One more-recent case that really stands out is Command & Conquer - Red Alert 2. This game had much simpler graphics than later RTS games, so the focus was mostly on gameplay. IMHO, this was the best RTS ever created[1], and the reason for this was that it was sort of at the peak of perfection for its level of graphical and spatial limitations.
1. I know Star Craft was epic as well, and Generals from the remaining remnants of Westwood combined with EA was great also. And... Dune. Red Alert, for me, was the sort of Vivaldi[1.1] culmination that built on all these past successes, just before the age of "Moar Triangles!" reached RTS.
1.1 (I heard you liked footnotes) Vivaldi, the Baroque composer, built upon the style of Corelli and others before him, even copied some aspects of their musical styles, but this is what made his music so great.
C&C-RA2 was very good, but for me RTS, the era of Starcraft and C&C was crushed to dust by the 3d terrain and balistics of Total Annihilation, nothing held a candle to it.
I still remember yelling out loud with surprise the first time enemy artillery destroyed some of my aircraft while firing on ground targets further away.
Sadly the 'moar triangles' era began shortly afterwards and definitely abandoned the simplicity of well balanced gameplay and solid game engines, for flashy graphics and other cheap lures.
There's a trilogy of Epic RTS games built Cavedog Alumni. Three different companies, three different "universes", yet a clear line of spiritual succession exists through them thanks to some unsung powerhouses of the gaming industry over the last 20 years.
Total Annihilation
Supreme Commander
Planetary Annihilation
The amazing thing about these games is how much longevity they have due to quality design. There is an active community of players around TA still to this day. Who have done some pretty amazing things over the years... The game is routinely played with more than 10 times the number of units it was 'designed for' with extra large custom maps and LAN games that can take hours to play out.
Supreme Commander came out and upped the ante, TA had scaled to massive RTS battles where micromanagement became nearly pointless. Supreme Commander goes further, units range massively in size, so much so that you often spend most of the game zoomed out, controlling an army of thousands of coloured dots spread out over maps up to 80km x 80km
Then somehow they found the crazy inspiration to go further. Not content with nuclear weapons deforming terrain with explosions so big your units are mere specs on the map if you zoom out to admire the fireball... Planetary Annihilation is everything you imagine when you read the name. Spherical planets swarming with thousands and thousands of tanks robots planes and ships, satellites in orbit, rockets, teleportation and other crazy machines to transport your army between planets and moons, massive asteroid pushing engines that let you push asteroids and moons out of their orbits and use the planets themselves as weapons of warfare.
TLDR: Yep, Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, and Planetary Annihilation are three of the best RTS games ever, if not THE best RTS games ever then clearly the best Strategic RTS games ever.
It was released by Wargaming.net on Steam in November last year, and after buying the GoG version earlier last year, much to my surprise when I re-bought the Steam version, the Steam version works fine on my machine which didn't work with the GoG version. Its also so ancient that its basically perfect under WINE.
There is still active development on some of the fan sites on a 3.9 and 4.0 'fan patch', which will also have corresponding groups of players using the patches.
There is online multiplayer via both virtual LAN / hamachi style setups and via a few tools like GameRanger that also help keep these older games connected.
The community is spread thin, but still thriving, since the simplicity of the game makes it so easy to keep enjoying it. I'm looking forward to its 20th anniversary on September 30th next year (2017).
Ah, Red Alert 2. I really loved that game, haven't played in forever. It was before I had ubiquitous broadband so I never really played it online - does anyone know if it is still possible to do so / whether anyone does? I'm sure I'd lose within minutes against anyone still playing today, but a 4 way multiplayer battle would be amazing.
EDIT: figured I could be less lazy and find out myself. It appears you can play online through https://cncnet.org/red-alert-2. Now all I need to do is figure out where to buy it and how to make it work on my Mac. I suppose it's old enough I might be able to play via a virtual machine.
Definitely check out OpenRA, a modern open source and cross-platform reimplementation of the old Westwood engines, with support for CnC, Red Alert and Dune2000. There's a few changes to add a bit of balance but its still got the classic feel and there's an active multiplayer community online with regular tournaments and everything.
One more-recent case that really stands out is Command & Conquer - Red Alert 2. This game had much simpler graphics than later RTS games, so the focus was mostly on gameplay. IMHO, this was the best RTS ever created[1], and the reason for this was that it was sort of at the peak of perfection for its level of graphical and spatial limitations.
1. I know Star Craft was epic as well, and Generals from the remaining remnants of Westwood combined with EA was great also. And... Dune. Red Alert, for me, was the sort of Vivaldi[1.1] culmination that built on all these past successes, just before the age of "Moar Triangles!" reached RTS.
1.1 (I heard you liked footnotes) Vivaldi, the Baroque composer, built upon the style of Corelli and others before him, even copied some aspects of their musical styles, but this is what made his music so great.