Colony Sims With The Best Combat

The colony-sim genre is saturated with deeply complex titles packed with mechanics that focus on resource management and base-building. Building and expanding a base, recruiting new members to the colony, and scavenging for resources tend to be the mechanical focus of these games.

Despite the fact that many colony-sims use enemy raids as an incentive to seek out more resources and build better colonies, deep/engaging combat is somewhat of a rarity in the genre. However, there are a handful of titles that include rewarding, tactical combat systems.

7 Ascent Of Ashes

Special Mention

• Platform(s): PC
• Released: N/A
• Developer(s): Vivid Storm Interactive
• Genre: Colony Sim

This unreleased colony-sim takes heavy inspiration from games such as RimWorld but with a stronger focus on tactical, real-time-with-pause, squad-based combat. In the game, players build, manage, and expand their colony of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world but can also send their survivors out on dangerous expeditions.

These combat-heavy expeditions are deeply tactical, with much of the game's combat focusing around tactical positioning and well-organized firing lines. Ascent Of Ashes is being developed by the team behind RimWorld's Combat Extended mod, and looks to be a promising colony-sim.

6 Trailblazers: Into The March

Special Mention

• Platform(s): PC
• Released: N/A
• Developer(s): Strangers
• Genre: Colony Sim

Putting players in control of a colony on board a massive, customizable landship, Trailblazers: Into The March is a unique combination of the rogue-lite and colony-sim genres. Though currently unreleased, Trailblazers: Into The March promises to offer gameplay that blends resource management and strategy with tactical combat.

Combat in Trailblazers: Into The March is set to feature dramatic battles between landships, as well as a morale system that impacts the performance of colony members in battle. For fans of the rogue-lite structure and colony-sims alike, Trailblazers: Into The March looks to be a promising title.

5 Songs Of Syx

A City-Sized Colony-Sim With Large Scale Battles

• Platform(s): PC
• Released: 2020
• Developer(s): Gamatron AB
• Genre: Colony Sim

This large-scale combination of the colony-sim and city-building genres tasks players with managing and defending a growing city. Along the way, players will need to amass and manage their army, as well as the city itself.

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By  Sid Natividad

Despite Songs Of Syx not being a massively combat-focused game, its large-scale results in some truly dramatic battles. These battles can feature thousands of units at a time, leading to some frequently entertaining and satisfying combat encounters that are somewhat reminiscent of the Total War games. However, these encounters can get repetitive after a while.

4 Rise To Ruins

Tower Defense, Real-Time Strategy, And Colony Management

Rise To Ruins is a unique combination of colony-sims such as RimWorld, God-games such as Black And White, and the tower defense genre. As a result, it offers an experience that's extremely distinctive, focusing around base building and defense against hordes of enemies.

Despite focusing more on its base defense elements, Rise To Ruins does task players with the management of their civilians; each civilian requires food and water, and these civilians are important as they can be used to perform a variety of tasks. Much of the game's combat is based around tower defense mechanics but features some real-time strategy elements that help to shake things up.

3 RimWorld

Strategic Base Building And Tactical Positioning

RimWorld is one of the best colony sims available on Steam, with a great deal of replay value even without its extensive amounts of DLC. RimWorld isn't always a combat-heavy experience, but each combat encounter can be extremely strategic, especially as the game progresses.

Much of a player's success in RimWorld's combat comes down to how well they set up their base and its defenses. Sandbags, choke-points, traps, and kill-boxes all play important parts in RimWorld's combat. For the most part, though, players will need to tactically position their fighters and ensure that each of them has the right equipment for their particular set of skills.

2 Cult Of The Lamb

Hack-And-Slash Dungeon-Crawling And Colony Management

Cult Of The Lamb isn't a straight-up colony-sim, offering an experience that's more of a hybrid between the colony-sim and action rogue-like genres with a little Animal Crossing thrown in for good measure. Cult Of The Lamb is a tremendously popular indie hit, and for good reason: its balance between action-packed combat and colony management is well-tuned, offering two very different flavors of gameplay.

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By  Russ Boswell

The combat of Cult Of The Lamb is built around a dungeon-crawling structure that has players hacking and slashing through enemies in a variety of rooms, often leading up to a climactic boss fight. The variety of weapons and powers, as well as the massively helpful dodge roll, help to keep combat engaging throughout each crawl through Cult Of The Lamb's stylized dungeons.

1 Kenshi

Real-Time-With-Pause, Squad-Based Combat

Kenshi is an incredibly deep, open-world sandbox RPG with an abundance of systems and a variety of things to do. Kenshi's biggest selling point is its expansive world and the freedom that it offers players, but its combat system is also surprisingly complex.

Kenshi features party-based mechanics, and although players can choose to go it alone, party members are extremely important to the player's chances of survival. Gathering a balanced composition of party members and training the right skills, as well as acquiring good equipment, are all important aspects of Kenshi's combat. However, careful positioning and target priority, as well as cautious threat assessment, are often the deal-breakers between a successful battle and bleeding out in the sand.

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