Yes they were in fact.

BFME is probably the best out of the three I mentioned.

Gondor played as a usual base line faction with good defence and decent offence

Rohan was an elite strike type with superior cavalry but weaker infantry and archers and limited siege capability (but daaamn those Rohirrim kick ass!!!)

Mordor was a swarmer, with free crappy orcs plus tougher monster units at higher tier

Isengard was a heavy offensive faction with tough uruks, lots of siege options and good upgrades for them

Both evil factions lacked walls for defense and were more offensive in nature, while the two good factions had walls for their castles and smaller barriers for encampments making them slightly more defensive in nature.
Also each faction had access to a variety of Heroes that helped flesh out their options.

The balance was pretty darn good. BFME 2 (without mods) sucked in comparison.

Dawn of War I would place higher above Forged Alliance
(simply because Supcom while an excellent very in depth and detailed RTS, also has a very steep learning curve due to all the unit and structure tiers and the hard counters that are present while being well balanced can still catch you off guard.)

But both of those games had a great variety of units that were immersive and balanced.

 The fact you seem to think Warcraft 3 is the only successful RTS with four races shows you clearly have a skewed view of reality Sinkillr. Guess that explains the outrageous claims you've made on these forums.

i say well done i like what u did, the super weapon is what i would love to see  

on the other hand i don tget why you guys dont want new ships, sins dose not have a huge learning curve, play 3-7 batteles with easy ai and thats it you know the basics

Actually this game has a huge learning curve, the amount of time and effort needed to convert from a SP mindset and tactics to a MP one is huge. Obviously you wouldn't understand because you don't play MP.

Well, after writing that I was agreeing with Sinkiller on one thing, I gotta say I disagree with him, too.

Another faction is fine, IMO.  It's the adding of new units to the existing ones I'm not for.  Again, small numbers (2-4) ships is fine, but not more.

Axxo4, it's not that I think there's a hard learning curve, it's that I think you can't introduce too many more units to the existing factions before you begin to overlap and make some useless.

Realistically, some forming of niches is inevitable.

Another option may be to have "tiers" like in Supreme Commander for each faction if there are that many units. I suppose the Titan would be the equal of the experimental units and the capital ships would fall somewhere in between.

Some units are used a lot early game and become mostly obsolete by late game, while late game units are better suited for specific roles.

I'd say Forged Alliance with some of the mods was a pretty solid RTS.

Problems I felt:

- I felt faction diversity was not too good

- 500 unit cap for large maps was really bad (some mods I think addressed this)

- Multicore support was improved with mods

- Experimentals tended to be changed a lot with mods so YMMV depending on which mod you used

UnleashedElf, tiers wouldn't solve it, either.  Actually, it might make it worse.  There were definitely units in SupCom that you didn't use anymore once you're economy was strong enough to support a higher tier.

Precisely.

What I mean is, some units are meant for early game. They will be scuttled later on. Then later on you'd want late game units.

Each unit would have a use - at some point in the game. Early game units have a purpose - an inexpensive expendable early game unit, as do late game units.

Another option in games like Age of Empires would be an "upgrade tier". That is to say, for a price tag, you can "upgrade" your unit after researching an unlock to upgrade the early game units into something more powerful.

That is the real difficulty associated with adding more ships.

The fact that they all have to be balanced relative to each other and that they all need a useful niche.

[quote who="Wintercross" reply="106" id="348429]Oh wait...

They did. Obviously they were successful enough that each one got a sequel just like War Craft 3.... oh wait...
[/quote]

I wonder what the best selling PC game of all time is? Just stop posting, you're embarrassing youself.

Just get rid of titan AOE and make every titan like the Kultarask or Coronota. Boom, problem solved.

Kultorask?  No.  Coronata?  Better, but not far enough IMHO.  I just never wanted titans in the first place.

Also, it appears that you cannot revoke karma that was given accidentally by fat-fingering your screen.  I liked it more when you had a confirm dialog...