7 Best Strategy Games With No Combat

There are games to fit every taste, from fast-paced action and sports simulations to text-based adventure games with no visuals to speak of. Strategy games are a particularly popular genre with the "one more turn" mentality that often sees sessions extend early into the morning.

17 Best Strategy Games On Nintendo Switch

If you love a challenge, check out these Nintendo Switch strategy games.

Fast-paced or slow, however, most of these games feature combat in some form, either between players or against the AI. Despite this, there are plenty of games without combat, and that includes strategy games. These games feature far-flung colonies on distant worlds, creating a business empire, or simply cultivating a landscape to your liking.

7 Surviving Mars

Published by Paradox Interactive, 2018

Surviving Mars is a city-building game developed by Haemimont Games that tasks you with creating and maintaining a distant colony on the planet Mars. Unlike terrestrial city-building games, Surviving Mars has a higher focus on survival elements, as the name would suggest.

Food production is essential first and foremost, and, along with other resources necessary for your colonists' survival, planning is the key to success before the appropriate facilities are set up on the red planet.

6 Frostpunk

Published By 11 Bit Studios, 2018

On the opposite end of the color spectrum is Frostpunk, a city-builder game developed by 11 Bit Studios. This title occurs in an alternate history setting, taking place during an ongoing ice age.

21 Best RTS Games Of All Time

If you're going to play an RTS game, it should be one of these.

Like Surviving Mars, this game emphasizes survival, with heat playing a central role in your city's success. As the temperature continues to drop, you will have to make increasingly drastic decisions regarding the lives of your citizens and the laws that govern them.

5 RollerCoaster Tycoon

Published by Hasbro Interactive, 1999

RollerCoaster Tycoon is the archetypal theme park management simulator, essentially codifying it as a sub-sub-genre of games. Originally created by Chris Sawyer, it puts you in charge of managing a theme park, from designing the rides to setting the prices of various concessions.

There are a variety of parks to run and challenges to be met, as well as the ability to create your own from scratch. Different guests will prefer different aspects of a park, so it's up to you to satisfy their needs and create a successful and profitable park.

4 Two Point Hospital

Published by Sega, 2018

Two Point Hospital is a business management game developed by Two Point Studios centered around the building and running of hospitals. Patients and staff alike have a variety of needs, and unlike guests at a theme park, these needs must more readily be met or face closing down.

10 Best Strategy Games Of All Time

Strategy games have been popular for a while now, but which titles are the best of the genre?

Curing people is the name of the game, and the quicker you can heal them of their ailments, the better. To this end, you'll buy equipment, build new wings, and hire a wide variety of staff members.

3 Cities: Skylines

Published by Paradox Interactive, 2015

Cities: Skylines 2 released in 2023, but in many ways, the original Cities: Skylines developed by Colossal Order is still the more fully fleshed out and feature-rich experience thanks to years of updates and packs of downloadable content.

9 Best Strategy Games On Android

Play the few that actually make you think!

Cities: Skylines is all about cities: designing them, zoning them, building them, and maintaining their upkeep in terms of amenities such as power, water, and sewage lines. At the heart of the simulation is traffic management, and in many respects, the game is one of carefully managing the flow of drivers in your city.

2 Dorfromantik

Published by Toukana Interactive, 2022

Dorfromantik is also a city-building game, albeit one with a more stylized approach. Developed by Toukana Interactive, Dorfromantik tasks you with building up a landscape tile by tile to create an ideal layout. Different tiles have different uses and strategies.

The question then becomes what order to place these tiles for the optimal effect. Part city-building and part puzzle game, the landscape will grow increasingly sprawling based on your whims and the needs of the village at hand.

1 Banished

Published by Shining Rock Software, 2014

Banished is a rustic city-building simulation developed by Shining Rock Software with a focus on sustainability. It focuses more singularly on open-ended economics than some similar games of its kind. It will see the evolution of a small hamlet isolated in the woods to a potentially thriving community throughout a run.

The citizens of the town are its most important resource, and as new buildings are built for their use, the population will slowly increase, attracting new arrivals over time.

6 Best Multiplayer Strategy Games

These strategy games allow you to work together with your friends (or destroy them yourself)!