Those of you skeptical about RTwP wargames should give the Airborne Assault a try (Highway to the Reich, Conquest of the Aegean, soon Battles from the Bulge). I usually prefer turn-based over real-time, especially in a strategy/tactics game. However, I think AA manages to pull off 'simulation' of high-level command much more effectively than any TB game I've played, and with less abstraction.
It does this in 3 ways.
1) It gives you a complete chain of command for your units. You're the highest ranking HQ. You can assign orders to any units down the chain. Your AI brigade/regiment HQ (which will give their own orders down their own chain of command), or you can decide to go lower down the chain and order battalion or company units around. More on this later.
2) Very competent AI that doesn't require you to micromanage individual units if you don't need to. In a RTS, you can often find yourself micro'ing a single unit around to kite a tank or whatever; this isn't high-level strategy at all. Even in TB games, there is a lot of minutiae that you have to do (eg. ordering every single unit around). Which is fine, and can be great gameplay, but again, might not necessarily be what a commander would be focusing on on a higher-level. Instead, you learn to deleguate. It's not just a matter of just making AI do things and just sit back and watch. The AI performs your actual orders, yes, but they're completely based on your specifications. You give the details of the actual order itself - what you don't focus on is the execution; that's the job of your (AI) subordinates. Fortunately, AA has a very strong AI able to do this. This is an example of what kind of settings you can give to your orders on the left of the screen:
3) This is the most important point, and links back to the previous 2. Order delays. In a TB game, you give your order and the unit does its move instantly. Everyone does their own thing in a sequential order. One thing AA simulates is that when making plans involving hundreds or thousands of men, you need TIME to organize all that. When you give an order to a unit (say, a battalion HQ, which in turn gives its orders to its companies), it might take 30-60, or maybe 2-3 hrs to prepare themselves, get organized and then finally get in a position to carry out your orders. This means clicks-per-minute are useless as per your usual RTS. In fact, if you give out too many orders to the same units, it just ends up in them having to replan over and over, engendering even more order delays. This system gives a flexible way through which you can macro or micro *as appropriate*. You can give a global command to one big HQ, but then the time needed to organize and carry out those plans might be longer than if you organized a smaller unit/group. However, if you take too many units under your own command, it clogs up your capacity to command, and order delays are all over lengthened.
What's the actual implication of this? You can't just improve your moves on a turn-by-turn basis. You can't just counteract an enemy action at a whim. Given how long it takes you to carry out orders, you need to plan AHEAD, anticipate where the enemy MIGHT strike and organize your forces accordingly, keeping reserves where they might intervene faster, and have to think ahead for when you need to change your plans. It's less about carrying out your plan step by step, and more about planning things properly, while keeping an eye on when you NEED to make changes to your plan (rather than be OCD and changing things constantly, and actually make the plans harder and harder to execute).
Many of these can be done in a TB wargame and be awesome, but they're also a lot more abstracted. This system really needs real-time (with pause). Order delays just wouldn't work the same way otherwise.