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.
Star Wars: Empire at War
"Star Wars: Empire at War" was first mentioned in 2004, by then-president of LucasArts Jim Ward. He discussed the possibility of a RTS video game set in the "Star Wars" universe, stating "...there's a bright future there for games based on these new properties as well as original Star Wars games like a new real-time strategy PC game that Petroglyph is developing for next year". Ward described the game as taking the real-time strategy genre in a new direction and outlined plans to balance the gameplay between hardcore games and audiences familiar with the "Star Wars" franchise. The game was unveiled by LucasArts on January 21, 2005 with an original release date set for the end of 2005. LucasArts said that the newly formed Petroglyph Games would be developing an original 3-D game engine, titled Alamo, for "Star Wars: Empire at War" and that the game would support online battles for up to eight players.