Well in WBC3 there was a queue but also the option to just repeat the last production. So you would just tell a building to build this and then hit the continuous production box and move on. Then when you had enough you would just uncheck the box. And yes the cost for units was only applied when they started to build. So you would only be down the cost of one unit per building at a time. Also it would just pause the build order if you didn't have the res and when you got up to enough it would build again.

Some older games even had a thing where not only did you not need resources except for the currently building unit, but you spent the resources over time so you could order a build with only 1 gold and as long as you produced the right amount of gold equal to how fast the build progressed you would never need to have more than 1 gold in your treasury.

APM isn't the same as multitasking. So you could set up a game where it was virtually impossible to need more than 100 or 200 APM. In that case even if you had better APM it doesn't matter because it can't get you anywhere.

Now I really like Majesty style games where you can't actually control units at all. I think it would be interesting to combine sim city like Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom with Majesty style combat, Emperor military engagements are boring as shit and it has cities spread out over the world on totally separate maps.

But I understand that that stuff is not as popular as action based RTS games.

As for imposing specific restrictions that would imply that I expected all games to be made this way, rather than discussing how we could make a game this way.

I have no problem with Starcraft style games existing.

I think one problem is that 2d and 3d RTS games are just so limiting power wise. A game like Warring Factions as a text based browser game can allow a lot of cool management to go along with combat across a universe with 100000 star systems. An RTS game can only deal with a small 2048x2048 map area tops. Luckily if we use a kingdom vs kingdom setting we can make do with that map size.

Commercial games tend to prioritize very fast high APM games like Starcraft however. This is partly because the shortened game times allow access by more casual gamers. Which is fine, but it does mean I have to design my own games instead of buying them from a big dev studio.

Average players do not go to 100-200 meaningful APM; they hover around the 100 range. I don't think APM is the same as multitasking, but multitasking increases the required APM of a game. By contrast, DotA can be played with 60 APM even though top players spam over 150 APM.

As far as straying from the Action RTS design, that's a design choice that is ultimately up to the developer. I've mostly given my opinion from an Action RTS fan about the subject, so take from that what you will. I really do not have the experience in non-conventional RTS games to offer any advice on the subject.

Average players do not go to 100-200 meaningful APM; they hover around the 100 range. I don't think APM is the same as multitasking, but multitasking increases the required APM of a game. By contrast, DotA can be played with 60 APM even though top players spam over 150 APM.

I concur. I recall seeing replays/screencasts from a number of players whose APM averages are lower than 100, some with lower than 70, while being top 5 Master League or better rank in 1v1 Starcraft 2. So you can be among the best 1% 1v1 Starcraft 2 players in the world, even have some tournament success, while giving orders slightly faster than once a second (and this still includes many meaningless orders, like repeated movement commands). Other than the very top of professional play, success in Starcraft 2 depends on being able to multitask in the sense of thinking and seeing quickly - clicking fast on stuff is generally not required. In this sense it is much unlike its predecessor, which demanded equally fast thinking and seeing, but required probably twice as much mechanical execution on top.

I liked the game Legendary Wars and the next game Monster Wars, where I had buttons to tell all units to advance, or even just all units of the same type.

Anyway, I think that the stats of the hero should automatically be distributed and that the skill points should be easy to distribute.

Have you looked at the King Arthur series by Neocore? It combines the slow paced no-micro real time strategy of the Total War series with RPG elements which sounds quite a bit like what you're wanting to do.

In most RTS circles micro refers to micromanagement, which is the mechanical action of controlling ones units particularly during combat. Macro refers to macromanagement which is the mechanical actions involved in managing one's bases, economy, production, research/tech, and etc.

An attempt to create an RTS that reduces the difficulty of the mechanical aspect of the game without reducing the strategical depth will be very difficult, and I might even argue futile, but here are some things to keep in mind:

Importance of micro largely depends on the marginal strength of units/armies, meaning how strong is a certain unit when it's being controlled well, as opposed to when it's controlled purely by AI. This can be reduced by forcing the user to relinquish some of the control of his units ala Majesty, but this can lead to unwanted nondeterminate behavior which in itself undermines strategy which is reliant on planning. So you want to minimize marginal strength of units without relinquishing too much control, one way to do this is to implement squads ala DoW 1, however that game was still quite micro-intensive (, but not as much as SC/WC3.)

Importance of macro on the other hand solely depends on the difficulty of execution of your strategy. One good example of a very macro-intensive game design being converted to a less macro-intensive design is the SC2 design being derived from the SC1 design. Another tool that reduced the difficulty of macro has been the side-bar in CnC3, and RA3 which gave the player the ability to control his production without actually moving the camera to select the production buildings. Interface is the key to managing how mechanically active a player is going to be in trying to execute his strategy.

So in conclusion:

To make macro less mechanically intense you want to design a very powerful interface.

But in the case of micro there's no easy answer, you can make the units less responsive, but then this will largely work to frustrate the players that are trying to control their units.