RTS can be on consoles and still be good, while not be dumb'ed down. Look at CnC 3's, there are a lot of pull up menus for a game based around mass production. AoE is a pretty simple RTS, not really any 'abilites,' just different units. For CoH, there is enough buttons for abilites. Most units may only have two to three abilites. A Vet 1 ability, grenade, and something else. For directional movement, on PC you click, hold, and move. Why not the same on console? For attack move in CnC, it was double click. Retreat could easily be a click in on a stick as well as reverse move to a location.
RTS on consoles are not damn to mediocrity. In a game like CoH where you are not mass producing on everything or micro'ing economy, this maybe the best situation for an RTS to be on a console. The only thing I would say is Relic's poor creation on DoW3.
+Red Alert, the first one was on old PSX and it did worked perfectly fine, obviously you couldn't pull certain micro maneuvers, but you still could order crush infantry or scatter or defend orders without any problem and it worked on pad.
I'm talking first PSX pad, without analogs, and it worked.
KKND was also very much playable, not very good compared to PC counterpart, but playable and worked.
Z was very slow one, but that one worked well too.
So did Warcraft 2.
And Warzone 2100.
Oh there was also Dune 2.
Some of them even had control groups(WZ2100, KKND and RA).
Come to think of it, there were plenty of console RTS mainstream titles which functioned perfectly fine with completely zero streamlining of consoles or circle menus for fast picks.