Fallen Enchantress

I don't know if many of you know the story of this game, but I have found it to be rather excellent and would encourage others to check it out particularly in the light of the company behind it, Stardock, being one of the most morally upstanding developers out there at the moment.

Basically it's a marriage of Civilisation, Master of Orion II, and Heroes of Might and Magic.

You explore and build cities, much like Civ, research tech, managing resources, and fighting for strategic assets as you go. It includes a rather sweet custom faction kit which is surprisingly well balanced too.
When you start, you create a character which is "you", and this comes with a really nice creation set that has a wide range of abilities, spells, and looks much like the faction creator. Your character grows with the game, as you go out and explore, collect kit, fight monsters and lead armies much like Heroes of Might and Magic.
Armies are comprised of different units, which in turn are designed by you much like in Master of Orion. Research swords, and you can choose to equip soldiers with them, Get plate armour and you can boost your armies with that (massively slowing them down), or leave them in leather and blast your foes through sheer speed rather than attrition.
Battles are fought in a zoomed in grid like Heroes of Might and Magic, with each unit having their own spells, abilities, initiative, and stats which dictate how they fight (all chosen by you of course, determined by what you chose to equip them with).

There is so much more to it than that, you can take it like an RPG and build up your character and have a small party of super high level heroes who accompany them, or you can play as a proper king and send out armies of custom units to conquer your enemies... or a combination of the two. You can even choose just what type of ruler to be, one who masters death magic and rules through oppression, or an enlightened one who studies life magic and command through benevolence.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/216390/?snr=1_7_suggest__13

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Two years ago, I was accepted as a closed beta tester for Elemental - War of Magic, and found it to be buggy and frankly rather boring however it had massive potential and I pre-ordered it regardless, as I had enjoyed their other games Sins of a Solar Empire and Galactic Civilisation II. However I was really disappointed when they released it in pretty much that beta state.

They however learned from their mistakes, and I fully applaud the action they took as a result. They brought in a new lead designer (the guy behind Civilisation IV's rather fantastic mod, Fall from Heaven), and some other new talent to support him. They then gave him free reigns to overhaul what all that he needed to make it work, and thankfully he was able to pull this off really well and the resulting product was Elemental - Fallen Enchantress.

Further, the company's CEO sent a personal letter to everyone who owned War of Magic, including a personal apology that the company had really screwed up, and promising access to further testing phases and an eventual free copy of the final game. I didn't follow it very closely, having been a little maligned through the first game, however while in Holland I installed it and had a go, and loved every minute that followed.

Yeah, Stardock are one of my favourite devs. Will check out the game. In return, I will plug the Geneforge series. Fantastic story, pretty unique gameplay etc.

Helps that I loved the three games you compared it to.

Would you say it's worth buying as a poor college student and he would have hours and hours of fun?

Yes. First game on a medium map took me about 20 hours to complete (yes, it's Civilisation in length!), and I'm now on the campaign which is interesting too (more of an RPG so far, but it's got solid mechanics to support that).

Installing. Probably should have waited for a sale, but oh well.

I could find a demo to check if my computer handles it. Would you have link handy?

EDIT: "couldn't"

Don't think there is one i'm afraid

I play it on a laptop so if you run Civilisation V, then you should be able to handle this.

Requirements are here anyway; http://www.elementalgame.com/fallen-enchantress/overview

The developer is really good, but the base game he had to make the game with was, honestly, bad. Although Fallen Enchantress, well, in my opinion, was a good game, it wasn't excellent.

It's a game worth the money. Probably more so once the modding takes off for it, but as others have said, it's good, but not great.

Personally though, it fills the void that Master of Magic left years ago. It's my favorite of the copycat games.