They Are Billions

They Are Billions is a 2019 real-time strategy game from the Spanish studio Numantian Games, set in a steampunk world overrun by infected hordes. You build a colony, gather resources and defend it with walls, towers and soldiers. The game's full release added a campaign, The New Empire, with base-building, combat and tactical missions.

It runs in real time and can be paused at any time to give orders and place buildings. A single infected getting through can spread through a whole colony, so defence is everything, and the game is built around a final wave of enormous size.

Its hordes are spectacular and its tension is real: one gap in a wall can end hours of play. Its pause is essential and makes planning possible under pressure.

It is not a squad game in its main mode. Its tactical missions, with a hero and a few soldiers, are closer to what this library covers.

They Are Billions shares Fallout Tactics' world after collapse and its pausable real time, and puts the dead in place of mutants. It shows how a pause makes a huge real-time fight manageable.