The original StarCraft, Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 (and Yuri's Revenge expansion), Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (and the expansion, Kane's Wrath), and the Total War series (the battles are in real time).
Civilization, E.Universalis, rail tycoon etc. I think that past a certain point where x games is obviously gret, the contributing factors for "the best" are often accidentary factors as in your age, activity, I.Q. etc. So, my point is to create a full circle, it's not the game itself that has value. It's you the one who add to it.
Some of my personal favorites are Decision Medieval Palisade Guardian: Revolution Crystal Saga Call of Gods WarFlow Warlord Saga The King Of Towers Super Mechs Game Battle Dawn Battle Mechs Rushwar Goodgame Poker Goodgame Big Farm Goodgame Shadow Kings The Dark Ages Goodgame Empire Sanctioned Renegades
If we even leave aside the fact that most of these are browser games - they are not RTS!!!! Real Time Strategy is a game where you build a base, create army and go wage war with your enemies - in REAL time, on a SINGLE map. Heroes series are not RTS, DOTA is not RTS (while Warcraft III is a RTS), Diablo III and CS: GO are NOT RTS FOR GOD'S SAKE! My favorite RTS series is Total War. Even despite Rome II being a huge fail and requiring a ton of patches to at least run properly, all the rest of the games in this series are awesome - Shogun, Shogun 2 with mods like Fall of the Samurai, Medieval, Medieval II: Kingdoms with mods like Stainless Steel and Third Age. Rome: Total War with mods like Alexander, Empire : Total War and Napoleonic Wars - these games are pure gems, they rested atop popularity charts for months and years after release and community is huge. On the opposite - I do not know half of the games you mentioned. And I doubt anyone ever heard of them.
nope, bro, just stating the obvious, which you failed to understand. This thread is not called BEST GAME EVAH! It is called BEST RTS. And the games you mentioned can be your top 10 - yet they are not RTS.