the best to check what other games use in the similar genre you want to make. probably most of them select different methods not accidentally.

With 3DGS, I could achieve only 25 FPS as an average, handling about 400 characters (moving in group formations) in my RTS testbed level (filled with buildings, trees, and using shaders like water, shadowmapping etc.), when reached a good enough quality, after many-many optimizations. It required to implement my own complex pathfinder and movement system... with A8 Pro edition where I have terrain LOD and GPU animation.

But a lot depends on what quality you need, how many of units are visible, their bone and vertex number etc. If the behavior is very simple you can have more, but game engines are in general not for this purpose, rather for something like an FPS.


Free world editor for 3D Gamestudio: MapBuilder Editor