I loved the original Brood War. But The Fun™ for me was always in the macro side of things. I wanted to give units large-scale orders, and have them figure it out.

The rest of the RTS world relentlessly pursued micro, of course. And the MOBAs that came of that are fine for what they are, but what they aren't is something I personally want to play.

It always surprised me that parts of the tech research tree in any RTS didn't seem to include smarter unit behavior as part of the stack. Paying in-game resources to off-load cognitive load is an interesting loop!

Partial credit is due to Majesty, which is the only indirect-control RTS I've come across. Old game, but still fun for what it was. I liked the idea.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/25990/Majesty_Gold_HD/

A focus on operations rather tactics is more something found in the Total Annihilation family of games : TA, Supreme Comnander (1) (Forged Alliance Forever), Planetary Annihilation, Zero-K/Spring, BAR/Spring...

And shout out to Achron which managed to weave freaking *time travel* into the gameplay !!

Thanks for the recommendation. I've never tried any of that series. Any in particular you suggest to start with?

Well, my personal preference is for Zero-K/Spring, because I actually like micro :

http://zero-k.info/

(It also has a single-player campaign where you slowly get to learn the more than 100 units and features.)

But BAR/Spring seems like it would fit you better (it's also the closest of them to TA, which is otherwise a bit old these days) :

https://www.beyondallreason.info/

(BAR used to stand for Balanced Annihilation Reloaded, while Zero-K used to be called Complete Annihilation.)

Thanks, I'll check them out!

I've never even looked at Starcraft 2 with it's "micro" reputation. I favour Supreme Commander. To be fair it is: Supreme Commander + Forged Alliance + FAF online community.

Persistent between games: Configurable building templates - one building command queues whatever you set in whatever arrangement, rotatable on placement.

Factory infinite repeating queues with waypointing including automated airlift ferrying for ground units if required.

Adjustable waypoints. Move, insert, remove waypoints without having to redo the whole set from scratch.

Plus I like the storage aspect of resource management and the titanic units. Not so sure I care much for nukes though...

In war, everything is simple but the simplest things are hard.

I feel that Brood War embodies this part of Clausewitz quite well.

There will always be marginal advantages to be had in micro-managing units I think.

Of course, but the game is more fun for the vast majority of players if it's not required for the vast majority of the skill population. Pro matches focus heavily on micro-heavier caster units and that's fine if it's still fun for the players that don't want to focus on that.

you don't have to micro in starcraft to get fun out of it - but you won't win in a multiplayer match against someone who does. Whether losing due to lack of skill is fun or not will depend on the person.

The single player mode (and custom maps mode) all do not really require micro'ing to be very fun.