no, planning out the grand strategy for the entire armed forces for the course of a war is a job for utter morons who don't believe the time proven truth that no plan survives first contact with the enemy.  Thinking on your feet is what every true commander does.  a grunt does no thinking at all - they only do what they are ordered to, no more, no less.  TBS="lazy idiot who can't take the heat of a real game"

that was for calling us Sinners "grunts".

that may be, but after those three minute build orders are up, then the real fun begins.

(i.e. the battles in campaign are very different from one to the next - in one, you can start out as a well-prepared city, able withstand a seige, and then the next, you are a small scouting force without villagers to build a town and must work your way through a huge enemy encampment.)

My personal favorite map is Islands (or team islands) because you have that ten minute grace period to build up your city and forces.

other than that, I agree with Zorak.

You see the analogy for TBS games earlier?  (Be warned, at the time, I was a bit defensive, so my writing had a angry undertone, but the analogy holds true)

I agree with the sentiment of your post, but I agree with almost nothing you wrote. It's impossible to "outplay someone without outplaying them." High lethality (in some RTS games), effective micromanagement, harassment, etc. are all desirable in RTS games for precisely the same reasons that they're desirable in TBS games. (Imagine only being able to select units in groups and drag them towards general locations, rather than individual hexes/squares; or not being able to raid cities to reduce their populations.)

That said, I agree that the reason that people have gripes with RTS games are usually due to implementation, rather than the fundamental principles of the genre.

As for RTS games with good strategic models, I'm surprised no one listed Sins.

Zagfel, two games.  A TBT and RTT of your choice.  I don't care which.  Take two melee units with the same movement and run one past the other while it's under attack.  What results do you get?

My typical results end up like this.  In the turn based games, the guy that tries to run past his enemy dies, fast.  In the real time games, he gets to where ever he's going with a single hit being placed, at best.  There isn't any brainpower in this exercise, no logistical feat has been accomplished, it's pure idiocy.  A catastrophic mistake in any remotely realistic situation is instead a highly rewarding method of play.  You don't need to draw the enemy away from your objective or defeat them, simply ignore them and attack it first.  As long as you have the necessary firepower for the task, you're all set.  It sums up most of what passes for tactics in the typical RTS game, it's depressing.

My typical results end up like this. In the turn based games, the guy that tries to run past his enemy dies, fast. In the real time games, he gets to where ever he's going with a single hit being placed, at best. There isn't any brainpower in this exercise, no logistical feat has been accomplished, it's pure idiocy. A catastrophic mistake in any remotely realistic situation is instead a highly rewarding method of play. You don't need to draw the enemy away from your objective or defeat them, simply ignore them and attack it first. As long as you have the necessary firepower for the task, you're all set. It sums up most of what passes for tactics in the typical RTS game, it's depressing.

Rushing is a legitamate strategy and if your paying attention easy to stop but at least if your playing an RTS it is a strategy where as your choices in a TBS are limited. most of the combat in TBS come down to what unit is stronger. In an RTS if your good a weaker force can beat a supurior one showing the value of tactics.

Didn't you see my little winking smilie guy there?  I wasn't meaning to use fightin' words when I started this post.  Thus far, I think there's been some really good discussion about the differences.  It could be that I'm actually lazy and don't like the excess busy work an RTS game requires.  I do like to play games at a leisurely pace.  I like to relax when I game, not get all in a frenzy.  Having said that though, there are times when I'm playing something like Total War and the micromanaging is getting pretty tedious and I think to myself "Am I actually playing for fun or doing actual work here?"  I can handle micromanagement though, as long as it doesn't require sweaty palms, a racing pulse, and frenzied clicking.    

Okay, well... if your going to let me choose the terms... Assuming the melee units start within contact of one another (because otherwise, assuming the speeds are even, obviously one is not going to catch the other), I'll take a goblin sapper chasing a peon in Warcraft II and an axman chasing a tank in Civ II (both melee in the sense that they have a range of one hex). 

Obviously, I'm joking since those aren't exactly "fair" examples, but I'll address the crux of your criticism below.

I'll break this down into two objections.

1) It isn't realistic.

Certainly. There are numerous historical examples in which commanders have decided to pursue some objective rather than directly engaging the enemy. But more importantly, even if it weren't, so what?

2) It doesn't require thought.

It does. The most likely scenario is that the attacking unit is attempting to perform some sort of early-game (probably economic) harassment. In order to even attempt to accomplish this in the first place, the attacking player has to make a series of potentially game-breaking strategic judgments: 1) determine whether the loss of the unit is worth the benefits of pressuring her opponent, 2) determine whether the benefits of pressuring her opponent are worth the costs to her own defense from counterattack, 3) determine whether the benefits of building the infrastructure for producing that unit are worth the benefits of building economic infrastructure instead. In addition, there are a number of tactical skills that need to be exercised, including: 1) scout the opponent's base to determine the location of the objective in relation to her defenses, and 2) move the unit to a location where it can rush past the defending unit without that opponent noticing and countering. 

And raise you another.

These are exactly the same sorts of decisions that go into early-game harassment in TBS games. The only difference is the graphical representation. ie. Player A's unit decides to rush into B's base and attack a target, while accepting that eventually B's units will kill A's unit, versus Player A's unit deciding to attack B's base to weaken some target while accepting that either B's defending units will kill A's unit either immediately or next turn.

I am sympathetic to people who hate the frenetic pace of most modern RTS's. But that doesn't mean that I don't recognize that they involve significant cognitive skills. 

Blah Life is glorified game, and this game is glorified chess.  And and and....

Blah. 

Okay, what about a TBS-RTS game like any of the Total War series ???

I found Sins to be far less reaction-based than previous RTS titles - a very nice meld of the two genres. Then again I have yet to play it multiplayer and would imagine at the super-competitive level where everyone knows every unit and every trick in the book backwards it comes down to reaction time.

Which would be dull.

This is a dishonest statement, period.  Name one time in the recorded history of the world that an army has run through another without fighting to attack a target on the other side of the enemy.

You see no difference in the quality of thought required to position your forces in a TBS compared to an RTS?  I'd never have been able to go pro or anything, but I was a very good RTS player when I was active.  Thinking was not the primary factor, rapid and accurate movement was.  Making a judgement call on whether an intellectually void, tactless assault is effective or not isn't the same as successfully deploying your forces in a manner that leaves an actual hole in your enemies defenses and lets you walk through unopposed instead of just undamaged by your futile pursuers.

It's not the pace, it's the system.  Focus firing on far from visible units in the middle of a crowd isn't pacing either.

Pacing has other issues, like every engagement being total destruction of one side or the other.