Key facts
- Cheapest right now
- € Standard · Europe · Gamivo
- Live offers
- 29 offers · 14 stores
Want to see more from Gocdkeys on Google?
You need to be signed in to your Google account.
Grand strategy is the corner of PC gaming where one campaign outlasts your interest in everything else on the drive. This list has 22 of them: the ones almost everyone starts with, the ones that hand you a manual on the way in, and five that sit outside the genre but eat a weekend the same way. Next to each is what it costs on our page today.
One thing to check before you pay: a Steam key lands in your own library under your name and takes your own DLC on top, while a shared account is somebody else's profile, where you own nothing and can install nothing. Paradox and Creative Assembly have built a decade of business on expansions, so a cheap base game is only the entrance fee. Seven of the 22 below have an account offer under the cheapest key.
The empire builders almost everyone starts with
Civilization VI moved districts outside the city centre, so a mountain ridge stops being scenery and starts deciding where your campus goes. Reviews: 237,014 positive out of 275,598, Very Positive. Steam asks €59.99; the cheapest key here is €3.85 from 56 offers across 19 shops, and the dearest offer on that same page wants €79.99.
Sid Meiers Civilization VII cuts the campaign into three ages and swaps your civilisation between them while you keep your leader. Half the audience thinks that fixed the late-game slog, the other half wanted their empire to last. 21,256 positive out of 44,284, Mixed. It also has the busiest page here: 121 offers from 21 shops, from €15.82 to €472.72 for the same game. The account costs €19.49, above the cheapest key, so there is no case for it.
Old World hands you a pool of orders each turn instead of letting every unit move, so half the thinking goes into what you leave undone, while your ruler marries, produces heirs and dies mid-campaign. 4,888 positive out of 5,961, Very Positive. Steam price €9.99; the cheapest key is €0.78, the lowest figure in the whole list, from 31 offers and 17 shops.
Endless Space 2 gives factions different rules rather than different bonuses: the Cravers strip a planet bare and have to keep expanding or starve. 14,321 positive out of 17,254, Very Positive. Steam already sells it at €7.99 and the cheapest key is €6.98 across 44 offers and 14 shops. The account at €3.28 buys you access, not the game.
Total War: the campaign map hands you a real-time battle
You move armies around a map, then two of them touch and it becomes a thousand men on a hillside and a cavalry charge you have to time yourself.
Total War WARHAMMER 2 is still the best door into the series: the Vortex campaign is short enough to finish, and if you own the first game both maps merge into Mortal Empires, where most of those 78,301 positive reviews out of 85,110 were earned. Steam wants €59.99; the cheapest here is €6.49 from 29 offers and 14 shops, the top offer €97.63. It is the one purchase in this section I would make without thinking: buy Total War WARHAMMER 2 key and start there.
Total War Warhammer dragged the series out of the history books, and owning it unlocks its races on the combined map. It has aged: 25,356 positive out of 32,096, Mostly Positive. Steam €59.99, cheapest key €5.89 across 29 offers and 14 shops, €65.66 at the far end.
Total War: THREE KINGDOMS made the generals matter: they hold grudges, they defect, and in Romance mode they ride out and duel in front of both armies. 51,684 positive out of 63,029, Very Positive, the best received historical entry here. Steam €39.99, cheapest key €6.49 from 50 offers and 15 shops, dearest €52.23.
Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia is deliberately smaller: Viking-age Britain, no recruitment chains, armies raised from a pool tied to the land you hold. Weakest verdict of the four, 8,619 positive out of 12,313, Mostly Positive. Steam €19.99, cheapest key €6.79, 27 offers, 14 shops.
The Paradox school, where the manual is part of the game
No win screen, no score, no tutorial that covers what you actually need. You pick a country and the game spends forty hours explaining why what it wants is difficult.
Europa Universalis V is the odd one out on price. It has only just come out, so the cheapest key is €41.80, more than several complete classics higher up this page cost with their expansions attached. Mixed for now, 16,639 positive out of 25,211. 44 offers from 16 shops, top one €96.17. The account is listed at €17.99, less than half the key, and this is exactly the game where that shortcut hurts: you will be buying expansions for it for years and on somebody else's profile you cannot install them.
Victoria 3 is the one where you barely fight. You pass laws, drag people out of farms into factories, and watch your own interest groups turn on you when you push too fast. 29,170 positive out of 41,084, Mostly Positive. Steam €49.99, cheapest key €10.32 from 41 offers and 16 shops, up to €79.99.
Imperator: Rome launched badly, was rebuilt from the inside with characters, populations and culture conversion, and was then abandoned. The score still carries the launch: 12,664 positive out of 19,483, Mixed. Steam €39.99, cheapest key €8.32 across 40 offers and 15 shops. The account at €6.29 saves two euros and costs you the library.
Age of Wonders 4 sits between 4X and tactics: you assemble a faction from a body, a culture and a stack of magic tomes, and every battle drops onto a hex map. 13,812 positive out of 16,844, Very Positive, the best reviewed of these four. Steam €49.99, cheapest key €16.41 from 44 offers and 17 shops, dearest €92.05.
Fantasy, science fiction and modern war
Heroes of Might and Magic Olden Era goes back to what the series did before it got complicated: a hero walking an adventure map, towns growing creatures once a week, fights on a small grid. 16,204 positive out of 18,842, Very Positive. Steam €39.99, cheapest key €17.22 from 33 offers and 16 shops, with an account at €6.99.
Warhammer 40k: Gladius Relics of War is a 4X with the diplomacy screen removed entirely: everyone on Gladius Prime is at war from turn one and the wildlife wants you dead too. 6,672 positive out of 8,137, Very Positive. Steam lists it at €40.86; the cheapest key here is €1.49, which with Old World makes the two real bargains of the article. 29 offers, 15 shops, top offer €93.88.
Dune Spice Wars runs in real time with a pause button, and you can take the win by buying the Landsraad vote instead of fighting for it. Leave a harvester out too long and a worm eats it. 9,122 positive out of 11,547, Mostly Positive. Steam €34.99, cheapest key €13.27, and with 24 offers across 14 shops it has the thinnest page here, topping out at €39.48.
Terra Invicta is the hardest game here by some distance. Seven human factions disagree about what to do with the aliens and you fight that out on Earth long before you build a ship, with real orbital mechanics. 7,113 positive out of 9,004, Mostly Positive. Steam €39.99, cheapest key €6.89, 29 offers, 16 shops.
Steel Division 2 is Operation Bagration: build a deck of battalions, then commit them along a front line that visibly bends where you are losing. 6,360 positive out of 8,050, Mostly Positive. Steam €39.99, cheapest key €9.86, and it is the least widely stocked game here, 47 offers but only 11 shops, dearest €100.59.
Not grand strategy, and we are not going to pretend otherwise
No diplomacy, no world map, no wars of succession, so calling these five grand strategy would be dishonest. What they share is the itch: scarcity, logistics, a plan that holds up over hours.
Manor Lords is a medieval town builder made largely by one person, where you drag burgage plots out by hand and the size of a back garden decides whether a family can keep chickens. 64,089 positive out of 76,296, Very Positive. Steam €25.99, cheapest key €16.45 from 39 offers and 17 shops, and an account at €6.49, well under half the key.
Against the Storm is a city builder shaped like a roguelite: each settlement lasts about an hour, you abandon it on purpose, and the upgrades carry into the next one. Cleanest score in the article, 31,169 positive out of 33,158. Steam asks €8.99, the cheapest key is €2.67 from 37 offers across 16 shops, and the account at €1.49 is not worth the euro you save.
Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic makes you plan gravel. A factory stops because the bus carrying the workers never arrived, and it never arrived because you never paved the road. 22,460 positive out of 24,681, Very Positive. Steam €9.99, cheapest key €6.70, 31 offers, 15 shops.
Norland is a medieval colony where the nobles drink, hold grudges and murder relatives, and your economy rests on people you only half control. 7,148 positive out of 8,825, Very Positive. Steam €14.99, cheapest key €10.15 from 31 offers and 15 shops, account at €3.49.
Empires of the Undergrowth is a real-time strategy game about an ant colony: you dig the nest out tile by tile and send workers to strip a beetle. It sounds like a joke and sits at 16,349 positive out of 17,393. Steam €8.99, cheapest key €3.51, 30 offers, 15 shops.
Which of the 22 should you buy?
Never finished a strategy campaign in your life? Civilization VI at €3.85: it explains itself, and at that price a weekend tells you whether the genre is for you.
Two hundred hours of Civ already and you want the game to stop holding your hand: Victoria 3 at €10.32 or Total War: THREE KINGDOMS at €6.49, depending on whether you would rather read a spreadsheet or command cavalry.
Want the most hours per euro? Old World at €0.78, Warhammer 40k: Gladius Relics of War at €1.49 and Against the Storm at €2.67. All three are normal keys that end up in your own library, all three are Very Positive, and together they cost less than a pizza.
I have been a gamer for as long as I can remember, and for the last 14 years I have been making life easier for other gamers. CEO and co-founder of Gocdkeys.
LinkedIn profile More about Luis Abrines
+ 120 Tickets by link