer, but in fact, there are so many element unique to the game that it’s a completely different game with a strong set of strengths to set it apart from its WW2-themed predecessor.

Much of the focus in Dawn of War, like Company of Heroes, is on the command of small groups of units instead of build orders and rock-paper-scissors style gameplay. Each unit can be lead by a sergeant or a commander who attaches himself to the unit, earning experience points and even items to bolster his strengths.

In the single player campaign, the player takes charge of a set group of heroes who must drive back the alien forces and undertake missions in a persistent campaign that takes both wins and losses into account as you play through the game.

Multiplayer is an entirely different beast, allowing players to play as one of the many alien races in addition to the Space Marines. There’s even a horde mode of sorts that allows you to level up your character as you—along with other heroes—fend off waves of enemies.

#6 Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

Age of Empires II is the widely acclaimed sequel to the first Age of Empires and is set in medieval Europe. It contained several campaigns which saw players liberating France as Jeanne d’Arc, the rise of Frederick Barbarossa, and the conquests of Ghenghis Khan across Europe and the Middle East. It also had a fantastic multiplayer mode that gave rise to the meme “wololo.”

#5 Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty + Heart of the Swarm

Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm take place after the events of the first Starcraft. Starcraft II is the sequel to the game many regard as one of the best real-time strategy games of all time. Building upon Starcraft II is its expansion pack, Heart of the Swarm, which sees the addition of many new gameplay mechanics and makes Starcraft II, which we originally left off this list, deserving of its position on this list.

#4 Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos

As the third title in Warcraft and sequel to the massively popular Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3 had huge shoes to fill, and they did so by including an actual narrative that put to shame just about every other previous RTS on the market. It was the first RTS to feature main characters who could level up and equip items—RPG elements, in short.

The game followed the stories of Arthas, Thrall, and Tyrande Whisperwind as they traversed across the lands of Azeroth in the lead of armies of humans, orcs, and night elves.

#3 Total Annihilation

Total Annihilation is the first real-time strategy game to feature actual 3D units and structures in a 3D map which took the vertical axis into account. In other words, weapons had to be fired over buildings and over terrain in order to hit their targets. The game also took velocity into effect, so your bullets would have had to lead moving targets or they would very easily miss them.

Units in the game were designed by Chris Taylor, a toy maker by profession, who made each unit and building in Total Annihilation something you’d want to play with for real.

#2 StarCraft

StarCraft is arguably the best competitive game of all time, surpassing every other game in mainstream popularity. The game is so popular that it’s frequently shown on TV throughout South Korea. I don’t think I need to explain the game or what it’s about. It’s StarCraft.

#1 Company of Heroes

Company of Heroes is the number one highest rated real-time strategy game of all time, and with good reason: it’s a damn good game. While I could very easily argue that the reason it’s also #1 on this list is because it’s #1 on everyone else’s list, my reasons for putting it way up here are purely from personal experience.

As an RTS, it’s the only one that managed to get me to give a damn about my soldiers, all of whom exhibited some manner of personality while earning veterancy ranks to give me good reason to want to keep them around. Not only is the single player campaign, which is extended through the Tales of Valor and Opposing Fronts expansions, it’s also host to a damn good multiplayer experience that has more to do with actual battlefield tactics instead of build orders. Eat your heart out, StarCraft.