story driven rts ... i never got why they have to push in characters so unnecessary
w3 hero units ruined it

They improve in making the game available on modern day windows machines
Some add the extra missions and video's to the pc version that where only available on the console version of cnc
I belief there are some rare glitches and bugs patched
there are added resolutions ( i still prefer the 640 x 480 or 720 x 560 ? resolution myself )

The pathfinding routine is at least a lot better then it is in StarCraft remastered. Order your full squad on a entrance to a higher plane and be sure there will be at least 3 or 4 units will start looking for another entrance

Some are better than others but at their heart, they're not that much different from 4X. I find it easiest to get into grand strategy games like Crusader Kings, ones that have a lot of RPG aspects to them. Also, Stellaris, which I consider to be between 4X and grand strategy, which is my favorite strategy game other than Total Annihilation (which is only ranked higher by me because of nostalgia). But yeah, I definitely understand, it can be really difficult to get into and enjoy grand strategy because of the complexity, the pacing, the balancing, etc.

Out of curiousity aside from the two mentioned on the first page of this thread, are there any other indie RTS's floating around at the moment?.

Re-Legion. It actually has pretty mold-breaking gameplay where you "convert" your units from civilians. The problem is that the game itself is not very polished.

Ultimate Admiral : Age of Sail

Grand Tactician" The Civil War ( 1861- 1865 )

judging by the numbers provided by the steamcharts site it seems that

A. the command and conquer remastered edition was a big fluke for most. Gathering 30k players on steam on the launch wkend ( and maybe who knows and equal number on origin? ) now barely able to hold a 1000 players together ( though a 1000 players simultaneously online would probably equal a very lively online scenery )

https://steamcharts.com/app/1213210

B. Grand is where the party is At !

Age of Empires II definitive edition going strong with 16000 players online 16 min's ago !
https://steamcharts.com/app/813780
Stellaris still looking more then oke with 15000 players online in the past hour!
https://steamcharts.com/app/281990
and Warhammer 2 ( i know technically not an rts but for many the tactical battles are cool enough to be called rts ) holding almost 30.000 players captivated this past hour ... and who knows what will happen when game 3 of the warhammer trilogy launches !
https://steamcharts.com/app/594570

of course this holds nothing to the really popular games on steam such as everyone's favorite counterstrike, 531.000 players or pubg with 326,855 players and the annoyingly popular GTA V still with 116k players !

When I call it a 'classic RTS', I mean it is in that style/has that premise. I.e. you build up a base, build units and use them to attack the enemy, in real time, from a mostly top-down viewpoint.

I haven't tried it with a controller (have you?), but I tried it on PC with m&k and it seemed like a decent game with some novel mechanics. According to the Wikipedia article it seemed to be quite well-received and many critics commented that it showed the RTS format could work on consoles.

Not many games seem to have followed in its footsteps though, despite the game doing well enough to justify a sequel.

Is it 'dumbed down' compared to the older classics? Maybe. I played the first 2-3 levels (some years ago) and it didn't seem too dumbed down to me.

Hmmm... hard to say if it's dead. Maybe it is just stale.

Keep in mind you may be more interested in the action part, of which Starcraft did a very good job at. Or maybe you're more interested in the story, in which case the RTS part is less interesting but should be hard enough to be compelling but not so hard/easy that you get bored or throw your controller in anger.

Currently, the only proper RTS on the radar is probably Age of Empires IV. If that flops, it might mark a point of no return for RTS games.

But the devs of RTS games have to decide what they're going to focus on. Either campaign or multiplayer. Those are 2 completely different crowds and as has been proven time and again, you can't do both because one is going to suffer if you focus on the other too much. One exception would be Starcraft 2, where the campaign balance is "frozen" and separate from the multiplayer. Everyone should try to mimic this. Countless RTS games have been ruined in the patches after releasing, because they focused on multiplayer balance and completely screwed up the campaign because of that.

And even more importantly, every game will eventually die when it comes to multiplayer. But you will be able to play the single player forever. Thus I vastly prefer the ones focused on single player.

I had a good amount of fun while playing Circle Empires, for a few a days.

Although not a true RTS, Infested Planet is by far the best indie strategy game I've played. I always keep coming back to it, playing the other day a Planetary Campaign for about 5 hours.

There is also the free Loria.

I do think this is a different case than when developers and publishers decided "adventure games" and "story-based RPGs" and "turn-based RPGs" and "horror games" were dead-ends out of nowhere, with no data. That was just them deciding not to make them.

I do think RTS as a genre has issues and it's hard to get right (as we've outlined in this thread, including myself above). But I also likely a touch of genre-aversion from game-makers. "Can't compete with Starcraft" and "Last C&C was a flop" with some "A bunch of RTS cookie-cutter games in the 05-15 were not very successful" making it hard to start up.

So it's a good mix between "it's really a hard genre to get right" and "we've decided not to work on them" with a touch of risk-aversion.

Looking at this list, it appears RTS games have been released for Windows every year for the past 20 years, including 2019, 2020, and 2021. "Dead" genre? Not sure that is true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_real-time_strategy_video_games

This list clearly includes games that are not RTS (at least not pure RTS) or are just remakes of older games. I'm not sure about the "dead" epithet too but I also wouldn't call a genre with 1-2 games a year 'alive'.

was Company of Heroes 3 mentioned?
looks it will come soon ~ 2years :P

hope it wont be tailored for stupid people like dawn of war 3