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As opposed to playing as a single soldier from a first person perspective as is the case with modern day first person shooters, real time strategy games allows you to play from the third person, giving you the opportunity to control a vast amount of units within an army that are divided into different categories which each have their own strengths and weaknesses that essentially brings a strategic element to the game in itself.

Real Time Gameplay
Another element that makes a game a real time strategy game is the ability for units to act accordingly in real time to a variety of situations without the player’s intervention. For example, in Starcraft 2, a very popular Real Time Strategy game, if you decide to create a bunker filled with soldiers in a tactical position to defend one of your bases, because it’s a true real time strategy game, they are able to shoot all incoming invaders without having to wait for a physical command from the user.

Unit/System Tree
Every real time strategy game focuses on the concept of building up an army and as such, there needs to be a system that allows the users to slowly gather the resources they need in order to build the structures they want so that they can create a specific type of unit. This system allows for some highly strategic gameplay in terms of destroying another players structure in order to cripple his\her ability to produce a specific type of unit.

Strategy
The most important element of every Real Time Strategy game is the abilty to utilize the various character’s strenghts and weaknesses to gain a tactical advantage in certain scenarios, commonly reffered to as the rock, paper, scissors effect.