What happened to the RTS genre?

[May90]

Baneling drop when you have Vikings flying around and marines? Sorry, but these things don't happen is SC2. Yes, you can run whole your army in enemy banelings losing 60-90% of it, but that's why you need upgrades, but this kind of "mistakes" are same as throwing your soldiers to attack walls with only swords, enemy archers will laugh at you at kill everything.

Well, you can't have many Vikings against Zerg as they get demolished my Mutas and Hydras. And, no matter how many Marines you have, 20 Overlords will be able to drop a few Banelings and kill off your army.
Here is nothing about realism, by the way. In real life the Marines would split themselves, without any "control" from the general. In the game, however, they would just stupidly stand and shoot, ignoring the fact that 2 Banelings can bust them all. This is something that I don't like about RTS genre in general, and about such fast-paced games as Starcraft in particular: a lot of time you spend on things that your army should do itself. Marines' split, Ghosts' snipes, Marauders' and Stalkers' hit and run, Sentries' shield... It would be great if they all would do it themselves, saving you a lot of time to do the management stuff: teching up, taking expansions, etc.
Now, it is bearable to have these things done by yourself in relatively slow-paced games, like Age of Empires, or even Dune series. But in Starcraft, it becomes really tedious. Instead of calm play with thinking and observing the battlefield, you have to spend a lot of time kiting these 2 rushing Zealots.

I don't know much about Jedi Knight 2, but i've played Jedi Academy, and i remember huge hype about dual-wielding swords. I can say one thing: one Heavy-style ligthsaber beats the crap out of it. I think same shit was with Jedi Knight 2, there should be something to counter that combo, if not - this game is poorly balanced and shouldn't be played until fixed.

I get the feeling that Jedi Academy was, like, say, Dragon Age 2, a game that was aimed to cut a lot of cash by using its predecessor's success. It was terrible unbalanced game. You are right, dual-wielding swords were too strong in that game, but not only them. Weapons were totally useless: they were weak in Jedi Knight 2, but they at least were a bit useful in such team modes as CTF, where one player could distract another player in a lightsaber battle, while his teammates shoot from the distance. In Jedi Academy, weapons were nerfed so much that they were literally unplayable.
Jedi Knight 2 was much better balanced, but, of course, players found some exploits and destroyed the game with them.

In medieval times there was many ways to defeat overwhelming force of enemies, it was called tactics and formations. I've learned this from Cossacks, when you basically but your pikemen in front, musketman (or buckshot cannons) behind and enemy will have to lose around 50% of their army to even close distance (footman will die to buckshot/musketman, horsemans won't pass pikeman).

If it is 1000 Pikemen and 200 Cannons against 4000 Horsemen charging right in them, then sure, Horsemen would be slaughtered. If it is 100 Pikemen and 10 Cannons against 2000 Horsemen, however, there was no way Pikemen would win.
The only way people could defeat 10 times bigger in size army is while defending castle. Before 1400 or so, when siege weapons became really powerful, it was literally impossible to take castle in any way other than by attrition, even if your army is 100 times bigger. You just couldn't get inside.

If i understand correctly, you want a game where you will explore for resources, build huge army and engage enemy at 40m-1h point where everything solved by having bigger army?

I want a game where I don't have to react in nanoseconds in order to not lose half my army to some cheesy unit. Actually, Dune 2 did it very well: when a enemy unit gets close, you are warned and have, at least, a few seconds to scroll to that place and to arrange your units in a defensive position. It's different in Starcraft: you hear warning, click on the minimap - and see your army stormed twice by HT and each unit having lost half HP. Again, it is totally unrealistic: only insanely stupid and drunk people would just stay waiting patiently when they get stormed.

And again. In SC2 your army is not everything that matters. Even if you lose half of your army (implying you dominated your opponent) you will recover MUCH quicker because of superior economy (more moneyz on productionz) and map control (he can't take expansions safe).

No way. Unless your opponent is so bad that he doesn't get the idea of splitting his overwhelming army in a few parts and send them to all your expansions. If you have 5 bases and your opponent has 2 bases, but he has 3 Colossi, 15 Zealots and 10 Stalkers and you only have 5 Marauders and 2 Vikings, you are dead.
Well, in Age of Empires, if you have 2 times less units than your opponent, you are in trouble too. However, there it takes an awful lot of time to destroy half the enemy buildings, especially castles and towers, so the player with superior economy, actually, usually wins, and there is not much his/her opponent can do, because there are no cheesy units.

Even in AoE, priests could steal your weak units in a blink of an eye, or you could lose all your infantry (or even important buildings) due to sneaky catapult barrage.

Priests were really hard to control. They didn't have automatic attack, so you had to point every unit manually, and by the time you point the 10th unit or so, your priests are usually dead.

Try out Europa Univesalis 4, it has great siege mechanic (you have to supply your troops and if you won't break enemy walls fast enough, your troops will get hungry, cold, sick and such and will perform much worse. Same goes for defending side, if they don't break siege/capitulate, whole population can die off due to sickness/starvation/unrest). It's very complicated strategy, but it's turn-based, because of shit you have to do lots of shit on your turns.

Unfortunately, EU4 was too easy, compared to EU3. Let's start with the fact that it is not RTS by any means. Then, it is so easy when you have some experience in it or EU3. It took me, I think, 100 years or so, starting as Denmark, to conquer half the Europe and to expand a bit into Ottomans and Russia. You have so much money in that game that you really don't have to worry about your army eating your resources: you can have a size of army 3 times of your supply limit and still not to have a very negative income. Also, unlike EU3, it would take really much expansion without any Casus Belli until the countries will start declare war to you. In EU3 it would take 1-2 small annexed countries to find yourself at war with half the world.

And, actually, EU3 was also quite easy, once you get a hang of it. Victoria II was far more complex. And Supreme Ruler: Cold War was more complex still.

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Actually, there is another great RTS many people have missed, I guess. It is Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Sure, it was just a copy of AOE2 engine with Star Wars sprites. But the campaigns were amazing, and there were a few new ideas as well: air units (too weak, but, still, interesting to play), Jedi who could both attack with lightsaber and convert. It felt like something between Starcraft and AOE, and also in Star Wars lore.
As a separate game, it is not that great as it is just a copy of AOE (very good copy, but still). But if you perceive it as an official AOE2 expansion, then this game really shines. At least, its single-player component.

[Dessan]

Third and First person shooters happened to RTS games. Everyone started playing those instead, playing CoD online is the new equivalent of lanning.

[Rennadrel]

If you like RTS your gonna have to play starcraft 2, no other competitive ones out there.

You do realize that the majority of RTS players aren't SC loving Koreans right? Most of us just like playing the games because they are fun, but every game has become a macro builder zerg rush snoozefest because every game is a try hard to be competitive rather then fun.

[Wildmoon]

No way. Unless your opponent is so bad that he doesn't get the idea of splitting his overwhelming army in a few parts and send them to all your expansions. If you have 5 bases and your opponent has 2 bases, but he has 3 Colossi, 15 Zealots and 10 Stalkers and you only have 5 Marauders and 2 Vikings, you are dead.
Well, in Age of Empires, if you have 2 times less units than your opponent, you are in trouble too. However, there it takes an awful lot of time to destroy half the enemy buildings, especially castles and towers, so the player with superior economy, actually, usually wins, and there is not much his/her opponent can do, because there are no cheesy units.

It is possible and it actually happens really often. If you watch a lot of pro games you will see that if you are so far ahead in economy then you will rebuild your army so fast that your opponent can't even reach your base soon enough after they crush your last army.

Have you ever seen a terran who keep throwing his army at zerg then proceed to contain and starve the zerg to death? He could do that because 3 base terran would be able to have like 7+ barracks and keep pumping out marines so fast. 3 base zerg would be starved to death without expanding.

Zerg is also well known for "throwing whole army and rebuild it instantly with different composition" tactic.

[May90]

You do realize that the majority of RTS players aren't SC loving Koreans right? Most of us just like playing the games because they are fun, but every game has become a macro builder zerg rush snoozefest because every game is a try hard to be competitive rather then fun.

Wow, thank you so much! I think I just understood why I don't have as much fun with games anymore as I had when I was young. It is because games became so freaking competitive these days that playing for fun is no longer considered viable.

Back when Age of Empires came out, I had no idea about hotkeys and control groups, let alone builds, strategies etc. In other words, I was an incredibly awful player. Yet, somehow, it didn't prevent me from enjoying excellent campaigns. Yes, I played on Hard, not on Hardest. Yes, I saved game every 30 seconds. Yes, I had no idea about economy-based builds and rarely trained more than 15 workers total. Yes, my micro was lacking and I had no idea about kiting and such. Yet, I enjoyed the game so much. It was a lot of fun trying to beat a chosen campaign mission in different, often cheesy, ways. Will siege units only work? Will ships only work? Will tower rush work? Will priests only work? How about abandoning by initial base and rebuilding somewhere where my opponent will have a hard time attacking me due to terrain advantage? There was just SO much to do back then.

Now, look at Starcraft 2. Completely different mentality. "You have less than 100 APM? NOOB". "You built Forge before Gateway against Terran? NOOB". "You didn't know about 12 minutes Roach+Hydra timing attack? NOOB". It's like people compete in their ego today, instead of having fun with the game trying different plays. No, it is different now. People play the same refined builds every game and bark at those who try to play on their own.

Maybe I need to change my own attitude and ignore that of other people. I miss the days when I just fooled around with campaign missions in Age of Empires, or in Dune 2000, or, if we don't limit ourselves with RTS, in Doom 2. I would start the second D'ark mission in AOE2 and try some crazy stuff, like archers only. I still remember that awesome game I had 10 years ago or so. The goal of that mission is to destroy one of the castles. So, I cleared the area around one of the Burgundian castles and built a castle of my own close to it, so castles started shooting at each other. Me and computer both repaired our castles, and we would raid workers occasionally to halt enemy's repair.
Somehow in modern games I do not feel like doing all this stuff. Supernova mission in Starcraft 2 - I just massed Vikings and Banshees, steamrolled all the enemy bases and never felt like repeating that mission.

[bohapjut]

Planetary Annihilation from what I've heard is good, although I haven't tried it yet.

If you're looking for a pure city-builder and don't mind no combat you could take a look at Banished. It's shaping up to be a nice game similar to the Anno series.

An unknown buyer picked up Rise of Nations in the liquidation this month, so I'm hopeful the game gets a proper sequel or rerelease.

I think what is needed to revitalize the genre is less focus on hyper-competitive twitch/APM gameplay to recapture the more casual players, maybe something like Heroes of the Storm is to the MOBA genre. You know, the people who don't want to min/max and frequent those "40 min. no rush" games. Good tutorial and epic single-player campaigns would help. Most importantly if it wants to stick it needs fantastic map editor and mod support. The custom maps in Warcraft 3 not only added longetivity to that game such that it's still being played, the custom map DotA even spawned the whole MOBA genre.

[endersblade]

You spent $200 on the kickstarter, wouldn't you have beta access and be able to play right now? Not being snarky...I was genuinely curious.

And Beta is Beta, as everyone around here likes to say. The game isn't complete by any means. I have been playing it on and off for about a month now, but I am looking forward to the full game upon completion.

[Deleted]

The RTS genre turned into easy to make "total war" kinda of strategy. You slap a lot of shit around, preferably based on reality so you don't have to waste your time with imagining units and stories, you slap some actual historical battles, once again so you don't have to waste your time writing a story.

Once you did that, you make sure not to make any decent cutscenes or any kind of a single player story campaign. Nah, those idiots will buy it just to fap around in a big sandbox.

Blizzard is the only company that makes REAL RTS-s not that shogun, cesar, who the fuck else total war bullshit with no stories and no campaigns. THQ took a crack at it with Dawn of War but, once again, the game featured crappy cutscenes made with the game engine and also only had the space marine campaign. Latter expansions brought nothing but skirmishes with very light and crappy stories behind them and even more crappy game engine "cut scenes".

It's like only Blizzard knows how to make a fucking RTS game with the whole dish.

[theredviola]

I suggest looking into a game called "Rise of Nations" and its expansion pack "Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots." Think, Civ meets Age of Empires.

[Charge me Doctor]

Zerg is also well known for "throwing whole army and rebuild it instantly with different composition" tactic.

Yeah, it's like, throwing away your roaches at protoss to get extra supply, he manages to defend against them and builds extra immortals to push you and destroy your roach hydra. NOPE, MUTAS, YOU WERE WRONG, now bend over.

@May90, SC2 doesn't need you to be uber-pro-elite gamer to succeed, i've managed to get to gold with only 50-80 APM as protoss.
And people play "same" builds, but you can't 100% follow build you choose, because enemy will know what you are doing, will think ahead and will win you. And even people playing "same" builds, many people can't even execute them properly, fail at timings, micro, macro, transitions and such. And who the fuck cares what people say about you in player vs player games? He is your rival for that match, he will act like an asshole, man up
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Well, you can't have many Vikings against Zerg as they get demolished my Mutas and Hydras. And, no matter how many Marines you have, 20 Overlords will be able to drop a few Banelings and kill off your army.
Here is nothing about realism, by the way. In real life the Marines would split themselves, without any "control" from the general. In the game, however, they would just stupidly stand and shoot, ignoring the fact that 2 Banelings can bust them all. This is something that I don't like about RTS genre in general, and about such fast-paced games as Starcraft in particular: a lot of time you spend on things that your army should do itself. Marines' split, Ghosts' snipes, Marauders' and Stalkers' hit and run, Sentries' shield... It would be great if they all would do it themselves, saving you a lot of time to do the management stuff: teching up, taking expansions, etc.
Now, it is bearable to have these things done by yourself in relatively slow-paced games, like Age of Empires, or even Dune series. But in Starcraft, it becomes really tedious. Instead of calm play with thinking and observing the battlefield, you have to spend a lot of time kiting these 2 rushing Zealots.

If you siege your enemy with tanks, vikings and marines, enemy can't have decent amount of banelings, mutas and hydras. Overlords are slow, you need two expensive upgrades (they require time too, so, he have to plan to defend against your siege before you siege him with exact same unit composition) to drop something. Management in SC2 is basically economy. Economy is getting enough workers (bind your CC, Nexus, Incubator to "5" and click "5">S(S>D, E) to make an SCV(drone, probe) every 17 second), drop buildings (it takes no more than 2 seconds to do so), and queue move commands for workers to get to expansions and build stuff. That's it, this is whole SC2 economy. It's not a mechanic, it is a "breakpoint" that you have to pass, if you manage to click two buttons every 17 seconds, your economy will be at good level. And if you look at minimap closer, you will see squares of different color moving towards you. And there is a meme actually "im in ur base killin ur d00dz" because of SC not having any notification about your forces being attacked. This game has really high skill cap and this

I get the feeling that Jedi Academy was, like, say, Dragon Age 2, a game that was aimed to cut a lot of cash by using its predecessor's success. It was terrible unbalanced game. You are right, dual-wielding swords were too strong in that game, but not only them. Weapons were totally useless: they were weak in Jedi Knight 2, but they at least were a bit useful in such team modes as CTF, where one player could distract another player in a lightsaber battle, while his teammates shoot from the distance. In Jedi Academy, weapons were nerfed so much that they were literally unplayable.
Jedi Knight 2 was much better balanced, but, of course, players found some exploits and destroyed the game with them.

I remember in Jedi Academy explosive wrecking shit, out of everyone who not used "good" force to shield themselves. Weapons wasn't nerfed there, there was no servers that would not play on 3rd level of "force" giving all players almost 100% chance to dodge/block lazorz

If it is 1000 Pikemen and 200 Cannons against 4000 Horsemen charging right in them, then sure, Horsemen would be slaughtered. If it is 100 Pikemen and 10 Cannons against 2000 Horsemen, however, there was no way Pikemen would win.
The only way people could defeat 10 times bigger in size army is while defending castle. Before 1400 or so, when siege weapons became really powerful, it was literally impossible to take castle in any way other than by attrition, even if your army is 100 times bigger. You just couldn't get inside.

Ever heard of pigs head formation? 10 cannons can easily destroy 10-100 horseman each, you should divide your horseman army to two and send one to flank them and steam cannons while first one die due to cannon fire, there was no other way to counter pigs head with only horseman, single pikeman can take down around 3 horseman and is MUCH cheaper. Add there Pigs head formation boosting defense almost in double, there was almost no way to overwhelm it.
That's why without siege weapons you cut off supply lines for enemy castle and pillage farms around it (you can't afford to wall-off EVERYTHING)

No way. Unless your opponent is so bad that he doesn't get the idea of splitting his overwhelming army in a few parts and send them to all your expansions. If you have 5 bases and your opponent has 2 bases, but he has 3 Colossi, 15 Zealots and 10 Stalkers and you only have 5 Marauders and 2 Vikings, you are dead.
Well, in Age of Empires, if you have 2 times less units than your opponent, you are in trouble too. However, there it takes an awful lot of time to destroy half the enemy buildings, especially castles and towers, so the player with superior economy, actually, usually wins, and there is not much his/her opponent can do, because there are no cheesy units.

If terran has 5 bases, he will pump out units like machinegun. Before enemy will reach his base, terran will have 3 times bigger army.
Game is badly balanced if there is not much opponent can do if enemy have got edge in something. And iirc in AoE you could easily "rush" enemy workers with early military units shortly after scouting his position, denying boar and sheep luring and "omg fuck you noob" chat replies. Like, 90% of games can be won this way by putting enemy in HUGE disadvantage from the begin and he won't be able to recover.

Priests were really hard to control. They didn't have automatic attack, so you had to point every unit manually, and by the time you point the 10th unit or so, your priests are usually dead.

No, they were not, you convert enemy units and enemy fights these converted units instead of priests, because player is too busy by building base or w.e. I don't know, but in AoE no one used micro and couldn't beat priests. (Well, elephants was an exception)

Unfortunately, EU4 was too easy, compared to EU3. Let's start with the fact that it is not RTS by any means. Then, it is so easy when you have some experience in it or EU3. It took me, I think, 100 years or so, starting as Denmark, to conquer half the Europe and to expand a bit into Ottomans and Russia. You have so much money in that game that you really don't have to worry about your army eating your resources: you can have a size of army 3 times of your supply limit and still not to have a very negative income. Also, unlike EU3, it would take really much expansion without any Casus Belli until the countries will start declare war to you. In EU3 it would take 1-2 small annexed countries to find yourself at war with half the world.

And, actually, EU3 was also quite easy, once you get a hang of it. Victoria II was far more complex. And Supreme Ruler: Cold War was more complex still.

Yes, i told that it's not an RTS, but it has everything you want from a game. Because slow-paced RTS games are TBS nowadays.
You played on easy settings, right? Complexity if difficulty is very different things. You can rush the game on easy settings yelling "easy newbs" at AI players, or you can get optimal difficulty settings and you will face the need of use of complexity of the game.

Actually, there is another great RTS many people have missed, I guess. It is Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Sure, it was just a copy of AOE2 engine with Star Wars sprites. But the campaigns were amazing, and there were a few new ideas as well: air units (too weak, but, still, interesting to play), Jedi who could both attack with lightsaber and convert. It felt like something between Starcraft and AOE, and also in Star Wars lore.
As a separate game, it is not that great as it is just a copy of AOE (very good copy, but still). But if you perceive it as an official AOE2 expansion, then this game really shines. At least, its single-player component.

I remember it differently, it had lots of hype but failed as RTS game, because it was AoE rip-off with SW models. Jedi were too powerful and cheesy, campaign was boring (i stopped playing it after Veider mission) probably because i already seen these event in movie and read it in books.

Currently i can't say what slow-pac'ish RTS games i know. Probably wargames and RUSE, but again, there is not so much building in it, pure strategy, scout, reaction to scout info, ruses. And again, even there, you can lose your medium tanks to weak and cheap infantry because you were stupid enough to not scout that forest to right hand from the road where your tanks were ambushed and enemy ate your 100 supply by cost of only 25 he spent on weak infantry with RPGs, lol

[Super Kami Dende]

I don't know why, but I kind of grew out of RTS games.

Finished the Original C&C, Warcraft 2: ToD and Red Alert games when I was 8 years old. Played Starcraft and Brood War for about 10 years straight, from release until around 2009.

These days I just can't play RTS games for more than 1 mission at a time due to extreme boredom. Hell after 10 years of Starcraft one would assume I played SC2 yet I only ever played half a mission and didn't touch it again.

I think RPG's took over RTS's special place in my Heart.

[Charge me Doctor]

I don't know why, but I kind of grew out of RTS games.

Finished the Original C&C, Warcraft 2: ToD and Red Alert games when I was 8 years old. Played Starcraft and Brood War for about 10 years straight, from release until around 2009.

These days I just can't play RTS games for more than 1 mission at a time due to extreme boredom. Hell after 10 years of Starcraft one would assume I played SC2 yet I only ever played half a mission and didn't touch it again.

I think RPG's took over RTS's special place in my Heart.

Haha, i know a guy who said to me "omg SC2WoL sucks, even my 10yo brother finished it. WC 2 was so much better", yeah, like, he didn't finished WC 2 when he was 10 yo.

I think that terms RPG and RTS are too vague by today standarts. Diablo 3 is called an "RPG", but i see more similarity in it with God of war than with Neverwinter

[Wildmoon]

Wow, thank you so much! I think I just understood why I don't have as much fun with games anymore as I had when I was young. It is because games became so freaking competitive these days that playing for fun is no longer considered viable.

Back when Age of Empires came out, I had no idea about hotkeys and control groups, let alone builds, strategies etc. In other words, I was an incredibly awful player. Yet, somehow, it didn't prevent me from enjoying excellent campaigns. Yes, I played on Hard, not on Hardest. Yes, I saved game every 30 seconds. Yes, I had no idea about economy-based builds and rarely trained more than 15 workers total. Yes, my micro was lacking and I had no idea about kiting and such. Yet, I enjoyed the game so much. It was a lot of fun trying to beat a chosen campaign mission in different, often cheesy, ways. Will siege units only work? Will ships only work? Will tower rush work? Will priests only work? How about abandoning by initial base and rebuilding somewhere where my opponent will have a hard time attacking me due to terrain advantage? There was just SO much to do back then.

Now, look at Starcraft 2. Completely different mentality. "You have less than 100 APM? NOOB". "You built Forge before Gateway against Terran? NOOB". "You didn't know about 12 minutes Roach+Hydra timing attack? NOOB". It's like people compete in their ego today, instead of having fun with the game trying different plays. No, it is different now. People play the same refined builds every game and bark at those who try to play on their own.

Maybe I need to change my own attitude and ignore that of other people. I miss the days when I just fooled around with campaign missions in Age of Empires, or in Dune 2000, or, if we don't limit ourselves with RTS, in Doom 2. I would start the second D'ark mission in AOE2 and try some crazy stuff, like archers only. I still remember that awesome game I had 10 years ago or so. The goal of that mission is to destroy one of the castles. So, I cleared the area around one of the Burgundian castles and built a castle of my own close to it, so castles started shooting at each other. Me and computer both repaired our castles, and we would raid workers occasionally to halt enemy's repair.
Somehow in modern games I do not feel like doing all this stuff. Supernova mission in Starcraft 2 - I just massed Vikings and Banshees, steamrolled all the enemy bases and never felt like repeating that mission.

I don't think you should define what "fun" means. I for one find StarCraft really fun. You also cannot be further from the truth in saying that people play the same refined build every game.

[bohapjut]

I don't think you should define what "fun" means. I for one find StarCraft really fun. You also cannot be further from the truth in saying that people play the same refined build every game.

Meh, different people have different definitions of fun and find different things enjoyable

[mizeri]

I really hope they have a WH40k dawn of war 3 in the making

[thedingleberry]

The problem is they are not as profitable as they were back in the 90s and 00s. Most gamers nowadays are not as sophisticated as they were back then and are looking for a cheap thrill like the boring FPS genre. They just don't buy the RTS games, except for Starcraft, so companies aren't producing them anymore. It's a shame. I grew up on C&C, and it was amazing.

[Suporex]

It's on a decline in comparison to FPS. Basically in the same situation the fighting genre is in. A couple top tier games will release every couple years to keep the genre afloat.

[TheHappyHozen]

I badly want to see a new RTS come out of the woodwork and really wow me, but also without being a 4x game. Or another space themed game. Give me something fantasy styled, fun to play, and well balanced, with 3 or 4 factions. Then again, I want a good RTS game about as badly as I want an MMO that doesn't feel like WoW, yet is awesome. Or a MOBA that doesn't have a crappy community, or feel like a DOTA clone. Oh, wait... Awesomenauts. Okay. Just the first two.

[May90]

I badly want to see a new RTS come out of the woodwork and really wow me, but also without being a 4x game. Or another space themed game. Give me something fantasy styled, fun to play, and well balanced, with 3 or 4 factions.

There are very few fantasy-styled RTS that are any good, sadly. The best one is totally Warcraft series. Also there was Spellforce, but for some reason I didn't like the demo version, don't remember why - people say it was a great game. Aside from that... I really don't remember any fantasy RTS worth playing.

[McNeil]

I still hope we get a new Command & Conquer game, despite the last one being cancelled. Perhaps a reboot to either the Tiberium or Red Alert universe