Usher in the 3rd era of RTS!

Uh. What?
1) The kickstarter proved there was a real demand for the game.
2) 32 bit can not physically give the backers the BIG robot battles they're asking for.
3) Including the wide array of promised platforms, at least one of them gives 64bit for FREE.

Legacy is not an excuse. There is virtually no PC developed in the past 5 years which is incapable of 64bit. Anything that plays PA well is guaranteed to be capable. The real problem is an issue of being ripped off by a manufacturer that installed a 32bit OS on 64bit hardware. Even that trend is beginning to die out... finally.

1) 50,000 backers was enough to "kickstart" PA, but it'll need to attract a much larger customer base to guarantee any sort of longevity, let alone be considered a killer app.
Supreme Commander by comparison sold ~1,000,000 copies, Star Craft more than 10x that amount.

2) And here is where Mavor has demonstrated the astuteness you seem to lack, despite expressing a dislike for 64bit he has stated the game will run on 32bit, but you will not get the full big bot bash experience.
Thus they get that 1/3 in in the game, but provide a 64bit Carrot, instead of a Stick baring entry that you advocate.

3) The much reviled 32bit Windows Luddites still have Linux users outnumbered ~30:1.
There's "small potatoes" if ever I've seen. Serving that market makes for good PR but it's basically charity.
Incidentally approx. 1/3rd of the Linux ecosystem is still 32bit as well.

Legacy is the perfect excuse when you are not a market leader and have little to no ability to shape that market.
Even when you do have that sort of power you have to be careful how you wield it.
MS was forced to support XP long past the point where even they wished it would just wither and die!

32 bit's 4gb limit is fine. Despite the fact that I have a 64 bit system, I don't plan on going beyond 4gb of RAM for at least a few more years. After that, I may get a Mac if mobile devices and tablets destroy the once vast PC empire. Intel's ultrabook idea is disgusting, and it already has Intel thinking about soldered-on desktop processors. LONG LIVE AMD, THE (SOON TO BE) SAVIOR OF x86!

Microsoft wanted to make a killer OS, they made it. It's not going to go away in my lifetime, for I will use my XP machine (with a 2nd gen i5!) until the day I die. Love XP too much to abandon it. Similar to the way I use my 20 year old powerbook for word processing (openoffice can open word 6 for mac documents).

I assure you that huge battles will be possible with 32bit... They have been for quite a while, and that's besides the fact that most servers are hosted with UBER-XEONS (see what I did there). I can say that multiplayer hosting with 32 bit might be slow, but if you want to play a huge skirmish, it'll probably be fine.

SOME PEOPLE have great big 16 bit software libraries and necessary 16 bit apps that requires backwards compatibility that 64 bit doesn't have. I still have my trusty Pentium 3 box and it's massive 30gb hard drive. Good times.

I refer you to this:

The 3GB "extreme case" mentioned is achieved by enabling a little used XP feature that is best left alone on a general purpose machine.
The normal per process limit is 2GB. So on XP you'll only see PA use half of your installed RAM.

There is good reason to go 64bit in 2013.

P.S. Go easy on the multi-posting please.

My OS uses half my 4gb anyways... I'm already 64bit, but I largely regret it... RAM isn't an issue for me, even with only 2gb available I can render video, play BF3, host a full 8 player supcom game, all perfectly fine. It's fast RAM, granted, but I play with 2gb available with a 64 bit OS, why not 2gb available with a 32 bit OS?
-EDIT- If you are wondering, I do indeed have an XP/7 dual boot. DX11 was enough to get my to buy 7 -reluctantly-

Just offer a 32bit server and client to those who are not yet blessed with a 64bit machine.
And make sure the game shows a nice and clear error message when it hits the 32bit limit:
"Your machine runs a 32bit OS and therefore this game now will crash. Please upgrade to 64bit asap".

Just agressively clear memory by CTRL+K'ing excess units. Start with the oldest. ;P

That's because 2GB is the max that 32 bit applications can generally use. Therefore, those programs need to be artificially limited to fit within that. 64 bit games = bigger games. Why do you regret it?

More than two thirds of computers on the steam survey were 64 bit. They're more secure, have larger memory ceilings and can run 32 bit applications. Of course, there are legitimate reasons for not going 64 bit - older hardware without appropriate drivers, for example.

Windows XP is almost criminally insecure. UAC isn't perfect but it completely cuts off all the absolutely trivial attacks that can be done on Windows XP thanks to the latter allowing users full admin rights by default.

The first consumer grade 64 bit computers started coming out in 2003. It has been a standard CPU feature ever since, with only explicit non gaming machines neglecting to upgrade.

No offense, but a computer more than 10 years old isn't going to play much of anything anymore.

I'm preeeeety sure I advocated no such thing. Watch this.

Code:

Minimum specs: 32 bit
Recommended specs: 64 bit

Woah! Isn't THAT amazing. The player with 64bit is still going to have the better experience, because they have the specs the game demands.

The #1 reason a minimum spec machine wouldn't have 64bit, is because the correct hardware has the wrong OS, a common experience from getting Delled. That's a problem for the installer to find.

Low memory users are advised to not play assassination mode.

You're wrong about UAC, some form of it was added to XP in an update. I got malwarebytes, security essentials and a rootkit remover (learned I needed the rootkit remover the hard way, my laptop got screwed).
What I am trying to say is that my PC only has 2gb of RAM free at any given time, so 32/bit applications and 64 bit applications can only use 2gb anyways, since my OS uses 2gb. 32 bit isn't a limit for me, as it doesn't change the way applications are allocated RAM at all.

Wow, it feels so soon to be hearing this phrase.

If you stick to 32bit, then you'll never be able to go above 4 GB ram total (2gb after os?). And that cuts you off pretty hard in multitasking and running games that are memory hogs (see PA).

Should have happened during the Vista era.

Why would that offend me?

This exchange lead me to believe you were against providing legacy support (and spare me your sarcasm):

This is a problem for average end-user too. Most people don't upgrade their OS independent of their hardware. Hence the reason so much 32bit is still around.

also, this isn't directly applicable, but certain things with 64 bit OS and hardware just work better, regardless of the higher RAM capabilities, like Java, i can tell you from experience the VM is FASTER in 64 bit mode, by a large factor in some cases ~ 100. and i am in agreement the tech has been around and standard so long there is no good reason to be on 32 at all

I don't plan on upgrading beyond 4gb of RAM. Granted, I said the same thing with 16mb of RAM, but the Mac still works. Never upgraded my old HP past 384mb of RAM, it runs great now with an NTFS formatted HDD (even with lots of background apps). 4gb is going to last me another decade, just as 16 and 384mb lasted me. BF3 is the biggest memory hog on the market and my PC handles it fine. Not even PA is going to make me pay for a needless upgrade, I've wasted enough money on video cards... That's besides the fact that I'll be renting a server. I was going to upgrade past 4gb of RAM, but the ultraportable PCs kicked off and average PC specs have been declining ever since...
The most memory intensive process my PC ever handled was an Arma 2 installlation, it crashed the system because it robbed to OS of quite a bit of memory, I tried to replicate it in XP, but it was just windows 7's abomination of an automated RAM manager.

Piles of upgrade cards with 16 and 32 bit drivers... 64 bit has it's incompatibilities. 64 bit is superior to 32 bit, but to imply that 32 bit is obsolete is outrageous.

Vista was bad enough, if Microsoft had made it 64 bit only, they would have bankrupted themselves.