I think the entropy curve of RTS games tend to be poor. The most addictive games have a random start with different elements and a fair bit of luck (think battle royale and roguelikes).
RTS games tend to have a standard opening minutes setup where you just do your own thing and then follow a flow chart of how to progress based on how things develop.
If you're playing someone decent, and are not a top tier player, you don't actually get to experiment and do interesting things so much as try to execute better on your original book of plays.
Yeah this is what killed my interest in the genre. Ultimately it seems that it comes down to learning the meta, and APM with strategy only superficially involved.
I do play some AoE3 still since they released the DE for that one and I will say there’s been one players running around pulling off victories that shatter the meta, and ofc the establishment players have referred to that as “toxic”.
RTS games tend to have a standard opening minutes setup where you just do your own thing and then follow a flow chart of how to progress based on how things develop.
If you're playing someone decent, and are not a top tier player, you don't actually get to experiment and do interesting things so much as try to execute better on your original book of plays.