# What is the most influential real-time strategy game of all time?

> Every entry here changed how the next one was built. Mouse-driven bases, fog of war, hero units — somebody did each of them first.

*By YPB Team · Published August 17, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-most-influential-real-time-strategy-game-of-all-time*

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## Current results (3 votes)

1. **Dune II** — 100% (3 votes · score 1000/1000)
   Westwood's 1992 adaptation of Frank Herbert's world, which set the mouse-driven base building, fog of war and resource harvesting that every RTS after it copied.
2. **Rise of Nations** — 0% (0 votes · score 642/1000)
   Big Huge Games' 2003 hybrid that grafted Civilization's borders and eras onto real-time play.
3. **StarCraft** — 0% (0 votes · score 551/1000)
   Blizzard's 1998 sci-fi RTS whose three asymmetric races made it a national sport in South Korea.
4. **Total Annihilation** — 0% (0 votes · score 551/1000)
   Cavedog's 1997 game that introduced true 3D units, physics-driven projectiles and streaming resources.
5. **Herzog Zwei** — 0% (0 votes · score 551/1000)
   Technosoft's 1989 Mega Drive game, widely credited as the first real-time strategy game.
6. **Company of Heroes** — 0% (0 votes · score 494/1000)
   Relic's 2006 World War II game that replaced base-spam with cover, suppression and territory control.
7. **Dawn of War** — 0% (0 votes · score 350/1000)
   Relic's 2004 Warhammer 40,000 adaptation, which put squad combat and melee at the centre of an RTS.
8. **Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos** — 0% (0 votes · score 350/1000)
   Blizzard's 2002 game whose hero units and custom maps produced the entire MOBA genre.
9. **Age of Empires II** — 0% (0 votes · score 257/1000)
   Ensemble's 1999 historical RTS, still played competitively more than twenty-five years after release.
10. **Supreme Commander** — 0% (0 votes · score 257/1000)
   Chris Taylor's 2007 game of army-scale battles, strategic zoom and experimental units.
11. **Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri** — 0% (0 votes · score 257/1000)
   Firaxis's 1999 strategy game of ideological factions colonising an alien world.
12. **Command & Conquer** — 0% (0 votes · score 143/1000)
   Westwood's 1995 follow-up, which turned the Dune II template into a franchise and added full-motion-video briefings.
13. **Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness** — 0% (0 votes · score 143/1000)
   Blizzard's 1995 fantasy RTS that brought naval and air units, fog of war and mass multiplayer to the genre.
14. **Homeworld** — 0% (0 votes · score 143/1000)
   Relic's 1999 space RTS, the first to make the whole battlefield fully three-dimensional.
15. **Age of Empires** — 0% (0 votes · score 143/1000)
   Ensemble's 1997 debut, which proved a history-based RTS could sell as well as a science-fiction one.
16. **Populous** — 0% (0 votes · score 143/1000)
   Bullfrog's 1989 god game, an ancestor of the real-time strategy form and Peter Molyneux's breakthrough.

Tags: games, strategy, retro, pc