I remember a strategy game called Majesty that worked in a "declarative" way as well. You didn't order your units around, you could just place bounties on things and your soldiers would go out and kill/destroy them
Yeah, your level 5 wizard would try to take on a vampire on his own, and quickly expire, instead of leveling up on rats like he ought to. Loved that game, and loved the voices. Don't buy the iOS version though.
Assuming it's the same as the Android version, it's superficially polished and internally hollow compared to the original. I posted more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13760412
The mobile version seemed like it would be fun if it was your first experience with Majesty. It doesn't hold a candle to the original, though. Fewer heroes, monsters, missions, and worst of all, dramatically simpler and less character-ful AI, with few apparent behavioral differences between classes.
Also the art was entirely redone in the generic cartoony style of every other mobile RTS. I suppose it's more approachable than the original's 2000-era pixeliness, but it didn't seem like an improvement to me.
It's still better than 99% of all mobile games, but that's not saying much. The original is on Steam for $10 including the expansion and various bugfixes; I played it through again last year and I think it still holds up wonderfully. http://store.steampowered.com/app/25990/
I LOVED Majesty, getting high level wizards was my favorite thing, and could honestly be quite tricky considering how blatantly suicidal they often were. XD
The saddest part was encountering enemy units who had magic reflection.
