Personally, I think Planetary Annihilation could be considered an offshoot of this game. Not necessarily a sequel or a spiritual sequel. More along the lines of what Paper Mario is to New super Mario Brothers: Vaguely sharing the same sort of aesthetic and setting, but putting forth distinctive design philosophies.
The thing is, to me, total annihilation isn’t merely about the robots and tanks firing lasers and canons at one another: It’s also about the brilliantly orchestrated symphonic music; the bright colors of the environments contrasting with the gritty metalized textures of the units you command, it’s about the vague but endlessly fascinating story which doesn’t explain itself too well, and makes you just wonder about what could have happened during those 1000 years of total war. And in that sense, Total Annihilation is, to me, a more mature game.
Planetary Annihilation missed the mark in regards to the music (cartoony-esque) and also with it’s the “epic” scale, which doesn’t really feel fully fleshed out. It is supposed to be about planetary battles, and many of them do feel quite big, but not when compared with the best battle scenarios you will find in Total Annihilation.
In my opinion, and this is just a suggestion, if you wanna experience the greatness of Total Annihilation, install the unofficial expansion “Total Annihilation: Escalation”. It has been in continuous and active development for almost a decade now, and it is so well crafted, and developed with such an attention to detail, that you are guaranteed to feel like you are playing an official continuation of the main series.
Wow, thanks for the very thorough response. I will certainly have to check out TA:E in the future. Cheers.