While Empire Earth never seemed to get quite as big as many other rts games, I think certain macro-management aspects of gameplay flew under the radar. For example:
1-click to set units to explore; when multiple units were selected they would fan out to decrease fog of war.
Multi unit formation setting, to dictate the spread factor between units when moving and fighting.
Setting indefinite patrol loops (although I think I recall other games having this?).
It’s been a while since I’ve played the genre, and it seems like factorio’s really nailed the set and forget - but allow tinkering - for base management. What I want is similar automation for army control, that’s always the piece that gets tiresome with, for example, Starcraft for me.
Ultimately, I want to write a script for my civilization and be able to step into the fold to take over manual control as necessary. And then update my script. If that’s too much, being able to just define action buttons that execute scripts for selections of a certain composition.
And of course to run it in a a competitive environment against other people and see what we can all come up with :)