I had issues with Age of Wonders II and Shadow Magic because of the ease it is to destroy the entire faction by just killing its wizard. The AI isn't very strong at building wizards towers so it made it that much easier. Plus as allies they would let you march up to the capital doorsteps with 3 full stacks and then declare war and crush them. There should have been some better rules of diplomacy and allying in that you can never enter the capital area of effect (so many hexes) without your ally being at war with someone and they are fighting in that area of effect. The origional provided the best AI performance, but, Shadow Magic provided the random generations I wanted in the first game. As it is now I don't play either because I'm tired of the maps in the origional and the AI plus the stupid wizard thing are both stupid in the latter ones.
Also HOMM2 was the best of the series because you could individually tweak each AI to what level of difficulty you wanted. HOMM III was fair, but, it only had one difficulty setting and all the AI's used it and it never compared to the AI of HOMM II. I actually lost playing HOMM II and never lost in III. Didn't get IV or V because I read about them and really that's just too long of a sequel of the same game. If you've got II or III you've got them all.
MOM would have been another but it aged a bit too much grapically
for my taste.
How could you forget and put MOM in the old folks home of computer games? I can still play MOM today and the graphics don't bother me at all. Sure it's 8 bit, but, big deal graphics aren't everything. So, I guess when your wife gets old and wrinkled you're going to put her out of your mind too? hehehe Behind every wrinkle is still the same warm soft game you knew when it was young.

WE/I WANT 1:1 or something even 1:2 death animations in the KOIOS PANZER COMMAND SERIES don't forget Erik!

and Floating Paratroopers We grew up with Minor, Marginal and Decisive victories why rock the boat with Marginal, Decisive and Legendary?