I am a strategy game fan since CIVILIZATION days. Then, there is the Command & Conquer series. MicroSoft's Age of Empires I & II, both are also very good.
Nowadays, I don't have a lot time to sit in front of the computers for hours to play game, although the addictive feeling is *really* Great. It puts me in a world of strategy, raising army, building, education of people, not to mention all kinds of war machines.
My solution is to play the game in the *EASIEST* mode :)
In this case, I can get all the favorite of the game without spending hours and hours to fight the computer AI. To really master the game, doing all kinds of hot-key setting and keyboard shortcut is necessary. To me, I want to win without too much effort ...
Thrones & Patriots is sequel of Rise of Nations from last year, which received most of the PC strategy game award. I haven't played RON since early this year, but what a game it is! The interesting thing about RON is that you can play as different nation. Through the years of civilization, each nation obtain the unique strenght to build up their own special power. The ulimate goal, of course, is to conquer the world.
New tribe Persian has elephant attack units ... cool!
Graphics is very nice