The Castle building sim, Stronghold Legends has occupied a great many hours of my time lately. I recommend it to anyone who grew up as an introverted player of StarCraft. I suppose that this game is the premeire castle building sim and rightly so. I remember sitting and playing Stronghold Crusader for hours on end amassing huge armies and laughing maniacally as the enemy's armies fell to my arrows and assassin's. I passed over the second game after hearing that it was too convoluted to truly be enjoyable, but Stronhold Legends is a wonderful real time strategy game, better than the original Stronghold game and possibly better than either the original StarCraft or WarCraft series from Blizzard.

Build your castle while you tear down everyone elses. The first Stronghold game took place during the crusades, this one takes place during some mythical age that doesn't really exist. Werewolves, imps, dragons, giants, witches and more exist to obey your commands as you work your way through the campaign, trails or destroy your human adversaries in online play.
A typical castle view. That dragon is only around for about 2 minutes though, so this guy should be attacking someone with it really soon.

As far as real time strategy games go the Stronghold games seem to be right on par with the best. Plenty of troop choices, upgrades and weapon choices. The graphics are lovely and the control system is what we have become used to over time. I loved Legends and can't think of any reason why the game doesn't deserve five stars