Dec 27, 2018  After testing 25+ games, these are the best strategy games for Mac today. Our Top 10 has something for everyone, including fast-paced RTS, complex turn-based games, and even a few good casual free Mac strategy games. Feb 01, 2020 The 100 Best Mac Games today. Civilization 5 was one of my favorite strategy games of all times and yet Civilization 6 managed to top it. This is the best Mac. Complex systems - The best city-building games are elegant on the surface but hide underlying complex systems. If you’re looking for a great city-building game that will keep you occupied for hundreds of hours, choose one with gameplay that’s easy to pick up, but takes time to master. Civilization VI does not support hard drive volumes formatted as Mac OS Extended (CaseSensitive) Civilization VI for the Mac App Store is currently a single player experience. You can contact Aspyr’s Support Team via support.aspyr.com. The game offers the combination of RTS, RPG, and combat elements and lets the player fight against other Civilizations and defeat them to loot their resources. With the best mechanics, addictive gameplay, brilliant visuals, and fantastic sounds, Civilization is the best game to play and enjoy. Every Civ game, ranked from worst to best. 4 – Civilization III. The oldest Civilization game that manages to feel timeless, thanks to a spit-and-polished pixel aesthetic, lovely animations. Civilization VI is a turn-based strategy game in which you attempt to build an empire to stand the test of time. Become Ruler of the World by establishing and leading a civilization from the Stone.

When it comes to strategy games on Mac, there are a lot of impressive choices. Some of these are available through Apple Arcade, while others are just a download away from the Mac App Store. Here are our current favorites.

Civilization V

When it comes to turn-based strategy games, you can't do better than Sid Meier's series of Civilization titles. In this fifth edition, you begin with 20 historical leaders, and your job is to slowly take over the world from the dawn of man into the space age. Along the way, you'll get to discover surprising new civilizations and wonders, excellent gameplay systems, and much more.

Civilization Game Mac Free

Currently, Civilization V offers 10 in-app purchases, including Brave New World and Gods and Kings. With these options, you get to decide just how far you want to go through the game.

How far will you go?

Civilization V

Diplomacy or War?

Sid Meier's Civilization V offers a brilliant story that's advanced further with a lengthy listing of in-app purchases big and small.

Source: Aspyr Media, Inc.

And here we go again! Similar to the previous installments, Civilization VI has one goal for players: to create and maintain a lasting civilization. In this most recent installment, you achieve victory through military domination, technological superiority, or cultural influence. It offers a nice mix of new and old civilizations. There's also renewed emphasis on the terrain and fresh artificial intelligence mechanics for computer-controlled opponents.

The game's first expansion pack, Rise and Fall, features entry into a prosperous Golden Age and terrifying Dark Age. There's also a Heroic Age. The second expansion pack, The Gathering Storm, features ecosystem difficulties that could impact the entire planet, including floods, volcanoes, and more.

The newest in the series

Civilization VI

Bigger than ever

This game is the newest in the long Civilization series and was first introduced to Mac in 2016.

Source: Dinosaur Polo Club

Being stuck in traffic is never fun unless you're playing Mini Motorways! The strategy simulation game gives you the power to keep existing roads clear while also expanding your digital city by adding new locations and road networks.

Featuring different color modes, including colorblind and night, Mini Motorways is for anyone with an imagination. Better still, like all Apple Arcade games, it comes without in-app purchases or any additional costs.

They will come

Mini Motorways

Create your city

As your city expands, make sure it remains easy to get from point A to point B. Otherwise, no one will be happy.

Source: Feral Interactive

Offering 3D real-time battles on land and at sea, Total War: Empire allows you to lead one of 12 great nations. Your success is determined by your diplomatic skills and military force, when necessary. Set in the 18th century, the game allows you to conquer overseas territories to establish colonies and profitable trade networks. Along the way, you'll need to learn more about your enemies and beat them on the battlefield accordingly.

First introduced on Mac in 2014, Total War: Empire is the fifth installment in the Total War series, which, as a whole, comes recommended. The turn-based strategy game was released for Windows in 2009. Before purchasing the game, just check the Mac App Store for compatibility with your Mac, since some older machines aren't supported.

Non-stop action

Total War: Empire

How will you succeed?

Empire is a thrilling installment in the Total War series. Just make sure your Mac supports it!

Source: Blindflug

In this multi-player real-time strategy game, you are fighting for control of distant planets. You have just seven minutes to destroy your opposition or the world as you know it will collapse and explode right before your eyes.

To accomplish your goal, you slowly gain access to rockets, tanks, and stealth generators. Futuristic troops are also available if you can find a way to unlock them.

Stellar Commanders is currently one of the best-reviewed Apple Arcade games available. Download it today.

Fly those rockets

Stellar Commanders

The world needs your help

You have seven minutes until success or destruction. Which path will you take?

Source: Tortuga Team

Old-school meets the 21st century in this impressive turn-based strategy game from Tortuga Team. Featuring a unique system of dynamic turn-based battles that last no more than 15 minutes, Spaceland features 10 different enemies from alien animals to unnerving monsters.

Offering a squad of space rangers, each with a unique fighting style, the game includes an exciting backstory about a mysterious planet, which you must protect. Use rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, and more to get the job done. Fail, and you must start again!

Single player fun

Spaceland

Protect this fascinating world

Shoot, kick, blow up, and destroy and achieve greatness in this Apple Arcade game.

Source: iMore

In This War of Mine, you aren't a great commander or a space fighter looking to protect the outer reaches of the universe. Instead, you're just one in a group of civilians trying to survive in a besieged city. Along the way, you must struggle with the lack of food, water, and medicine. At the same time, there's a constant worry that snipers and hostile scavengers could cause further pain.

This War of Mine has been well-received since it was first released and continues to receive kudos with each new expansion. While it's not necessarily a 'fun' game to play, per say, it tells a relevant and emotional story that should not be missed.

Can you survive?

The War of Mine

There's no escape

Can you find and explore all of the different outcomes of the game?

What's your favorite?

Strategy games and Macs go together well. Which games are you currently enjoying on your desktop or laptop? Let us know in the comments below. Perhaps we'll add it to our list on a future update!

macOS Catalina

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We’ve had to wait longer than usual, but with Civilization VI out now a new dawn is breaking once again on the venerable 4X series, ready to give us a fresh take on the fantasy of guiding a nation from the dawn of time through to the near future.

Related: find out more about Civilization 6 in our review.

Even though the basic formula remains the same, the devs have never rested on their laurels, always rejigging the visuals and mechanics between entries in bold and drastic ways. Sometimes it’s worked, and sometimes it hasn’t. But 25 years on from its inception and going stronger than ever, it’s fair to say that Civ has – to quote the original’s box – ‘built an empire to stand the test of time.’

As you’re about to see, and then subsequently spit your cup of coffee all over your screen like a sitcom character, we’ve included the Call to Power games. We’ve also omitted Beyond Earth and Alpha Centauri, even though the former carries the Civ nomenclature and the latter carries the Meier name.

Why? Because Civ games, to us, are about guiding a people from prehistory to the future, journeying through recognisable periods of human history and doing it on Earth. While CtP deviates from that formula slightly, it’s still very recgonisable as the classic Civ experience. Beyond Earth and Alpha Centauri? Well, their names say it all.

Which entries propelled Civ to glory, and which are best left in the past? Join us as we chart the series from its ancient era to the modern day, and rank each of the Civilization games from worst to best.

8 – Civilization: Call to Power

Purists will scoff at the inclusion of Activision’s ambitious yet shambolic stab at the great empire-builder, but it marked a blip in the history of the series that’s kind of fascinating.

Call to Power arose out of legal tussles between Activision and Microprose over the board game origins of the ‘Civilization’ trademark. Made without Sid Meier, Jeff Briggs and co at the helm, it was Activision’s first stab at the Civ franchise, which perhaps explains why they seemingly crammed every idea into it that a single game could possibly hold.

Featuring outlandish ideas like space warfare and underwater cities, as well as a whole wealth of sneaky units like lawyers, slavers, televangelists with televisions for heads and, errr, steampunky blimps that beamed advertising onto enemy Civs, Call to Power was nothing if not ambitious. It was marred by a poor interface and bad implementation however, with all the extra content making the game feel bloated and unfocused, with the late-game feeling like a hellish rabble of conflicting ideas that, frankly, was a bit grim to be a part of.

Let’s just call it ‘Franken-civ’ and move on…

7 – Civilization II

Civ 2 probably deserves an apology for being put in line right next to the black sheep of the family, because it really is a far superior game. It took the series out of a top-down view into a more immersive isometric perspective, expanded the number of techs and playable civs, and deepened war and diplomacy.

Yet when I upgraded from Civ 1 to Civ 2, I remember that for all its added polish and depth, it felt somehow colder than the original; little things like the fact that leader screens were just generic portraits, the static city view, and those awful video clips of advisors dressed up like they were going to a Roman-themed uni party.

Not that those niggles stopped me from pouring half a decade of my life into it, and remembering its sweetly 90s soundtrack to this day. Just like every other Civ game – it ranks among the greatest games of its time.

6 – Civilization

Where it all began. It’s fitting that one of my enduring memories of Civ is that pixellated cutscene of a young Earth smouldering into existence, because that’s precisely the role this game played for the series – setting the scene for generations to come.

With its blocky bird’s-eye view, only seven leaders and a comparatively small tech tree, of course the original is also technically the crudest, but it had some flourishes that gave it a big personality.

Meeting each leader was a treat, and your negotiations with them would be dramatised by their contorting, shifting faces as you inevitably pissed them off for calling them an ostrich or not handing over your techs to them. The city view – fully animated by gorgeous sprites – remains the best in the series, and the different looks of the advisers when you changed government were a great touch. It had a charm that was unmatched until much later in the series.

5 – Call to Power 2

If the purists were scoffing before, they’ll be choking on their self-righteous lentils that Call to Power 2, which doesn’t even have the word ‘Civilization’ in the title, makes it onto this list among the Sid Meier thoroughbreds.

For all intents and purposes it is a Civ game, and Activision’s second and final stab at the Civ formula was a big improvement on its bloated predecessor. Yes, there are still slavers and those blasted lawyers being a nuisance, but the improved interface, better diplomacy, and ability to automate units make it much enjoyable. It even introduced a couple of innovations like cultural borders and ‘armies’, both of which were taken on in subsequent games (the latter appears in Civ VI as the ‘combined arms’ mechanic, where you can stack certain military units with others to make them more effective).

Call to Power 2 cut out its predecessor’s underwater cities and space colonisation, but still has its share of interesting features – like global warming and futuristic army units – that spiced up the gameplay. The source code for the game was released in 2003, and if you do want to give it a crack you can buy it at GOG. It’s best played with the CtP2 Apolyton patch, which fixes many of the bugs and improves AI (nice to see that there’s someone out there actually cares about the black sheep of the Civ extended family).

4 – Civilization III

The oldest Civilization game that manages to feel timeless, thanks to a spit-and-polished pixel aesthetic, lovely animations, and deep systems that remain a central part of the series to this day. Civ III introduced Civilization traits, endowing each civ with more individuality, and encouraging different strategies depending on which one you chose. It built on the idea of national borders established in CtP 2, and was also (regrettably) the last Civ game to have a city view.

Civ III had a few maverick features too. You could monopolise strategic resources and luxuries then sell them on for a premium, had to deal with corruption in distant cities, and even faced the occasional volcanic explosion. Best of all, leaders would wear clothing befitting of their era; who wouldn’t want to see Abe Lincoln wearing a fur hat and jerkin in 1000BC?.

With the Play the World and Conquests expansions, Civ III remains a rich and pleasantly pixellated entry that’s still a joy to revisit.

3 – Civilization V

In a huge overhaul, Firaxis ‘de-stacked’ units and changed the map from a square grid to a hex grid for Civ V. This helped make maps feel more geographically natural than ever before, and wars far more satisfying, as good tactics and positioning could often defeat a far bigger force. City-States were a welcome new feature too.

Civ V was far from perfect upon release. The AI was bonkers (not in the ‘fun-at-a-party’ way), vassalage from Civ IV was dropped, and espionage felt over-simplified. With the expansion packs Civ V truly came into its own, though the fact that these were required to make the it shine meant that the game felt like it went backwards before truly moving forwards.

Gods and Kings reintroduced religion, now more customisable and robust, while Brave New World added in Tourism and Ideologies, both of which combated the series’ trademark late-game lull. Check out the Civ V Community Patch Project as well if you want an interesting rejig of the rules, better AI, and the reinstatement of Civ IV features like vassal states and deeper espionage.

This is undoubtedly the most polished Civ to date, and held top spot on this list until my heart made me do a last-second u-turn. Much like Civ II to Civ I, this just lacked that extra ‘something’ in relation to its predecessor…

2 – Civilization VI

It’s not easy to rank a vanilla Civ game and compare it with entries that had a couple of expansion packs and several years to come to full fruition, but at the same time it’s kind of irresistible.

Where Civ V pared back on many of the great features introduced in its predecessor, the latest entry retains just about all of them. Religion, tourism, espionage and city-states are all here, and have been rejigged to offer the deepest Civ experience yet, which is deceived by the bold, colourful visual style that looks incredible in motion.

The big decision to de-stack cities, spreading them across several tiles with separate zones for different building types, was an inspired one, forcing you to be more tactical about city placement. The option to merge different unit types and form armies, meanwhile, gets rid of the unit clutter that oft plagued Civ V.

From the scrawled maps that have replaced the dreaded Fog of War, to the Wonders that now stand proud and massive on their own tiles, to the art style of the leaders (whose personalities are now bolstered by new ‘Agendas’), Civ VI feels a fitting celebration of the series on its 25th anniversary. The AI remains chaotic, but with patches and expansions inevitable, Civ VI has the potential to claim the throne.

For now, however, the King (or Deity?) remains unchallenged…

1 – Civilization IV

Remember the charm I prattled on about while discussing the original Civ? Well, this is where it made a triumphant return – with full 3D graphics. From that sweeping, lovely menu music (Baba Yetu), to Leonard Nimoy sagely giving you inspirational quotes each time you discovered a technology, to the fact that in the late-game you could seamlessly zoom out into space and see the whole world, Civ IV was a real charmer.

Civilization Game For Mac

It wasn’t just superficial, either. Religion as a tool of control made its debut, and with the expansions we got fantastic features like vassal states and espionage (I’ll never forget my successful death-or-glory mission to sabotage Mansa Musa’s spaceship production and steal the Space Race victory).

For all its charms, Civ IV was still flawed. War was an unstrategic slog consisting of the infamous Stacks of Doom, the late-game dragged on (despite the inclusion of corporations in the Beyond the Sword expansion), and religion was never as effective as it could’ve been.

Even though going back to it now is surprisingly tough after playing the complete version of Civ V, the depth and presentation of Civ IV, and its role in progressing the series, wins it the top spot.

Best Civilization Game Machines

So there we have it. The definitive Civ rankings so you don’t need to do them yourself (or get enraged about how wrong we are).