Being able to discover new areas is a particular joy, invoking Age of Empires style memories. Researching new technologies is just as important here as dominating through sheer force. That means plenty of multi-tasking and figuring out which objective to prioritize and when. You need to concentrate on army building and conquest, as well as resource gathering to stand a chance of surviving. In either case, planning many moves ahead is vital to your chances of success. There's the turn-based open-world campaign mode, as well as a real-time strategy option. Combat is available in two different ways too. Each forms part of the narrative-driven campaign mode so there's a compelling story to follow along in conjunction with the action.

There are four factions to choose from including Lizardmen, High Elves, Dark Elves, and Skaven. Kind of like a more bloodthirsty version of Lord of the Rings, Total War: Warhammer II has you pitting different factions against each other in an epic war. The Warhammer fantasy universe is a rich and diverse world to use in the context of strategy gaming, and Total War: Warhammer II truly embraces it. With seemingly endless choices available to you, this is something that will last hundreds of hours. That means that Stellaris is always thrilling stuff. The game's broken up mostly into three key areas - the early game of exploring and colonization, followed by governing, and finally, the ability to trigger galaxy-wide implications based on your actions. There's a certain amount of flexibility here with each route offering a different form of challenge. You can choose to manage an empire, engage in a plethora of warfare, or learn to pursue the diplomatic route and forge partnerships with other civilizations. Arguably, that's the most fascinating part of any science fiction journey and it leads to plenty of potential from Stellaris. Set in space, players take control of a species during the early stages of that race's quest to explore space. Stellaris is one of the more accessible strategy games out there while still easily challenging its players along the way. As the name suggests, they tend to focus on the loftier ambitions of the genre - being convoluted and involving a lot of careful thinking and planning. Many strategy games aren't considered the most accessible strategy games out there.

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