The 18 Best Mobile Strategy Games (2024)

Whether it’s short rounds of Clash Royale or the long scenarios/short sessions of Plague Inc, strategy is one of the best genres for mobile gaming. Many strategy and tactics games are far easier to control with the touch screen of a modern phone than with any controller. What's more, with no need for complex animations and detailed graphics, even older phones shouldn't have any problem playing the best mobile strategy games.

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What makes a great mobile strategy game isn’t just the tactical depth or the bite-sized missions, but the delicate balance between the two. Few players look for mobile titles to play at their leisure. It's more likely that they’re trying to fill time while moving or when waiting in line. That’s why the ability to stop and start at any moment takes priority when talking about any mobile game.

Updated September 24, 2023 by Via Erhard: No matter if a player prefers fantasy, futuristic stuff, or digging into history there's a mobile strategy game for every type of gamer. These games aren't just about defeating bad guys, so players can embark on epic adventures as they improve their critical thinking and strategic skills.

Players get to build their kingdoms and explore amazing virtual worlds while making difficult decisions that challenge them. During their adventures, players can also engage in epic battles, build and manage futuristic cities, and conquer new and exciting lands.

18 Guns Of Glory: Lost Island

Guns of Glory: Lost Island is one of the most exciting MMORPGs gamers can also play on mobiles. This adventurous mobile strategy game transports players into a world where old wars persist, and new ones are on the horizon. During their adventures, players will get to explore an enigmatic island and its ancient civilizations while hunting for treasures.

They'll lead an expedition team to uncover the island's secrets before anyone else. Players will also have to defeat ghosts and sea monsters, and outmaneuver their foes and cunning pirates during their adventures. Guns of Glory: Lost Island skillfully blends exploration, treasure hunting, and strategic gameplay to keep players entertained at all times.

17 Stormshot: Isle Of Adventure

Stormshot: Isle of Adventure is a gripping mobile shooting puzzle game that takes players on an adrenaline-fueled journey across 300 mind-bending levels. Players will be sharpshooters on Skull Isle and will be tasked with finding long-lost treasures hidden beneath the island's dangerous terrain.

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However, if players want to succeed they will have to do much more than just use bullets. They'll need to rely on their wit, precision, as well as their strategic skills. It's a fantasy-inspired strategy game, so players can also meet ghosts and fearsome sea monsters while completing their quest and collecting treasures. Gamers can also decide to forge alliances with fellow adventurers and enjoy this captivating treasure-hunting adventure with other fans.

16 League Of Rome: Strategy War

League of Rome: Strategy War is a great choice for casual and avid gamers alike who enjoy playing fun war games and want to learn more about ancient Rome's history. This immersive turn-based strategy game transports players back in time where they can participate in some of Rome's most famed wars, conquer formidable foes, and relive the glory days of this iconic civilization.

This strategy mobile game meticulously recreates hundreds of historical battles, allowing players to witness Rome's transformation into a vast empire spanning Asia, Africa, and Europe. During their adventures players will get to take command of their legions, employ cunning strategies, and deploy limited forces to their fullest potential. Gamers can also choose from an array of legendary generals, each with unique skills, and assemble diverse troops to form customized legions.

15 Doomsday: Last Survivors

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Doomsday: Last Survivors immerses players in a post-apocalyptic world that's overrun by zombies, and offers a fun experience for players of all levels. Players will step into the shoes of the Commander and will have to lead fellow survivors while constructing a shelter, navigating fog-draped territories, and defeating zombies as well as rival factions.

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It's a thrilling survival game that challenges players' tactical and team-playing skills since making strategic decisions is the key to thriving in this ruthless world. Players will also have to train diverse troop types, employ Hero skills, and craft tactical brilliance to outmaneuver the relentless zombies and help humanity survive.

14 Clash Of Clans

Clash of Clans is one of the most popular mobile strategy games with a vibrant and colorful world that offers a fun and addictive gaming experience to its players. Thanks to its engaging strategic gameplay, gamers can enjoy great customization options and explore a fun battles-filled world where they can fight against players from all over the world.

Since Clash of Clans is highly competitive players can battle against each other in real-time. However, they'll also have to design their bases, upgrade structures, and train unique troops with different abilities among many other things. It's a great option for strategy gamers of all levels as well as for those who are looking for enjoyable strategy mobile games for couples.

13 Rise Of Kingdoms

Rise of Kingdoms is an entertaining strategy game anyone can play on their mobiles no matter their gaming level and get immersed in a fun fantasy world where they can manage their cities, expand their territories, and even conquer new lands.

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It's one of the most customizable mobile strategy games since players can choose from over eleven unique civilizations, and can battle against other players or powerful AI-controlled enemies. Players will have to research new technologies and train their troops as well as use their diplomatic skills to forge strong alliances with other players among many other fun things.

12 Viking Rise

Viking Rise is one of the most entertaining mobile games with Vikings but it's not just for Viking fans but for all players who appreciate beautiful graphics and captivating stories. Thanks to this fun game, players will get to travel back in time to the Viking age and experience what their life was like.

Viking Rise offers players a unique and immersive gameplay experience and takes its players on a fun adventure during which they'll have to lead their clan to glory while also building and managing their own Viking settlement, and expanding their territories. Players can also choose to battle against other players or AI-controlled enemies.

11 Boom Beach

Boom Beach is one of the best mobile strategy games for beginner players since it's highly praised for its supportive community of players. However, players can also enjoy great graphics, while getting transported to a beautiful tropical island.

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During their adventures players will have to rely on their strategic thinking skills and quick reflexes if they want to successfully defeat their enemies. Boom Beach also offers its players strategic depth and fast-paced action, but it's not just about battles, so players will also have to manage resources, upgrade their defenses, train troops, as well as share resources and strategies while engaging in friendly competitions with other players.

10 Into the Breach

Into the Breach is a turn-based tactics game from Subset Games, well known among strategy fans for their space combat roguelike FTL: Faster Than Light. Into the Breach takes the formula of Fire Emblem and Advanced War and adds a roguelite twist: every time the player is defeated, and they often will be, they’ll send help back in time to an alternate timeline, making their next attempt just a little easier.

The mobile port of Into the Breach is available at no additional cost to Netflix subscribers, but it can’t be bought normally. Good news for those subscribed to the streaming service, while everyone else still has plenty of alternate choices for their mobile strategy game.

9 Door Kickers

Door Kickers and Frozen Synapse aren’t quite like any other strategy game before them, and of the two, Door Kickers is easily the more complete, polished product. They play a bit like the planning phase in old Rainbow 6 titles, where the player uses a bird’s eye view of the action zone to plan the movement of a SWAT team.

Being developed as a PC game first, the game is full of different weapons, gadgets, and characters to unlock and experiment with. A mix of bite-sized missions and many different angles from which to approach them makes Door Kickers an engaging strategy game in a form factor that's ideal for mobile gaming.

8 Rusted Warfare

Rusted Warfare is a real-time strategy game in the vein style of Command and Conquer. It is a multiplayer-focused game with no microtransactions and no hidden fees, which is itself a rarity among mobile games. It also has challenges and a skirmish mode to play offline against the computer.

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Rusted Warfare doesn’t have much in the way of a story and its presentation isn’t particularly pleasant. All in all though, for players looking for a straightforward retro RTS, this cheap mobile title delivers that with confidence while punching far above its weight.

7 The Battle For Polytopia

The Battle for Polytopia is like a much simpler Civilization: a turn-based strategy game based on extending an empire with some unique quirks while pursuing either an economic or a military victory. Along the way, players can invest points harvested from their most prosperous cities into expanding their abilities.

From the more varied warfighting of archers and knights to the border expansions brought by farming and fishing, every point invested can completely change the way the game is played. The Battle for Polytopia also has multiplayer, which is unlocked by buying one of the premium civilizations, the cheapest of which only costs around a dollar.

6 The Battle For Wesnoth

The Battle for Wesnoth is quite an old game, having originally been released as open source for Linux machines in the early 2000s. As a result, this game is not as demanding as many other mobile ports, and it’s nearly infinitely expansible thanks to years of custom content.

Battle for Wesnoth takes some inspiration from the Advance Wars series, swapping the tiles for a hex grid and the cartoony modern war for a fantasy theme. The biggest innovation in Battle for Wesnoth is that surviving units can be recalled from previous fights instead of being recruited, which is cheaper as well as making them level up faster.

5 Partia

At first glance, Partia looks just like a Fire Emblem game that didn’t get as much budget for art as its peers. Even when exploring all the different systems, even after getting a good way into the game, this feeling doesn’t go away. Even without details like the rock-paper-scissor combat, where spears beat swords and swords beat axes, Partia seems designed in every aspect to appeal to nostalgic fans of the series.

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What might have contributed to the extended Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones homage that is Partia is the popularity of GBA emulation, and of Fire Emblem in particular, on mobile phones. Partia is an exceptional Tactics RPG, but on mobile, it’s competing with some of the best in the genre.

4 Warbits

Much like Chucklefish’s Wargroove, Warbits is based on the core loop of Advanced Wars but manages to turn the whole system upside down. The premise of this adorable iOS exclusive is simple: why make war when one can simulate war instead? That might sound silly, but it’s a fix to a real problem.

Making the war in Warbits an in-universe game dissipates much of the awkwardness around the Advanced War-like modern battles. On top of that, Warbits is extremely polished for a mobile-only game, with beautiful art and a distinctive presentation. It even has asynchronous multiplayer, meaning that friends don’t have to schedule in advance to play together.

3 Final Fantasy Tactics

Final Fantasy Tactics is widely considered to be one of the best entries in the genre. Besides its name, this tactics-based RPG has little to do with Square Enix’s JRPG saga. Still, when the spin-off was first released in 1997, Final Fantasy had just broken into the mainstream in the West.

Final Fantasy Tactics looks and plays a lot like most other tactics RPGs, except with a much stronger emphasis on its story and more customizable characters. As for the mobile port, it’s based on the updated War of the Lions version, which was originally developed for PSP, and boasts new cutscenes, characters, and events, as well as an improved translation.

2 Clash Royale

Clash Royale is one of the most popular mobile games of all time and for very good reason. Being a multiplayer-only game that’s over five years old, new players might find that getting up to speed takes longer than with most single-player games. Structured around bite-sized gaming sessions, Clash Royale pits two players against each other in three-minute-long matches.

In a mix of deckbuilding, tower defense, and real-time strategy, players have to use the units and spells in their deck to defend their side of the field and destroy the enemy’s towers. While Clash Royale can quickly become repetitive, scaling the rank and seeing new content being added does spice things up occasionally.

1 Plague Inc

2012’s disease management smash hit is just as good today as it was ten years ago. In Plague Inc​​​​​​, the player is the virus, micromanaging its mutations to prepare for a lethal, infectious pandemic. Even with its barebones presentation, the depth of this pandemic simulation is still unmatched among mobile gaming.

The hook of Plague Inc, of helping a deadly pandemic take over the world, might have gone from darkly humorous to actively repelling for many players. While many might be immediately repelled by the theme, Plague Inc is more Don’t Look Up than Contagion: this is the sort of satire that lets players explore how our safety systems can crumble under historical events while spreading a horde of infectious vampires to the new continent with bird migration.

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