Totally off topic, but RTS is a weird split genre.

I really like the economy / base building part, but care less for unit control. I’m more of a macro player than micro.

I think a lot of players fall on one side or the other.

Clearly we need a team game where you can control the economy and I can control the armies. And if we start to lose we can curse and blame each other.

You can do this is Beyond All Reason - which is the best RTS I've played in years even though it's free/beta.

Even better. It's open-source. I've contributed a few small bug fixes myself.

thankfully, the genre has been dissected so there are games like revolution that focus on the warring armies aspect, and games like sim city that focus on the building aspect. and then there are factory games, which is a whole genre unto itself.

Sim City is older than RTS, or at least older than the genre defining RTS of Dune 2. Herzog Zwei release at about the same time as Sim City, and definitely didn't have any influence on it.

The factory must grow.

Did you ever play settlers? I loved building the towns.

Settlers of catan?

Weirdly enough, I’ve never played it

Probably this one or one of its successors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_II

That’s the one

> In all seriousness though, I think RTS games (I only do single player) would be more fun for me personally if I could leave the economy/build order stuff to a reasonable AI and focus instead on military unit control. I’m just not someone that can handle all of that at once.

Just pick an RTS game without base building? They exist.

2 upcoming games for you to check out:

1. Industrial Annihilation: a dual-mode game where you can build a base or manage an army and the AI will happily handle the rest.

2. Battle Aces: unit-management distilled by almost entirely removing building from the game.

What about RTS games specialising on the military part? I haven't played them myself, but I think the Company of Heroes series is like this, light on base building and focusing more on the military aspect.

WARNO and it's predecessors have zero base building. You can place down a single Forward Operating Base that is just a supply truck without wheels, but everything else comes from off screen onto the game.