Are you also tired of games that describe themselves as "tower defense" but somehow require you to manage six cooldown abilities while platforming? This may be the best TD that I've played. The "towers" are people of various classes (barbarian, ice mage, archer, etc) that you hire and level up while buying better equipment. And then you just let them hit monsters on the path. That's it. If you want to press your luck or click on the screen, there's some meta game abilities, like fireball, but it's perfectly viable to put all your meta progression points into a speed boost for your units that you can use no more than every 90 seconds. This may sound simple, but there's a lot of variety in the maps and enemies, especially at higher difficulties that combines with the "tower" choice and leveling. And you'll get experience and currency even when you lose a level, so you'll never just be banging your head against the wall. It's almost shockingly generous and civilized. AND it's got a sly sense of humor, a reasonable narrative, and decent writing. I just really can't praise the game enough, especially for anyone who used to play tower defense maps in WC3 and wonders what happened to the genre.
So I'm the sort of player that stopped playing the Stronghold military campaign because all the fighting was distracting from my lovely production chains, and was greatly annoyed to find that fighting was shoehorned into the Stronghold economic campaign as well. Boo! The standard game starts with 10 people and a few storage facilities, and it's up to you to clear forests and mine stone and ore, find or grow food, build housing, make sure everyone has firewood and tools, eventually (big deal) build a trading post so that an occasional merchant can leisurely offer you some seeds or livestock. Do you want to play a game in which building a new sheep pen is big deal? Do you want to be excited that your church is almost full of parishioners? Do you want to be a little upset that a (very rare) building fire has interrupted your mushroom gathering? Do you want to think "Oh no, the frost came early this year. I lost 10% of my pumpkins." God, I love this game. I can't believe it took me so many years to buy this game, but it quickly gained a spot in my "I am never uninstalling"-list.
