I have lived RTS and Strategy games the whole of my life. I look to them in the broadest of sense but enjoy them equally. I find that often I have strategist "moods" and I play the games based on them. Allow me to give an example.
If I want to hurl myself at the enemy I break out Starcraft, Total Annihilation (and the Kingdoms version), Warcraft, Age of Empires, and the like. This isn't he gratification that FPS gives me with "boom head shot" screaming at my desk and further twitch style satisfaction. It is faster than games like Civilization, GalCiv2, Chess, Diciplies 2, and even board games or card games like Magic: The Gathering. The main difference between the three to me is time.
If you have Time on your side, meaning you have a turn to do what you want to do and everyone must wait until you do it, and you know how much can be accomplished in each turn for both you and your competitor then you can sometimes have a major war on your hands. Time works in both ways here though as you might also have a game so long they declare you dead and your significant other has moved on. That said the "think on your feet" versions like Starcraft make the fast acting have a massive advantage over the analytical. It can get a sense of major rigidity when there is always an answer to a certain tactic. For the most part this does not come up often, but it does come up in Korea where the last Starcraft champ was clocked at executing more than 133 commands per minute. At that speed you know he isn't thinking, he is reacting to what is practiced and recorded in his brain. While that is a slap shot into the net of awesome is seems to lack fun to me. Games are supposed to be fun just as often as they can be a challenge.
That is why in the department I work in we play Worms: Armageddon. It's turn based but you have 30 seconds to act. We turn on all the cheats we can an blow the ever loving heck out of the level with banana bombs of doom. We do this when we don't have much time left in our lunch hour or we just really want to kill each other good. Then there are the games where we turn everything off and play a typical game carefully. When you win you don't laugh at how far the guy flew or scoff at the random effect that just happened to make you the winner, you stand up slowly.... stretch..... utter a long "yyyeeeeaaaaahhhhhhh........" look at everyone in the eyes one by one and utter a slow and deliberate "Boo. Yaa." Really this isn't a vs. comment on modern gaming but a view at the 31 flavors of awesome that is the game golf bag I choose from.
On that side note: Elemental is going to be friggin great!
What can I say? Some days I just want to cover the world in exploding bannanas, some days..."Boom Head Shot".
Seabass