Why bother to waste time on this blatant Warcraft ripoff when one could get the brilliant Warlords Battlecry trilogy here (that is deeper, richer and overall better than Warcraft 3, to be honest)?

Because you bought that Warlords Trilogy ages ago and played the ever living crap out of it in campaign and skirmish?

Then get your *ss up and try The Protectors mod, private. And don't forget to try Rising Kingdoms, Total Annihilation Kingdoms and Kohan trilogy after.

Every single thing you named is bought, even several times on different platforms, and played to death. Supported The Protectors for years now, defended Total Annihilation Kingdoms eons ago from other TA players, Kohan is one of my favorite game series ever, and I got super excited when Rising Kingdoms got recently re-released, which I was playing for a long time with fan 1.4 patch.
You see the point now? X)

damn, i really wish kohan was here.

i love the first one.

You and me both, man. It really belongs here. A true cozy old school experience.
At least devs of Rising Kingdoms hinted at possible GOG release too.

Me too! That makes *three* of us! All fighting the good fight!

Hey, bro, didn't recognize you in makeup at first! :P

Then... then... Heroes of Annihilated Empires? Maybe even War Wind 1-2?

I just don't believe that your obviously refined taste in RTSs would let you fall into Loria trap.

Rising Kingdoms and the Kohan trilogy aren't even on Gog.

So that's 11 games you've recommended, ok, thanks and all I guess; 4 of those I don't own yet.

As for blatant ripoffs, I personally don't think that a good historical game gets to own its genre and that no later game is allowed to be similar. There'd only be about 30 games in existence, with your theory of what should be allowed.

Gentlemen, if you ever have need of a good sword, mine is at your service. This makes four already.
Well, they are on that other site, so you could get 'em quite easily if you want.

Because this has widescreen support out of the box (as it is a modern game) and works on other platforms (Mac, Linux) aswell?

Let me put it this way)
Know Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds? That’s basically a total conversion on AoE2 engine with extra steps. But I love it, to bits.

Same here. I like when people take established ideas and mechanics - and do their own spin on them, changing maybe a setting, a color palette, not much. It stays recognizable and simple to understand, and something fresh at the same time. That’s why I was fascinated by all of those “clones” of AoE, SC and WC.

Also, I think it’s disingenuous to ask incredible production values of an one man dev team, that had an unheard audacity to attempt to develop an RTS in this day and age. Even if with such frankly obvious inspirations. You think he put all of this work, put his own finances in original artwork, voice lines, music, altering store assets to suit the overall artstyle - all just to trick people? I don’t think so, especially when he slashed the price. Loria didn’t trick me. It inspired me, that one man is capable of making an RTS.

And I like the artstyle, 3D models made into sprites is my soft spot X)

Wow, very nicely said.

(and yet, to make the quote shorter, I ruthlessly deleted most of the quoted text that I admired so much; I must be some kind of monster)

I generally agree, it won't deter me from buying it at some point since I play single player 99% of the time anyway, but it does give a game more life time to it, depending on the genre. Brigador is my prime example because although I rarely play MP, that game would benefit a lot from it and I would probably never have uninstalled it if it had that mode.

It's great when it's focused on a single player experience that can be enhanced by MP, just like it was back in the day, I can rather do without the latter than the former though.

You are not alone. I am on of these, who plays only singleplayer :)
And I am happy, that outside the campain there is also skirmish mode.