"The perfect balance of number of units with the amount of things a player's human brain could possibly track at any given moment was completely lost on me."
The human brain can actually abstract things away and starts thinking in groups rather than in individual units, regardless if the game mechanics allows the player to treat them as such or not. That units-limit was something I did not particularly enjoyed in those games (and appreciated instead games like Command & Conquer in this regard). I agree that there is more than technical features that make or break a game, but the units-limit in RT tactics games is a flaw and it's not a technical one.
For those who argue that units-limit encouraged unit-quality over unit-quantity thinking, I concede. It's a valid point that perhaps contributed to the *Craft success series. That feature could however have been left as an over-ridable game parameter (set on by default, if you will).
The human brain can actually abstract things away and starts thinking in groups rather than in individual units, regardless if the game mechanics allows the player to treat them as such or not. That units-limit was something I did not particularly enjoyed in those games (and appreciated instead games like Command & Conquer in this regard). I agree that there is more than technical features that make or break a game, but the units-limit in RT tactics games is a flaw and it's not a technical one.
For those who argue that units-limit encouraged unit-quality over unit-quantity thinking, I concede. It's a valid point that perhaps contributed to the *Craft success series. That feature could however have been left as an over-ridable game parameter (set on by default, if you will).