You should play some competitive PVP games in Sins frogboy, us Sinners can't seem to agree if it is closer to Starcraft or Supreme Commander on the macro/micro focus. 

Wargame is an RTS mostly focused entirely on the macro and logistics of fighting on a battlefield.

Yeah, I didn't even try to play SC2 for this reason.  I can micro reasonably well if I force myself, but my hands can't take it for too long, and I don't feel like crippling myself.  This is why I loved to play Sins when it came out, it is a nice balance of micro and macro style play.  I just don't feel the need to compete with all the kids giving themselves carpal tunnel.

Planetary Annihilation isn't going to solve this "problem" because it is so fundamental to what an RTS is about. And by the way, if you visit the forums you'll find the same idea - PA won't be micro intensive, you don't have to worry about mechanics as much as you would in sc2.

Frankly, I find the whole argument a bit delusional. At the competitive level, micro will always be a factor because it is a real time strategy game. At best, you will simply have micro that appears to be at a higher level of the game - but you'll still be microing. Maybe you'll micro asteroids instead of SCBs, but the more you can push your control downwards in the hierarchy of decisions, the better off you'll be.

I'm not in any way telling you how to or what to enjoy, but I personally enjoy turn-based games precisely because we can be rid of the curse of the micro. When time is infinite, at your own leisure, then micro simply ceases to be competitively useful.

I was the top ranked Total Annihilation player on Boneyards.net for awhile and played in the PGL. No, micro isn't the defining factor in all RTSs.

Differing levels of macro are actually distinct at basically every level of SC2 and probably the defining advantage at everything below diamond or plat. Arguably everything below masters.

http://imgur.com/jmMNR

The phenomenon you observe is actually a perception problem. Silvers and golds actually have almost exactly the same macro, so it feels very much like you hit a wall because there's actually a large hurdle to overcome there. The gap between plat and gold macro is similar in scope between bronze and gold macro past two bases on a log scale.

I'm low diamond/high plat (MMR gets really confused if you have two 70-80% matchups and a 20% matchup). I have what I'd classify as poor control. I'll generally a-move in and then pull back important units if they're being targetted or everything if I'm losing and that's about it. I'll mix in storm very late when I feel my opponents are too overwhelmed to micro out of it. If I do warp prism harass it's generally fly in the prism somewhere, forget about it for a bit, go into warp mode, warp in some zealots and rally them to the nearest mineral line. A lot of my wins are because I still see some VERY questionable decision making from my opponents. Like in PvP "I scouted 4 gate that's turning into warp gates, I'm going to cancel a gateway in response" questionable. (fyi I went 4 gate b/c his cybernetics core was late so I thought he had ninja'd an expansion somewhere)

For the record, I play around 100-150 APM. Some benchmarks: I type at 40 WPM. That's around 200 APM (however, that's with two hands). If my previous osu! experience is any baseline to go with, one-handed 200 APM is managable for me for me, 300 APM tires out my hand in less than two minutes, and as far as I can tell I cannot phystically do 400 APM in any meaningful context, though those are only using two fingers.

What about games like Dawn of War or Empire at War? I like those games because you can just focus on economy and map control. There is a small unit cap so you don't have to worry about micro so much, mostly just reinforcing squads and occasionally activating an ability. 

Also, I am pretty sure there are custom maps like "Macro Wars" that purport to alleviate this problem... maybe you could check some of those out. 

Oh, I am curious about one thing, Brad ... did you ever play Interplay's 1996 MS-DOS-based turn-based strategy game, M.A.X. (Mechanized Assault & eXploration)?  Of every "ground tile"-based turn based strategy game (such as Civilization, WoM/FE/LH, etc., versus Master of Orion which is a TBS but not ground tile-based), M.A.X. is very close to the top ... but, sadly, I know a lot of gamers never tried it.  It did, unfortunately, suffer a sequel that was an even worse disgrace to the original than Master of Orion III was to its series -- the biggest reason being they completely dumped the strategy aspect and made it a turn-based tactics game; no resource gathering, no research, no building.  Two things I really liked about M.A.X., and what inspires me to keep playing it now and then despite being so dated, was how every faction more or less had the same set of units, but you could research upgrades to quite a variety of individual characteristics of units such as improving the range, firepower, speed or armor ... and the second thing I really liked about it was the logistics modelling.  You could not build a base in one corner of a vast map, build a second base in the opposite corner and both bases would have instant access to resources (minerals, fuel, gold or power) ... to transfer resources, you would either need to build and use a transport (truck, cargo plane or cargo boat) or build conduit between the bases (which, stretched out over vast distances, is of course easily assailable if you don't have it properly defended with units or fixed gun turrets, artillery stations, missile launchers and/or anti-aircraft batteries).

This has actually been made much better in the newest expansion, Rebellion. It's not super fast, but when your ships need to do 180 degree turns, they will now stop, turn and accelerate away rather than doing those wide turns that would send them closer to the danger you where trying to get them to retreat from. 

execution isn't fundamental to RTS though

it's just a major part of the games in the marketplace, all of which are real-time mass micromanagement games

"macro" just means micromanaging production instead of units

the core concept of strategy in real-time has nothing to do with micro/speed

the only reason to play RTS games (in terms of strategy) is the resource-management decisions (and the tactical ones to a certain degree)

the challenge is finding opponents who are equally (in)competent at the mechanics surrounding those decisions

it's easy to dismiss Starcraft because of the APM, but it at least has resource-management and tactical decisions some of the time

many other games in the genre usually have no balance and completely overpowered strategies where you don't have to make any decisions at all, but rather optimize something or manage something quickly (neither of which are actual decisions)

the genre basically stopped making progress after rise of nations. even though optimizing your empire required speed, there were actual decisions involved extremely often

Timegate filing for bankruptcy makes me sad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAMgu3j3AZY

Also, Plat/Diamond macro is definitely a lot different than gold. But its like The_Biz said, macro in SC2 requires micro. You're definitely right about unit control becoming more important as you increase in skill level but its not just about control. Building, production and tech timings plus overall strategy are important in SC2. Its just that it all happens really fast which makes it micro intensive.