Some units in Heroes 2 were a mere cannon fodder anyway. For example I never bought peasants when playing knight.

I concur. But they ARE good for teleport/stopping archer/mages combo. See where I'm coming from?

HoMM2 is actually better than 3. MoO2 beats all the HoMMs hands down (except maybe in the music department, HoMM2 has outstanding music).

ToEE is fun, but you're back in RPG land there.

so i've been playing some of MoO2...and i feel like an idiot. i know the basics and what not, but it feels like i'm just clicking next turn without anything else to do in the mean time. scout planets- check, research- check, build stuff - check, yet it seems i'm "wasting" turns when i can't do more because it's already done? maybe i'm doing it all wrong.

oh and i'm almost positive on AoW now, seems more appealing than HoMM to me personally.

If you want a smaller scale strategy, I highly recommend Jagged Alliance 2. Squad based TBS with some rpg elements thrown into the mix. Vanilla game is already one of the best games ever made, but 1.13 mod makes it ever better :).