Have You Played... Warcraft 2?
Work work!
A lot of my HYP entries end up being games wot I watched my big brother play and then cautiously experimented with myself. Warcraft II (colon Tides Of Darkness) was, to an eight year old, amazing, especially with the Beyond The Dark Portal expansion.
I don't much dip my toe in the RTS genre these days, but when I was little they were the majority of what my brother played, and thus were the majority of what I played. And the Warcraft games were my favourite (also leading to a glorious failed gatekeeping attempt when an older boy at school said "Um, I think you mean Warhammer?").
If you're interested in the release of Warcraft 3 Reforged later this month and you haven't played Warcraft II, do check it out, 'cos you can get it on GOG. The early forays into Blizzard's orcs vs humans series are really delightful, not just because they did RTS very well, but also because of their humour.
I always chose to be the orcs. Duh. Even now, decades later, I can remember happy little voice voice clips for peons, the orc workers, and the weirdly perky bare arses of ogres, which you can see for yourself in the header image. When I was playing multiplayer and could pick my own faction, I always set my colour to a bright, pale, acid blue, and loved how brightly the pixels shone on the units wearing my clan. Ah, youth. And war.