Total Annihilation
"Total Annihilation" was one of the first RTS games to feature radar that showed enemy units within its radius on the minimap. This added an additional element of electronic warfare to the game: players could construct radar jammers that prevented units in a small radius around them from appearing on radar. Mobile radar jammers could be used to create surprise attacks, necessitating the deployment of scout units on a regular basis to reveal said units visually. In addition, radar jammers could disguise the presence of visually cloaked units, such as the commander or land mines. Radar fields rendered cloaked units detectable; a radar jammer could make said units undetectable until the radar jammer was destroyed. "Total Annihilation" was also one of the first RTS games to point the way towards battlefields with hundreds and thousands of units. Previous games could field a hundred units or so. However, Total Annihilation initially permitted 250 units per side which was later patched to 500. A third party patch allowed up to 5,000 units per side.
AI War: Fleet Command
AI War's more positive reviews said "AI War is a revolution in terms of how RTSs play," "[The first three AI War Expansions] are perfect examples of what an expansion should be," and "AI War breaks most of the genre's rules. Which is precisely why it's incredible." These same reviewers also noted "it’s got a considerable learning curve," "The one thing [the first three expansions] have in common, however, is how much the[y] increase the difficulty compared to the original game," and "It has the presentation of a spreadsheet, but as much heart and soul as Dune 2, Total Annihilation, Homeworld, Galactic Civilizations and Desktop Tower Defense rolled into one."