There's a trilogy of Epic RTS games built Cavedog Alumni. Three different companies, three different "universes", yet a clear line of spiritual succession exists through them thanks to some unsung powerhouses of the gaming industry over the last 20 years.
Total Annihilation
Supreme Commander
Planetary Annihilation
The amazing thing about these games is how much longevity they have due to quality design. There is an active community of players around TA still to this day. Who have done some pretty amazing things over the years... The game is routinely played with more than 10 times the number of units it was 'designed for' with extra large custom maps and LAN games that can take hours to play out.
Supreme Commander came out and upped the ante, TA had scaled to massive RTS battles where micromanagement became nearly pointless. Supreme Commander goes further, units range massively in size, so much so that you often spend most of the game zoomed out, controlling an army of thousands of coloured dots spread out over maps up to 80km x 80km
Then somehow they found the crazy inspiration to go further. Not content with nuclear weapons deforming terrain with explosions so big your units are mere specs on the map if you zoom out to admire the fireball... Planetary Annihilation is everything you imagine when you read the name. Spherical planets swarming with thousands and thousands of tanks robots planes and ships, satellites in orbit, rockets, teleportation and other crazy machines to transport your army between planets and moons, massive asteroid pushing engines that let you push asteroids and moons out of their orbits and use the planets themselves as weapons of warfare.
TLDR: Yep, Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, and Planetary Annihilation are three of the best RTS games ever, if not THE best RTS games ever then clearly the best Strategic RTS games ever.
It was released by Wargaming.net on Steam in November last year, and after buying the GoG version earlier last year, much to my surprise when I re-bought the Steam version, the Steam version works fine on my machine which didn't work with the GoG version. Its also so ancient that its basically perfect under WINE.
There is still active development on some of the fan sites on a 3.9 and 4.0 'fan patch', which will also have corresponding groups of players using the patches.
There is online multiplayer via both virtual LAN / hamachi style setups and via a few tools like GameRanger that also help keep these older games connected.
The community is spread thin, but still thriving, since the simplicity of the game makes it so easy to keep enjoying it. I'm looking forward to its 20th anniversary on September 30th next year (2017).
Total Annihilation
Supreme Commander
Planetary Annihilation
The amazing thing about these games is how much longevity they have due to quality design. There is an active community of players around TA still to this day. Who have done some pretty amazing things over the years... The game is routinely played with more than 10 times the number of units it was 'designed for' with extra large custom maps and LAN games that can take hours to play out.
Supreme Commander came out and upped the ante, TA had scaled to massive RTS battles where micromanagement became nearly pointless. Supreme Commander goes further, units range massively in size, so much so that you often spend most of the game zoomed out, controlling an army of thousands of coloured dots spread out over maps up to 80km x 80km
Then somehow they found the crazy inspiration to go further. Not content with nuclear weapons deforming terrain with explosions so big your units are mere specs on the map if you zoom out to admire the fireball... Planetary Annihilation is everything you imagine when you read the name. Spherical planets swarming with thousands and thousands of tanks robots planes and ships, satellites in orbit, rockets, teleportation and other crazy machines to transport your army between planets and moons, massive asteroid pushing engines that let you push asteroids and moons out of their orbits and use the planets themselves as weapons of warfare.
TLDR: Yep, Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, and Planetary Annihilation are three of the best RTS games ever, if not THE best RTS games ever then clearly the best Strategic RTS games ever.
Total Annihilation Intro Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6mZZiI4ShQ
Supreme Commander Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItDVrkLkYXw
Planetary Annihilation Launch Trailer - https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=enzglv8sLn8
Planetary Annihilation: Titans Launch Trailer - https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=gpZWAZwoNz0