Strategy Games

Strategy Games Guide

Most videogames have a goal that the player needs to reach in order to become the winner. In this specific category, the process of reaching the goal requires a little more thought than in the rest of game types.

Decision-making is what determines the outcome of every game. Strategy games also require very high situational awareness, since enemies are located in specific spaces and distances and every detail must be taken into account, thinking not only as yourself but also as the person/people you are playing against.

It is one of the most extensive categories, since it involves a great range of game types: war games, battle games, army games, artillery games, tank games, tower defense games, building games…

War Games

Since kindergarten we are taught that war is something bad, something that should never happen. However, a great number of teenagers go home after school to play war video games. Thankfully, it happens inside a screen, and here’s why it is not as negative as it sounds:

One very positive aspect of war games is that they approach something as terrible as war not from a violent perspective, but from a strategic one. In most of the games about war, winning is not about directly killing your enemies, it is about having a better plan, a better mindset than theirs.

Why are strategy war games so popular? One of the reasons is, without a doubt, the sense of power that they provide. Building your own empire, defending it against others…that’s how emperors and kings felt (I guess). And the player can feel that way too.

Here are some of the best war games for pc that you can download from Rocky Bytes:

- League of Legends is all about teaming up and defending your “Nexus”. At the same time, the player and four teammates must destroy the opponent’s “Nexus”. If you need some encouragement to start playing this war game, just know that there is big money to be made in the global tournament! LOL does not stand for “Lots of Laughs” for the fans of this game!

- Medieval: Total War is a turn based strategy game that lets the player plan the battles managing a very realistic number of soldiers: there are 10,000 different kinds of troops and 100 special units available in this war game. Rams, archers and a heavy cavalry can be used to take castles, always with a tactic in mind. The player can even choose between three different times in history to make the battles more authentic!

WARCRAFT: One of the best strategy games

The Warcraft series games are known to be some of the best strategy games ever. They are set in a high fantasy world, Azeroth. A group of human nations called the Eastern Kingdom are invaded by The Orcs, which arrived from another world through a dark portal. Then the Great Wars began. Each new games follows the plot from the previous one and introduces improvements. It began as a real time strategy game, and then in 2004 World of Warcraft was released, which required to pay a fee. It became extremely popular, to the point where it reached 12 million subscribers all over the globe.

In Rocky Bytes you can download:

- Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos: this high fantasy real time strategy game has four playable races: Humans and Orcs, which were present in previous games, and the Night Elves and the Undead as new playable characters for this sequel. It has an amazing multiplayer game!

It must be mentioned that Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is one of the best sellers and awarded games of all times. A month after its release, it has already sold 4.5 million units.

- Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne is an expansion pack from the previously described third sequel of Warcraft, and it is also available to download (for free) in Rocky Bytes. Just as in Reign of Chaos, the playable races are Humans, Orcs, the Night Elves and the Undead.  However, a loads of new features come with this expansion pack, as well as bug fixes and enhancements to improve the game. News maps are also available!

Tower Defense Games

Tower defense is a subgenre of real time strategy games. The goal of this kind of strategy games is quite simple: stop the enemies from reaching a point by building towers around it. The competitors must be shot in other to prevent them from getting closer to the main point.

Rocky Bytes has one of the best tower defense games (also one of the most popular ones) ready to download: Plants vs Zombies. It used to be in everyone’s phone and now it can finally be played in a bigger screen: your PC’s.

In Plants vs. Zombies, the player needs to protect his point (also called home) from the zombie attacks. The main weapon to do such thing are plants that shoot with their seeds. The more points you get the more plants you can receive. Zombies get stronger as the player reaches higher levels.

Despite having very simple game mechanics, Plants vs. Zombies can be incredibly entertaining and certainly addictive!

Building Games

Building games are another subgenre of strategy games. They are also known as empire strategy games or civilization strategy games, and its basic objective is to build and grow a community from scratch.  The player becomes the planner and the leader of a city (for example) and he also becomes responsible for its management. The game that defined this genre was Sim City, which first came out in 1989.

Building games are especially attractive because they provide a feeling which could almost be defined as pride after seeing the community you have created where there was absolutely nothing. The player can make all kinds of decisions: from salaries to ecological policies to improve the community.

Here are some civilization building games that can be downloaded from Rocky Bytes (they also have an element of war games):  

- Civilization IV is a classic. And classics are classics for a reason. It has sold over 6 million copies and it is because of the freedom that the player is allowed: from conquering everything to stepping back and defending what’s yours, everything is an option. You can also customize every detail of your gameworld!

- Age of Empires, as it can be easily guessed by its name, is a series of empire strategy games for computers which has already released seven titles and three spin-offs. Each game is set in a special time in history, exploring from the expansion of the Roman Empire to the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

The Age of Empires series has been a success in both sells and popularity. In Rocky Bytes you can download Age of Empires II, Age of Empires III, Age of Empires III Warchiefs and Age of Empires III Asian Dynasties. 

Army Games

Since their main attractive is the reenact of war, most war games can also be considered army games. The player is the leader of all kinds of troop, and it is his mission to plan the tactics that, hopefully, will make him the winner of the battles and eventually of the war.

In Rocky Bytes we have available for download two classics of the army games that started off as board games and, just as many others, ended up in screens: Risk and Risk II.

- Risk is one of the games that could perfectly be described as “old but gold”. The world is ready to be conquered, and with your strategy skills you must take territories from your friends, no mercy!

- Risk II introduces new modes to be played in the game. One of them is the single player tournament “Same Time Risk”, in which all players take turns at the same times instead of one after another. Way more exciting!

They are the perfect battle games for a night at home!

Those two games still have the familiar retro elements of the board games but there is no need to set them up and lose half the soldiers in your living room!

Tank Games

Although it is not listed in the strategy games category, World of Tanks has elements from war games, action games and simulation games.

It is a battle game where players have a tank with special weapons and speeds and battle in a multiplayer game against other players with similar or different tanks. The player is placed in a random position at the beginning of each game and communication with other players is possible through voice chats, which makes the experience way more realistic and fun.

While some modes are simply a deathmatch (last man standing style), others require strategy and tactics to achieve and objective, and very often team play and coordination is involved.

Top Strategy Games

All of the strategy games available from download are very generously rated by Rocky Bytes. The five starred ones are Age of Empires III Warchiefs, Warcraft III the Frozen Throne, Age of Empires III and Starcraft.

According to the users (using as criteria the number of downloads), the top 3 best strategy games are Plants vs. Zombies, League of Legends and Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun.