This is a very personal article I’ve wanted to write for a long time, but time constraints have kept me from doing so. In this one, I’ll be going over a personal chronology of the best strategy games I have played, year by year, and why I think that. It’s not going to be a “professional” sounding article, but more of a personal rant. Some entries will be longer, some might have a couple of words. Some might go on for quite a while. I won’t be describing the games here; if you want to read more about that, there’s plenty of that on the website. Here’s my heart when it comes to strategy games.
1999 – Age of Empires II: Age of Kings
The first strategy game of any sort I have ever played was Age of Empires II: Age of Kings. Literally my first PC game, ever. How lucky was I that I managed to play the very best historical RTS in history as a first-timer? This is the game that has gone on to serve as the gold standard to which all other titles are measured, even in 2026, almost three decades later. Yes, the image is that of Definitive Edition, because that’s also the best way to experience this legendary video game.
2000 – Red Alert 2
My second game was Red Alert 2. So, I started gaming with Age of Empires 2, the best RTS game of all time, as my first, and my second game was arguably the second best. It was like I was destined to inevitably have a website talking about strategy games, right? If Age of Kings did its job introducing me to historical strategy, then Red Alert 2 was the game that allowed me to see how crazy and silly and fun well-designed factions and storylines can be. There’s only one other strategy game whose campaign I enjoyed the most, and that was Age of Mythology.
2001 – Empire Earth
In between Red Alert 2 and Empire Earth, I started to branch out and play other games, mostly just random things my father and mother bought me. A couple of shooters, a couple of adventure games, and I do distinctly remember a Harry Potter title as well in 2001. Well, the first year of the new millennium was dominated by Empire Earth, the game that, to 10-year-old me at the time, felt like a natural evolution of Age of Empires 2, which was still my go-to game of choice after finishing Red Alert 2. Empire Earth was new, 3D, and had way more things, especially way more ages, even if they mostly played similarly to one another, but that didn’t matter. Oh man, simpler times.
2002 – Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
Now we’re entering 2 years of my existence when both games I played were introduced to me by my cousin, who is also a massive RTS fan. Oh yes, don’t be surprised that most of my early titles are RTS; that’s what I could play back then. I didn’t know how to read English, so dragging things around and seeing stuff explode was a lot more fun and easy to understand than having to read tutorials for complex wargames and turn-based titles, most of which I didn’t even know existed in the first place. The game of 2002 was Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. I never owned Warcraft III. Still don’t, but after I’m done with this article, I might decide to pick it up, now that the Reforged edition is good and there’s a new massive expansion.
Despite that, I have played it at my cousin’s house, and we have together completed its main campaign, and the whole experience felt very distinct from other titles like Empire Earth and Age of Empires 2 because of all of its RPG elements and hero units. Damnit, now I have convinced myself to pick up Reforged. Alright, I’ll do it.
2003 – Command & Conquer: Generals
The second game I have played with said cousin was Command & Conquer: Generals. Now, this might sound weird, but at the time there weren’t a lot of video games set in modern-day settings. Most were just fantasy, or medieval, or historical. And those that were, by proxy, like Empire Earth, didn’t feel right. 2003 was the year when Iraq began, and the war was mostly televised, and I do remember my mates talking about how no game was doing that war. Now we see how silly that was, but at the time, Generals was the closest thing you had, because it featured the US and an over-the-top terrorist nation with the GLA, with car bombs, angry mobs, suicide bombers, and technicals. All of which we grew up used to seeing on TV.
2004 – Rome: Total War
By this time, I had grown used to seeing a ton of History Channel (back when it was really, really good), and I was equally craving games about Roman history because World War 2 was all the rage. One day I was picking up a game for my birthday, and I looked at the red cover of Rome: Total War at a hardware store, saw its back, recognized the “I came. I saw. I conquered” quote from the documentaries and the massive 3D battles, and decided that it was coming home with me. Little did I know that I was picking up a game that would be my main plaything for the next 2 years.
Rome: Total War became my new historical obsession, and I used to spend way too much time quite literally drawing battle formations in my school notebooks so that I could try them out later at night or during the weekend. I still have many memories of my best and worst campaigns, and some of my desperate battles and major victories. So great. This was the one that started the Total War love affair that still lasts to this day.
2005 – Civilization IV
Civilization IV was not my first Civilization game. Before it, I had played Civilization II and Civilization III. I quite enjoyed the former way more than the latter, but don’t ask me why. I just did, and probably because Civ II had a great World War 2 map that I played way too many times. It wouldn’t be until Civilization IV that I would actually fall in love with this top-selling series, and that’s mostly because my gameplay time with Civ IV consisted of a friend and me, during Fridays, for like a year, playing it until the early hours of the morning, me playing as Japan and him playing as England in hotseat, making alliances and capturing the world. Yeah, we turned Civ IV into a co-op experience vs. the AI, even before that was a feature in most games. Innovation.
2006 – Company of Heroes
What else is there to say about Company of Heroes? When it came out, the whole World War 2 cultural zeitgeist was on its way out. It had been almost a decade since Saving Private Ryan was released, and half a decade since Band of Brothers, and gamers were growing tired of playing the same thing time and time again. Fortunately, the best RTS was still to come, and Relic’s masterpiece revolutionized the way I looked at gaming. Again, this was a time before I even knew what wargaming was, so you have to imagine how realistic all of this felt to me. Even today, I love Company of Heroes, and I cannot wait to replay the whole thing with the Definitive Edition coming in 2027.
2007 – World In Conflict
In the last entry, I mentioned that the whole “every piece of media” had to be set in World War 2 was on its way out, and that modern conflict was becoming a thing. This was the year that saw the release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, after all. While World in Conflict didn’t have the right setting for me (Cold War was never really my jam), it was modern enough that it provided me with a different enough experience to become one of my favorite RTT games ever. It was the first time that I really gelled with the idea of not having a base and not being able to recruit new units mid-mission. The campaign is also one of my favorites, with both the US and European set missions being so great. A perfect crescendo of Cold War action, tactical nukes included.
2008 – Spore
Man, remember Spore? I cannot tell you how hyped the whole gaming community was for this game. The marketing for the game made it seem like it was going to be the game of games. The one to rule them all. A game so wide in scope that no other title could possibly match it. Well, what we ended up getting was slightly less than that, but a memorable game nevertheless, and 2008 was the year that Men of War came out, so it is highly praised. I loved how ballsy the game was, with the idea being that you could start a space-faring civilization with a single-cell organism, and then grow from there, and that each and every phase would be unique and play differently. Say what you will about Spore, hate it or love it, but no other game had such a banger creature editor like this one.
2009 – Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II
At this time in my life, I was already a teen, and since I wasn’t terminally online like most teenagers are nowadays, and watching YouTube wasn’t even a thing, I had no idea what Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II was all about. I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as a Warhammer 40,000 universe. To me, that was something created for the game, and it worked well enough. I was looking for something similar to Company of Heroes, and Dawn of War II, being a direct descendant of that lineage, worked for me. It was also my first, but unintended, introduction to the Warhammer franchise. Yes, I haven’t played the first Dawn of War, despite looking at its physical copy several times during my yearly game-buying session with my dad.
