>>724700201
>What RTS lacks is marketable material
Frankly, I think that your prospective RTS developer doesn't actually understand what is marketable these days because they want to make "an RTS" which means trying to remake Starcraft or Command and Conquer.

My 140 IQ market analysis is that replayability is king in 2025. Think about your Rimworlds, Factorios and Hearts of Irons that are all pretty much infinitely replayable but also have deep mechanics that give you some room to play around with and exploit so that each playthrough feels a little bit different and the player can actually get better and grow their understanding. RTS are stuck in the compfag multiplayer mindset that a map is just a place where you battle in a void before loading into another completely unrelated battle in a void, which means the only way to get people to stick around and take interest is if there's a huge multiplayer community except none of these games will ever develop that because people would rather play Starcraft, so you're left with a population of 100-300 gigaautists playing 1v1 ranked and scaring away the new blood like in Wargame and Steel Division. What does Empire at War have? A persistent sandbox campaign that apparently has kept people entertained for 20 years. I don't think there's anything inherent in RTS gameplay that means you can't step away from basing your game on 1v1 multiplayer matches, it just needs a developer willing to risk it.