[Jmenschenfresser]

"real-time strategy" is almost an oxymoron. You can't do much deep thinking about strategy while clicking everything that moves.

Heh, I must say you've given me the phrase I could not find. RTS function sometimes nicely as a battle engine for a larger game. For tactical combat of just a few entities, as seen in Icewind Dale or the like. Not never, ever, ever, never in a global, massive scale game. Never played one I liked.

Maybe it is just the Marxist in me, but GC games and the genre in general demand real economic models. Perhaps not enough game designers are economists, or are scared of the daunting micromanagement it brings to mind, but 4x games will never, ever, ever, never reach their zenith without such. Too much is focused on the expansion and the military. Robust, workable combat engines are great, don't get me wrong. Without them 4x games can get boring. However, I have yet to play a game where the empire I control feels alive. That is the key. I don't want to have control over every citizen. I want in some sense to think that the empire I control lives outside of my actions.

Economics and population are the key, but are most often first overlooked. Population could really just be one bit--on or off, happy or sad. Economics in these games all too often settle for the threesome (wood, stone, gold OR food, shields and gold OR X, Y, Z)...which seems so ingrained in us, thank you Freud and Aristotle and Jung.

****, even if someone said, here's a game without real combat, it's been abstracted, but we've given you a complex economic model and a population with simulated life, life cycles, and attributes which respond according to their environment, I'd lay down my money in a heart beat. Even if it were partially text based, would be ok.