Best strategy games?

[depricated]

chess

How did we miss this one

[DevilDan]

I almost wrote in chess once myself, but it sounded terribly snotty to my own ears.

[Angular]

Hearts of Iron II. Pause-when-you-like strategy where you take control of a country in 1936 and play until 1963. Global warfare with resource management and a basic economy system. Engaging stuff, takes a while to learn but worth it.

I concur. Grand-strategy indeed.

[Telva]

Go

[Firkraag]

My favorite strategy games:

Dark Reign: The Future of War
Heroes of Might & Magic III (& expansions)
Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings
Battle for Middle-Earth (1 & 2)
Rome: Total War
Medieval 2: Total War

Dark Reign and HoMM3 in particular get extra points for being awesome even now, so many years after their release. HOMM3 will never show its age.

And here is a bonus: A link to my old Battle for Middle-Earth 2: Rise of the Witch-King modification. Really good stuff, if you ever played that game.

[depricated]

Master of Magic, anyone?

[kefkakrazy]

Master of Magic, anyone?

Love that one dearly; I fondly wish for an updated one. If I was a genius indie game developer, the first thing I'd do is get together a couple friends and build a game that was basically a modern version of Master of Magic. But I'm not.

Also, I like Galactic Civilizations 2 and the Total War games. Big fan of the combat system for Total War, especially.

[Skystriker]

Gotta say Wesnoth is the gem I keep going back to for pure strategy. StarCraft etc. are all fabulous, but wesnoth has the deeper meta imo.

I also echo the sentiments for DotA, but that's mostly twitchy. Although there's HoN and LoL in that genre as well. They're all great fun.