The squads idea is probably the best idea to hit strategy games since waypoint queues. I don't know where it was introduced, but I've seen it used to great effect in Kohan, Dawn of War, and Battle for Middle-Earth. Dawn of War in particular has the best squad system I've seen, particularly since it's based on Warhammer 40K, which uses squads its original table-top rendition. I wouldn't even think about making an RTS without squads.

However, I would prefer to have more control over which units go into a squad. DoW adhered tightly to the original W40K rules, which you'd expect, but it also limited the flexibility of your units. In Kohan II, you could select different types of units (infantry, archers, cavalry, mage, etc.) to make up the squad, but once it was created, you could never change it. I'd much rather hand-pick my units, merge them into a squad, and disband them whenever I like. Full control over squad makeup is my desire.

I never played TA, and I never cared for C&C. I'm an economy player, which means I prefer resource management over combat. (You wouldn't think it to see my armies, but I like to gather resources and upgrade techs for about 45 minutes before I even start building an army.) The one thing I didn't like about RoN was the infinite resources. I much prefer games where the trees actually disappear when you cut them down, and gold mines don't last forever. That's why I've been playing Age of Mythology for the last several months, even though it has its share of flaws that were addressed in RoN.

I just came up with the idea of an editable action queue a few days ago, so I'm disposed to it. It wouldn't be a script like you guys are talking. It would simply be a list of queued actions, same as what's used in every modern strategy game, but you'd be able to see and edit the queue. You could rearrange actions, remove them, or add them at any point in the queue. Ninety percent of the time, this wouldn't be useful, but for the other 10 percent it would be extremely useful.

Here's my synopsis: Dawn of War is the best real-time tactical game I've ever played. Age of Empires has the best concepts strategy. Rise of Nations has the friendliest interface and unit AI. If you can somehow blend these seemlessly, you'll have a winner.

One thing I want to mention about the interface: please integrate keyboard shortcuts into the button images. It amazes me how few games incorporate this idea. Starcraft is the only one that comes to mind. Visualization is the key to smoother play. Hovering the mouse cursor over a button to see which key you have to press kind of eliminates the point of having keyboard shortcuts, doesn't it?

i agree - DoW squads were brilliantly implemented

I think advanced action and planning customizability would be phenomenal, but I don't think scripting functionality would be the way to implement it. It gives too much control to the players. I could see the equivalent of 'aimbots' arising for the RTS. Picture L33tzorXXX developing the play2crush 1.0 script that more or less executes the 'perfect' game strategy from start to finish without the player having to click more than a few buttons. I realize this would be a difficult feat and would rival the game developer's own AI skills, but players have accomplished some pretty amazing things in the name of competitive advantage and automated game play. Look at some of the third party scripting out there for MMORPGs, it's quite powerful. Part of what makes the RTS challenging is that human players can essentially only issue one command at a time in a real time environment. Scripting would allow players to be many places at once doing many different things all at once, which would reduce competition to who is holding the better scripts.

But, a total button mashing frenzy isn't the goal either, so more sophisticated commands and customizability would be a great direction for the genre to move in.