It would not be amiss to say that the Nether Earth game (UK, 1987) mentioned above was one of the first real-time strategies ever.
Many of the games mentioned above (Astroclone, Feud, Kenny Dalglish Soccer Manager, Laser Squad, Nether Earth, Quazatron, Sentinel, Southern Belle, but not only these) are impossible to play without reading the Manual. But these games are worth reading two or three pages of English text to play. ;)
Of course, you can also play Kolobok Zoom 2 if you're too lazy to read the instructions. ;)