Totally.

Yeah I am confused by that too ... especially since Empire At War already exists. Also, as a lover of flight/space sims, I am more than a little bemused by the description of strategy games as "niche". They may be niche relative to the FPS genre, but then what isn't?

I would say the article as a whole was poorly researched. Most of what he wants to see is even in classic strategy games never mind modern day ventures and in everything from twitch-based RTS to turn-based 4X. That even brings up another point, I would argue there is quite a lot of variety in the strategy field - so much so that the various sub-fields are almost full fields in and of themselves. To me, at least, strategy games are far from hurting. There is still a solid mix of AAA, mid-tier, and indie titles in the strategy genre.
I'm currently playing Frozen Synapse (got it from the Humble Indie Bundle) - I think you'd probably enjoy it.

I agree, most of what he's talking about has been done, and not just by obscure indie games that you'd have to be a hipster to know about.

Warzone 2100 went of the deep end with unit customization. Weapons, armor, propulsion and on top of that they'd gain experience. Depending upon the choices one could get cheap units or ones that were more powerful, as well as expensive.

At the end of the day, I'm not sure how much more can be added to RTS games that hasn't already been tried. At least not without bogging things down to the point of having a bloated turn based strategy game. I mean, there was even that one game that allowed units to time travel a bit.

I'm sure that there's more that can be done, but realistically most of that is a matter of refining what's been established. Complaining that there's something wrong with RTS games and citing those problems makes about as much sense as complaining that after like 30 years there's something wrong with platformers.

I miss Dawn of War (didn't play II). Great games. I'd love a RTS for the modern day. I don't play SC2 for reasons I've stated, but beyond that, it's a game geared towards e-sports and that's antithetical to fun for me (an esport needs to be fun for the observer, not necessarily the player, more of that if anyone cares).

I want fun, not WC3 trying to convince me that 1 hero with a squad of 6 is the ideal way to play an RTS game (which is funny because their multiplayer illustrated that that was bullshit).

I'm trying to think of the last RTS with which I had fun and it was probably DoW. Sacrifice was before that. Sometime in the distant past I loved SC, but there were certainly awesome titles after that (AOE2 for example). There's nothing "new" though (at least that isn't slathered in DRM).

I hope you don't mean to imply that ALL turn based strategy games are bloated.

As I was reading this topic, Warzone 2100 came to my mind too. Lots of unit customization there, and a huge tech tree. Shame about the outdated graphics, especially on texture, but the game itself is pretty good with many viable strategies.

Unfortunately it too has the downside of requiring build and rush strategies if you ever want to fight humans online. I don't like that type of gameplay (not am I good at it) so I don't play online, but it's pretty good fun in single player. Open-source and thus no DRM too ;)

Agree with the others saying the article was poor. There is next to no content in the article, even though it's an interesting topic and provoking title. You'd think he could say more on the topic than, basically, "unit customization".

You probably want to check out the continuation, they've been adding quite a bit to the original game.

Rushing is unfortunately, not something which is easily dealt with. I don't like that strategy, personally, because it really gets kind of metagamey.

I actually still play Soulstorm on a regular basis. It gets a lot of (somewhat deserved) hate but it's an excellent starting point for modding. There's no online play anymore but there are some really fantastic skirmish AI mods out there.

Base building made perfect sense in-universe for some races, like Orcs or Imperial Guard, but it made none whatsoever for other races, like Space Marines or Dark Eldar. However, it kept everything internally consistent which is usually more interesting than strictly adhering to tabletop fluff. DoW 2 basically played like Diablo IN SPACE. I still have no idea why they tried to market it as an RTS.

That's the one I am playing. Never tried the original game. But the open-sourced one is pretty good fun, and there are loads of customization options. It's available for free, but it would be nice to get it here too.