Empire Divided is a fun change of pace from the standard Rome II fare.
Civilization VI takes all of the elements from the Civilization franchise, improves on them and produces one of the most unique games in the series.
Hearts of Iron IV is an easy recommendation for grand strategy fans of all ages and encourages them to take the time to figure everything out.
Europa Universalis IV’s online multiplayer used to have significant problems to the point where it was basically non-functional. With the debut of Mare Nostrum, multiplayer seems to be working very well now and despite the occasional disconnect which requires one to restart the entire game, it’s now more enjoyable than the single player experience.
Ashes of the Singularity appears at first glance to be a heavily graphically enhanced carbon copy of Supreme Commander, but functions very differently and honestly feels stripped down.
Cossacks fixes the diplomacy system in a way that was sorely needed.
Anno 2205 succeeds where many in the genre have failed in creating an interesting looking world that the player can care about. Experienced players of the city sim and strategy genres won't find anything new here, though, instead finding one of the most rudimentary offerings in terms of mechanics on the market today.
Civilization's anything-can-be-traded-however-unlikely diplomacy system was a key element of the game and seems to have been removed and the war and peace system is broken as stands. Hopefully this will all be patched at some point, the way Beyond Earth had a significant patch history, as Rising Tide brings a number of positive changes to the table.
Galactic Civilizations III is better than Beyond Earth (especially at release), but in this ever improving genre you have to come up with your best shot at launch and, if you want to sell DLC, build on top of that in engaging ways. This genre is one of high replayability and hundred hour games so your product has to challenge last year's fully DLCed 4x games in a substantive way to merit the kind of investment in time, intellectual energy and money that these games require.
Ancient Space is worth a look for those who enjoy linear real time tactical games, but isn't going to be remembered with the same fondness as the games it has been compared to. While the levels look great up close, there's few other redeeming or original qualities.
Wasteland 2 Kickstarter backers will get what they paid for plus a few glitches they didn't. The game doesn't live up to its ambitions in a number of places, most notably the dialogue system.
Until the rest of the game is released in the form of DLC, at least, it's hard to imagine a good reason to go with Tropico 5 instead of Tropico 4 unless the addition of a tech tree gets you excited.