10 Games Like Age of Empires

Age of Empires was first released in 1997 and became a fan favourite among real-time strategy players with its bold take on history. Four mainline games later, plus Definitive Editions of the older ones, the series is in better health than it has been for years.

If you have worked through them and want something with the same feel, here are the strategy games worth your time. All of them are on PC, and most of them are still getting updates.

Age of Empires IV

Worth starting here if you somehow missed it. Released in October 2021 and developed by Relic Entertainment with World's Edge, AoE IV returned the series to the Middle Ages with eight civilisations at launch and more added since.

It is more accessible than Age of Empires II without losing the depth, and the documentary-style campaign sections are genuinely well made. If you have only played the older games, this is the obvious next step.

See what you need to run it on our Age of Empires IV gaming PC page.

Age of Mythology: Retold

The closest thing to Age of Empires that isn't Age of Empires, because it was built by the same studio. Ensemble Studios took the Age of Empires blueprint and swapped history for myth.

You pick from Greek, Egyptian or Norse, choose a major god, and unlock minor gods as you advance, each granting different powers. Army building, resource management and conquest all work the way you would expect, but the gods change how each match plays out.

Retold, released in September 2024, is the remastered version and the one to buy. It has been supported properly since launch, with Chinese, Japanese and Aztec pantheons all added as expansions.

Sid Meier's Civilization VII

Turn-based rather than real time, but scratching a similar itch. Start as a nomadic tribe and build an empire that outlasts everyone else's.

Civilization VII launched in February 2025 and shook up the formula with an Age system that resets the map at key historical junctures. Reception was mixed at first, and the DLC released since has filled out what the base game was missing.

Expect religion, espionage, diplomacy and nation building, all of it deep enough to be overwhelming at first. If you want a strategy game to disappear into for a hundred hours, this is it.

StarCraft II

Now free to play, and still the benchmark for competitive real-time strategy fifteen years after release.

Set in a 26th century galaxy where three species fight for control, StarCraft II split its campaign across three releases: Wings of Liberty for the Terrans, Heart of the Swarm for the Zerg, and Legacy of the Void for the Protoss. The multiplayer is famously demanding and famously well balanced.

Blizzard stopped producing new content years ago, but the game is still played and the campaigns hold up.

Warcraft III: Reforged

Worth including with a caveat. Warcraft III is one of the most important strategy games ever made, combining base building with hero units in a way that eventually gave rise to the entire MOBA genre.

Reforged, the 2020 remaster, had a famously poor launch and removed features from the original. Blizzard has patched it substantially since, and it is now in decent shape, but go in knowing its history.

You command Orcs, Humans, Undead or Night Elves, build a base, raise an army and recruit heroes who level up across the campaign.

Stronghold: Crusader II

A castle builder first and a combat game second. Developed by Firefly Studios and released in 2014, Crusader II is set in the Middle East during the crusades.

The desert setting is the whole point. Farms can only be built on limited oasis grass, which means competition for land from the first minute. Everything else, quarries, iron and pitch, has to be found and defended.

If the economic side of Age of Empires appeals more than the fighting, Stronghold leans further in that direction than anything else here.

Total War: Warhammer III

Turn-based campaign map, real-time battles, and the largest scale of anything on this list. Warhammer III released in February 2022 and has been supported with DLC ever since.

The main draw is Immortal Empires, which combines the maps and factions from all three Warhammer games into one enormous campaign. It is one of the biggest strategy games ever made, and it will happily take over your life.

Start with Warhammer II if you can, though Immortal Empires makes III the better entry point now.

See what it takes to run on our Total War gaming PC page.

Company of Heroes 3

Relic's Second World War series, and a very different flavour of real-time strategy. No base building in the traditional sense. Instead you capture and hold territory, and cover matters enormously.

Released in 2023 and improved considerably through updates since. The Italian campaign uses a turn-based map that sits somewhere between Total War and traditional RTS.

If Age of Empires' combat is the part you enjoy most, Company of Heroes takes that further than anything else.

Manor Lords

Medieval city building with real-time battles attached, built largely by one developer and released into early access in 2024 to enormous interest.

The town building is the strongest part. Settlements grow organically along the roads you lay rather than snapping to a grid, and the level of historical detail in the construction is remarkable.

It is still in early access, so expect gaps. What is there is excellent.

Northgard

A lighter, faster take on the genre with a Norse setting. You claim territory tile by tile, manage food and warmth through brutal winters, and fight over a much smaller map than most RTS games use.

Matches are shorter and the rules are simpler, which makes it a good choice if you want the strategy without the two-hour commitment. There is a decent single-player campaign and the multiplayer is still active.

Anno 1800

City building and trade rather than warfare, set during the industrial revolution. You build production chains, manage shipping routes and keep several classes of citizen happy at once.

It is the most economically complex game on this list by a distance, and the most peaceful. If the part of Age of Empires you enjoy is watching a working settlement take shape, Anno does that better than anyone.

What strategy games need from your PC

Strategy games are the odd ones out when it comes to hardware, and it catches people out.

They are not especially demanding on your graphics card. What they demand is processor speed, and specifically single-core speed, because the game logic that works out what every unit is doing usually runs on one core. That is why a strategy game can run beautifully for the first hour and then start stuttering as your empire grows.

It is also why the usual advice to spend your money on a graphics card is wrong here. A faster processor and 32GB of memory will do more for a large Total War battle or a late-game Anno save than a more expensive GPU will.

Final Thoughts

Age of Empires occupies a specific space, somewhere between the pure competition of StarCraft and the slow build of Anno. Nothing replaces it exactly, which is probably why it is still going after nearly thirty years.

What the games above do is take one part of it and go further. Pick based on which part you enjoy most: the economy, the battles, or the long game.

If your current machine is struggling with the late game, see the best gaming PCs for Age of Empires IV, or build your own with our online configurator.