You should try Grepolis.
It's a similar castle based war game. But you can have an infinite number of cities. Taking cities from players is a big part of being successful. It's quite hardcore PVP (so not one for the farmers) as you can be completely wiped out (there is nothing stopping all your cities being lost).
The game mechanic means that alts are reasonably pointless (when you can have infinite cities anyway). The game mechanics are slightly more complex to the extent that coiners won't beat skilled players. Being in a good team far more important than spending.
To be honest it solves a lot of the problems.
Only one major drawback is that it can take 5/6 hrs of dedicated game time followed by another 5/6 hrs 12 hrs later to be successful offensively. So it's a major time drain. I played when I was taking time off work but when I went back to work I just didn't have the spare time to play to the level required to be good.
Grepolis isn't for everyone due to the extreme hardcore PvP nature and massive time sink for running attacks. But if you want RTS that isn't coiner unbalance you should give it a try to see if it suit you.
I would also highly recommend C&C Tiberium Alliances.
The fighting is live thing you can watch. As a result the battle mechanic is very complex to truly master. It's not like here when as soon as the troops are sent you would know the outcome and biggest army wins. If you don't master it you won't be successful in PvP and you won't be very efficient in PvE and will have much slower growth. So again skill plays a major part. A dumb coiner in that game will get nowhere.After Stormfall which has virtually no player skill element these days it is very welcome.
Where you bases are located (and that of your alliance members) has a huge bearing on the game as you maneuver for Point of Interest which give significant bonuses. This gives rise to some pretty strategic gameplay when you are at war with another alliance. There are a huge number of ways to go about things and bad positioning without good thinking gets punished big time.
The coining is interesting, capped at a daily max which is a refreshing change. If you want to win a server you'll have to drop money but if you are happy to enjoy the experience you can quite comfortably play through a server for the equivalent of $5 a month.
I am still playing C&C 1.5yrs in.
I am still investigating Gregopolis. Din't know that there was Command and Conquer mmorpg. it was my favorite mobile game. very difficult to complete. I will give it a try.
It runs so well is is HTML based. I think I will stick around
