All the games on that list are good to excellent. Almost all of them are also huge time sinks. Given that you’re coming back to single player gaming from a different huge time sink, my recommendation would be to start small and play Age of Mythology. First of all, it’s awesome, with fun gameplay mechanics that are easy to learn yet difficult to master, and a story that is familiar yet fresh. Secondly, it’s probably the one game on the list that you can easily finish and feel satisfied doing so. My personal experience with backlog delving is that I’m much more successful when I start off with a game I know I will finish, then move on to another slightly more involved one, then build from there.
I think World in Conflict fits that description better.
I personally can no longer play base-building RTS campaigns. I got through one and a half missions of Age of Mythology and uninstalled it forever. The OP might have a different opinion.
I still enjoy base-building but found Age of Mythology really disappointingly bland. That said, I’ve had that issue with all the Age games I’ve tried other than the turn-based DS games. (Still haven’t fired up Age of Empires III despite getting the Complete Edition for a buck in the GFWL Store’s one decent deal ever.) I had hopes because mythology certainly isn’t bland and having asymmetric civilizations with a whole bunch of different mythic monsters and god powers seemed like a winning recipe and…yeah, no spark at all. I still mean to go back someday and see if maybe I was just crazy in my youth and it really is awesome.
You think I don’t already own Red Alert 3? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I’m just listing the games that I think are considered can’t miss for some reason or another. I tried playing Codename Panzers: Cold War, and it was just too bland. And yes, short and sweet is more desirable to me than a prolonged slog (I definitely burn out after one or two run-throughs if there isn’t much difference between different factions)
I just spent a few hours with the Total War 2 tutorial … it goes directly from stupidly obvious to “use your special units to capture the castle.” WTF? Time for plan B. Now where are my World in Conflict discs?
Of the games listed, I vote for DoW2:R; it really refined the DoW formula to nigh-perfection for my tastes. AoM was solid, but it was “just” an AoE clone with a fantasy patina; I got my fill of that style of gameplay from AoE 2, thanks. WiC was pretty neat (more of a tactical-combat game than a traditional RTS, IIRC), but I never felt the love; I think I was just bored with near-modern-day RTSs at that point and should probably give it another go. And Starcraft 2 is, well, Starcraft; either you still love it or you’ve moved on.
I’m no RTS aficionado having not played many of the more recent higher profile titles (including most listed in the OP) but I’ve been picky enough over the years (bouncing off the likes of Homeworld, Company of Heroes and recently Sacrifice) to know that Age of Mythology is one of my favourites because of its all round excellence: great UI and controls, fascinating lore, robust in-game help and information, diverse races, units, structures, abilities and specialisations, an entertaining and meaty campaign, solid skirmishing and multiplayer, the excellent Titans expansion, lovely graphics and music. For me, that’s a great package. The multiplayer is still up and running on Game Ranger as far as I know.
I don’t like RTS game generally, but I would recommend the Wargame games. I would personally advise Air Land Battle, but both are good. Either one sidesteps the tedious single player ‘mop up the base’ thing.
I played a good amount of World In Conflict online. Really good fun, I especially liked the medal system, as it was genuinely difficult to achieve those things and if you had the gold ones you were usually quite skilled at that aspect of the game. It’s orchestrated like an FPS, so you just join a random server, join a team and start tankin’. The single player was very entertaining as well.
World in Conflict is a pretty cool game. The campaign is particularly good.