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25 essential games to have in your iOS collection
Updated February 03, 2020: Post entry tweaks
Most people would probably associate the strategy game genre with the PC. They might well conclude that the sheer complexity of these hardcore games requires a mouse, keyboard, and monitor set-up.
But that's a load of outdated piffle. Strategy games can be as intuitive, streamlined, and accessible to a mainstream audience as they please. Just look at a list of the most popular mobile games of the past decade (by any metric) for confirmation of that fact. The iPhone and iPad stores are rife with great strategy games.
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The likes of Clash of Clans, Mobile Strike, Summoners War, Boom Beach and Game of War: Fire Age have all raked in more than $1 billion in their lifetimes.
This doesn't mean that mobile strategy games need necessarily be flimsy, shallow or overtly casual affairs though. It's possible to wring real depth out of a modern touchscreen device.
The following list of mobile strategy games covers the entire gamut, from casual city builders to hardcore turn-based tactics. That's the beauty of the mobile strategy game scene - its sheer variety.
We haven't even included tower defence in our deliberations, as that's a thriving sub-genre that deserves (and indeed has received) its own separate list.
Here, then, is a list of our favourite mobile strategy games for iPhone and iPad. We're quite aware that there are loads of stone-cold classics and popular favourites that we've left off. We only had 25 slots to fill, after all, and we always try to reflect what's current.
If there's a mobile strategy game you think should be on this list, let us know in the comments section below.
Sid Meier's Civilization VI
It's Civilization VI on your iPad. Like, the actual Civilization VI, not some streamlined approximation. It's nothing less than one of the best and deepest strategy games on any platform.
XCOM: Enemy Within
XCOM has a reputation for being one of the finest squad-based strategy games around, with tense turn-based battles rendered in glorious 3D. This iOS conversion brings it to mobile without compromise.
FTL: Faster Than Light
FTL tasks you with running your very own spaceship, allocating resources to the departments that need it most. But the real thrill is that you have to do this while fleeing through a hostile star system.
Iron Marines
The maker of the peerless Kingdom Rush series proves that it can do classic RTS as well as its does tower defence. Iron Marines is brilliantly balanced, great to look at, and generally quite special.
Bad North
Bad North is a uniquely brilliant mish-mash of RTS, tower defence and roguelike elements as you defend your island communities from Viking attack.
SteamWorld Heist
SteamWorld Heist demonstrates that strategy games can be a zoomed-in, action-packed and even funny. This brilliant 2D squad-based game as you taking on robotic pirates with expertly placed ricochet shots.
Invisible, Inc.
Klei combines turn-based strategy with high-tech stealth in this beautiful isometric cyber-punk adventure.
ROME: Total War
One of the greatest and deepest real time strategy games ever made makes its way onto iPad, and it works shockingly well. ROME: Total War is the real deal.
Warbits
It doesn't look like we'll ever get Advance Wars on mobile, but Warbits is as close as it gets. This is colourful, intuitive turn-based strategy with a surprising amount of tactical depth.
Dungeon Warfare 2
You could well make the argument that Dungeon Warfare 2 is a tower defence game. But constructing the ultimate death-filled dungeon here proves to be so much more strategic and nuanced than your average lane runner.
Chaos Reborn: Adventures
A dauntingly deep and involving strategy game that punishes mistakes and rewards smart thinking. Its hex-based 3D battles have an impressive amount of tactical scope.
Tropico
Easily the best city builder on the market, Tropico is a richly detailed, responsive, engaging, and fun PC port that feels perfectly at home on iPad. It looks and sounds beautiful, too.
Tharsis
Strategy games don't need to be ponderous and small scale. First Strike concerns a global nuclear conflict, and each battle can be swept through in frighteningly quick time.
Pocket City
Though it's less viscerally impressive than Tropico, Pocket City remains an absolute treat of a premium city builder. In particular, it manages to combine intuitiveness with strategic depth better than most.
Sid Meier's Starships
Sci-fi strategy on a grand scale, Sid Meier's Starships has got interplanetary diplomacy, deep space exploration, and plenty of pew pew laser battles.
Clash of Clans
Oooh, controversial pick. But there's no denying that Clash has done something super interesting with the strategy genre, making it truly social and accessible, and making defence as important as all-out attack.
Crush Your Enemies
Pocket real time strategy in its purest form, Crush Your Enemies whittles things down to a series of feisty minutes-long battles. It's just not a sharply-made RTS, but a funny game filled with foul-mouthed, half-drunk barbarians.
Hero Academy 2
Hero Academy 2 starts slow, but blossoms into a brilliantly tactical turn-based experience. It's also an extremely polished, layered affair.
Plague Inc.
We're all used to defending life in our strategy games - Plague Inc. tasks you with destroying as much of it as possible by spreading and mutating a horrible virus. It's dark, man.
Frozen Synapse
Some strategy games simulate the big, the epic, the expansive. Frozen Synapse goes in tight, letting you plan the individual seconds of a frantic gunfight between computer simulated warriors.
Egypt: Old Kingdom
Star Trek: Fleet Command is a slick 4X mobile strategy game with sympathetic monetisation and a flexible mission-based progression system. It uses its license well too.
Battleplans
Battleplans is a thoroughly modern mobile strategy game hybrid, blending RTS, MOBA and base defence elements into a gloriously colourful whole.
Wild Beyond
What initially appears to be another Clash Royale clone soon reveals itself to be a lot deeper. It's got an engrossing single player campaign, and there's a real flow to its steadily branching battles.
The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands
An engaging and intuitive strategy game that offers genuine consequences for your decisions as you strive to keep your village alive and thriving. It's also beautiful, in its own sparse way.
Xenowerk Tactics
A brilliant turn-based strategy game set within Pixelbite's tense sci-fi Xenowerk universe. There's more than a hint of XCOM to its tight squad manoeuvring, but with a slightly more arcadey edge.