In this work different strongly-coupled gauge theories with and without fundamental matter have been studied on the lattice with an emphasis on the confinement problem and the QCD phase diagram at nonvanishing net baryon density as well as on possible supersymmetric extensions of the standard model of particle physics. In gauge theories with a non-trivial centre symmetry, as for instance SU(3)-Yang-Mills theory, confinement is intimately related to the centre of the gauge group, and the Polyakov loop serves as an order parameter for confinement. In QCD, this centre symmetry is explicitly broken by quarks in the fundamental representation of the gauge group. But still quarks and gluons are confined in mesons, baryons and glueballs at low temperatures and small densities, suggesting that centre symmetry is not responsible for the phenomenon of confinement. Therefore it is interesting to study pure gauge theories without centre symmetry. In this work this has been done by replacing the gauge group SU(3) of the strong interaction with the exceptional Lie group G2, that has a trivial centre. To investigate G2 gauge theory on the lattice, a new and highly efficient update algorithm has been developed, based on a local HMC algorithm. Employing this algorithm, the proposed and already investigated first order phase transition from a confined to a deconfined phase has been confirmed, showing that indeed a first order phase transition without symmetry breaking or an order parameter is possible. In this context, also the deconfinement phase transition of the exceptional Lie groups F4 and E6 in three spacetime dimensions has been studied. It has been shown that both theories also possess a first order phase transition. ...