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[SirQuiamus]

Gary Grigsby's games are also good for complexity, though I've never played any due to the cost;

Some of his older titles are scott-free on Matrix Games.

Mentioning Outpost 2 also reminded me of Outpost 1, which I considered as having brilliant potential in spite of its rather unfinished state.

I remember Outpost 1 as a rather crummy Dune II clone. It's been a long time since I played it, though, and I was a kid back then.

[Culise]

Ah.  I never played any of the Dune games, so that could be why I never picked up on it if that was the case.  Thanks for the heads-up on Matrix Games, though. ^_^

[Reelya]

Sorry for the generalization, what I mean is turn based, or grand strategy a la Crusader Kings 2. I like real-time, but love turn based more so.

And it sounds like I should definitely check out Dominions.

Already played Crusader Kings, love it. Still haven't truly figured out how exactly to play it though, should probably try it again sometime.

Seconding recommendation of Hearts of Iron series for WWII strategy. It's real-time but is more board-game like than action-like. A nice feature is the ability to play pretty much any nation that existed in the period. You can go all-out as a major power or try to see what you can achieve as a country as small as Luxembourg.

[Bouchart]

Gary Grigsby's games are also good for complexity, though I've never played any due to the cost;

Some of his older titles are scott-free on Matrix Games.

Mentioning Outpost 2 also reminded me of Outpost 1, which I considered as having brilliant potential in spite of its rather unfinished state.

I remember Outpost 1 as a rather crummy Dune II clone. It's been a long time since I played it, though, and I was a kid back then.

Outpost 1 was something of a city builder, and not particularly good.  Outpost 2 was an RTS, not quite a Dune 2 clone because it has a bit more emphasis on base construction and population management.  It's a very overlooked game for whatever reason.  I'm a fan of it.

[RedKing]

It's a different kind of strategy, but I loved the Railroad Tycoon games. Nothing like bankrupting your rivals with some good old-fashioned market manipulation.

It's more tactical than strategic, but I also recommend SSI's Fantasy General, which took their Panzer General engine and traded tanks and infantry for knights and ogres and dragons.

[FallacyofUrist]

I've heard of an RTS named Achron.
It's mostly pretty standard.
Except time travel is a thing. And I don't mean nerfed time travel to avoid headaches, I mean time travel that you can use to send an army of units back in time to prevent your base from being destroyed...
It's crazy.

[mainiac]

Imperialism 2 is an old gem of a turn based strategy game.

[Sergarr]

Age of Wonders 3 - for its faction/class system, which technically provides a lot of variation, and Heroes of Might and Magic 4 - because it's a very different game from the others in Heroes series, has a lot of different strategies and I can almost guarantee you will say multiple times during it "wow, this is soooo overpowered".

Also Achron, yeah. Be warned, though - it has atrocious pathfinding, and you'll have to micromanage all your units for optimal performance. Which sounds harder than it is, actually, since you can repeatedly go back in time to amend your mistakes.

[MaximumZero]

Not turn based, but how about Dwarf Fortress?

[Bohandas]

Gary Grigsby's games are also good for complexity, though I've never played any due to the cost;

Some of his older titles are scott-free on Matrix Games.

Mentioning Outpost 2 also reminded me of Outpost 1, which I considered as having brilliant potential in spite of its rather unfinished state.

I remember Outpost 1 as a rather crummy Dune II clone. It's been a long time since I played it, though, and I was a kid back then.

Outpost 1 was something of a city builder, and not particularly good.  Outpost 2 was an RTS, not quite a Dune 2 clone because it has a bit more emphasis on base construction and population management.  It's a very overlooked game for whatever reason.  I'm a fan of it.

Outpost 1 was hella better than Outpost 2

I still rememner how disappointed I was when I plated Outpost 2 for the first time.

EDIT:
It's been gathering dust under my bed ever since.

[wierd]

Homeworld and Homeworld 2.

3D RTS space combat simulations. Amusing plot with in-your-face judaeism references.

They were quite a bit different from your usual top-down RTS games.

For top-downers, there are several good ones from back in their heyday. Total Annihilation is available from GOG, and warzone 2100 (already mentioned) has some interesting features. Then there are the more well known ones from the era, such as starcraft/broodwar, Warcraft 2 (and 3), Red Alert and the other Command & Conquer titles, etc.

Total Annihilation was a very popular RTS for tournaments and custom challenges, because the engine was highly moddable, and radically diverse 3rd party units could be added for a very staggering level of diversity. It supported multiplayer skirmishes and has a map editor.

I would strongly suggest TA and Homeworld(2).

[Flying Dice]

TBH regardless of whether you're playing for plot, immersion, or tactical depth, Homeworld is superior to the sequel in nearly every regard. Start with that and only move on once you've finished the campaign and gotten sick of skirmishes. It's among the elite ranks of strategy games which managed to have campaign missions that had more to them than "kill everything on the map", "protect this point for X minutes", or "escort this special NPC unit to point A". Not just on some of them, but almost all of them. The only one that's literally just a kill-'em-all is incredibly vindicating and cathartic. Still the only strategy game to ever give me real feels.

[Sonlirain]

Old crap:

Warlords.
One of the founders of the TBS genre.

Warlords Battlecry.
RTS spinoff h a couple interesting mechanics that makes it different compared to other medieval RTS of it's time. Mainly the "Combat rating" of units representing how skilled that unit is at fighting.
A low combat skill unit fighting against a high skill unit will often miss or score gflancing blows while getting critical hits in return.

Spring engine.
More like an engine then a game but there are loads of games made using it as basis.
Most are Total Annihilation clones but they are not bad in the slightest (mostly).

Heroes of Might and Magic.
Just about any of the series (well maybe except the very first one.)

Age of Wonders.
Again any in the series. Altho admitedly AoW1 had the most insane OP spells.

[Parsely]

Have some general recommendations with no description of what they are or why you should play them! Enjoy.

Blitzkrieg
Commandos 2
Creeper World 3
Cultures (the FIRST one)
Defender's Quest
Evil Genius
Homeworld Remastered
Men of War: Assault Squad
Mount and Blade (literally any of them. they're all good)
Original War
Stronghold 1 OR Stronghold Crusader (fuck all the other Stronghold titles)
X-COM: UFO Defense

[Sergarr]

Heroes of Might and Magic.
Just about any of the series (well maybe except the very first one.)

The HoMM 1 has some excellent OST, though. Very atmospheric.

Age of Wonders.
Again any in the series. Altho admitedly AoW1 had the most insane OP spells.

I dunno about OP spells, but what was really OP about AoW1 was that build where you give your main character 10 defence and lighting strike.

Also, I've once, as an experiment, cheated a little bit and gave a character all possible abilities at the start. Every strike was accompanied by rainbow-like special effects.

Also, as far as

Old crap:

goes, Master of Magic is pretty good.