Blog
Strategy guides, design notes and engineering stories from the workshop of a browser RTS.
- ·by Rene Wang
Can an LLM play an RTS? We let an AI agent command a real-time strategy match
How an LLM agent can play, and win, a real-time strategy game: why RTS is hard for language models, two real matches, and how to try it with your agent.
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14 modern RTS games worth your time in 2026
The genre everyone declared dead keeps shipping. Fourteen real-time strategy games from the last five years that are actually worth playing in September 2026, what each one does well, and the honest status of the ones that did not make it.
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20 indie strategy games that earned their reputation
Small teams have been carrying the strategy genre for a decade. Twenty independent strategy games, real-time, turn-based, roguelike and enormous, that are worth your evenings in 2026, with the facts checked and the hype left out.
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20 PvP games you can play in your browser right now
No install, no launcher, usually no account: twenty multiplayer games that put you against another human inside a tab, checked in September 2026, plus two famous ones that are not what they look like.
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Free RTS games that are complete games, not demos
Ten real-time strategy games you can play for nothing in 2026 (open-source projects, free-to-play ladders and browser games), with what 'free' actually means for each one, and one famous free RTS that just lost its servers.
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Games like Command & Conquer in 2026
Where to get the C&C feeling now: the remasters and the open-sourced originals, two free re-implementations, the new game that finally nailed it, what is coming next, and where a browser RTS like Steel Tide fits.
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Games like Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander
The streaming-economy RTS is its own family: engineers that build everything, metal and energy that flow rather than stack, and armies that outgrow the screen. Where the lineage stands in 2026, from the 1997 original to the free open-source giant, and what Steel Tide took from it.
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OpenFront and Steel Tide: two browser strategy games with almost nothing in common
Both open in a tab, both are free, both are real-time strategy. After that they disagree about everything: what you control, how many people are in the match, and what winning even means. An honest comparison.
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RTS games that actually work on a phone
Most 'strategy' on the app stores is a timer and a shop. These are the real-time strategy games that survive the move to a six-inch screen, built for it or ported well, checked in September 2026, plus the two famous names that are not what they sound like.
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RTS games where the navy actually matters
Most real-time strategy games treat the sea as a place tanks cannot go. A few make it a front. The games that get naval warfare right, from Forged Alliance to Sea Power, and how Steel Tide's sea works: shipyards, sonar, submarines and transports that carry weight.
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RTS games you can host yourself
When the publisher's servers go, the game goes with them, unless you can run your own. The real-time strategy games with a server you can install, what hosting each one actually involves, and why Steel Tide's is one command.
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Browser RTS games: what actually runs in a tab now
Real-time strategy used to be the genre browsers could not have. Here is what changed, what is still hard, and what a browser RTS gets in exchange for the install it never asks for.
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Games like Rusted Warfare, and what we took from it
Rusted Warfare proved a full RTS fits on a phone. Steel Tide is built in the same tradition. Here is what we borrowed, what we deliberately changed, and what it still does better.
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Hard counters, soft counters, and how to pick the numbers
Why rock-paper-scissors is the backbone of every RTS, what breaks when a counter is absolute, and how a two-axis damage matrix keeps 26 units all worth building.
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How to get better at RTS games: five habits that transfer
Not build orders but habits. Five things that separate a losing RTS player from a winning one, in any game in the genre, and how to practise each of them in a single match.
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Playing an RTS with your thumbs
A finger has no right button, no hover and no Shift, and it covers what it touches. Designing real-time strategy controls for a phone means replacing each of those, not emulating them.
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