BEST MODERN WAR GAMES FOR MAC SERIES

The military system provides you with the chance to specialize your battalions. An almost ridiculously complex technology system lets you guide your country’s development as you like, while diplomacy systems let you conduct trade, form and break alliances and treaties, and appoint advisors to help you turn the world from a divided battleground into one of your making. Hearts of Iron 4 is the company’s most war-oriented, giving you god-like command over pretty much any country that existed in the WWII period. Each game has it’s own idiosyncrasies and loyalists, but they’ll all give you your fix if grand strategy is your thing. Their games can bring you from the start of the crusades through the end of the WWII the company’s most recent offering, Stellaris, will even take you hundreds of years into the future for galaxy-wide statecraft. Each of their titles features an adjustable real-time clock allowing you to watch your decisions play out in a matter of minutes or extending the results of your strategic decisions to hours and days. Paradox Interactive is well known for its grand-strategy simulations.

But if you had to buy just one, the series’ latest, Wargame: Red Dragon, brings you near the end of the Cold War and adds a variety of the Asian communist states, expanding the theater of war to a truly global scale. The game’s sequel, Wargame: Airland Battle, takes you right back to the battlefield in a conflict between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces. Wargame: European Escalation, gives the player the chance to control one of the Cold War militaries in Thatcher-era Europe. A unique aspect of the game is the satellite camera mode which, on its own, is little more than a cool video effect but, in reality, demonstrates the scale of the game’s battlefields. The campaign modes have grown with each release and the multiplayer modes are worth hundreds of hours of replay value. One of the biggest selling points is Eugen’s effort to bring you as close to the real battlefield as possible, accurately reproducing hundreds of military vehicles, troops, and weapons. The Wargame series, from Eugen Systems, is a real-time strategy (RTS) wargame that gives you control of Cold War Era militaries across the globe. You can purchase additional campaigns and culture packs if your favorite war-mongering pack of blood-thirsty maniacs isn’t in the base game. Campaign mode features a dynasty interface that allows you to play the court game of intrigue if you’re the type that likes your war in intimate settings. The game features a skirmish mode, historical battles mode (which lets you relive some epic battlefield confrontations of the period) and a campaign mode. Attila takes you to the end of the western Roman empire and puts you in control of one of the Mediterranean or Germanic tribes that carved up former Roman territory, and their enemy’s hides in the process.

MacGamer HQ’s head-honcho Ric is a fan of the franchise’s take on feudal japan, Total War: Shogun 2, but I’m definitely fond of the most recent release, Total War: Attila. Different games in the Total War franchise take you from before the birth of Christ to the end of the Napoleonic period and all over the globe. In between battles, there’s a turn-based strategy interface (think a very stripped down version of Sid Meier’s Civilization series) that lets you construct the whole of your war machine. It lets you deploy your soldiers, define your engagement strategy, groupings, pace, and more. First, there’s a real-time war theater which allows you to command your troops’ every move on the battlefield.

BEST MODERN WAR GAMES FOR MAC SERIES

War is all-encompassing and to give you the taste of blood you crave, the Total War series relies on a dual-engine approach.

Best modern war games for mac