Battle for Middle Earth was my favourite game ever probably or at least among top 3. Honestly between the 4x warhammer total war and rts bfme I think bfme was slightly more fun.

It’s a real shame the genre is so forgotten.

RTS is more organic genre without incessant thinking about numbers and save scumming while 4x always feels like Math.

Every game session of RTS game is slightly different even with the same map and enemy parameters providing for a way more replayability value and unpredictable chaos that you need to manage in real time. It’s much more engaging this way.

It’s still about numbers under the hood but more organic while 4x feels like an excel spreadsheet sometimes. There are less solutions to victory, sometimes even only one proper, predetermined before playing and that’s boring.

Another gem was Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. They made 2 sequels but none captured the gameplay of the first one. For some unknown reason they scrapped everything what made the original good in the second game, making it completely different. The third one was an attempt to go back to the mechanics of the first one but it was mediocre.