A Civilization type game with Tolkeinesque races, such as Elves, Dwarves, Undead etc. Despite being ten years old, I still find it to be the best of its type.

Very similar to most other turn based strategy games, although the difficulty can be a barrier for new players. You control a race, build\control cities, produce armies and buildings and spend time either allying or destroying other races.

You control a Wizard on the map who acts as the races leader. Should the Wizard die without any means to revive, your race is defeated.

You can take over mines, mills, farms etc on the world map to give you gold per turn. You can use that gold to build and train units, however you have to be aware of how much your spending. Once you've trained units, you also need to pay them a wage per turn. If you don't have enough gold, they may get disgruntled and leave you - possible joining up with your foes! I like this because, rather than just duking it out on a battlefield, you can work on removing your enemies resources and forcing his army to dwindle without ever facing open war.

Bad points: the AI often makes nonsense moves, and the diplomacy towards AI is irrational - often they will offer an alliance, before instantly breaking it and declaring war against you. The Steam edition doesn't come with the MASSIVE manual that came with the CD version, so it's worth flicking through an online wiki to get to grips with the game. A tutorial is there, but it's pretty brief.

Best played against humans. There's online options, as well as a play by email function which I prefer and tend to be quite active on. The community is still going strong after so long, and maps can still be downloaded. Age of Wonders III is due in 2014, so if this looks too dated for you, might be worth holding out for that.

A very well-made spiritual successor to Master of Magic. Addictive gameplay, nice simultaneous-turns multiplayer as a bonus and still sweet graphics.

One of best fantasy worlds ever