Yeah Dominions 3 takes some time to understand but it's part of the pleasure

The forum is still active and that's a good point too.And it has a HUGE universe, plus you have 3 eras early,medium and late, and each faction has different units and strategy in each of them ... A very deep game but you need to spend a good amount of time on it.

You can definately learn it on your own, the manual is pretty good.  Especially the mod manual, you can use it almost as an abilities guide on it's own.

The story of 1 is summarised in II, but apart from the different plot the only changes I believe are some optional difficulty tweaks - you can have items degrade over time, require food and drink to survive and similar.

You might also want to check out the Spiderweb Software series of RPG's, they're turn based too. Avernum is entirely turn and party based, Geneforge has a rather unique background and is real time with turn based battles. Avernum 5 and Geneforge 4 are currently on sale at Gamer's Gate (it's the last day though so hurry) and well worth it imho.

You might want to try Armoured Princess rather than The Legend, unless you can get the gold edition cheap. There's some minor balance issues in The Legend that were smoothed over with AP, like only having a finite number of recruitable troops so you could end up playing yourself into a no win situation. They're great games though.

On an RTS front you might want to look into Majesty 2. It's a remake of the old Majesty game which has you building a town and setting bounties on various things in order to encourge the local heroes to get off their fat backsides and do something. It's fun, but the remake has some ridiculous difficulty spikes in it.

If we start counting in consoles Disgaia 1 & 2 for the PS2 are also quite superb.

You're going to love it solidsmooky. Give it a little time and you'll see the game is deep and rich. It's definitely expensive, but I know I've already gotten my money's worth out of it and continue to play it. Feel free to pm me if you've got any questions while you're figuring it out.

And if you don't like it...give me a headstart before you come after me.

Shadow Magic hands down.

king's bounty

age of wonders shadow magic with some mods...

i also hope one day someone will make a mod for elemental to add race from age of wonders like the shadow demons (which are cool) and/or some more (maybe heavy) tiles and geographical objects to like in king's bounty...

I've almost exclusively played it single player.  You will eventually "learn" the AI though.

Lords of Magic SE  turn based fantasy strategy with real time pause-able battles

Lords of the Realm II  also turn based with RTS battles

GalCiv II

HoMM series

Disciples 1&2 maybe 3 but haven't got to it yet\

I would vote for Fall From Heaven 2, especialy its mod mod, Wild Mana.

Sorry for you MOM lovers, but for me the best Fantasy TBS game continues to be Heroes of Might & Magic III after... ¡11 years!

Nowadays computers have for superior power, but I have not found yet the game that replaces HOMM3. The truth is, when I get tired of the other games, I keep coming back to old HOMM3. With a bit of luck, Elemental will replace it, but there is yet a bit of work to do for it

Also, searching the Internet I have found there is a Warlords 5 in the works. Could it be interesting?

Dominions 3 is awesome. It looks pretty ordinary but seriously, its very deep and ever so rich with imagination juice.

Check out this AAR in progress:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3302467&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

Note that the opening post has direct chapter links but there are more chapters than links listed so keep reading after the mini-magic update.

I tried Dom3 and shelved it, came back to it after 6 months and now its won a permanent place on the hard-drive.

I find that way to battle at least as fun as your typical tactical battle on the grid. And I loved lack of limit on the amount of units. Nothing feels better than watching your 1500-2000 soulless Ermorian army stomping everything. You may lose many, but who cares when fallen enemies join your ranks?

(I hate the way they cast spells one by one tho. One of my favorite tactics is to rush with lots of spellcasting leaders stacked together, and watching the combats becomes unbearable)

You define strategies for your squads, and then let AI do the rest. Its realistic and it saves you from repetitive and boring combats in late game, while keeping actions sensible.