>>11118I have a bunch of Paradox games but never actually got into them. The learning curve is too steep for me to sink any time into at this point. Sorry that I'm not any help. Are you just starting off with the game, or are you just looking for ways to get better?
>>11142Is it StarCraft or StarCraft II you're playing?
>>11151Seconding this. Company of Heroes features pretty small-scale battles, and there's a lot more nuance to the gameplay than most RTS games. While there are clearly some units that are more desirable than others, it's not the kind of game where tanks will always steamroll everything else. Without infantry support to back them up, even tanks can be vulnerable to enemy infantry popping up out of the woodwork to chuck sticky bombs or fire rockets at them. Infantry in Company of Heroes are a much bigger deal than they are in a lot of games, where they tend to just be your starting forces until you work your way up to vehicles or the equivalent. Cover and suppression are also highly important considerations. If you decide to place your foot soldiers in the middle of a road, they could easily get mowed down. But if you put them behind a fence, they could do pretty well for themselves. And if you put them inside a building, they would have really good resistance to small-arms fire and be impervious to being pinned down by machine guns. The downside is that they'd also be vulnerable to flamethrowers and explosive attacks. There's a lot more to consider than most games in the genre.
You might also want to try Kohan: Ahriman's Gift and crank the speed up. It's one of my favorite games, but it's intolerably slow otherwise. There's way less micromanagement involved than most RTS games, and unit upkeep costs prevent you from making only the most powerful units. The Royalists get extremely powerful cavalry, but they'll also drain your coffers unless you're able to support them. Instead of making premade units or groups of units, you build companies consisting a captain (or an assigned hero unit), the main body of the company, and two supporting units (like wizards or necromancers). Outside of combat, your companies will heal and reassemble themselves if they're in friendly territory. Killed heroes are the exception. You have to pay to reactivate them, and I think they have to be put in charge of a new company.
Maybe you'd find Z/The Zod Engine to be worth a try. You can attack with a bunch of troops at once, but if they're bunched together they'll be sitting ducks for explosive projectiles.
All three of these games lack gathering-based economies and are more involved with capturing and holding points. Company of Heroes has manpower, fuel, and ammo points, Kohan has things like mines and cities (which you can also build Civilization-style), and Z has factories that automatically spawn units over time. Kohan's economic system is a bit weird and is based around unit upkeep costs, but you get used to it.
I like StarCraft and all, but at this point it's more for the music and aesthetics than the gameplay at this point (although maybe it would be different if there was a better way to play it; I wish Stargus had gotten off the ground). The Terran music never gets old to me, and the concept of ragtag armies of roughneck space hicks taking on hordes of vicious lizard bugs is an interesting one. I've always thought the Protoss were lame though.
I was just looking up StarCraft concept art, and it's getting a bit hard to find now. It's effectively been getting memoryholed by StarCraft II artwork, but at least I've downloaded the manual now.Hopefully you can get something out of these recommendations, but RTS games have been my favorite genre since I was a little kid and it's hard for me to think like someone who has problems connecting with them.