What games would you recommend for a newcomer in 2024? What are the genre-defining classics, and which ones still hold up? What's the recent hotness? The modern classics?
Personally, I'd also recommend Homeworld and the Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War series
On the free-and-open-source front there is Zero-K (which I don't care for) and Beyond All Reason, both of these are Spring Engine games, and Spring Engine started out as a 'modernization' of Total Annihilation. Most games built with it don't fall too far from the original
Homeworld 3 comes out in May, I can't wait :D :D :D
ps- I'd be remiss to omit Command & Conquer... Red Alert 2 and Generals are my favorites. I don't care for Starcraft but that series is worth mentioning too.
Planetary Annihilation is cool too but I really didn't like the spherical maps
SupCom really is the sweet spot
Age of Empires 2 still has a significant player base, for example, so it's both a genre-defining classic and modern ranked multi-player.
Other RTS design traditions include Total Annilation, etc. Plus there's adjacent stuff, such as They Are Billions which just does the base building part and drops some of the other mechanics.
So probably WC3 -> DoW 40k -> Starcraft 1/2 -> weep because the genre is dead
But yeah overall high production values pickings are pretty slim - last year saw Company of Heroes 3, 2022 had a Dune game, 2021 had Age of Empires 4. 2020 might be a high point with Warcraft 3, C&C, and AoE 3 remasters.
Age of Empires and Total Annihilation still have fan bases.
Supreme Commander and Command and Conquer do as well.
AFAIK, Beyond All Reason is the most popular "large-scale" RTS.
Dune II: One of the first, one of the best. 3 factions, all very different, story mode with scope. Interesting units when "harvesters" was a new idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_II
Command & Conquer / Red Alert: Excellent unit select, very orthogonal unit choices, live-action cutscenes (which while of questionable quality, were still pretty amusing) Red Alert also has an excellent soundtrack (although extremely facist march themed with "Hell March", yet quite listenable). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Red_Alert
Age of Empires: Artificial Intelligent opponents that didn't "cheat" with extra resources or out-of-game knowledge, they were simply competent opponents. Age of Kings is probably the showcase. Rotational rock-paper-scissors unit effectiveness. Several "victory" types. Gameplay that tended to support longer games, rather than 3-minute rush (Commander vs Legacy in an MtG context). Only complaint is unique units were often not enough for long enough to really be special. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Empires_II
Warcraft II: Not sure how relevant today, yet one of the first to feature an online matchmaking service that was not utter misery (and actually had players at lot of the time!) Also, neat cartoony style that became the basis of WoW, DOTA, and many others. Possibly the best though, first game where you could spend half an hour just cycling through all the quotes ("I can see my house!") for units (and their annoyances at your clicking "Are you still touching me?"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_II:_Tides_of_Darkness
Homeworld: There is Still not a significant other 3D RTS franchise (EVE Online is very close for an MMO). Basically, about the only game that does actually 3D strategic space combat in an actual spherical playing field over vast distances, with multiple-ship scales, and per unit positionable cameras ("camera can be set to follow any ship and view them from any angle, as well as display the ship's point of view"). The story's also quite well written, and at least provides a plausible reason for each of the missions. I watched Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and thought "You people should have played Homeworld, you would have written such better space battles. Somebody over at Battlestar Galactica must have played Homeworld." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeworld
Sins of a Solar Empire: Neat game design based on solar system "zones", where you can only really fight around solar systems, and then transit is mostly hands off (often with surprises when you exit jump space into fog of war). Planetary and solar system upgrades that are inherent to the idea of "planet" rather than just tower defense. Multiple ship styles and races with fairly different play styles depending on the build choice. Been a while, yet from what I remember, also not quite as punishing as Starcraft about choosing the "correct" choice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire
Warhammer 40K Dawn of War: Gameplay that's not built on mining anything, rather more like capture the flag, holding locations for time frames to accumulate "something". And then pretty much all the pre-existing craziness of Warhammer that is far too long for a single game recommendation. LOTS of units and armies though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000:_Dawn_of_War
Total War Franchise: (Medieval II, Rome, Shogun, and Warhammer are notable entries) Scope. Massive scope. Battles with 10's of 1000's of soldiers on the field. Became a bit much to deal with in some of the games, yet neat to be able to create your own LotR "Ride of the Rohan" scenes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_War_(video_game_series)
Achron (have not played, would like to try) Time travel RTS with three time-frames units fight in, and propagating time waves that erase the future. You can "chronofrag" yourself, by having future self meet past self. A Grandfather Paradox resolution system, where units are removed if they fall out of the "possible futures."
Supreme Commander: (and prior Total Annihilation) are the subject of this article. Also massive scope. Huge, smoothly scalable maps. Tons of unit choices. Enormous numbers of on map units simultaneously.