Best Strategy Games Focused On Base Building

Building is believing. There’s something almost primal about turning a patch of wilderness into a fully functional base that churns out resources, supports a growing population, and maybe defends against the occasional alien swarm or medieval siege. Strategy games that center on base building aren’t just about placing walls and plopping down barracks. They’re about vision. Balancing chaos and order until players’ little digital society can function like a well-oiled machine… or go up in flames when someone forgets to hook up the oxygen supply.

The following games aren’t just strategy titles with a building mechanic. They make the very act of base building the strategy. Whether it’s laying conveyor belts with surgical precision, digging through hellish asteroid rock, or orchestrating worker drones in a sinister volcano lair, these games know that the base is the battlefield.

Planetbase

Basically Space Factorio, But With Death Around Every Corner

• Platform(s): PC, PS4, Xbox One
• Released: October 16, 2015
• Developer(s): Madruga Works
• Genre(s): Strategy, Simulation

Planetbase is what happens when players are given the keys to a lifeless planet and told, “Good luck not suffocating.” Every single element of its base-building loop hinges on survival, and it doesn’t waste any time reminding players that space is trying to kill them. The game drops players on barren planetary surfaces with a handful of colonists, and from there, it becomes a constant battle to build airtight structures, manage oxygen production, generate energy, and not starve.

There’s an almost puzzle-like rhythm to Planetbase, where placement of domes, power grids, and supply chains needs to be done with both expansion and disaster mitigation in mind. Sandstorms will knock out solar panels, meteor strikes can punch holes in oxygenated rooms, and if one part of the chain breaks, the rest follows fast. It’s a relatively stripped-down sim compared to some others on this list, but the way it forces players to think ten steps ahead makes every successful colony feel like a small miracle.

Evil Genius 2: World Domination

Build A Lair So Elaborate It Would Make Dr. No Jealous

This one doesn’t hide its intentions. Evil Genius 2: World Domination is a love letter to Bond villains and 60s spy kitsch, but underneath the cartoonish aesthetic lies a rock-solid base management game. It puts players in the role of a globe-threatening mastermind who must carve out an underground lair, fill it with traps, henchmen, science labs, and eventually launch schemes to take over the world.

The joy of Evil Genius 2 comes from how granular its lair-building becomes. Players can install fake walls to trick agents, build corridors lined with lasers, and automate the capture, interrogation, and disposal of infiltrators. It’s silly, yes, but also cleverly intricate. Each room has a purpose. Whether it’s research, power generation, or covering up nefarious deeds, keeping everything running smoothly while hiding one’s operations from nosy governments becomes a delicate balancing act. The base isn’t just decoration; it’s a tool, a weapon, and a playground of wonderfully diabolical design.

Stronghold Crusader

Sand, Steel, And Siege Warfare

Stronghold Crusader might not have the sleekest interface or most modern engine, but it remains one of the purest base-building RTS experiences out there. Set during the Crusades, it’s all about building castles. Actual, functioning castles, and then testing them against waves of enemy armies. Every decision, from where to place the granary to how many archers man the walls, can be the difference between a glorious defense and a fiery collapse.

What sets Stronghold Crusader apart is how deeply its mechanics reflect medieval logistics. Food production, religious morale, taxation, and population control. It’s all part of running a functioning keep. But once the siege begins, the base becomes the gameplay. Moats, murder holes, boiling oil, and flaming pitch aren’t just gimmicks; they’re essential to repelling sieges, and every castle layout is a strategic expression. It’s less about building for aesthetics and more about building to survive an onslaught.

Oxygen Not Included

Micromanagement In The Best Kind Of Hell

Oxygen Not Included doesn’t pull any punches. It drops players deep inside an asteroid with a few dupes (space colonists who are definitely not equipped for this job) and says: Survive. What follows is a chaotic ballet of plumbing, gas management, temperature regulation, and the occasional slow-burn disaster that spreads across the base like a sickness. Every tile dug and machine built affects the delicate balance of heat, air, and water.

What makes Oxygen Not Included special is how interconnected everything is. Want to cool down your food storage? Great, but that coolant will heat something else. Need to mine deeper? Hope you routed oxygen pipes properly, or those miners will suffocate. The base is the strategy. It’s an ever-growing, self-regulating organism where failure usually happens slowly, then all at once. And when it all works? It feels like beating a Rubik’s Cube with exploding tiles.

Factorio

Engineering Catharsis In Its Purest Form

Factorio is the closest gaming has come to turning engineering into a religion. It’s not about survival or story; it’s about optimizing the unoptimizable. Players land on an alien planet, start mining iron and copper, and before long, they’re neck-deep in conveyor belts, inserters, smelting lines, and sprawling factory systems that loop in on themselves like some kind of industrial ouroboros.

The base building here is the entire point. Every inch of the map becomes part of a greater logistical puzzle as players attempt to automate resource flow, defend against alien attacks, and research increasingly absurd technologies. There’s no campaign to follow, no forced objectives; it’s just players versus inefficiency. And the community has embraced this philosophy completely, with players spending hundreds of hours refining their base layouts down to the tile. It’s complex, technical, and wildly satisfying for anyone whose brain lights up at the sight of a perfectly synchronized assembly line.

RimWorld

When Base Building Meets Human Chaos

Building a base in RimWorld is like building a sandcastle during a hurricane while your colonists are arguing about who stole someone’s pants. It’s a colony sim with emergent storytelling baked into every mechanic, where players manage the construction of a home in a wild, alien land filled with raiders, plagues, and colonists who have emotional breakdowns if the dining room isn’t pretty enough.

While the game’s storytelling gets a lot of the spotlight, the base building is just as crucial. Defenses need to be designed to funnel attackers, bedrooms placed far enough from work zones to prevent burnout, and refrigeration systems crafted to preserve food in heat waves. It’s not about building pretty bases; it’s about building ones that can function despite social drama and random calamities. And because every colonist has different needs, skills, and neuroses, the base must evolve around them, not the other way around.

Age Of Empires 2: Definitive Edition

The Definition Of What A Good RTS Economy Looks Like

No matter how many strategy games come and go, Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition remains the gold standard for base-focused RTS gameplay. The economy loop is as smooth as silk: chop wood, mine gold, farm food, and the race to build up your town center, push into new ages, and fortify your base while prepping for war is still as compelling as it was in 1999.

What really sells the base building here is its clarity. Every structure has a defined purpose and fits into a tech tree that encourages strategic growth. Walls aren’t just for show; they buy precious time during early raids. Proper placement of lumber camps and farms can make or break resource flow. Players who know how to place their buildings efficiently will always have the edge. It’s not flashy, but AoE2’s base building is a masterclass in elegant, balanced design, and that’s why it’s still played competitively to this day.

Dwarf Fortress

Losing Is Fun, And So Is Digging Into Madness

There’s base building, and then there’s Dwarf Fortress, which lets players simulate the complete rise and fall of an underground society down to individual toe injuries and spilled goblets. It’s notoriously opaque and punishing, but once players climb the learning cliff, it becomes one of the deepest base-building experiences in gaming history. Every tile carved into the mountain is a choice, every room placement a risk.

The dwarves will build farms, workshops, dining halls, magma forges, and more, but they’ll also fall into depression, throw tantrums, and occasionally start cults. Building a successful fortress means understanding not just logistics but psychology. Players must route water to wells without flooding the fortress, store food away from miasma, and engineer traps that can hold off goblin sieges while also leaving room for dwarven art installations and feasts. It’s as much simulation as it is strategy, and it rewards obsession.

StarCraft 2

Where Base Building Becomes A Razor-Sharp Science

In StarCraft 2, the base isn’t just the heart of one’s army. It’s the whole game. At the highest level, matches are decided in the opening minutes based on the efficiency of a player’s base layout, expansion timing, and production flow. It’s a real-time ballet of SCVs mining minerals, pylons powering buildings, and Zerg creep slowly swallowing the map like a sentient infection.

Each race treats base building differently. Terrans wall off with depots and bunkers, Zerg spread their hive mind through organic creep and morphing structures, and Protoss warp in buildings with psionic flair. The level of optimization required at the competitive level is staggering. Misplacing a building by one tile can cost valuable seconds in a game where seconds are the margin of victory. Yet even outside esports, the campaign’s base-building missions and co-op modes offer layers of strategic planning that showcase why StarCraft 2 has remained a benchmark for RTS design.