Best RTS Game

Starcraft. Unique sides. Competitive balance. Unmatched polish. Excellent singleplayer campaigns. Largest multiplayer community.

Sins: Epicness, UI, lore, options.

CoH (Excepting the amazingly bad patching): Gameplay, graphics, and physics.

C&C: Atmosphere, (Excepting TW): gameplay, (Excepting RA3): story.

Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2 - multiplayer is fast, fun and quick to match.

Homeworld. You get to keep your fleet as you move on with the campaign.

Sins all the way

Homeworld is the greatist RTS of all time!

It had a very good multiplayer base.

The campain had better plot than most movies. (Game version of Lord of The Rings, in terms of epicness)

It was perfectly ballanced, it did NOT use the rock/paper/scissors type ballance that sins does. Which makes tactics MUCH more interesting.

Game was very simple, only had one type of reasource. Yet the tactics were AMAZINGLY complex and deep.

Becouse the Units weren't Rock/Paper/Scissors, the tactics (once one delved deep enough) actully would become Rock/Paper/Scissors.

And you can't argue with Heavy Cruisers.

Well...maby you can, but you can't argue with them twice.

Supreme commander is terrific and only has 2 resources. And SoaSE does rock

Age of Empires 2....been playing it for years and still loving it, worth every penny.

agreed but try supcom

supcom: forged alliance.

I do not think you can simply mark one RTS as the best one ever....

Homeworld was for example perhaps the best single-player RTS, but its multiplayer was lacking, other games were just better multiplayer-wise, but not as immersive or innovative.

CoH, DoW, Sins, C&C´s, Starcraft, Warcraft, AoE, Conquest FW, Earth 21x0, Sup Com. etc...are all great games as well.

I can recommend to anyone one old not so famous game though. It is called Star Command Revolution, it was competition to StarCraft on its day and while it never became as popular as StarCraft, i always liked it more. It´s special aspect are the battles, which required lot of smart micromanagement not based on the number of clicks per second ala C&C and using some special ability at right time, but it was more CoH-like. That means it was not only about bringing the right "counter" into to battle but you had to take  range of fire, direction of attack and other things into consideration.

For example you had to destroy enemy starbase hidden behind the asteroid belt, which you could reach only with the fighters from your aircraft carriers. The base had the enourmous range of fire, so you had to move the carriers to fighter launching distance protected with your Point Laser Cannons, which shot most of the base´s projectiles down, then launch the fighters and retreat the carriers to safe distance to repair them...

Or you could build the missile turrets which you could move only by using unit called switcher...so you moved the turrets infront of your fleet and ripped incoming enemy ships to shreds....and then moved your turret-line again via switcher deeper inside enemy territory.

I think this is pretty similar to CoH´s deploying of machine guns or mortar groups, supression fire and other stuff, which makes the CoH so different and interesting...and fun. I wish someone would remake this game instead of StarCraft 2, which when it comes to using of units and micro looks to me exactly the same as 10 years ago.

yeah im not trying to say anyone game is better, just why you think.

also supcom i think might be more realistic

I have fond memories of 8 hour long Age of Empires II sessions with friends.

Kohan, DoW 1 before addons

Total Annihilation - noone else gets close

3D environment in 1997 - build ques, order ques +++ the game was ages before anyone, and its yet to be surpassed

Company of Heroes, it has an awesome use of graphics, sound and interesting gameplay, a pitty the online part works so badly

Have to agree with the poster and say Supreme Commander is my favorite RTS game.  The reason for me is that because of the scale and interface I felt like I could actually formulate real stragtegies.  I was raised on turn-based games so the strategy is what I'm looking for.  All the other good ones that I played (Starcraft, Warhammer, Company of Heroes, etc) made me feel like I was in a race and was forced to throw my units around.  Also most RTS's keep you so close to the action that it's much harder to get a feel for how the whole battle is developing.

My complex top five.

Sins of a Solar Empire = Rome: Total War > Rise of Nations > Supreme Commander  = Command & Conquer Generals > Every other RTS I've ever played.

Shogun Total War -- except that almost no one can run it on their machines anymore. 

[bitter] 

Europa Universalis III Complete. Only game where you can be at war with 50 countries at once, and have 50 allies at the same time. Possible to have over 100 battles going instantaneously. The Pause button is used a lot though...

I don't like the micro management type of RTS games (although StarCraft was great). I would vote for Sins, Rome TW and Homeworld (I should really install that game again, does it work with Vista?). Supcom looks nice, but is also lots of micro management and is incredible system resource consuming (why can't they fix that?). Any good RTS games coming up soon?

SoaSE FTW!! Seriously, the (relative) ease of modding this game, combined with a great deal of ingenuity on both the modders' and the devs' parts, and well, it sells itself in some ways.

I haven't played as many RTS as others, but the other one that sticks out to me is Dune:2000. My 1st RTS ever. And still my favorite.

Though, Warzone 2100 (which is now open-source, w00t!!) is a big contender.

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade

It got a great balance of micro & macro with its squadsystem which works so well. Reinforce the squad with more members, a weapon (which one?) or build a whole new squad..?

The heroes are precisely as powerful as they should be.

Its interface is also great with autoreinforce, shiftqueing and its stances.

I've only played the beta of Dawn of War II so can't take it into consideration. Company of Heroes I've played the tutorials.

Supreme Commander I've never played. I wouldn't play it in multiplayer though since it becomes "play the dots" if you're competetive.

looking how I spent endless hours of playing the game, i would have to say Starcraft. Although I haven't played much of it recently

you know I really like battle realms.