Starcraft 2 multiplayer is free to play and it's an amazing game.

Battle For Wesnoth is turn based and also free to play (it's FOSS in fact), and it's pretty great though not as visually pleasing.

Hades Star, VERY long term game though. There are great tutorials for AoE 2 DE and you dont really need build orders to play well and have fun

Homeworld is a great game and often on sale sometimes up to 85% off. You could also try one of the older Civilization games like Civ4 if you want a cheaper option (Cheaper than the newer Civ games) If your group of friends are in a budget, although they are good games, I would advise against games by paradox is their business model includes releasing alot of DLC through the games lifetime

Epicinium is a pretty good free online turn based strategy game- Battle for Wesnor is another one. Recommending both!

Edit: Can find the former on steam and the latter on its own site I believe

Battle of Polytopia. A mini 4X game. Really fun for a good amount of time, even against bots. Basic tribes are free, but you have to buy a dlc tribe (1€ for the cheapest) to play online. Which is ridiculously cheap for the quality of the game.

I can't think of any game like FFT on android that has multiplayer

But you can use PPSSPP emulator with online play enabled to play FFT WotL PSP version, it has multiplayer mode but just single battles, not story coop or anything

Ticket To ride is really good, in a 4ppl lobby, carcassonne also good little slow, underlords prettt fun, kinda dead gsme no updates but still fun with friends

Been forever, so maybe someone can confirm or correct me, but Uniwar might fit your criteria

Chess

Also how does a strategy game list exist without either of the starcrafts on it? Be real.

I've also enjoyed tempest rising, broken arrow, and terminator a lot which aren't on this list. Warcraft 3 is surging in popularity with young players right now. 3v3 lobbies are mostly new players in WC3.

Starcraft 1 (remastered)

MyHordes is a multiplayer game where 40 players work together to survive in a town under constant threat from zombies. Each day, players have a limited number of actions. Towns typically last several days, and success depends on strategic resource gathering, building essential structures, and carefully managing water, food, and other supplies.

Available in English, German, French and Spanish.

MyHordes: https://myhordes.eu/jx/public/welcome

• Wargroove
• Mushroom Wars
• Advance Wars: Re-Boot Camp, when it finally comes out some time after world peace has been achieved and releasing war games is no longer insensible
• Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel
• Civilization 6, not sure if anyone plays that on Switch though

What games have you played? There are many online games. As for the classic 5v5 MOBA, I would say that Honor of Kings is the best, then there are other styles such as CoC, iGP Manager, Souls, Brawlhalla, Brawl Stars, Chess, CoD Mobile, PUBG Mobile or Legends of Runeterra.

Please share your own

Real strategic thinking in video games? Go into 4x strategies. Start with Master of Orion for example, then ascend towards Stellaris, Europa Universalis and Distant Worlds 2. Only this type of games (seriously macro, "open system", complex, sometimes even non-linear etc.) train mental facilities close to proper strategic thinking applicable in real-world contexts.

Slay the Spire. 

You have to deal with RNGesus, Bird Cultists, and worst of all, your own dumbass, short-sighted decisions. 

You'll learn how to plan ahead. You'll learn how to optimize your ratios. You'll learn how to adapt and "lean-in" to a situation rather than forcing a narrative that just won't work. You'll learn a lot about order of operations & causality. You'll learn less about negotiation, but more about how to weigh options and make a rational choice. But you'll screw that choice up time and time again, chasing some shiny object or even worse, chasing hope. You'll learn how to identify synergies. 

If that doesn't do it for you, UnCiv is a mobile version of Civ 5.

Europa Universalis 4. Loved it, entered me into the world of Grand Strategy games. You run an empire from 1444 till 1821.

You build relationships with empires, call in favours befriend those that may protect you, especially as a small nation. Economic goals, trade power, embargo’s, inflation and corruption. Territorial aspect, war or through political means. There’s more than this, but main points.

However when it comes to skills that can be applied, as someone now working in a COO team idk how transferable these would be to be honest with you. I use to be a heavy gamer and still try when I get the time. But I can’t name a game that can help you practice skills that can be applied in real life. General strategy is best and for that thought process of thinking ahead I’d say chess will do the job.

I’d also recommend Victoria, which is more economy and politics based.

However a lot of paradox games are significantly better with DLCs and they can get expensive with those. There is a bit of learning curve with them but from the sounds of it you’d enjoy that.

Surprisingly, arma reforger.

It’s a sandbox, not everyone plays it super strategically, but to some extent it’s basically game theory the game.

Otherwise chess

Try Twilight Imperium 4th edition with the prophecy of kings expansion. It’s a board game not a video game, but there’s a free version on discord and has a steep learning curve. It’s better in person but is quite time consuming.

Lots of good stuff in there like making decisions with imperfect information, allocating resources efficiently, trading and transacting with rivals, long term planning vs short term gains, and lots of fun ways to get distracted from the true end goal

As my flair says - AoE 2 and 3.

How about this? Northgard https://apps.apple.com/ru/app/northgard/id1533979882

Hades star is pretty deep.

My latest obsession is play.stateofsurvival.net give it a try

If you're into chess games you could check out Godsbane. It's a 1v1 strategy game:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1480960/Godsbane/

Best is entirely subjective. Also what genre are you looking for? For rts, Starcraft 1 and 2, Warcraft 3, Company of Heroes 2, Supreme Commander, Dawn of War 2 Elite mod, Age of Empires 4 and 3 and 2 all have active player bases and are excellent.

Steel Division 2, great RTS

My top teir list in order: Hearts of Iron 4 Crusader kings 3 Wargame: Red dragon Door Kickers 2 Victoria 2

All amazing in my opinion but can also just depend on the mood or tast