One realism problem, ignoring gameplay for a moment, of all build-base-then-attack RTS games is that it leads to all sides becoming more powerful over the course of their battle as they develop, wheras in the real world fighting is not a very good method of promoting growth in an economy, or much of anything for that matter. A "rush" of any kind shouldn''t be possible in its RTS definition, devoting everything at the start of the game to an overwhelming wave.

Continuing along those lines, I think that one thing most RTS games miss is the idea of unifying the play to a smaller number of experiences. You are fairly dragged along from developing your civilization or whatever into smashing the other guy, or else you lose, and they are like different games played on the same board. Outside reinforcements are generally avoided in favor of building it all from scratch, and when items like power and food are used as limitations, our commander can at times feel like a economic planner, not someone building military forces and defenses. This disjointness has turned me off to RTS games...I played a few(C&C/RA 1, WC I+II) and then tired of it. They try to strike a balance between fighting and resources and really it just seems too needlessly busy and hectic.

There are games that go to the two extremes of all-resources or all-fighting, but they are fewer. (The Settlers series and Myth, for example) There is no doubt that the rush "problem" is eliminated in them, however.

Perhaps the real problem is that the real-time we are using is too fast; we should stop using awkwardly-formed scales that try to overlook how one tiny building can magically produce people that are bigger than its doors, and move to a more realistic one where it takes some time to move people about, and more attention can be given to thoughtful strategy and real logistical problems instead of limiting our units through quantities and construction times.

I would personally like an RTS to have defensive structures powerful enough to be reckoned with instead of, as often seems to be the case, near-symbolic defenses incapable of doing more than slow down a force of any significant size. If towers were made enough of a threat to make infantry assaults truly costly - powerful enough that one would not normally tackle them without decent support by artillery or siege engines - this might stop much of the immediate rushing.

Of course, this would only move the rushing up a notch to a catapult rush, so siege units would have to be weak enough that even entry-level infantry could easily destroy them unless skillfully defended.

There are games that don''t allow for rush tacticts but they are not well known by people. Perhaps because they do want rush tacticts. I have seen one or two of those games but I can''t even remember their names now. That being said, I am not very fond of games that allow for the opponent to simply build a huge army of whatever unit is the biggest,hardest and meanest of them all. Then using it to crush the opponent. Gets kind of boring after a while, no matter who is winning. I personally think that a point system like warhammer epic would be much better.

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