Strange, somehow I thought the NOD had tesla coils too, it's been a while since I played those.
Well, I consider GDI to be Americans and NOD to be Soviets in disguise. ;)

You're not that far off though. They have the obelisk of light which is sorta like the tesla coil, only more menacing.

On bigger maps, those Allied tank swarms were scary. Seriously, they're not nearly as weak as you think they are, and with a big open map they can leverage that speed to excellent effect.

My opinions of the Allied Tank force were similar to your's until I decided to play a little bit online RA1 about a year ago. After getting my ass handed to me by the more agile and surprisingly hard-hitting allied tanks, I had to conclude my childhood opinions were dead wrong. Allies have more than enough power to beat the Soviets in a straight tank-on-tank battle.

This is really only true in Warcraft 1 and 2. In these games the equivalent units had identical stats and the difference between the two sides was in their spellcasters. In Warcraft 3 this approach was abandoned and the factions diverged radically. Even where units shared broadly similar roles, the cost and power difference was massive, like Undead Ghouls costed 120 gold to Orc Grunts costing 200 gold.

Thanks for the reply.

First of all, it is many years ago I had played a Warcraft game for real. I've played Warcraft 3 a little for some years ago (an hour or two, or such), so I don't really get to know the fractions.

About RA1, if I understand it correct, it requiere more skills to prevail as the Allies, than the Soviets, so to say?

Sorry for being anal about this, but that's not quite true for Warcraft 1 and 2. In Warcraft 1, the orc spearman did more damage, but had smaller range than the human archer, but that's it I think. In Warcraft 2, again, the elven archer was slightly different from the troll, but only with line-of-sight this time round. There was one additional difference though, the lumber mill upgrades. They were all the same except for two. The human lumber mill had an additional researchable upgrade that increased damage even further beyond the other shared upgrades, whereas at the orc lumber mill you could research troll regeneration.

Last time I checked the incrased line of sight was a lumber mill upgrade itself. I'm quite sure that, excluding wizards and deathknights, all units were completely identical before upgrading them to another unit type (like elf archer > ranger, knight > paladin etc.) and applying the uprades that became available after that transformation.

I can't explicitly remember the difference, but according to wowwiki there's a 1 point difference in the l.o.s. values between the two. Increased scouting range is an upgrade at both lumber mills tho:

Interesting if that's true (and it probably is). Never noticed that.

I knew, but had forgotten about, the range/power difference of the archer units in Warcraft 1. Didn't know about the line of sight difference in Warcraft 2. Good nitpicks, but still nitpicks; the units are largely identical.

Eh, I don't think so. The biggest gap to get over with these old 90's era games is handling the primitive interface. Strategy matters very little if your opponent is just running circles around you (or, more likely, running over you) because they have mastery of the unwieldy interface. I'm of the opinion that there's a basic level of competency you must reach before you can even talk about skill in strategy games. If you've got that level of understanding of RTS games, then it shouldn't take too much imagination to figure out how faster move speed can be useful (if you haven't already seen it first-hand).

And, to reiterate an earlier point, those smaller tanks are much more powerful than they look. Don't underestimate them.

Please, starting with the original Command & Conquer and Warcraft 2 RTS games became super simple and intuitive and barely differ from modern games in terms of controls and UI. Admittedly C&C's controls scheme and building interface have disappeared into oblivion but Warcraft 2's interface barely differs from the most modern RTS games, and also C&C's interface remains comparably intuitive and accessible. And I think WC2's Battle.net edition even already had type selection by double clicking on a single unit, both games already had box selection and numbered groups in their original forms. The one thing you need to know when playing C&C to make up for the AI's ridiculous multi-tasking abilities is that 'G' makes units enter guard mode where they behave much like the AI-controlled units. The most irritating thing about both C&C and WC2 is probably the lack of building queues but that's really it.

And I've also played Dune 2 and Warcraft 1 rather recently and their clunky interface is actually not the biggest problem. Once you've gotten used to the crappy control layout there's still a bunch of other things you have to figure out, especially in Warcraft, and the controls aren't that much of a hassle by comparison. Sure, the games aren't particularly deep or challenging (although Warcraft can get a tiny bit frustrating at times if you don't save often). It's really absurd to claim that any balancing issues or other difficulty factors in these old RTS are trivial compared to interface issues. The clunky interfaces become trivial compared to any other issues after one or two missions.

C&C series , balance, in the same post.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!

Oh that's too funny.

Both of these games lack, among other things, unit queues. There were no hotkeys for unit production in C&C so you had to actually mouse over to the unit bar, scroll to the unit you wanted, and click it. You had to do this once every 10 seconds or so on faster game speeds. Easy enough on its own, not so easy while doing everything else the game demands of you. Even a slight drop in your production output would cause your army to fall behind, and strategy doesn't count for a lick if you're outnumbered 3:2 because you weren't clicking the "build tank" button fast enough.

Modern RTS games are way simpler. You can keep your production facilities hotkeyed and have effectively limitless unit queues, so it's easier to check in on them and you need to check in way less often. That really takes a lot of pressure off of your management technique. In Starcraft you could hotkey your buildings if you wanted (can't remember if this was possible in WC2), but you could only select one building at a time so this didn't help as much as you'd think in a game where you'd often have 4-5 buildings producing units constantly.

So yes, there's a big difference. Managing unit production in those old interfaces while still handling your army and carrying out your larger-scale battle plan required serious technique that took time and practice to hone. Veterans of those older games may take that for granted, but having taught many people to play RTS for the first time I can attest it is not something that comes easily. Newer games make it way, way easier to pick up.

@Darvin:
Oh yes, I remember. Already RA2 makes it easier with production queue up to 30 units, and different tabs for buildings, defence buildings (actually makes it possible to build two buildings at the time), infantry and tanks/ships/aircraft (however the last tab could be chaotic too, when both having a war factory, naval yard and air command). In C&C1, RA1 and Tiberium Sun, you could scroll those tabs for years to find what you need (sometimes I did that, that I sold my barracks, war factory, naval yard etc., and reconstruct them, so I at least get all infantry in the top, then tanks etc.)
But in the first four C&C games (up till RA2), the production speed goes up with the number of construction yards, barracks, war factories etc. you have. So if you want to have a lot of tanks, fast, you could build one or two more war factories. It also makes you less vulnerable, that you still have your production facilities, if the enemy manage to destroy one of your factories. Also therefore a service depot most crucial function is to make it possible for you to build a new MCV, if you loose your (last) construction yard.

BTW, the developers made Service Depots obsolete in C&C3, and let War Factories repair tanks etc. within a small radius. Actually quite smart.