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Debate rages as to what the first originating RTS actually was, the results largely dependent on the age and nationality of the participants, and the definition of RTS (which can overlap with real-time tactics or Turn-Based Strategy). The ZX Spectrum had early claimaints many many moons ago (1984 saw Stonkers and 1987 — Nether Earth); the MSX saw Herzog in the late 80s — but only in Japan; and 1989 saw its sequel Herzog Zwei on the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) which introduced many of the genre conventions. Herzog Zwei was the Trope Maker that spawned the genre, being the common ancestor of every modern RTS, as well as the Trope Namer ("RTS" was coined in this 1989 interview). It inspired 1992's Dune II by Westwood Studios (later of Command & Conquer fame), which established the form and the tropes of the RTS which are known to the masses today, making it the Trope Codifier.
Games in the genre have one or more factions where the players assume the role of a "god" or commander, controlling units and buildings, building a town, creating an army and eventually crushing their enemies into dust using said army. There are four basic elements of the genre: units, buildings, resources and technologies:
- Units are individual actors that can be given orders, from resource collection to engaging another enemy unit, depending on their class.
- Buildings are static, faction-owned structures. Most of them have two roles: train units and research technologies. Other buildings influence the faction's resources, either increasing the population limit or serving as a storage point for collected resources. Depending on the game, what order you construct these buildings in, and how quickly you do so, is an important factor in deciding the outcome of the match.
- Technologies are used to give the faction an edge against the enemy factions. Techs are improvements for economy-oriented units/buildings or military-oriented ones, or even the faction as a whole.
- Resources are used to achieve all of the above goals, and because of its integral importance to the genre, all armies fight for their control as much (if not more) as they fight each other.
Almost all games of this type are based on ground combat on a 2D map, with various terrain and obstacles adding interest to the battlefield. Airborne and seaborne units are sometimes incorporated, but they are seldom realistic in terms of speed and performancenote . As for the GUI itself, it always displays the available resources, enemy factions, the minimap with the revealed terrain and the units/buildings the player can see, and if an unit or building is selected, it also displays the commands/orders it can perform. Several games also have different minimap options allowing players to see resources, enemy units, allied/own units, Wild Card units, and many/all of the above at the same time.
Enhancing one's forces with better equipment and training makes perfect sense, but while a few titles do use plausible terminology for requisitioning new gear, training specialists, retooling factories and deploying the finished products to active forces, most use the peculiar choice of "research" for the process. This gives players the surreal image of scientists doing research on the front lines, making miraculous breakthroughs almost immediately, and then promptly forgetting whatever it was, every single level.
As its name implies, in comparison to its big brother Turn-Based Strategy, the Real Time Strategy genre has players taking action whenever they wish (within the constraints of how often any particular action can be taken). Playtime will continue for other players and entities in the game even if one player sits back and does nothing, rather than breaking up the sequence of play into discrete turns for each player, which brings multiplayer matches down from hours or days to minutes. While this leaves less time for strategizing and encourages fast-paced playstyles, it makes commanders less omniscient, allowing ambushes and distractions to be viable strategies, especially when the so-called "Fog of War" is involved. As for unit pathfinding, unlike other genres such as the First-Person Shooternote , in the RTS genrenote the tendency of unit AI to unnecessarily bumble around the map in response to choke points and clump together when attacking becomes very obvious; therefore pathfinding is given a high amount of importance, as a game with a weak AI becomes frustrating to play in the "my units are dumb" sense.
The genre also possesses a number of aesthetic conceits, so typical to its presentation that they often confuse even the games' creatorsnote :
- Units are rarely depicted to scale, not even with each other. Buildings are shown about as high as mountains, vehicles tower over the structures that constructed them, and infantry are nearly as large as the vehicle that can carry ten of them. Furthermore, a single unit onscreen rarely represents what it appears as. Rather, the single soldier is supposed to represent anything from a squad to an entire company, a hero unit usually includes their personal honor guard (more common in Civilization-esque games than other conventional RTS'), and even a solitary building is probably symbolic of an entire complex.
- In order to make things manageable in realtime, little details like ammunition, supply, noncombat casualties, fatigue, communication, and maintenance are conveniently swept under the rug, except when used as a mission objective.
- Despite the realtime moniker, a certain amount of chronological compression usually applies, with week or month long battles taking minutes in-game. Still, developers often fail to keep time to scale with itself, allowing buildings to be constructed faster than they were destroyed, and new upgrades to instantly propagate to soldiers in the heat of combat. Real-Time with Pause may be an option.
- Not every technology can be researched from the get-go. Some of them require something else to be researched priorhand.
- The factions' populations are numbered at all times. While killing units do make space in order to train more units, the preferrable way to have more units available in the map is by constructing more population expanding buildings until the maximum allowed by the game in question.
Refinements of the genre formula have appeared over the years, and in more modern times these include the addition of high ground bonuses for range and vision, bonus damage for flanking enemy troops, terrain bonuses such as cover and concealment, the organization of small units like infantry and fighter craft into squads or wings that act as one unit, aircraft units that act like aircraft (take off, perform mission, land again), elements from the Real Time Tactics genre where there's no base building or unit construction and scale is strictly squad-level (units are acquired at the start of each level), units with limited supplies who can expend all their supplies if left in the lurch, persistent troops that are retained throughout a campaign (introducing RPG Elements), Mobile Factories blurring the distinction between buildings and units, and eschewing gathering resources and destroying the enemy's base in favor of taking and holding positions on the map in order to achieve victory.
Economic Units
Units whose purpose is the upkeeping of the faction's resources and the construction and maintenance of the civilization.- The Worker Unit (a.k.a. Peon): A basic, cheap unit that can build any structure, gather resources, and/or repair structures (and often vehicles). It almost always has either a pathetic melee attack, often its repurposed Magic Tool, or has no combat ability at all. Units of these type can further be divided into:
- The Builder: An unit which handles the construction of buildings.
- The Harvester: An unit entirely dedicated to gathering resources. This is also used if one of those jobs is performed by a building instead, with the Peon handling the other. Particular subsets of the subclass are the Hunter (hunts wild animals), the Farmer (has one or many of the following roles: domesticate animals for food, work in specialized resource buildings and gather food from nearby bushes), the Miner (can harvest mineral resources from mines) and the Lumberjack (in games where wood is a resource, these guys do the lumberjacking).
- The Fixer: An unit dedicated to the reparation of damaged buildings. Usually overlap with the Mechanic if they also have the ability to repair damaged vehicles and robotic units.
Military Units
Units whose purpose is to dish out damage in the battlefield.- The Militia: This is the Peon's supermode (if you can even call it that), with better attack power than a Peon but less than that of a normal basic ground unit. Useful en masse in resisting a rush. Alternatively, it's a separate unit that can be called from the Command/Construction Center rather than the Barracks.
- The Basic Melee Unit: In medieval fantasy games this is the first and most basic combat unit available, and most often has a sword and light armor. In more futuristic scenarios, melee units are much rarer.
- The Basic Ranged Unit: The first and most basic combat unit available in most modern, futuristic, and historical games set in the age of the gun, the second in medieval fantasy. Has a rifle or a bow or other basic ranged weapon, and pathetic armor.
- The Scout: A fast unit with limited combat capabilities and a wide sight range. Used to reduce the Fog of War, though it may also double up as a stealth/cloak detector, light combat unit, or target designator for artillery/superweapons/etc. Can be a light tank, jeep, or motorcycle in modern and future games, or cavalry in fantasy settings.
- The Elite Unit: A souped-up basic unit with a higher price tag, heavier armor, greater attack power, and/or higher speed (or the opposite) for units of its type. These have a danger of getting spammed late in the game.
Anti-Military Units
Military units whose entire purpose is to counter a specific unit or set of units (usually vehicles/buildings or air units), as opposed to the more generalized basic units.- The Anti-Infantry Unit: Usually used in modern/futuristic games. About the same stats as basic units, but usually armed with a flamethrower, rocket launcher or other specialized weapon. Their usefulness tends to wane after the early or middle game, usually right after the enemy's anti-infantry vehicles come into play.
- The Anti-Cavalry Unit: Units intended to counter enemy mounted troops. The most common form is some variant of infantry provided with long pikes or halberds with which to break the impetus of a cavalry charge.
- The Anti-Vehicle Unit: Like the infantry equivalent, only bigger, tougher, and can usually dish out more damage. These usually come in Anti-Land Vehicles or Anti-Air, occasionally both.
- The Anti-Structure Unit: The building equivalent to the Anti-Infantry and Anti-Vehicular units. Comes in two variants:
- The Siege Unit: A heavy, armored monster for taking down buildings and other siege units. Either vulnerable to masses of lighter enemy troops, specialized counters, or equivalent enemy siege units. Usually a tank or mech in modern and future settings, heavy cavalry or a massive Beast of Battle in Fantasy. Siege units are often slow-moving or expensive, but can form a solid core to your battle line or the big punch to break the enemy's.
- The Artillery Unit: Long-range equivalent to the siege unit, the artillery unit can't hit anything too close to it, has splash damage, and is usually slow (if not static) and under-armored. Its disadvantages are often balanced out by its massive attack power and long range.
Vehicular Units
Another subset of the military units, they are expensive but fast units that can travel most territories where the regular foot units cannot tread. May overlap with Support Units if they can also transport or heal other troops.- The Naval Unit: Typically works like floating artillery, but is well-armored and has access to seas or other regions that standard ground units cannot go. Also available in Troop Transport, Submarine, Anti-Submarine, Anti-Air, and sometimes Aircraft Carrier. In space settings where spaceships take the place of ground units, this archetype does not apply.
- The Air Unit: The air unit is often faster than ground units and mildly or not affected by terrain. In some cases it fights like an attack helicopter, hovering in one place to attack, even when it isn't one. In other cases, it has to return to a special building after every attack to rearm and/or repair. Good against anything that can't hit it back. Although, realistically, it shouldn't apply to spaceship-based games, this unit archetype is present anyway in the form of squadrons of small and maneuverable Space Fighters and similar strike craft.
- The Air Scout: If a game uses multiple air units, this is usually the first one you get. Lightly-armed if at all, Air Scouts are very fast (usually the fastest unit in the game), have a wide sight radius, and may have the ability to see Stealth units.
Support Units
Non-military units whose role in the battlefield is to support the military units.- The Medic: An unit that can heal other units, usually organic race units. They're a priority to take down in a mixed firefight.
- The Unit Stealer: An unit with the ability to steal other units from the enemy factions. Usually located in games where one race is split up in factions such as the Age of Empires series. Seldom seen in race-based games because being able to have more than one race Tech Tree, while difficult to pull offnote , usually leads to game-breaking results.
- The Mechanic: Another healer unit, but this time oriented to vehicles and robotic units. Can overlap with the Fixer if they can also fix buildings.
- The Transport: Picks up other units and carries them around, and is almost always an air or sea unit, although modern/futuristic games will often have land-bound APCs as well. Useful for transporting ground units over long distances, around defenses, or across inaccessible regions. Is often moderately fast and has little or no combat ability in itself, though passengers might be able to use their own weapons.
Specialized units
Units that have a role that fall outside of the other roles. Usually units with a Difficult, but Awesome requirement.- The Spellcaster: An unit with little armor and/or normal attack power, but can use player-commanded abilities that inflict heavy damage over an area, or bestow status effects on friendly and enemy units. Its abilities often have areas-of-effect and time limits, cost mana/energy points of some kind, and are micromanagement-heavy. Not limited to fantasy settings, despite the name.
- The Mercenary: An unit that typically becomes available immediately and is purchased using the "gold" resource. May only be available for a limited time, or its cost be too high.
- The Stealth Unit: As much a modifier as a unit type of it's own, the Stealth Unit is nominally like one of the above units, but also has the ability to hide itself from enemy detection. This can be a limited-time ability, or it may be always on. If the game doesn't make the unit de-cloak to attack, it may require specialized units or defenses to reveal them to the opposing player.
- The Hero Unit: A really powerful unit that more or less represents the player on the battlefield or a major character in the game's story. It usually has spells or abilities that can affect big chunks of the battlefield at once, and at the same time hits and takes damage like a tank. If nothing else has RPG Elements, it often will, with XP gain from kills and experience levels, and more abilities becoming available at higher levels. May be the Keystone of a Keystone Army.
- The Super/Epic Unit: A large superpowered unit almost capable of taking out an army or base all by itself. These are usually expensive as hell to build (and usually slow, too) and factions can only field a certain amount of them at a time, so if you allow your opponent to build several of these, you probably deserve what's about to happen. Usually Awesome, but Impractical, bringing one of these into a fight often gets a satisfying Oh, Crap! from your opponent. Losing one of these returns the favor.
Economic buildings
These buildings' primary purpose is to manage the resources of the faction. They have limited or non-existant combat abilities:- The Command/Construction Center: Either constructs buildings itself (especially if in the Command & Conquer series) or builds Peon units. Despite it's humbleness, this is usually the true Keystone of your force: if you lose it defeat may not be automatic, but unless you can replace it quickly, it may be inevitable.
- The Resource Storage Building: A building that stores or generates resources, and/or creates/accepts Peons, Workers, or Harvesters. Versions that don't create worker units are usually placed close to the respective resource it gathers.
- The Resource Controller: A Resource Building that is specifically built on top of (or nearby) a gatherable resource itself, allowing only your peon/harvester units to use it.
- The Population Extending Building: A building that incrementally increases the Arbitrary Headcount Limit for units - often handwaved as providing housing or food for them. May also be necessary (as a source of electricity/mana/phlebotinum) for other buildings to function. Sometimes upgradeable to a Defense Turret or Transport.
Military Unit Buildings
These buildings' purpose is to train the military units that will compose the army that the player will use to crush the enemy factions. Some of them can also overlap with Research building, especially if the techs they contain are related to the units they train:- The Barracks: Builds the basic infantry units and sometimes handles unit-specific upgrades.
- The Stable/Vehicle Factory: Builds scout, siege, and artillery units.
- The Naval Building: Builds and repairs naval units.
- The Aircraft Factory: Builds, upgrades, and potentially rearms air units. Often only supports a limited number of aircraft at a time, usually between one and four.
- The Science Factory: Trains support units such as healers and transport units.
- The Defense Turrets: A small building with a mounted weapon. Usually varies between anti-infanty, anti-armor, and anti-air.
- The Superweapon: A building that generates an unlimited-range or near-unlimited-range attack that can blow large holes in an army or base, if not wipe it off the map completely. Typically, only one can be built at a time. If not, there's a chance the game can become a Turtle-fest as players hide behind their defenses, build a dozen or so Superweapons, and try to wipe out the enemy base in a cataclysmic orgy of Nuclear fire, Kill Sat Beam Spam, Negative Space Wedgies, or whatever is available to that side.
- The Anti-Superweapon: A defensive building specifically designed to defeat the Superweapon and prevent it from being used against a specific area. Usually cheaper and faster to build than the Superweapon. Intended to discourage the above behaviour, forcing conventional conflict and encouraging faster battle resolution. Often still vulnerable to a Spam Attack.
Research Buildings
These buildings are used to research technologies in order to give the faction an edge against the enemy factions.- The Tech Building: A building whose main purpose is to advance the Tech Tree and upgrade units. Usually has to be built before you can build other Research Buildings or advanced unit buildings.
- The Specialized Tech Building: A research building whose techs are monofocused: you have economic tech buildings (The University), military tech buildings (The Arsenal) and...
- The Advanced Tech Building: Like the first one, but comes later in the game, or is expanded from the original. Needed for accessing even more advanced stuff like Elite Units or Superweapons.
Neutral Buildings
These buildings aren't faction-oriented, but anyone can claim them and train unique units and research unique techs.- The Saloon: A Bad Guy Bar. Hosts mercenary units that can be bought with a specific, valuable resource, usually gold. Cannot be damaged.
- The Village: A subclass of the above. A settlement or tribe located in the middle of the map. Contains a building place for a specific building to be built so an alliance can be made with these natives. Unlike the Saloon, the faction building in this settlement can be destroyed.
- The Shop: Like the Saloon, this building can't be damaged, and its contents can be bought with a specific resource. What differences the Shop from the Saloon is that instead of units, it sells technologies.
- The Outpost: A watchtower which clears the FoV for the unit that controls it. Some can even function as defense points for the team thet controls it.
- The Discovery Site: Often found in specific gametypes of specific games, these are the positions over which players fight. Controlling the highest amount of these for a certain period of time is the victory condition for these Domination-style gametypes.
- Population: Most RTS games have an Arbitrary Head Count Limit, which is represented by this resource. Can be extended with Population Extender Buildings (Pylons).
- Tree: In games where wood is a collectible resource, wood is usually collected from trees.
- Mine: In games with mineral collectible resources, gatherer units are sent to these mines. They usually are displayed with a stack of the aforementioned resource, if not with a mine entrance.
- Gas: In games where gas can be collected, geyser holes act as the gas collection spot.
- Animals: In games where food can be collected from hunting animals, across the map there will be plenty of creatures from where to harvest food. Animals can be found either in the wild (with all parties fighting for them), or can be domesticated. In games with support for water maps, fish colonies can also be harvested for food.
- Other food sources: Food can also be collected from other sources such as forage bushes.
- Resource box: Usually obtained via research, resource boxes are faction-specific and can contain any type of resources in a finite amount. Boxes can also be found in the wild and any faction can acquire them.
- Mana: Spellcasting units, hero units, and units that use special abilities have their own resource to manage, in the form of a separate energy bar. Abilities draw power from this bar, which is usually rechargeable.
For common tropes, see Strategy Game Tropes. Compare Strategy RPG. See also Real-Time with Pause for a slightly different approach (may also have variable time scale). The Multiplayer Online Battle Arena genre came out of Real-Time Strategy genre and utilizes a similar camera but with much smaller scope that limits you to one character (and occasionally other units depending on the game's option for it but largely most players will be using one unit) supporting waves of weaker units trying to bring down the enemy's base. See its own page for more information.
Games in this genre:
- 0 A.D.
- 8Realms
- 8-Bit Armies
- 9th Company
- 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
- Achron (This one has Time Travel!)
- Act of War
- Aegis of Earth: Protonovus Assault
- After Protocol (Sci-Fi MMO)
- Airmech (Contains some action game elements)
- Airships: Conquer the Skies
- Afrika Korps vs. Desert Rats
- Age of Empires
- Age of Empires: Focused on conflicts from the paleolithic to the iron age.
- Age of Empires II: Focused on medieval conflicts and The Crusades.
- Age of Mythology: Based around Greek, Norse and Egyptian mythology.
- Age of Empires III: Focused on colonisation of the Americas.
- Age of Empires Online: Focusing again on the antiquity time period, aka the ancient era.
- Age of Empires IV: Focusing again on the middle ages.
- Age of War: IOS-optimised, with the battle occuring between two strongholds.
- Aliens: Dark Descent
- Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction
- Allegiance (2000)
- American Conquest
- Ancestors Legacy
- The Ancient Art of War
- Ancient Wars: Sparta
- Anno 1800
- Anomaly: Warzone Earth
- Anthill
- Armies of Exigo
- Ashes of the Singularity
- Atom Zombie Smasher
- Attack of the Mutant Penguins
- Avalon Heroes
- Aztec Wars
- Baldies
- Batman: Arkham Underworld
- Battalion Wars
- Battle Of The Sands
- The Battle for Middle-earth
- BattleForge
- Battlefleet Gothic: Armada
- Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2
- Battle Pirates
- Battle Realms
- Battleships Forever
- Battlezone — The reboots from 1998 and 2000, blended with First-Person Shooter.
- Black Command - a modern PMC game with a mix of real time strategy tactics as a simulator game.
- Blitzkrieg
- Boom Beach
- Brix
- Brütal Legend (an RTS with Hack and Slash elements)
- Call Of War
- Call to Arms
- Catacomb Snatch (an RTS/Shmup)
- Celestus (an online one)
- Centurion: Defender of Rome
- Cepheus Protocol
- Chronicles of the Second War
- Clash of Clans
- Close Combat
- Codename Panzers
- Colobot
- Command & Conquer
- Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
- Mental Omega (A Game Mod of the above)
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
- Red Alert 3: Corona (A Game Mod of the above)
- Command & Conquer: Generals
- Rise of the Reds (A Game Mod of the above)
- Command & Conquer (2013) (A canceled sequel)
- Commander
- Commandos (of the squad-based tactical flavour)
- Company of Heroes
- Conqueror's Blade
- Conquest: Frontier Wars
- Constructor
- Cossacks
- Cossacks: European Wars
- Cossacks: The Art of War
- Cossacks: Back to War
- Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars
- Cossacks II: Battle for Europe
- Cossacks 3
- Cossacks: European Wars
- Creeper World
- Crusader Kings
- Dark Colony
- Deception
- Desperados
- Dragon Force
- Dark Reign
- Darwinia
- Dawn of War
- Dawn of War III
- Deadnaut
- DEFCON
- Demigod
- DETOUR
- Diggles
- The Dio Field Chronicle
- Distant Worlds
- Divinity: Dragon Commander
- Dognapped
- Dominant Species
- Double Switch
- Dune II
- Dune: Spice Wars
- Dungeons
- Dungeon Keeper
- Dungeon Siege (employing a Role-Playing Strategy gameplay)
- Dwarfs!?
- Earth 2150
- Eldritch Lands: The Witch Queen's Eternal War
- Emperor: Battle for Dune
- Empire Earth
- Empire at War
- Empire of the Ants
- Empires of the Undergrowth
- End of Nations
- EndWar
- Europa Universalis
- Evolution: The Game of Intelligent Life
- Executive Assault
- The Fabulous Fear Machine
- Far Gate
- Fat Princess (hybrid with Action genre)
- Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings
- Five Nations
- Forged Battalion
- Freaking Meatbags (more of a Tower Defence, but still features worker units, factories, commander and attack drones)
- Full Spectrum Warrior
- Future Cop: L.A.P.D. (Precinct Assault mode)
- Galaxy Angel gameverse (hybrid with the Dating Sim genre)
- A Game of Thrones: Genesis (hybrid with Western RPG)
- Game of War: Fire Age
- Gangland
- Gender Wars
- Genewars
- General Chaos
- Genesis Rising
- Globulation
- Goblin Commander
- Godsworn
- Graviteam Tactics
- Grey Goo (2015)
- GrimGrimoire (a side-scrolling one!)
- Grom Terror In Tibet
- Ground Control
- Halo Wars
- Harpoon
- Hearts of Iron
- Bring the War Home
- Eternal Golden Dawn
- Equestria at War
- Extremis Ultimis
- The Fire Rises (Mod)
- The Gates of Versailles
- Hearts of Minecraft
- HOI 4 Beyond Earth
- Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg
- Modern Day Scenario II
- The New Order: Last Days of Europe
- Old World Blues
- Pax Britannica
- Red Flood
- Red World
- Spartakus: World in Revolution
- Thousand-Week Reich
- Twilight of the Anthropocene
- Von Der Asche
- Hegemony Series
- Heroes & Generals (For the Strategy Game part)
- Heroes of Mana
- The Heroic Legend Of Eagarlnia
- Herzog
- Herzog Zwei (Contains some action game elements)
- Hogs of War
- Homeworld
- Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising
- Imperator: Rome
- Imperivm
- Impossible Creatures
- Iron Harvest
- Iron Grip
- Iron Marines
- Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds
- Kessen
- Kingdom
- Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders
- Kingdoms Reborn
- Knights and Merchants
- Knights of Honor
- Kofi Quest: Alpha MOD
- Krush Kill n' Destroy
- Last Train Home
- League of Legends
- LEGO Battles
- Little King's Story
- Little War Game
- Lord Monarch
- The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring
- The Lords of Midnight (third game only).'
- LostMagic
- Lost Technology
- Machines: Wired For War
- Maelstrom (2007)
- Magna Mundi
- Majesty
- Marauder
- MechCommander
- Men of War
- Metal Fatigue
- Metal Marines
- Minecraft Legends
- Minion Masters
- Minion Quest: The Search for Bowser (not a standalone game, but a bonus mode in the remake of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga)
- Bowser Jr.'s Journey (like the above, it's a bonus mode in the remake of Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story)
- Mobile Suit Gundam U.C. Engage
- Myth series
- Natural Selection 2 (Hybrid with First Person Shooter)
- Naval War: Arctic Circle
- Nether Earth
- Netstorm
- Nexus: The Jupiter Incident
- Northgard
- Nuclear Dawn (hybrid with First-Person Shooter)
- Odama
- Ogre Battle
- Operation Bagration
- Original War
- Outlive
- Outpost
- Overlord is Pikmin in Mordor!
- Pandemic: Make your virus spread across the globe.
- ParaWorld
- Patapon
- PatchCon! Defend the Library!
- Pikmin: Combines RTS with heavy Puzzle Game elements
- Plague Inc.: Similar to 'Pandemic' above, make your disease spread worldwide.
- The Power Of The Spiral: Game Mod of the above.
- Planet Alcatraz: Lead a small team of space cadets to prevent the convicts from escaping from a Penal Colony.
- Planetary Annihilation: An RTS set IN SPACE!!
- Planet Blupi
- Populous: The precursor of the God Sim.
- Perimeter
- Puzzles & Survival: Combines RTS with Match-Three Game.
- Rakion: Chaos Force
- Rebel Inc.
- Rescue Raiders
- The Riftbreaker
- Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War
- Rise of Kingdoms: Lost Crusade
- Rise of Nations
- Rise of Legends, its sequel
- Rock Raiders
- Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Koei)
- rymdkapsel: Build and defend a space station out of abstract polygons and Tetris blocks.
- Sacrifice: A hybrid of third person RPG.
- Saga: Rage of Vikings
- Sanctuary: Shattered Sun
- Satellite Reign
- Scrap Metal Heroes
- Sea Salt
- The Settlers
- Sengoku
- Seven Kingdoms
- Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew
- Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
- Shattered Galaxy
- Sins of a Solar Empire
- Skyland (2021)
- SpellForce
- Spore: Only in the Civilization Stage.
- Submarine Titans
- Sun Age
- Stalin vs. Martians
- StarCraft
- Star Ruler
- Starship Troopers: Terran Command
- Star Trek: Armada
- Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds
- Star Wolves
- Steel Division: Normandy 44
- Stellaris
- Stonkers
- Stormgate
- Stormrise
- Strife MOBA
- Stronghold
- Stronghold Kingdoms: MMORTS based on village development in the Middle Ages.
- Super Robot Wars (Scramble Commander games)
- Survivalist: A mixture of this and Top Down Shooter, as well as Survival Horror.
- S.W.I.N.E.
- Sword of the Stars (Total War {see below} IN SPACE!)
- Syndicate
- Syrian Warfare
- Terminator Dark Fate - Defiance
- TerraGenesis
- There Came an Echo
- They Are Billions
- Tooth and Tail
- Total Annihilation
- Total Annihilation: Kingdoms
- Spring (freeware engine with multiple games)
- Supreme Commander (its Spiritual Successor)
- Supreme Commander 2
- Total War: An interesting hybrid, with a continent-scale strategic turn-based game that jumps to Pausable Realtime battles for resolving conflicts between opposing armies. The Other Wiki calls it Real-time Tactics
, distinct from Real-time Strategy.
- Shogun: Total War
- Medieval: Total War
- Rome: Total War
- The Fourth Age: Total War: A mod set in Middle-earth.
- Medieval II: Total War
- Silmarillion: Total War: A total conversion mod set in Middle-earth's First Age.
- Thera: A campaign and conversion mod.
- Third Age: Total War: A mod set in Middle-earth.
- Divide and Conquer: An extensive Third Age sub-mod.
- Empire: Total War
- Napoleon: Total War
- Total War: Shogun 2
- Total War: Rome II
- Total War: Attila
- Total War: Warhammer
- Total War: Warhammer II
- Thrones of Britannia: A Total War Saga
- Total War: Three Kingdoms
- Total War: Warhammer III
- Total War: Pharaoh
- Totem Tribe
- Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon
- Tzar: The Burden Of The Crown
- Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail
- Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts
- Ultimate General: Gettysburg
- Universe at War: Earth Assault
- Urban Assault
- Victoria: An Empire Under The Sun and various other Paradox Interactive games
- Warlocked
- Warcraft
- War for the Overworld
- War Front: Turning Point
- WarGames Defcon 1 — an In Name Only adaptation of the movie of its namesake
- War Mongrels
- War Wind
- Warhammer: Dark Omen
- Warhammer: Mark of Chaos
- Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin
- Warhammer Shadow Of The Horned Rat
- Wargame: European Escalation
- Warrior Kings
- Warlords Battlecry
- Warpaws
- Warzone 2100
- World in Conflict
- The X-Universe series. note
- Yggdra Unison
- Ys Strategy
- Z — Colour Coded Armies fight on distant worlds.
- Zero K