Best Warhammer 40k strategy game

[Arryosha]

There are so many that it's hard to choose. I have heard good things about Gladius, Mechanicus, and Battlesector, but opinions also vary widely between them. I realize they're quite different games, of course.

 

[Space Satan]

What kind of strategy game? Turn based? real-time? wargame? Specify, I bet there are majong, porn and card strategy warhammer 40k games

 

[janior]

dawn of war, turn based ones are mostly mediocre

 

[Galdred]

There are so many that it's hard to choose. I have heard good things about Gladius, Mechanicus, and Battlesector, but opinions also vary widely between them. I realize they're quite different games, of course.

I played all the recent ones, and I prefered Chaos Gate by far. It has some UI issues, but it was much more challenging than Mechanicus and Battlesector.
Gladius has good combat, but uninteresting eco.

Among the older ones, you cannot go wrong with Dawn of War, OG Chaos Gate, Rites of War, or Final Liberation.

 

[Elttharion]

This with the Ultimate Apocalypse mod Imho.

 

[Desman]

Gladius is probably my favourite (its like a Civ game heavily focused on combat).

I feel people rate Mechanicus very high just because it looks good and has a great soundtrack. At the end of the day its a tactical game where you keep fighting boring necrons in tiny repetitive levels.
Style over substance.

 

[Jaedar]

Style over substance.

This is a valid complaint to bring against a video game. But when someone specifically asks for the best 40K videogame, they are clearly willing to sacrifice some substance for the right style, otherwise they'd just ask for the best videogame period.

And Mechanicus oozes with style if you like admech stuff. Same as how chaos gate is mostly inferior to X-com and others in substance, but it REALLY nails the style of warrior monk space marines. Rites of War is also very cool if you like eldar.

Dawn of war is cool in general, in terms of single player I'd say Dark Crusade is the best one and soulstorm the worst, but for mp and mods soulstorm is where it is at.

 

[janior]

I enjoyed sanctus reach quite a bit, don’t see anyone mention it ever when discussing 40k video games. Great to slay some orcs as space wolves and ig

 

[Galdred]

I enjoyed sanctus reach quite a bit, don’t see anyone mention it ever when discussing 40k video games. Great to slay some orcs as space wolves and ig

It sure beats the other Slitherine tactical games by a landslide for me (Battle sector and Armageddon), but I really disliked the way it implemented its campaign.
The one in Final Liberation gave you more agency (you had a few ork counterattacks, and you didn't have this weird morphing unit pool).
However, the AI is not as hopeless as it was in Final Liberation. It is definitely better in skirmish or multiplayer.

 

[janior]

I think campaign would be far better if they didn’t let the player upgrade units, they get really overpowered with those special abilities

 

[ArchAngel]

This with the Ultimate Apocalypse mod Imho.

I played this one recently and pathfinding was making me rage enough to quit. I have not played DoW1 for many years and I forgot how terrible pathfinding was.

 

[Galdred]

I think campaign would be far better if they didn’t let the player upgrade units, they get really overpowered with those special abilities

I am not too surprised, as I took part in the beta testing, and they were added very late(or maybe even after beta, I don't remember).

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

dawn of war 1.0, turn based ones are mostly mediocre

ftfy.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

As an epic scale tabletop player back in the '90s, I can say that Final Liberation is the closest 40k vidya game to the tabletop experience. The game is older than dirt though.

I really enjoyed Battlefleet Gothic 2 despite not liking the first game. BFG 2 drew a lot of hate for the grindy campaign, but the QoL was better than than BFG 1. You can actually pause and issue orders in Battlefleet Gothic 2, which is essential in large fleets. Skalgrim mod is worth checking out.

 

[Storyfag]

The original DoW for me.

 

[luj1]

Dawn of War 1 with Winter Assault and Dark Crusade. Soulstorm was crap imo.

 

[Wassersäufer]

For Multiplayer/Skirmish its DoW with either Unification Mod (close to vanilla, you can choose most mod options yourself) or Ultimate Apocalypse if you want to go full retard.
For Singleplayer I will farm some heretic ratings and say DoW 2. No other 40k game came so close to the actual feeling of moving small squads of elite troops, where every equipment choice matters and actually changes gameplay and your enemies are many and deadly. MP is basically a MOBA, so forget about that.

 

[Vic]

having fun with DoW right now, also tried Battlesector which looks like an interesting turn based game

 

[Harthwain]

Dawn of war is cool in general, in terms of single player I'd say Dark Crusade is the best one and soulstorm the worst, but for mp and mods soulstorm is where it is at.

I would opt for Dawn of War 2: Retribution with Elite Mod instead.

 

[Jaedar]

For Singleplayer I will farm some heretic ratings and say DoW 2.

I think chaos rising campaign is pretty cool, and vanilla dow2 is alright as well. The main things holding them back is they are super easy unless you play on the hardest difficulty, but if you do that, all the bosses turn into insane hp sponges that will take half an hour to whittle down.

It's hard to call it a strategy game when you control like 4 dudes though.

Dawn of war is cool in general, in terms of single player I'd say Dark Crusade is the best one and soulstorm the worst, but for mp and mods soulstorm is where it is at.

I would opt for Dawn of War 2: Retribution with Elite Mod instead.

I tried elite mod many years ago, I remember it as being pretty bad, fixing none of DoW2s issues, just shuffling balance problems around. Potentially it has improved since then.

You can actually pause and issue orders in Battlefleet Gothic 2, which is essential in large fleets.

Iirc you could slow the game down to like 1/10th speed in BFG1, which is basically the same as pausing. I liked BFG1 campaign, although it got repetitive, but I found BFG2s to be worse.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

For real time I would go with DoW1, though DoW2 is also very good - its simply a different type of game. For really good 40K turn based stuff you have to go deep into history - I would say Final Liberation for large scale combat and Chaos Gate (the original one) for small unit tactics. Lots of people swear by Rites of War - its OK. If you want something new, then Mechanicus and Chaos Gate (the current one) are OK. Special mention should go to Gladius (4x) and Sanctus Reach.

 

[Harthwain]

fixing none of DoW2s issues

What do you mean by that? I thought DoW2 alone was really cool. Probably the closest to real-time representation of tabletop experience out of all RTS games.

 

[Jaedar]

fixing none of DoW2s issues

What do you mean by that? I thought DoW2 alone was really cool. Probably the closest to real-time representation of tabletop experience out of all RTS games.

It's been a while since I played, but iirc there's two main issues with DoW2 MP: It has a tendency to turn into popamole, where you just run around and steal points from the opponent and barely fighting (and they do the same). The second issue is that there's a lot of abilities that will instagib your squad if they hit, but do absolutely nothing if they miss, so if you look away from a fight for like 3 seconds and fail to dodge that can lead to an effective game over.

 

[Harthwain]

It has a tendency to turn into popamole, where you just run around and steal points from the opponent and barely fighting (and they do the same).

I didn't feel this one at all, because you tend to fight over points. It takes some time to steal points, especially the ones that are further away from you and if you're caught you will likely have to run without accomplishing much.

The second issue is that there's a lot of abilities that will instagib your squad if they hit, but do absolutely nothing if they miss, so if you look away from a fight for like 3 seconds and fail to dodge that can lead to an effective game over.

Ah, yes. This is inherent flaw of the game being in real-time, sadly. Nothing can be done about it. A good grenade on reatreat can kill off an entire squad (or most of it). It doesn't always mean a game over, but I get what you mean.

 

[Jaedar]

I didn't feel this one at all, because you tend to fight over points. It takes some time to steal points, especially the ones that are further away from you and if you're caught you will likely have to run without accomplishing much.

Except hitting the retreat button is very fast, so you're not losing much. Plus you only have to leg it like that if they send a stronger unit, and keeping a stronger unit busy and away is a good use of a weak unit. And when it comes to req points they slowly build over time (starting at like +5 and going to +30), but they always decapture in 10 seconds.

Ah, yes. This is inherent flaw of the game being in real-time, sadly. Nothing can be done about it.

And yet, I can think of no other RTS which has a problem of similar magnitude.