A place to sit back, hang out, and make monkey noises about anything you'd like.
"Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games where the game does not progress incrementally in turns.[1]
In an RTS, the participants position and maneuver units and structures under their control to secure areas of the map and/or destroy their opponents' assets. In a typical RTS, it is possible to create additional units and structures during the course of a game. This is generally limited by a requirement to expend accumulated resources. These resources are in turn garnered by controlling special points on the map and/or possessing certain types of units and structures devoted to this purpose. More specifically, the typical game of the RTS genre features resource gathering, base building, in-game technological development and indirect control of units." -Wikipedia, the internet argument settler
How is that stretching the definition by any stretch of the imagination? That's Overlord almost to a T. The only thing it's missing is base-building, but Total War and M&B don't even have that, at least not in the Realtime segments, and it could definitely be argued that the spawn improvements and shit you try to capture in multiplayer is base-building as well as resource-gathering.
Yeah, if there's one flaw in its design, it's that everything and everyone is too specialised, to the point where each enemy and each enemy combination becomes a matter of mastering the various clever gimmicks rather than being able to outmanuever or simply out-fight your opponent. Outside of the arena, you don't get many areas in the game where you have to come up with your own strategy rather than memorizing and exploiting patterns, and things get absorbed in gimmicks.
Dark Souls is a little bit like that, but they break it up by making the combat gimmick so absolutely customizable that you never have to completely sell yourself to the initial version of the combat gimmick. Pikmin has similar gimmicks, but it breaks that up with fun puzzles and resource-gathering. Overlord isn't very customizable, and its engine was not built for puzzles, so it breaks up the gimmicks with amusing things and the ability to abuse your minions for fucking up, which is sort of a love-it-or-it'll-overstay-its-welcome kind of mechanic.
Used to be the only genre I played when I was younger, then as the years went by somehow I lost interest in the genre. Played Real War/Rogue States, Command and Conquer Generals/Zero Hour (love it to this day), Age of Empires (I, II, III + DLC), Age of Mythology, Empire Earth+DLC, Rise of Nations, Rise of Legends (really liked it). Among the modern ones, I've tried Banished (can't really get into it), Starcraft 2 WoL (loved it, need to get round to the other two some day), Company of Heroes (1 and 2, hate 2), DEFCON, Divinity Dragon Commander (the RTS part was terrible, the Visual novel part was fantastic), Endless Space (Nice), Galactic Civilizations II, Grey Goo (really did not like, shallow as hell), Kingdom:New Lands, Medieval II Total War (Classic), Offworld Trading Company (liked it a lot), Planetary Annihilation+Titans (Really weird camera and terrible graphics but strapping a thruster on a moon and slamming it into another planet has its own joy), Rome II Total War (disappointing), Shogun 2 Total War (Phenomenal), Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion (Lost so many hours to this one), Star Wars Empire at War + DLC (Liked this one, despite the shallow gameplay), Stellaris (needs more content), Supreme Commander 2 (Nice, but I hear the first was better), Total War Warhammer (satisfied my lifelong itch to defend Moria/Helms Deep areas from Orcs), Ultimate General Gettysburg (never really got into it), Unity of Command (Just got that recently), Wargame Airland Battle (I keep trying to get in, but there's steep learning curve, Command: Modern Air Naval Operation (Learning curve on steroids, I'll play it... someday), World in Conflict+Soviet Assault (Technically Real Time Tactical, but the game itself is a gem), WH40K 1, 2, Retribution (not as fun as I'd hoped, CoH did things better). Yeah, in hindsight I've played a lot, but amusingly, not as much as I play other genres.
There's a lot of games in that list for me to comment on, but I will say that the difference between Age of Empires 1 and 2 is one of the most drastic improvements I've ever seen in a video game series. In one game there's bugs galore, you can barely build a single warship before all of your enemies destroy your dock, and good luck trying to kill an archer with nothing but axemen. Age of Empires 2: freaking castles, battering rams, major upgrades to the graphics in every conceivable way...it blew my mind.
On the other hand, cheat codes for AoE 1 are still amusing. Type "bigdaddy" into the chat box and bam, the game gives you a car equipped with rocket launchers which zooms across the map, looking incredibly out of place in the medieval setting. One of the enemy priests converted this rocket-launcher car over to their side, and suddenly the game reached a whole new level of badass.
Just realized I'd forgotten Battle for Middle Earth 1 and 2 from that list, the first was innovative, the second was boring. For most improved games in a series, I'd point of Witcher 1 to 2, and again from 2 to 3. But yes, AoE 2 was an excellent game for the time, and yes the fun cheats from AoE1 and AoMythology were a barrel full of laughs (and revenge where applicable)