I don't recall games of the past giving you a plethora of options to screw up. Where were these FPS where you could:

choose the wrong target, lose a bunch of resources and have to forfeit the war

Doom seems to have largely the same fail states as a modern FPS. I think you've described some games that have some unique failure states and then claimed they're representative of all past games. Which isn't true.

Fucking up in chess is equivalent to dying in Call of Duty. There aren't a bunch of secret fail states in chess. I suppose you might eat one of your pieces of something, but if you play the game properly there's just having you pieces taken for being crap at the game.

I suppose what you're saying is that in chess if you make some dumb decisions early on you'll get punished later, but not in a linear shooting game. But chess is a strategy game. In CoD the strategy is how to not get shot in the head and if you play more competitively there are more fail states than just dying; you might choose the wrong weapon, or get out of cover too early, or end up in a vulnerable position.

There's possibly room for greater complexity in these games (though I suspect there's a reason games tick to simple fail states), but even then I don't really see much merit in the examples you give.

How is a game at all improved if you have to restart because you sold a vital quest item?

The Need for Speed example works well in some games and games like Don't Starve, Dark Souls, The Long Dark, also punish you more heavily for dying. But that kind of punishment would be tedious when applied to different games.