[Stryke11]

1) Medieval 2: Total War (Not vanilla, but MODS - Stainless Steel and Broken Crescent - seriously, if you have M2TW you NEED to try these mods, 500X better than actual game).
2) Galactic Civilizations 2: Twilight of the Arnor
3) The Witcher (pretty unknown, but absolutely awesome, think Oblivion with more action and for adults).
4) Dwarf Fortress (it's been so long since a patch that I don't actually play it much, but it's there waiting).
5) Battle for Wesnoth (occasionally).
6) Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES (Playstation 2 game, but it's still a game, so it counts.)

P.S. HoneyBadger: You mentioned you would like a Fantasy: Total War, well, I highly recommend you try Fourth Age: Total War, which is a LotR mod for Rome (with Barbarian expansion) and is set in the 4th age of Middle Earth (after the events in the novels/movies). You can be Gondor, Rohan, Harad, Rhun, this bizarro evil-twin Gonder that has Gondor infantry with orcs and trolls, located in what was formerly Mordor), and Dunland. They are also working on a mod for Medieval called Third Age: Total War, which also looks very pretty.