What games should you play to prepare for Plan-Annihilation?

On-line games where 90% of the players have a head start on me is a major factor that puts me off playing them. For this reason, I tend to normally start playing games from alpha/beta and continue playing until the game is almost dead.

I have gained a lot of experience from lots of genres doing this. However, this is not the case for real time strategy games. Almost all have them are have strong similarities, so people who have been playing real time strategies for a large portion of their lives will be able to transfer over their skill with little to no modification.

Planetary Annihilation is one of the few exceptions; I think it is dramatically different due to the sheer size of the playable map, lots of stereotype breaking rules have been introduced. I found this to be a golden opportunity to finally break into the real time strategy scene, and I am going to stay here for a few years.

I have played some real time strategy games before, and have intermediate experience in it. The games I played lead me to have stronger micro skills than macro.

But my question is, what real time strategy do you guys recommend a "not so experienced" player to train up into playing Planetary Annihilation?

(state your recommended game, and the skills I would gain playing it)

TL;DR version:
Intermediate player @ RTS games, looking 4 game 2 skill up RTS/prepare 4 PA, which 1 do I play? (name of game + reason)

Re: What games should you play to prepare for Plan-Annihilat

Probably TA.

Re: What games should you play to prepare for Plan-Annihilat

TA, Supreme Commander, SupCom: Forged Alliance, Sins Of A Solar Empire, TA Spring http://springrts.com/

That should cover it for the most part, but be sure to check out mods for the games as well, they also add in a ton on content and can often even make the games even more balanced and enjoyable.

Re: What games should you play to prepare for Plan-Annihilat

I know that feel. I had never played an RTS game before when I pledged for this. Like you, I used this game as a chance to break into the RTS community.

You should play Total Annihilation, as PA is based most off of it as well as being a great macro based RTS. Play some Supreme Commander too, as there will be some features from that as well.

You can get Total Annihilation from GOG (which gives you some cool stuff to boot):
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/total_anihi ... ander_pack

You can get Supreme Commander through Steam, if you have it.