This is the most complete classification that includes all possible strategy video game genres.
English is not my native language, but I'll try my best to make the text understandable and I'll fix possible mistakes with your help.
Strategy game is a genre of video games in which the player controls troops or other units and/or various economic and other systems. Although many video games may include strategy elements, strategy as a genre emphasizes thinking and planning over immediate action. This video game genre focuses on strategy, tactics, logistics, and/or resource management, and may also include diplomacy, economy, expansion and research management.
Time
- Real-time strategy: a strategy game in which actions occur without a sequence of turns.
- Turn-based strategy: a strategy game in which actions occur using a sequence of turns that can be alternate or simultaneous.
Main genres
4X strategy game: a strategy game based on 4 elements: exploration, expansion, exploitation, extermination. Examples: Age of Wonders, Stellaris, Master of Orion.
Grand strategy game – a strategy game focused on managing a state (or similar entity), its resources and relationships, often in a pre-open and asymmetric world. Examples: Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron
Tactical strategy game – a strategy game focused on tactical military operations, which emphasizes the importance of specific units and either excludes or contains a less manifested economic component.
Subdivided into two categories based on time:
- Turn-based tactics (TBT) Examples: Xenonauts, Battletech
- Real-time tactics (RTT) Examples: Men of War
Classic strategy games – a strategy games that have an economic element: the ability to build a base, extract resources and produce units (or part of these capabilities), while their gameplay is focused on military actions. Also includes a category of strategy games that cannot be classified into more specific subgenres.
Subdivided into:
- Classic RTS (or just RTS) Examples: StarCraft, Command & Conquer
- Classic TBS (or just TBS) Examples: Panzer General
Construction and Management Simulator (also Management Strategy Game): a strategy game with gameplay based on the construction and/or management of economic processes, such as, for example: resource extraction, money making, production, personnel management, and others. Games of this genre have little emphasis on military actions.
Subdivided into:
- Business Simulation Game - a strategy game focused on economics and business management. Examples: Two Point Hospital
- Transport Strategy Game - a strategy game in which the player manages transport systems and infrastructure. Examples: Transport Tycoon, Transport Fever
- City-Building Simulation - a strategy game in which the player builds cities. Examples: Cities: Skylines, SimCity.
- Colony Simulation - a strategy game in which the player builds small settlements of various types; unlike urban strategy, the main emphasis here is on individual colonists and resource extraction from the environment. Examples: RimWorld, Surviving Mars, Against the Storm
- Factory simulator – a strategy game in which the player builds an automated factory. Examples: Shapez, Factorio
- Sports manager – a genre of games dedicated to managing a sports team. Examples: Football Mogul, F1 Manager.
- Life simulator – a genre of games that allow you to control characters in their everyday life. Examples: The Sims, InZoI, The Guild
- Political simulator – a genre of games whose gameplay consists of detailed management of the government and politics of various nations and state entities. Examples: Democracy
Wargame: a strategy game that particularly emphasizes deep strategic and/or tactical combat, as well as their historical accuracy or realism. Examples: Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age, NEBULOUS: Fleet Command
MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena): a subgenre of classic real-time strategy games in which players control only one character and, as part of their team represented by other players and AI controlled units, fight against the other team. Examples: Dota 2
MMO strategy game: a strategy game that is focused on online interaction between a large number of players, often in a single open world. Examples: Travian, Ogame, Stronghold: Kingdoms.
Tower Defense: a strategy game with the main purpose to protect a base from waves of enemies using towers or other defensive structures. Examples: Plants vs Zombies
Auto Battler: is a strategy game in which units are placed on the battlefield during the preparation phase, after which the battle phase begins and they fight against the enemy without any control from the player.
Puzzle strategy game: a strategy game focused on logical problem-solving with minimized economic or military aspect. Examples: Railgrade, Dorfromantic
Artillery game: a genre of strategy games, the main component of which is the calculation of the trajectory of the shells. Examples: Worms, Miners Mettle
The most popular mixed genres
Tactical role-playing game (TRPG): is a hybrid genre that combines role-playing games with tactical combat. Examples: Battle Brothers
Action strategy game: is a genre of games in which you can control both troops in general and/or base construction, as well as specific units directly, including from the first or third person. Examples: Men of War, Factorio
Stealth strategy: is a genre of games that combine strategy and an emphasis on stealth. Examples: Desperados, Commandos
God simulator: is a genre of games in which the player, in the role of some deity being, controls some community of objects or characters; they are often strategy games with city-building elements. Examples: Black & White, The Universim
Roguelike strategy game – games that combine roguelike principles, such as random world generation, permanent death and free exploration of the environment, and strategic gameplay. Examples: Against the Storm
Notes
Many games have mixed genres. Very often, strategy games can combine two or more genres. For example, Total War series is turn-based grand strategy with real-time tactical (RTT) battles.
Time and genre. Basically, every strategy game can be classified by these two criteria, like Turn-based 4X Strategy game (Age of Wonders), Real-Time Grand Strategy game (Hearts of Iron) etc. Sometimes we do not have any specified subgenre, so the game becomes simple RTS (StarCraft).
Judge by dominant elements of gameplay. Overall, the genre should be defined by main gameplay loop, not by every game mechanic that exists in the game. For example, if a game has leveling-up system, it doesn't mean that it instantly becomes an RPG: a good example is WarCraft which has characters gaining XP and levels, but the main, dominant gameplay loop in this game is still a classic RTS. At the same time, if some Rainbow Six has some strategic planning, it doesn't mean that this game is a strategy game or even a mixed genre, because the main gameplay there is action/shooter. The same logic is applicable to strategy games: if the game has resource management, it doesn't instantly mean that it becomes a management game.
This is a theoretical model. It means that here we are supposed to find criteria by which strategy games can be classified. These criteria can be based both on gameplay and historical tradition of naming genres in video game industry. The model can be discussed and improved, but any critique should be based on strict arguments.
Strategy as a genre, not a word. The main principle of this genre classification is that we don't take the word "strategy" literally. A strategy game can be a tactic game, it can be a management game, it doesn't matter here. The word strategy means the genre name, not the strategy as a layer of action planning.
Are management games strategy games? This is a hard question that has no answer based on reliable papers because there are no such papers. Here we look at naming tradition in community and video game industry. We can find many similarities in core gameplay of various city-building and colony sim games with classical RTS. Some management games include RTT/RTS style military combat, These games are often tagged as strategy game on digital distribution services. So we include them into this classification to make it more complete. You might find two controversial opinions about this (management games are/are not strategy games), but this problem can't be solved on these days because we do not have a strict genre requirements and developers can name genre of their games as they want. There are no popular scientific researches about it on which we can refer to.
