I remember well the good old days of running Total Annihilation flawlessly on my bug free 233. My friends and I would gather at the house of one with a LAN (that was not so bug-free) and we'd play into the wee hours.
Total Annihilation, or TA as fans refer to it, was and still is ahead of its time. Up to this point, RTS games ran almost identically: build "villagers," gather one or more resources, build structures including a few to upgrade units and gain technologies, build an army, and trounce all opposition. The ends will never change with RTS, but the means certainly can, and TA did just that.
Instead of "villagers," with TA the player would begin the game with the most powerful unit - a "commander" that would start the process by building basic resource gathering structures and unit producing buildings. The commander would discourage any effective early rushes, since he was an excellent military unit as well. In fact, he had a weapon called a "D-Gun," one shot from which any unit in the game would be destroyed. It just took a lot of power to fire, which would be at a premium to start the game. He was, however, very slow to move and could be overwhelmed eventually by a great number of even low level units.
Instead of gathering, structures would be built that provided resources at a continuous rate. More advanced builder units would create more advanced resource gathering structures.
The game had an unprecedented diversity of units. One could attack by land, air, and sea, with unit choices that would appear overwhelming at first. Tanks, infantry, fighters, bombers, gunships, destroyers, battleships, submarines, and many more could be brought to the front lines. There were artillery emplacements that could fire across the length of many maps. Nuclear missiles also were an option, but anti-nukes could also be built to counter them. In fact, for every offensive tactic, there was an appropriate counter tactic.
The single player game was not as interesting as it was in many other titles, but it was certainly adequate. The real value of TA was in its multiplayer, and nearly every game seemed like a slightly different experience. The replayability value was incredible.
The game was not without some flaws, but they were fairly minor in my mind. There were a few bugs for one side that were never fixed and made them less desirable to play, although certainly not unplayable. Most (but not all) of the units for each side, although different in appearance, were identical in function, and the tactics for each side were therefore quite similar.
Such minor flaws did not detract much from what remains to this day as the finest RTS experiences of all time. It's unorthodox approach, and bewildering amount of strategic and tactical options, seemed to put off many RTS fans, which is unfortunate. The game should still be available on eBay or Amazon, and would be worth every penny. There are avid fans playing online to this day, but Warzone is the only server I know of where it's still active. I've since moved on to Supreme Commander, but TA in my mind is, and will always remain the better game.