51st State is an apocalyptic board game that fits some of your criteria.
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2026
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I've already glazed Frostpunk here but I honestly cannot shut the hell up about that game so you're going to hear about it again.
There's a map scenario where you have to survive mid-winter right after a mob (likely that you took part in) has destroyed half of the town and lynched the former mayor.
There's not enough roofs to keep people warm, burnt ruins cover the landscape restricting your building until you can clear them, people are injured and a group of the population will not be able to help until their injuries are healed (an endeavor that takes a long time to see any return on, if at all). Oh and the former mayor was an actual dumbass who built roads and zoned the town in a way that will set you on a slow doomspiral if you don't devote some work to clearing even the intact infrastructure.
The game has its usual diagetic ideology choices you have to make to help the recovery but also there are additional major damages to the society that will result in a single inevitably: you will not get to leave alive and will have to make your peace with setting up the next generation for a better future than was handed to you.
Just had to bring it up again because even though it isn't a literal war game it still somehow covered everything on that list.
Suzerain is phenomenal at this. More story and decision making rather than typical rts/TBS. But really handles a lot of those considerations.
There's an in-browser game, a political simulation for Germany's inter-war period from the point of view of the Social Democratic party (the biggest at the time, soon to be ousted by the Nazis): https://red-autumn.itch.io/social-democracy
You basically have to make lots of tough political and economic choices to try to slow down the explosive growth of the NSDAP party. It's tough but very replayable.
Not exactly what you're looking for, but this reminds me of The Quiet Year:
The Quiet Year is a map game. You define the struggles of a community living after the collapse of civilization, and attempt to build something good within their quiet year. Every decision and every action is set against a backdrop of dwindling time and rising concern.
The game is played using a deck of cards – each of the 52 cards corresponds to a week during the quiet year. Each card triggers certain events – bringing bad news, good omens, project delays and sudden changes in luck. At the end of the quiet year, the Frost Shepherds will come, ending the game.
The game occupies a niche somewhere between a ttrpg and a board game.
I think the adventure zone podcast used the quiet year as an interlude or pre-campaign setup I think (as I'm sure others have as well)
That's exactly where I learned about it! They ran it as a worldbuilding tool for the Ethersea arc.
Good point, I hadn't thought about the entire post apocalypse genre. But I was rather thinking about something similar to a strategy game like Tropico or SimCity, just in that setting
Rebel Inc comes to mind.