Age of Wonders

The Good
This is my absolute favourite turn-based strategy game. With a balance that makes the races equal, even though you have to play them differently, it ultimately comes down to who's the better strategist. The units are easy to learn and you'll pretty fast start noticing different combinations that works better than others. But it takes a lot of playing to learn all the good combinations. Furthermore, the different races have different relations to the other races which adds a strategic element where you can combine armies across the races.

The Bad
The computer AI is at times a little to easy, some spells are somewhat unbalanced. Also it's at times a little to easy to only use your heroes.

The Bottom Line
Heroes of Might and Magic, add Master of Magic then work out a few original things and remove any annoying things, voila that's a game pretty close to perfection.