The best Star Wars strategy game is Empire at War, and the Gold Pack is $19.99 on Steam and GOG. It came out in 2006, it still has 98 percent of its Steam reviewers on its side, and its mods have kept it in active use for twenty years. Zero Company is second, and it is the better choice if you want turn-based tactics rather than fleets. Galactic Battlegrounds is third, and at $5.99 it is the cheapest good strategy game in Star Wars.
After those three the list gets thin fast. Star Wars has made very few strategy games, and two of the six below cannot be bought legally at all.
How we ranked them
Three questions, in this order:
- What did critics say? Metacritic where a score exists, GameRankings for the two games too old to have one.
- Can you buy it and run it today? A great game you cannot buy is worth knowing about, but it is not a recommendation.
- Is anyone still playing? Our tracker reads Steam's concurrent player counts through the day. It counts Steam only, and it does not follow every game on this list.
We also asked how much of each game is strategy: planning a war as well as winning a fight. That question is why Empire at War finishes above Zero Company here, when our all-time ranking puts Zero Company higher. The all-time list asks which game is better overall. This one asks which is the better strategy game, and Empire at War is the one with a galaxy to conquer.
If you want the XCOM side of this in detail, what to play after Zero Company and how each game compares to it, that is our Star Wars games like XCOM guide. This list leans toward real-time strategy and the galactic map.
The six at a glance
| # | Game | Type | Year | Where to buy, week of Sep 21 | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Empire at War: Gold Pack | RTS with a galactic conquest map | 2006 | Steam, GOG | $19.99 |
| 2 | Zero Company | Turn-based tactics | 2026 | Steam, EA app, PS5, Xbox Series X|S | $49.99 |
| 3 | Galactic Battlegrounds: Saga | RTS | 2001 | Steam, GOG | $5.99 |
| 4 | Galaxy of Heroes | Turn-based squad battles (gacha) | 2015 | iOS, Android, EA app on PC | Free, with purchases |
| 5 | Rebellion | Real-time 4X | 1998 | Not sold digitally | Secondhand discs only |
| 6 | Force Commander | 3D RTS | 2000 | Not sold digitally | Secondhand discs only |
The ranking
Empire at War 2006
Petroglyph
- Metacritic
- 79
- Playing now
- 2,122
Two games in one. On the galactic map you build up planets, move fleets and pick where to fight. When two forces meet, the game drops into a real-time battle, in space or on the ground, and the outcome goes back to the map. No other Star Wars game gives you the whole war like that. The Forces of Corruption expansion (Metacritic 75) adds a third faction, Tyber Zann's criminal syndicate, which wins by bribing and corrupting planets rather than conquering them.
Our tracker's busiest reading between September 14 and 20 was 2,122 players, on Saturday afternoon. Its quietest was 831. That is a twenty-year-old strategy game with two thousand people in it on a Saturday.
- Who it is for: anyone who wants to command the Empire or the Rebellion at galaxy scale. Start with the base campaign, then move to mods.
- Before you start: buy the Gold Pack, which includes Forces of Corruption; almost every mod needs it. Then pick a mod by era: Thrawn's Revenge for the post-Endor Empire, Fall of the Republic for the Clone Wars. Our Empire at War mods guide covers which one to install and how.
Star Wars: Zero Company 2026
Bit Reactor / Respawn
- Metacritic
- 85
- Playing now
- 12,961
The first full turn-based tactics game Star Wars has had, and a very good one: our review gave it 9 out of 10. You build a squad of Clone Wars specialists, fight from cover, and manage the outfit between missions. Permadeath is on by default. It has the best review score on this list and by far the most players, at 12,961 on Monday afternoon, September 14.
It places second because its strategy layer is lighter than Empire at War's. The planning between missions matters, but the game is about the fight in front of you, not the shape of a whole war.
- Who it is for: anyone who liked XCOM, and anyone who would rather move six soldiers carefully than two hundred at once.
- Before you start: it is the one full-price game here. Read our permadeath guide before your first campaign, because a third injury kills any operator except Hawks for good.
Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds 2001
Ensemble Studios
- Metacritic
- 75
- Playing now
- not in our tracker
Age of Empires II with Star Wars armies. LucasArts built it with Ensemble Studios on the Age of Empires II engine, so you gather resources, build a base and push up the tech tree with Wookiees, Gungans, the Empire and the Rebellion. The Clone Campaigns expansion added the Republic and the Confederacy in 2002, and the Saga edition includes both. Steam's reviewers still recommend it at 91 percent.
It ranks below Zero Company because it is the least Star Wars of the three. Under the art it plays like Age of Empires II, and the units behave more like medieval armies than a galaxy at war. At $5.99, that is a small complaint.
- Who it is for: anyone who played Age of Empires and wants the same thing with walkers.
- Before you start: it runs on modern Windows from either store. Many players add the unofficial All-In-One Patch, which fixes a broken color palette PCGamingWiki reports on current systems and adds widescreen. (Updated September 24, 2026: this line previously said nothing extra was needed.)
Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes 2015
EA Capital Games
- Playing now
- not on Steam
A gacha game, and you should know that before anything else. You collect characters from every era of Star Wars and fight turn-based battles with squads of five, and the strategy lives in which characters you pair and in what order they act. The game is built around energy limits and spending, and the fastest route to the characters you want costs money. It is also one of the most successful Star Wars games ever made, and still running eleven years on.
It ranks above the next two because you can play it tonight, for free. It ranks below the top three because the tactics come second to the collecting.
- Who it is for: players who like building a roster over months, on a phone, and who can set themselves a spending limit and keep it.
- Before you start: it is on iOS and Android, and on PC through the EA app, with progress carried across.
Star Wars: Rebellion 1998
Coolhand Interactive
- Playing now
- not sold digitally
The deepest strategy game in Star Wars on paper, and the hardest to act on. Rebellion is a galaxy-wide 4X in real time: recruit characters from the films, send them on diplomatic and sabotage missions, flip planets one loyalty point at a time, and build fleets for either side. Critics were harsh in 1998. GameRankings averaged 50 percent, and GameSpot named it the most disappointing game of the year. Players have been kinder since.
Steam and GOG both sold it until April 2026, when Disney pulled it along with the original Dark Forces, without warning or explanation. If you bought it on either store before the delisting, it is still in your library.
Correction, September 24, 2026: this entry said GOG never carried Rebellion. GOG sold it from 2015 until the April 2026 delisting.
- Who it is for: strategy veterans who enjoy learning a difficult old interface, and anyone who wants the Rebellion experience in a modern game: Awakening of the Rebellion, an Empire at War mod built as an homage to it, is the legal way in.
- Before you start: the only legal copies are secondhand discs, and a 1998 Windows game may need fan-made fixes to run on Windows 11.
Star Wars: Force Commander 2000
Ronin Entertainment
- Playing now
- not sold digitally
LucasArts' first fully 3D real-time strategy game. It follows an Imperial officer who defects to the Rebellion, with ground battles from Hoth to Endor. GameRankings averaged 58 percent, reviewers fought the camera and the controls, and GameSpot named it the most disappointing game of 2000. The soundtrack remixes John Williams into rock and techno, which is worth hearing once.
- Who it is for: completionists.
- Before you start: like Rebellion, it is secondhand discs or nothing. Play Galactic Battlegrounds instead.
Close calls we left out
The tabletop games. X-Wing, Armada and Legion are the biggest Star Wars miniatures games of the last decade, and none of them has an official video game. Fans play them online through tabletop simulators, which is a separate hobby from this list.
The closed mobile games. Star Wars: Commander, a base-builder, closed in 2020. Force Arena, a lane battler, closed in 2019. LEGO Star Wars Battles survives on Apple Arcade, and it is a lane battler more than a strategy game. There is not enough left of the others to rank.
Which one to play first
You want to run the whole war: Empire at War. Play the base campaign, then install Thrawn's Revenge.
You want turn-based tactics: Zero Company, and then read our XCOM guide for what comes after it.
You want a cheap RTS for a weekend: Galactic Battlegrounds, for six dollars.
You want something on your phone: Galaxy of Heroes, with a budget you set before you start.
You loved Rebellion in 1998: install Awakening of the Rebellion for Empire at War and play that instead.
The details
- Metacritic scores are each game's PC score: Empire at War 79 (Forces of Corruption 75), Zero Company 85, Galactic Battlegrounds 75. Rebellion and Force Commander have no Metacritic score, so we used their GameRankings averages, 50 and 58 percent. Galaxy of Heroes is a live mobile game whose launch score does not describe it now, so we left its score out.
- Steam review percentages are Steam's own, and prices are Steam's and GOG's regular US prices for the week of September 21, 2026. GOG runs frequent discounts on both LucasArts strategy games, so check before you buy.
- Player figures are our tracker's busiest reading between September 14 and September 20. They count Steam only. Galactic Battlegrounds is not one of the games we follow, and Galaxy of Heroes is not on Steam.
- The order is ours. It weighs how much of each game is strategy, which is why it differs from our all-time ranking.
