>RTS Games
Memorize build order, out-gookclick the oponent, best case scenario you get a map editor and a campaign, most of the latter RTS games released don´t have map editor at all, and no campaign either or its a tutorial meant to get you to play multiplayer instead
>4X Games
same shit, but its turnbased, if you attempt to take things at your own pace or just try to do your own thing (AKA:Not using the forum meta strategy) the AI that has perfect knowledge of the game will steamroll you, this is the case in MOO, Distant Worlds, Space Empires, you name it, the only exception i´ve seen to this is Civ V, and i´d wager its because in that game you can´t deathstack and the AI is "bad" according to people
>Grand Strategy games (or actually just paradox games because the only two other Grand Strategy games aside from them are Knights of Honor and Making History, with post-Shogun2 Creative Assembly being its homosexual twin)
mostly overlap with 4x, but they are over-complicated on top of that, an example of this is how Hoi3 had the OOB system that ended up being a hassle to learn, and then once you learnt it you realized that just leaving it on AI control is the most optimal unless you are doing barbarossa or island hopping, wich is the worst of both worlds, having to learn a lot about one thing to not use it at all, its asinine design, also how you have laws and policies on