Dark Reign
I loved that one as a kid. Seemed way more difficult than C&C iirc. Played through it with my cousin and if one failed, the other would take over.
The German games media made it out to be a C&C rival and we had a bit of a thing going on where the gamer kids split into factions because of it. DR faction were the more hardcore gamers, C%C guys the casual scum obv.
Of course we'd actually all loved the older C&C title(s?) before that happened, but eh, kids...
Lots of more obscure games that did interesting stuff as well, like War Wind 2, Total Annihilation...
Starcraft was imo very good, amazing OST, interesting faction differences and stuff, tough to balance but they did it more or less.
The other crafts weren't my thing, which is why I voted C&C... Liked more of the C&C games than -craft games.
WC3 was very moddable and whatnot, but I wasn't a fan of the 3d approach and the hotkey/special ability stuff. Seemed more twitchy but awkward (of course SC had some of that but it had so many good points in comparison imo that I was fine with it). Boring vanilla fantasy world... Eh. Can understand why others love it, though. It had a lot of content and was a good game overall, just not my thing.
Both series turned to shit at some point anyway. Just like AOE after the second (some like the third on here iirc, but not me). Never really got into the second Dark Reign either.