Why would you punish high apm? Thats punishing people for being better.
If you free up actions, good players will use the free space for other options.
If it only taked 50% skill to defend an expandion, people will double expand or expand and attack at the same time.
Isnt Icefrog one of the lead devs? I guess he likes this style of game. How many Total Wars, 4x and CoDs were released while Valve made one more Dota-like. Valve has some cool people working, vut O don’t see a Suda51, a Raphael, Swery or Co, who has the focus to develope such a single player experience. If the flat structure with ‘at will’ project focus is still a thing, than sp games have probably a problem getting devs.