SC2's automated away most of this (pretty much everything but production cycles), which makes it a better measure for AI vs human.
If that were true, then AIs would be dominant in BW instead of still bad at the game.
In SC1, just the act of moving a large army is a commitment and takes quite a few resources. Moving your armies under fog of war and not letting your opponent know exactly how you're set up in order to get a good angle on you is incredibly important. I want to see how much of an importance a great AI puts on that vs the other things it could be doing instead. Are the strongest AIs going to be more methodological, safer, and slow moving? Or will the best AIs try to exploit the imperfect information aspect of the game and try to lure the opponent into making a wrong decision? I feel like AIs tend to excel at the former, but the latter has been a huge component for the very best pros in SC1.
I don't follow SC2, so I don't know much of this also applies there. I just feel like SC1 isn't as mechanical as it's made out to be. There's definitely that huge initial barrier, but once passed that, the game actually feels very delicate and is about good use of resources (including mouse/keyboard actions), timing, and transitions in unit composition to catch your opponent off-balance.
This statement is wrong. SC1 has admittedly less tech-tree depth & strategic approaches than SC2 does (purely because of lower number of different units/upgrades), but there are innumerable variations that are imperceivable to the lay observer.
I'll go on a limb to say that SC1 has more refined rock-paper-scissors system than SC2 ever had (taboo to speak of on reddit).