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[ChairmanPoo]

I concur  with AoW, Master of Magic, and Heroes 3. But Disciples? That series always felt like a dumbed down Heroes to me.

Also: how about Heroes 5? It's pretty much a remake of Heroes 3 in 3D. Vanilla Heroes 5 ran decently on my netbook, too. With the expansions, not so much.

[Robsoie]

Disciples 2 is indeed not as feature packed as a Heroes 3 but it has enough gameplay difference to be worth a real try and have fun with it.

[Jopax]

There's that somewhat old RTS-ish game called Kohan (there's more in the title but I forget what), it had a sequel (which was kind of sucky). It was something like HOMM but realtime, you had cities, improved them, you had resource points you could capture and hold and stuff. Units were built in groups where you had slots for different types, like four frontline spots for infantry or cavalry, then two rear spots for archers and the like and finally two support slots for mages and whatnot.

It's quite a nice game with quite a few interesting ideas and takes on the classical RTS formula.

There's also SOTS with it's expansions if you like space 4x games, not sure if you will be able to run it smoothly but it's not incredibly new or demanding hardware wise.

[Sonlirain]

Egads yes kohan was (and kinda still is) quite innovative.

It plays a bit like Empire Earth 2 and Rise of nations.
Every city has a limited number of building slots you can use for buildings and units were made from 4 front line troops + 2 support units (and hero if you had one or more).

[Wayward Device]

Can believe this hasn't been mentioned yet, as the OP asked for (amongst other things):

"in particular, games where you create or carve out a settlement/empire whilst competing with other entities"

Mount & Blade my friend, Mount & Blade. In case you haven't heard of it at all, its basically a RTS/RPG  in a medieval setting, with different factions who used to be part of a unified empire that collapsed. You can be a wandering mercenary, commander of you own army (in reality, you almost always have your own troops, unless your playing some crazy challenge game) or join one of the factions as a vassal once you get enough renown (and be granted lands! Yay!). Sounds like exactly what your after and its not mentioned in your post. Basically, its a giant medieval sandbox. 

If you do decide to give it a try (I got the whole bundle on steam for $9.99 in a sale, pretty damn cheap) I recommend you go with Mount & Blade Warband (basically its Mount & Blade 2, with slightly better combat, world economy and the ability to do stuff that you really wanted to do in Mount & Blade like becoming King of a your own faction). I would also recommend the Florris Mod for M&B:W, it basically adds all the little things you want (like way better control of how your kingdoms run, way better AI (both combat and world map) and is just generally awesome. I've never looked back. 

[MonkeyHead]

Thanks for the many varied and helpful suggestions. I will probably be busy with many of them for some time now. I also realised that I had never given GalCiv2 a spin, so thats getting played a lot at the moment. If there are any more, keep them coming people!

[Sensei]

Master of Magic gets another recommendation from me, and can be had quite for free, but methinks you will need DOSBox to run it.

[snelg]

There's that somewhat old RTS-ish game called Kohan (there's more in the title but I forget what), it had a sequel (which was kind of sucky).

Kohan was great! The sequel was so-so. I remember playing around with the editor and placing neutral monster nests all over the map. Good times! 

[MonkeyHead]

Well, it took me around a month to get bored of GalCiv2 finding it a bit bland. The ship editor was nice but had little point as the layout of the ship did nothing for thier functionality, save for what parts and how many. I will be making a strt on some of these suggestions here over the coming weeks, and am still open to further ideas...

[lordcooper]

Endless Space.  It's in alpha at present, but already feels a lot more polished than some other 4X games that shall remain nameless.

[EuchreJack]

And this one will give you an alternate take on CoE 3: http://www.indiegamemag.com/conquest-of-elysium-3-review-a-turn-for-the-worst/


IMO it's kind of sucky, if not quite as bad as they paint it. It can be entertaining for a while (though it will get boring fast), but it's not worth throwing 25 € at it, IMO.

If you want to get an idea of the game you can play CoE 2 for free. CoE 3 has some more options, some flavor changes, and the art is somewhat better, but it's not that different, all in all.  TBH it's the kind of game I'd keep on my HD if it was cheaper, to fool around sporadically, but wouldn't play that much overall.

For some reason, I found the review to be overly harsh and whiny.  Also, you can get a demo of CoE 3 for free, and the price is now $20 USD.  I'm not saying you should or should not buy it, I'm just responding to what I view as a unfair review, or a reviewer who's priorities are WAY different then mine.

Note that I'm also debating whether or not to purchase CoE 3.  Anyone know how interested the modding community appears to be with the game?  I know that the Dominion 3 mods are what keep me booting it up.