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Keeping the beavers alive is the first priority - after that, players must find ways to generate power and create dams that will keep water flowing through times of hardship. Timberborn is less of a competitive experience but a satisfying and challenging town simulator nonetheless. Currently, there are no other beaver colonies to interact with, but with updates, the game could become multi-player focused and cooperative. As it stands, building a beaver society is already a great hook but the visuals and an emphasis on vertical buildings make this one of the best 3D colony sims available on Steam.

While traditional real-time strategy games might not be getting the attention they once had, management and factory simulators are better than ever. Satisfactory and its tricky efficient factories have proven there's a market for in-depth sorting and manufacturing gameplay and there are a number of titles like Factory Town and Voxel Tycoon that are taking the RTS genre to new heights.

These games focus on taking resources and creating a factory with them that eventually fully automates the process of creating high-complexity goods. Dyson Sphere Program takes this subgenre and blows its scale up to massive proportions by tasking the one player with harvesting enough resources and crafting them into enough solar energy plants to surround a star and power the universe.

Optimization in this game happens by improving conveyor routes and planning efficient production mills on a galactic scale and the game does a fairly good job of easing players into their workflow. The ultimate goal might be overwhelming at times, but Dyson Sphere Program starts a player off with very few tools and asks them to develop small production lines before expanding their responsibilities.

One of the factors that relegated the RTS to the "game B" tier is how ill-prepared the format was for modern monetization sensibilities. StarCraft II is a dinosaur compared to the titles that burn up the Twitch charts every day.

It's capped at three factions and is bereft of "hero" units or paint-splattered AKs. League of Legends turned Riot Games into a monolith because the studio could roll out a brand-new champion on a strict seasonal schedule, and Hearthstone keeps the ball rolling with randomized card packs that are sold for three bucks a pop. RTS games, on the other hand, were not crafted with that goal in mind. It is awkward to retrofit all of those micro-transactional tendrils to a genre that never needed them in the first place.

Do you skin them all? That's a lot of work; that's a lot of development time. There's definitely considerations that you need to factor in. It also isn't clear how much of a market those cosmetic flourishes would find in the first place. Rory McGuire, chief creative officer at Blackbird Entertainment, which is currently developing the much anticipated Homeworld 3, notes that a ton of RTS players are satisfied with a story campaign and a handful of skirmishes against the AI.

Many of them never even touch the multiplayer, which is anathema to the live service, treadmill mindsets of EA or Activision. He's absolutely right. I've probably played a thousand hours of Red Alert 2, and I'm not sure if I ever delved into the matchmaking servers.

The broader gaming framework is increasingly grind-y and chronically online—even Assassin's Creed is an MMO now—but it remains to be seen if the beleaguered RTS fandom wants to watch the genre soak up some of the Machiavellian lessons preached by the finance offices around the industry. And games-as-a-service models typically focus on multiplayer. RTSes have a rich multiplayer pedigree, but it's a narrow percentage of your audience," says McGuire.

You really have to have a killer instinct to enjoy it. This is the question facing everyone breaking ground on an RTS right now. Should you design a game built for ? Or ? Don't look now, but we're on the cusp of a real-time renaissance. Alongside Frost Giant and Blackbird, a number of dewy-eyed studios are breathing life back into the scene.

Relic Entertainment is poised for a huge comeback—the company just launched Age of Empires IV , and Company of Heroes 3 is on the horizon. Will any of these studios crack the code? There's more than a hint of Crusader Kings here. You can't have a best strategy games list without a bit of Civ. Civilization 6 is our game of choice in the series right now, especially now that it's seen a couple of expansions.

The biggest change this time around is the district system, which unstacks cities in the way that its predecessor unstacked armies. Cities are now these sprawling things full of specialised areas that force you to really think about the future when you developing tiles. The expansions added some more novel wrinkles that are very welcome but do stop short of revolutionising the venerable series. They introduce the concept of Golden Ages and Dark Ages, giving you bonuses and debuffs depending on your civilisation's development across the years, as well as climate change and environmental disasters.

It's a forward-thinking, modern Civ. This is a game about star-spanning empires that rise, stabilise and fall in the space of an afternoon: and, particularly, about the moment when the vast capital ships of those empires emerge from hyperspace above half-burning worlds.

Diplomacy is an option too, of course, but also: giant spaceships. Play the Rebellion expansion to enlarge said spaceships to ridiculous proportions. Stellaris takes an 'everything and the kicthen sink' approach to the space 4X. It's got a dose of EU4, Paradox's grand strategy game, but applied to a sci-fi game that contains everything from robotic uprisings to aliens living in black holes.

It arguably tries to do to much and lacks the focus of some of the other genre greats, but as a celebration of interstellar sci-fi there are none that come close. It's a liberating sandbox designed to generate a cavalcade of stories as you guide your species and empire through the stars, meddling with their genetic code, enslaving aliens, or consuming the galaxy as a ravenous hive of cunning insects.

Fantasy 4X Endless Legend is proof that you don't need to sacrifice story to make a compelling 4X game. Each of its asymmetrical factions sports all sorts of unique and unusual traits, elevated by story quests featuring some of the best writing in any strategy game. The Broken Lords, for instance, are vampiric ghosts living in suits of armour, wrestling with their dangerous nature; while the necrophage is a relentless force of nature that just wants to consume, ignoring diplomacy in favour of complete conquest.

Including the expansions, there are 13 factions, each blessed or cursed with their own strange quirks. Faction design doesn't get better than this. Civ in space is a convenient shorthand for Alpha Centauri, but a bit reductive.

Brian Reynolds' ambitious 4X journey took us to a mind-worm-infested world and ditched nation states and empires in favour of ideological factions who were adamant that they could guide humanity to its next evolution.

The techs, the conflicts, the characters— it was unlike any of its contemporaries and, with only a few exceptions, nobody has really attempted to replicate it.

Not even when Firaxis literally made a Civ in space, which wasn't very good. Alpha Centauri is as fascinating and weird now as it was back in '99, when we were first getting our taste of nerve stapling naughty drones and getting into yet another war with Sister Miriam. More than 20 years later, some of us are still holding out hope for Alpha Centauri 2.

Pick an Age of Wonders and you really can't go wrong. If sci-fi isn't your thing, absolutely give Age of Wonders 3 a try, but it's Age of Wonders: Planetfall that's got us all hot and bothered at the moment. Set in a galaxy that's waking up after a long period of decline, you've got to squabble over a lively world with a bunch of other ambitious factions that run the gamut from dinosaur-riding Amazons to psychic bugs.

The methodical empire building is a big improvement over its fantastical predecessors, benefiting from big changes to its structure and pace, but just as engaging are the turn-based tactical battles between highly customisable units. Stick lasers on giant lizards, give everyone jetpacks, and nurture your heroes like they're RPG protagonists—there's so much fiddling to do, and it's all great.

Set in an alternate 's Europe, factions duke it out with squishy soldiers, tanks and, the headline attraction, clunky steampunk mechs. There are plenty of them, from little exosuits to massive, smoke-spewing behemoths, and they're all a lot of fun to play with and, crucially, blow up. Iron Harvest does love its explosions. When the dust settles after a big fight, you'll hardly recognise the area. Thanks to mortars, tank shells and mechs that can walk right through buildings, expect little to remain standing.

The level of destruction is as impressive as it is grim. To cheer yourself up, you can watch a bear fight a mech. Each faction has a heroic unit, each accompanied by their very own pet.

All of them have some handy unique abilities, and yes, they can go toe-to-toe with massive war machines. Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 's cosmic battles are spectacular. There's a trio of vaguely 4X-y campaigns following the three of the Warhammer 40K factions: The Imperium, Necron Empire and the nasty Tyranid Hives, but you can ignore them if you want and just dive into some messy skirmishes full of spiky space cathedrals colliding with giant, tentacle-covered leviathans.

The real-time tactical combat manages to be thrilling even when you're commanding the most sluggish of armadas. You need to manage a whole fleet while broadside attacks pound your hulls, enemies start boarding and your own crews turn mutinous. And with all the tabletop factions present, you can experiment with countless fleet configurations and play with all sorts of weird weapons. Viking-themed RTS Northgard pays dues to Settlers and Age of Empires, but challenged us with its smart expansion systems that force you to plan your growth into new territories carefully.

Weather is important, too. You need to prepare for winter carefully, but if you tech up using 'lore' you might have better warm weather gear than your enemies, giving you a strategic advantage. Skip through the dull story, enjoy the well-designed campaign missions and then start the real fight in the skirmish mode. Ancestors uses the Unreal Engine 4 to power its massive battles and based off of the video it appears the developers have done a good job of utilzing the engine for their game.

When Ancestors launches it will feature four playable nations in single player campaign inspired by real historical events. The game will also launch with a multiplayer component. Jack of all trades, master of none.