2014 – Men of War: Assault Squad 2 – 1.5 Million Copies
As a curiosity: did you know this was the year when I started to get really invested in wargaming? It was also the year when Wargame: Red Dragon and the amazing Ultimate General: Gettysburg came out. The first one sold almost 1 million copies and the second one around 200,000. Really impressive numbers for niche games, as neither were all that well known at the time. But the winner of 2014 was the multiplayer-focused Men of War: Assault Squad 2. This game fostered a community so engrossed with the game that it has some of the largest modding communities ever, with mods for almost everything you can imagine.
2015 – Cities: Skylines – 10 Million Copies
By 2015, SimCity fans were craving something that would allow them to create and solve traffic problems in a city of their own making. After the catastrophic failure of SimCity (2013), Paradox swooped in and ate Electronics Arts city-planning cake with the best city-builder ever made, Cities: Skylines, which went on to sell over 10 million copies. To put this into perspective, it’s almost as much as all of the SimCity games put together, 4th one included, whose sales numbers hover around 10 to 12 million.
2016 – Civilization VI – 11 Million Copies
In one of the best games for strategy games ever, with the release of XCOM2 (over 3 million sales), Total War: Warhammer (2.5 million), Hearts of Iron IV (6 million), Stellaris (3 million) and Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun (1.5 million), Civilization VI came out and once again toppled every sales chart with an astounding 11 million copies sold during its lifetime. Yours truly found more enjoyment in this latest entry, as it consolidates the gameplay changes to the formula set forward by Civilization V. I often think of Civilization VI as the game Civilization V should have been. If you’re new to 4X games, I think that Civilization VI is the perfect entryway to the genre and with the amount of content it has, you’re set for over a decade.
2017 – Total War: Warhammer II – 2.5 Million Copies
Just one year after the release of Total War: Warhammer, Creative Assembly doubled down on the success of their fantasy title and released what I consider to be one of the more unique Total War games to date, with a campaign that’s no longer “painting your colour” on the map. The four starting factions each played differently than one another, and Total War: Warhammer II was the first game I feel tried to break the rock-paper-scissors mould of the previous titles. Other standout titles of the year are XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, Endless Space 2, and Steel Division: Normandy 44′. Dawn of War III also came out in 2017 and sold almost 1 million copies, which was surprising to me, given that a lot of people hated the game.
2018 – RimWorld – 3.5 Million
If it were up to me, 2018 would have been dominated by Into the Breach, or Armored Brigade. However, since my purchase only accounts for one in several million, those 3.5 that bought RimWorld have decided that RimWorld would live on as the 2018 best-selling strategy game. The sci-fi colony sim that took direct inspiration from Dwarf Fortress’s idea of fun went on to become strategy’s most beloved game, with countless stories of failed space expeditions to be told by players. Also, I see Jurassic World Evolution being discounted by a lot of players, but it’s worth noting the game sold 2 million copies, quite impressive if you ask me.
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