Why I open every strategy game by ignoring the army

I lost a lot of early strategy matches by rushing units. The faster I built an army, the faster it got ground down, and then I had nothing left to replace it. The habit that fixed my win rate was boring: build economy first.

In most real-time strategy games, every resource you spend on an early attack is a resource not spent on growth. Unless you're going for a specific rush that ends the game fast, a slightly later but much bigger push usually wins.

Frontline Dominion drove this home for me, because it ties supply directly to how far your units can fight. I started treating depots and resource nodes as my real frontline, and the actual battles mostly resolved themselves.

It's less exciting in the first five minutes, I'll give you that. But strategy is a game of the long middle, and the player who can afford to make mistakes usually walks away the winner.