This is one of the most interesting 4X Games I've seen up to now. You are a wizard, you try to conquer the world. You have a town of one of fourteen races and are skilled in one of five magic schools plus you can sacrifice knowledge in magical schools for traits. This game has ridiculous depth because of the sheer amount of content. All the races have access different parts of the - to be honest somehow smallish tech tree - but they produce vastly different units. Every lizardman unit can cross water, every dark elf has a ranged magic attack etc. The best part, no one is stopping you from conquering another race's cities so all that variety is up for you to grab! The different schools of magic allow for interesting options in the overview and the tactical combat part of the game. The Life school buffs your units and tries to keep them alive, the Death school thrives if your units die bringing them back... Heroes are strong and a player with alchemy (one of said traits) can craft insane artifacts for them (even Warcraft 3 didn't pull off heroes this well), but a low leveled hero is easily dismantled by regular units. There is another map to play on, where the more challenging monsters and the stronger loot await that is only accessible by certain points in the overworld. This game is just amazing in terms of possible strategies and delivers on a nice whimsical feeling. One word of advice before you get this game: don't underestimate Halfling slingers. If you see veterans and/or buffed Halfling slingers tread very lightly. Halflings field more individual units per tactical square and are notoriously lucky making their slingers the strongest ranged units in the game. Your high-elven archers won't stand a chance, if only Frodo hadn't forgotten his sling in the Shire.
