Three Moves Ahead 644: 2025 Strategy Games of the Year

Three Moves Ahead

Idle Thumbs

Strategy, Strategy Games, War, Games & Hobbies, War Games, Games, Video Games

4.8 • 532 Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2026

⏱️ 109 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Len, Mike, and Luke pop the champagne and discuss the Strategy Games of the Year for 2025. And we can't really talk about the year in strategy without dwelling on the big theme of Disappointment. But all is not woe, because we played plenty of stuff we loved this year, too! Stay tuned after the main show for a chunky, free preview of this year's final Patreon bonus episode! Games Discussed: Civilization 7, Endless Legend 2, Europa Universalis 5, Crusader Kings 3, Stormgate, Broken Arrow, Two Point Museum, Jurassic World Evolution 3, Burden of Command, Anno 117, Master of Command, Cataclismo, Tempest Rising, Phantom Brigade, 9 Kings, The King is Watching, Drillcore, Pioneers of Pagonia, The Great Villainness: Strategy of Lily, Heretic's Fork, Tavern Keeper

Transcript

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0:00.0	Good evening. You are listening to Three Moves Ahead. I'm Len. I am your host. I am here today with Mike Williams.
0:09.4	Hello, hello folks. How's everybody doing today? And with Aftermaths, Luke Plunkett.
0:15.8	Hello. Happy holidays, everybody. And we are gathered here at the very end of 2025 to discuss our games of the year,
0:25.7	which I have somewhat pretentiously called the only strategy game awards that matter.
0:30.5	But it's kind of true in comparison to at least certain,
0:40.9	certain programming that you may have experienced,
0:47.2	as well as like just what 2025 was for strategy games.
0:49.6	Before we start counting stuff down,
0:55.7	I don't know, Luke, did you feel like there was a strong theme to 2025 for strategy? Yeah, there was a, there was a surprising number of games that I was, like,
1:00.9	even being someone who's dead inside most days, there was a surprising number of like huge,
1:07.4	you know, sort of flagship strategy games that I was really excited to come out in
1:11.6	2025 and nearly all of them ended up being crushing disappointments.
1:16.1	Yeah.
1:16.7	As much of a bummer as that is to say in what should be like a cheery retrospective awards
1:22.8	kind of show.
1:25.1	I just think back to like, you know,
1:27.6	SIV 7 and Lus Legend 2.
1:31.6	Yeah.
1:33.8	There's more, there'll be more,
1:36.0	there'll be more, but I'm just opening my steam.
1:38.3	Last played list up just to check,
1:39.9	but games like that, they were just like, yeah.
	...

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