Best Grand Strategy Games on PC, by What You Rule
The best grand strategy games on PC are almost all made by Paradox, and the useful question is not which one is best but what you want to rule. A family: Crusader Kings 3. A country at war: Hearts of Iron 4. A state across four centuries: Europa Universalis 4. An economy: Victoria 3. A galaxy: Stellaris. Crusader Kings 3 is the friendliest place to start.
Takeaways Three ways into grand strategy
- Crusader Kings 3 Start here You play a person, not a map. Tooltips explain almost everything, and a bad heir is a story rather than a defeat.
- Hearts of Iron 4 Most war Factories, fronts and supply. 77 cheats on its trainer page, 22 of them for resources.
- Europa Universalis 4 Most time Four centuries of one country. Stability, prestige and manpower recover over years.
What grand strategy means
The Wikipedia article on the genre defines a grand strategy game by its scale: the movement and use of a whole state’s resources. It also names the difference to 4X games like Civilization. In grand strategy the starting positions are asymmetrical. You do not found a civilization on an empty map, you take over a country that already exists, with its neighbors, debts and ambitions, and the map is a real one.
Paradox Development Studio makes most of the games that define the genre, and all five below are theirs. They share a few habits: a pausable real-time clock, a map that is the whole interface, tooltips nested inside tooltips, and an Ironman mode that saves automatically, locks the console and is the only mode that hands out achievements.
A family: Crusader Kings 3
Crusader Kings 3 is a medieval dynasty simulator where you play a person. When your ruler dies, you continue as the heir, and if the heir is nine years old with the wrong education, that is now your problem. Four currencies run side by side, gold, prestige, piety and renown, and none can be bought with another. That is why it is the best first grand strategy game: the stakes are personal and readable, and the game produces stories by itself.
Where it stalls: decades. An ambition can take a lifetime and end with a cousin you never met inheriting the result. Age plus five and minus five are free cheats on the trainer page, which is a very Crusader Kings solution.
A country at war: Hearts of Iron 4
Hearts of Iron 4 covers the Second World War, but most of the game is the economy behind it. Political power arrives at a fixed rate and gates every advisor, law and focus. Factories need steel, oil, rubber, tungsten and aluminium, each in short supply. Its trainer page lists 77 cheats, the most of these five, and 22 of them move a resource. Campaigns in this game tend to break in a factory line standing idle for want of tungsten.
It is the hardest of the five to learn. The front line and division templates take a few campaigns to understand, and the game does not explain much on the way.
A state across centuries: Europa Universalis 4
Europa Universalis 4 runs from the late Middle Ages to the age of revolutions, and you play one country the whole way. Trade, colonization, religion, diplomacy and war all happen at once. Stability gates decisions, prestige gates diplomacy, manpower gates war, and all three recover over years. Lose one war badly and the next decade is spent rebuilding numbers.
Its trainer has 32 cheats, and three of the six free ones set exactly those numbers: max stability, 100 prestige and 250,000 gold.
An economy: Victoria 3
Victoria 3 is the Paradox game about building. You manage industries, populations, laws and markets through the nineteenth century, and wars are fronts you assign generals to, not armies you move. Construction is the engine of everything, and construction costs money the young country does not have. A treasury that goes negative early can turn into permanent debt.
It suits players who like spreadsheets that respond. All four free cheats on its trainer page move gold reserves, which is where a Victoria campaign tends to break.
A galaxy: Stellaris
Stellaris is grand strategy in space, and the one that comes closest to 4X: you design your species and start from one planet, then meet empires that already have histories of their own. Three research queues run at once, physics, society and engineering, and late resources like dark matter and nanites appear exactly when you need them in quantity. Its console opens in any game that is not Ironman, which the console guide covers command by command.
Where to start
Every one of these is a single-player game first, and the consoles, the trainers and the cheats belong there; Ironman and multiplayer are the two places to leave them off. If you came from Total War and want the map without the battles, Europa Universalis 4 is the closest step. For everyone else, a first pick by what you want from an evening:
| If you want | Start with | First campaign |
|---|---|---|
| Characters and family drama | Crusader Kings 3 | A small count somewhere quiet, after the tutorial |
| War, fronts and production | Hearts of Iron 4 | A major power, so the factories can carry mistakes |
| One country across centuries | Europa Universalis 4 | A mid-sized kingdom with room to grow |
| Economy and politics | Victoria 3 | A country with a stable treasury at the start |
| Science fiction and exploration | Stellaris | A default empire on a normal galaxy size |
Infographic Three ways into grand strategy Click to enlarge What is the best grand strategy game for beginners?
Crusader Kings 3. You follow one ruler and their family, the interface explains its terms on hover, and failure tends to produce a story rather than a lost campaign. Hearts of Iron 4 is the hardest first game of the five.
What is the difference between grand strategy and 4X?
Grand strategy puts you in a specific place and time with an asymmetric starting position, a historical country or dynasty. 4X games such as Civilization start factions on more equal terms in a world they explore. Stellaris sits in between.
Which Paradox game is the best?
It depends on what you want to manage. Crusader Kings 3 for characters and family, Hearts of Iron 4 for war, Europa Universalis 4 for the long sweep of a state, Victoria 3 for economics and society, Stellaris for science fiction.
Do Paradox games have console commands?
Yes, all of them have a console, but the rules differ. Hearts of Iron 4 and Stellaris open theirs in any game that is not Ironman, Crusader Kings 3 needs a launch option first. Ironman, the mode that awards achievements, disables the console everywhere.