The 17 Best Strategy Games on Windows 8

Strategy has always played well with Windows. The PC has long been and still is the place where fans of the genre could find the best games, often exclusively. The advent of smartphones and tablets have not tipped the scales to the other side, although touch has also meant new ways of playing, beyond the mouse+keyboard, which has always been the winning combination.

Today we compiled the 17 best strategy games on Windows 8, both those more focused on the tactile part and those more traditional. A top (not ordered, just numbered) with which free time will disappear from your life.

1. Skulls of the Shogun

Mixing arcade with turn-based strategy, Skulls of The Shogun is one of the best options to enjoy on a Windows 8 tablet. Dead samurai warriors trying to take control of hell, in a intense campaign and, in addition, with multiplayer options to get the most out of it. You have it available in the Windows Store

2. Crusader Kings II

Never has the intrigue and instability of medieval kingdoms been better represented, nor their intense pursuit of glory. In Crusader Kings II, what matters is never to conquer more and more, but to ensure the future of the lineage, of the family, in an environment in which betrayal and death are not the order of the day, but are insured.

3. Robotek

Robotek, with its casual aesthetic, and its mixture of pure strategy, action, and RPG offers a fun design that has been succeeding on all platforms and also deserves you to try it on Windows 8 if you still you have not had the opportunity It is one of those that will consume you for hours without you hardly realizing it and its games are also designed to be enjoyed in those free moments or idle moments. In addition, the multiplayer is also completely free... and addictive.

4. Civilization 5

The work that was born from the great Sid Meir and changed the strategy on PC forever already has five titles. On this occasion, in addition to delving into the same formula as always, it is also adapted to tactile environments without losing an iota of depth. You decide what civilization you want to be and how far you want to take it. Also the style of play that you will impose: diplomacy, military skills, trade, cultural expansion, religious supremacy... Everything is allowed in one of the great classics of turn-based strategy that has never failed.

Oh, don't forget their exciting expansions.

5. Babel rising

Do you dare to put yourself in the shoes of a God determined to prevent poor humans from even getting close to him? In Babel Rising, you'll play the role of an angry deity who spends her spare time destroying false idols, gigantic towers, and much more. 15 missions in campaign mode and a survival mode for those who dare anything: those little men deserve all your wrath... and being God is in the Windows Store at the reach of a click.

6. Starcraft II

The original is still the big name in RTS, real-time strategy games. But in 2010, Blizzard gave us what many of us had been waiting for years: a sequel... which, moreover, was totally up to the task. Of course, the campaign - full of speed, surprise attacks, pyrrhic victories and excitement - deserves our full attention... but the multiplayer is still an amazing experience.One of those titles for which the game on PC will always be something unique.

7. XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Remake XCOM, the 90's game, was quite an odyssey for whoever dared. How to get back that feeling of danger, of permanent death, of not being able to prevent the aliens from killing the best man in your anti-aliens squad without repeating yourself? Firaxis achieved it by maintaining the commitment to turn-based combat, the measured movements, the almost chess rhythm, and adding everything that can be visually contributed 20 years later... plus a science fiction setting that is even more successful than in the original, in in which decisions outside of missions can tip the game to one side or the other.

Few things are as impressive in PC strategy as trying to save a city under alien attack.

8. Pirates Loves Daisies

Let's face it: if you like the tower defense genre, you are lost, because there are hundreds of titles willing to steal your hours through waves of enemies before which there is little more to do than “place” the defending towers and expect to have made correct choices at the beginning so as to have as little rectification as possible afterwards.

With a humorous aesthetic, in Pirate Loves Daisies (free in the Windows store) you will have to defend your flowers against the attack of Davey Jones and his gang.

9. SunAge

We were talking about Starcraft and it's obvious that SunAge (5.99 euros in the Windows store) is full of references to the Blizzard game. But he has adapted it to a new environment, he has made it his own and, although it is not better than the original, it is different enough to deserve to be included in the essentials of touch devices.With offline and multiplayer maps, a single player campaign and much more, SunAge is a great title for fans of the most frenetic strategy.

10. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

The Warhammer 40K universe is one where orcs and soldiers with futuristic weapons go hand in hand… or rather: shoot each other. And 'Dawn of War II' managed to become a strategy classic precisely because it strayed somewhat from the usual and proposed a greater role-playing depth, a greater choice prior to the combat scenarios and a highly appreciable mix of genres.

Visually challenging and powerful, this second Dawn of War is truly a must see even 5 years later.

eleven. Europa Universalis IV

Paradox is one of the big strategy firms. Just as Relic would be the kings of RTS, Paradox are the true master chiefs of Grand Strategy, that subgenre in which the games are long "epic duration", the immense maps, the documentation so extensive that it could occupy entire books and books. …and the goals are not just to win battles, but to manage the future.

If Crusader Kings was his approach to the Middle Ages, Europa Universalis is his look at the world between the beginning of the Renaissance and the outbreak of the Industrial Revolution. The world at your feet… if you really have the guts and knowledge to master it.

12. Plants vs. Zombies

The great winner of the casual strategy, for all audiences, and with all the merits. Popcap's work has conquered millions of players with its humor, its ease, its learning curve and its plants. It's the game that, at first, doesn't seem to demand anything of you but will end up making you sweat to conquer it completely.

Never has a small garden given so much of itself.

13. Company of Heroes 2

If Dawn of War was Relic's way of bringing real-time strategy games to the Warhammer 40K universe, Company Of Heroes is the same company exerting its already manifest superiority in the genre but in the World War II environment.

Both the original title and the expansions and sequel made you a hero of microstrategy: or how small skills could make a whole great battle fall on your side. The little soldier game you've dreamed of all your life... but created for PC.

14. Total War: Shogun 2

Total War was SEGA's way into real-time strategy and one of the longest-running (and some say squeezed) RTS sagas. In 'Shogun 2', however, everything is designed to satisfy newcomers and those demanding alike. If we started this list with dead samurai, now that we are almost at the end samurai are coming out again in Feudal Japan... and many of them will die too.

The end of an era and the rise of Christianity in Japan told in battles so numerous that they would have delighted Akira Kurosawa in 'Ran'.

fifteen. World in Conflict

If the great game about the Cold War is yet to come (and someone will end up giving it to us, I have no doubt), what we do have is the great game about the end of it. 'World In Conflict' imagines a world in which the fall of the USSR does not end in the scenario that true history left us, but in one in which the Soviets decide to stop that fall by attacking.

‘World in Conflict’ is a demanding game that will make you play with how many of your troops are going to die and when as key elements in order to succeed.

16. Galactic Civilizations II

And from earth to space. The galactic conquest has produced numerous strategy games on PC, but few like Stardock's, a 4x (Explore, Expand, Explode and Exterminate) that has well assimilated the influences of the Civilization saga, but takes them to the stars.

Design of ships, conquest of new planets, discovery and development of new technologies... The conquest of Space raised from a small company but dedicated almost exclusively to this subject.

Welcome to Windows 8: