Really excellent article man. I think Relic had the right approach to the RTS genre with CoH, although didn't execute it well, where you have an inherent slowness in the units in the game and often a cost of moving them (leaving cover, tearing down set-up weapons, exiting a building), rather than an APM cap, which makes each decision much more critical, because you can't just take it back right before your units engage the enemy.

As I said though, they didn't execute it that well, and there is a lot of poor pathfinding, luck, and clunkiness to the movement of units. That could easily be solved by improving the movement UI to allow for more precision, having predictable movement of individual models within squads, and visually intuitive pathfinding for units.

RTS games are supposed to be fast-paced, and I reckon having a small advantage if you can think, react, and click quickly is fine but the strategic element should be facilitated as much as humanly possible.

What do you think of Supreme Commander in this context?