Vagelis
You are right : Starcraft was a great game (and still is, my 3 kids currently play SC and only SC).
But remember, AoE came before SC, so that the introduction of unit upgrades and technology came with AoE and not with SC. (Even WC had a complex tech tree with unit upgrades)More over, AoK did bring ressources management one step further than AoE did (not that SC did), AoE was already ahead of SC in that department.
The great improvments of SC, among others, were :
1) the great difference between races (as in AoM, but more than in AoK and much much more than in AoE)
2) And the complexity in the interaction between various units (possibility to attack ground units only, flying units only or both but with unequal effect..) Plus all the magical (or technological) special effects.
Note that this was done differently in AoK with the rock/paper/scissors type of interaction (cavs beat archers who beat pikes who beat cavs...). It will go up to a higher level in AoM with all the same complex interaction between normal units plus the heroes, Mus and Gps.
And some of the various ennemy controlling effects of SC (via the Zerg queen or the Protoss templars) were just variation (with more diversity and different kind of effects, I agree) of the conversion that existed already in AoE and the medics were also doing what the priests were doing in AoE and that also existed in WC (even in the first WC).
Finally, SC had only 2 bad points : the graphic of all Ages games is much nicer and the random maps of all age games are much more fun. (Not that Blizzard can't make nice graphics and nice random maps, they did just that with Diablo, but neither with WC nor with SC).
************
ΐ la guerre comme ΰ la guerre[This message has been edited by Dagobert (edited 05-17-2002 @ 10:33 AM).]