Bookend Game Awards: Best Strategy Game

Now, I love me some strategy games, though I admit I’ve not played as many new ones as I should have this year, mea culpa. Still, the Total war series is like crack to me, so I’ve made an effort to put some other contenders in there so it at least looks like a contest...

• Hegemony: Gold – Hegemony is a strategy game that offers a very unique approach to moulding the empire management and troop movements of other games. It’s in real time, and has lots of logistical management of supply line. But both the building and combat border on the simplistic side. Regardless, it’s a game I expect myself to keep coming back to, before feeling dirty about how long I spent playing it by the time campaign ends.
• Medieval Total War 2 – This feels a little unfair, as it’s more of a vote for Mods than the game itself, though over a decade later Medieval 2 is a hard game for it’s predecessors to beat, and Kingdoms must be one of the best expansions for a game ever. If only CA didn’t come complete DLC whores starting with Empire...
• Patrician 3 – I don’t know why, but I love this Hanseatic League Simulator. Something about transporting goods around the Baltic and increasing my hold over the towns just gets that dopamine flowing. Another game I come back to more often than sense would dictate.
• Steamworld heist – Take captain Piper and her steamboats across space, fighting all sorts of foes in a strange steampunk western version of space. Not the deepest strategy game in the world, but the turn based squad management with manual aiming is a fun time.
• Warhammer: Total War – Better than Rome 2 and pretty fun in general, but made a load of choices I question which make it far too shallow a strategy game, not to mention all the DLC makes the entire game cost £90 full price, which is about  three times what it’s worth in my opinion.

And the Winner is:

                Medieval Total War 2

                ... to be Precise...

               Mods for Medieval Total War 2

               And if I’m forced to Pick one...

               Europa Barborum 2

As I said above, the base game is still fantastic, but the ability to mod the game gives it infinite replay-ability, even if modders have to wrestle quite hard with the limitations of the game engine by this point. Europa Barborum 2 is a mod I cannot recommend highly enough it you’re interested in ancient history, It’s like playing a history book, but in a good way, if that doesn’t already sound good to you. See if you can’t seat Phyrros of Epirus on the Throne of Makedonia, take Hannibal to beat Scipio Africanus, Try and hold the Arche Selukia together as the empire crumbles or take Rome itself and play out history as it happened. Sometimes the mod is a little overly prescriptive for my tastes in what you can and can’t do as a faction when it comes to expansion, but the work they put into governments and traits is truly exemplary, and they’re improving the mod all the time!

Quisque est Barbarus Alio!

Next up is Best Family Game!