Strategos Review: An Instant Classic is Born

The concept of strategy comes from the Greek strategia. In Latin, strategi. In French, stratégie. In German, strategie. In Italian, strategia. In Spanish, estrategia. Are you writing this down?

All of that comes from the Greek word strategos, meaning military general. It is Strategos that we are here to talk about.

Developed by aptly-named Strategos Games and published by the second iteration of MicroProse, Strategos is a real-time strategy game that puts you in command of some of history's most legendary armies. The game, set to release on January 20th, 2026, has been on my radar for a while now, so I was ecstatic to get a review copy of it.

Full disclosure, I did try to procure a copy of The Cambridge History of Warfare by Geoffrey Parker to prepare for the release, but it did not arrive on time. I will blame any of my battlefield failings on this.

Command School

Legendary Russian General Alexander Suvorov once said that difficult training translates into ease on the battlefield. Although I did not go through Parker's aforementioned book, Strategos does a brilliant job covering the basics before you dive in.

The game has a three-step tutorial that introduces you to the controls and mechanics, then puts you through a trial by fire against a limited version of an AI general.

Criminally hidden under the Miscellaneous menu is the Manual tab, a wonderfully transparent view where you can find accurate information about unit efficiency in different scenarios and the modifiers that come into play.

Under the hood, Strategos feels like a history nerd's digital reimagining of Warhammer, minus the need to spend your entire life savings on figures painted to standards barely good enough to look at from half a table away.

Crossing the Rubicon

I have a weakness for campaign modes, so that felt like a natural starting point for my Strategos journey. With a few clicks, I became Alexander the Soon-to-Be Great, thrust into the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE against the might of the Athenian army.

Before sending you to the battlefield, each campaign mission lets you choose which unit types you want to bring. This is limited to certain slots, but it adds a nice layer of customization without jeopardizing your army's identity. The choices are typically for units of the same class, like different mounted types.

Like most good RTS games, Strategos has a staging phase where you can redeploy your units depending on your gameplan. Or you can always just run with the default, wide front layout, which I did initially until I got the hang of things.

Where it stands out from other games is the General mechanics, however. Your army's field commanders are attached to certain units, and only they can issue orders on the battlefield.

During lulls in battle, orders can be shouted at a decent range, but most of the time, I ended up relying on the Couriers to do the job. Following in the footsteps of Hermes, they dart through the thick of battle to deliver instructions. Most of the time, they make it, but casualties are inevitable. Couriers are a finite resource, which forced me to be mindful of what orders really needed to get through.

Fortunately, Strategos does away with micromanaging and features some of the most pleasantly autonomous unit management I've seen in a while.

In line with the majority of real engagements, the battles in this game end without the total elimination of the enemy. Sometimes, you can have the side that took the worst beating come out victorious so long as it stood its ground.

During my campaign experience, I found it a missed opportunity that the state of units does not transfer between missions, breaking the feeling of actual continuity. Given the intervals between some of the campaign battles, it makes sense that losses in some generic cavalry unit would just be replenished, so I understand the reasoning there. Still, it would have been nice to have a stronger attachment to your army.

Mechanical Animals

In Strategos, unit commanders may require generals to issue major orders, but they act independently once they reach their positions. The modifiers and specifics are outside the scope of this review, but the practical outcome is that you are able to actually manage the overall flow of battle instead of trying to force a group of archers to engage.

This has realistic consequences, sometimes negative: for example, your infantry may run into a concealed enemy en route to the target area and decide to charge to preserve themselves. This, in turn, may leave your flank exposed and have cascading effects on the battle. For the most part, I found that it greatly improves my battlefield management.

Terrain plays a big part in Strategos, and I was happy to see that this goes beyond just trees slowing down units. Your troops are affected by elevation, vegetation, waterways, and even specific types of soil. The specific interactions vary per unit type: dismounted archers, for example, can move through forested areas unhindered for the most part, whereas cavalry struggles there.

Once you come to terms with the intricate complexities that rule over combat in Strategos, the game gradually scales up the difficulty through the campaigns and in reenactments. In later missions, the margin for error is drastically reduced, though it never feels unfair or impossible.

The real challenge is managing armies so large in a cohesive manner, which makes the first battles you experience feel like silly skirmishes in comparison. The bitter taste of defeat is the best teacher in Strategos, so it only takes a few humblings and coffee-infused meditation sessions to come back wiser.

Where I have some mixed feelings is the audiovisual experience. Strategos sets the scene nicely with the music and battle cries, and the animations are endearing, but there is a certain cartoonish quality to the whole affair that falls in the grey zone between artistic choice and dated design.

None of this really gets in the way of the gameplay, and sometimes that vintage air takes me back to the old days of playing Rise of Nations after school, but there is always that nagging feeling that it could have been just a little more polished.

Time passes equally for everyone on this planet, but it feels like ages have passed since we got a good, encyclopaedic antiquity simulator for PC. Strategos looks and feels like a finished product that can deliver engaging, realistic battles for you to flex that armchair general muscle on. The minuscule budget is on display at times, but Hannibal was primarily concerned with winning his battles instead of smelling the flowers. Strategos delivers where it matters most and has all the hallmarks of a real-time strategy classic.