Medieval 2 Total War. I couldn't get the hang of the game, then magic happened.

I was playing Spain. I secured the peninsula (sorry, Portugal) and tried to marry a princess off to France. They refused, and the 2/10 trait princess got a trait decrease to boot, making her a diplomatic liability. I needed more commanders to lead the expansion, so I married her off to a local "suitable husband" dude, to get an extra commander. Unfortunately, the princess was ugly enough to make the dude forswear women forever (wink wink), which reduced his commander rating in turn. Than plan having failed, I marry the remaining 2/10 princess to an existing commander and send him to fight the Moors.

After some success at conquering and converting the Moors, I managed to get my (highly pious, as a result of all the preaching he did) priest dude elected Pope, wasting huge amounts of money on bribes, but my relationship with the church worsened after that. Then the Pope declared a crusade to liberate the Holy Land and I thought that could help me out, but due to my complete lack of understanding of the diplomatic system, France declared a war on me for moving troops through their territory, and to add insult to injury the Pope (you know, my former dude I spent twice my GDP to get elected) excommunicated me for attacking a fellow Christian nation. While most of the army production goes to support the war of attrition on the French border (that I was losing anyway), my best commander (husband of the second, not-so-ugly princess) gets killed fighting the Moors. Damn, my northwest African war was the only thing that was going kinda-well.

It sure sounds like reload time, but I decide to roll with it. There's hardly anything left of my African contingent, but it's victorious, and the game offers me a "man of the hour" replacement dude to adopt into the royal family. He's older than my existing heirs and disloyal (like most captains are), so I am worried that he might turn disloyal and usurp the throne, not to mention my existing heirs might be, you know, somewhat pissed, but at that point I'm pretty starved for dependable army leadership (a captain-led army went rebel in the middle of Spain not too long ago), so I adopt him and notice a peculiar thing. In place of a Chivalry rating (on a scale 1 to 10, but I've never seen it go higher than 3, and that only on the recently departed commander), the new guy had two skulls. Whoa.

And what do you know, the guy starts eating African provinces like candy, and within a short time the Pope likes me again. We arrive in time to win the crusade, too. By land. Meaning he wiped every single army out there, leaving for the captains to clean up undefended provinces. Fernan the Merciless (for that was his name, with 10/10 Dread skulls and all) compromised only once, when the game, on behalf of Egypt, offered me a stupid amount of money for the crown prince I captured (the capture allowed my severely understaffed army - they only got one reinforcement, right after my former commander bought the farm - to win a battle against practically all of Egypt). Turns out the game recommends a ransom regardless of the opponent's financial situation, and there's no option to adjust it - when Egypt failed to cough up 7k gold, dude got executed.

Around that time, Europe started hating me pretty seriously. The Pope was frowning, my priests got investigated by the inquisition (and were found innocent), and assassination attempts on my star commander happened every freaking turn (they stopped when I finished with Egypt though, so I guess I was wrong to blame Europe). Winning the crusade was the last straw - that got me excommunicated (again!) and, holy crap, a crusade is announced. On me.

But you know, whatever. The next turn after I wrapped up the liberation of the Holy Land, the reinforcements that were supposed to help Fernan doing exactly that finally arrived from Spain by sea. Rather than let them sit there and be useless, I decide that my future king has had enough of the fighting and was feeling pretty homesick (plus you never know when the old king might kick the natural causes bucket or get offed by Yet Another Rebellion).

So he goes home. By land. And Europe folds like a house of cards before Fernan and his band of battle-hardened... oh scratch that, green recruits who I imagine are still confused as to which side of the crusade they are supposed to be fighting on.

While at it, I manage to get the requisite number of provinces and win the game, so I reload, wait to be crowned king and then win.

(I actually have Alpha Centauri, but wasn't that a cool story?)

One of my most memorable moments with a stategy game was with Homeworld Cataclysm.

I remember playing the missions where u first encounter the beast infected probe !at night!

-Spoiler Warning-
I really freaked out when my ships approached the infected module and suddenly the ion-beam chain-connected to my ships. All these screams - the radio transmissions - and the biomasses spreading across the hulls of my ships!

Warlords III for me too, but no cheats. :-)

It's my go-to game on nights when I just want to get buzzed, listen to music, and have a long night.

No real spectacular strategies; I prefer the missions where I get to build up my defenses, build every kind of building even if I don't use it, max out mine personnel, and then I'll send out some eagles to do some scouting. Then I just get a group of about 20 men and go out and conquer.

Already have Alpha Centauri, but if you don't mind, I'd like to enter for a chance to pass the gift code onto another community I'm in.

I've got a couple stories I love to tell.

From Master of Orion 1: One time, playing as the Humans in a Small/Five galaxy, in the endgame with just me and the Darloks, after finishing researching everything, I gave all of it to the Darkloks. We then proceeded to swap about 20 planets back and forth every 10-20 turns or so. I loved that game.

From Master of Orion 2: My very first game, I take a slow approach, focusing on building up my home system and the nearest system. Once I'm at "Hyper-Advanced" in all the techs, I build up as much of a fleet of Doom Stars as I can. I launch it at a nearby Human system...

...only to get smashed by a fleet about ten times the size of mine. I zoom the map out. The Humans have colonies in literally EVERY OTHER SYSTEM.

This is one of those moments I wish I played more strategy games.

I think the most memorable is when I first played Medieval 2: Total War, having no previous experience with the series. I was totally amazed by the battle system in the game. What was most amazing, though, is I totally owned all the nations around me with my little army :P
I played and I played and it's probably the most extensively played strategy game of mine. And this, folks, is how I got over the "I hate strategy games" label that I put on myself as a young boy and went on to finish the campaign in Empire: Total War :D

Beating the gorgon in birthright: the gorgon's alliance for the first time. Thanks for the giveaway :)

Memorable? How about pathetic and still got away with it.

I was playing the final level of Battleship (yes the board game) on the Gameboy Color. I ended up attacking every tile on the gameboard to beat the cpu. That's right, not a single grid tile was spared on my way to victory.

I still remember the Russian (future) campaign in Empire Earth for one of its missions (can't remember which one exactly, I'd guess the second one) that took a few tries (and readjustments of my strategy). There were 3 (I think) large, established enemies and another smaller opponent close by, so there was constant pressure and the additional danger of being overrun by mechs if I took too long. In the end, I completely changed my starting strategy and went flyer-heavy, defending my base mainly with multiple airfields and finally using a strike team of bombers to take out the target of the mission (some kind of building in the middle of one of the big bases).

Because my previous ground-based strategies had little success, I felt like having achieved something afterwards. It's good to be challenged from time to time, which is something modern games like to forget...

My absolute favorite memory of any RTS game was this time I made what I felt was a solidly defended Zerg HQ in StarCraft. It was back when I had the time to spend hours fortifying and cautiously advancing the hive cluster until I took over the entire map before completing the level goals. Well this one time, I had most of the map covered and was waiting to assault the Protoss, assuming that they were just out of resources and would pose little threat. Then all at once, in like 3 minutes, the Protoss completely wiped out all of my central Zerg forces and just kept coming until I had nothing left. It was just impressive.

Nothing really too big or impressive, but... Playing Deadlock: Planetary Conquest for the first time. I was six or so, but goddamn if that game didn't blow my mind back then.

I already have Alpha Centauri, just wanted to say thanks for the giveaway and do this
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/how_does_one_make_a_gift_aka_gifting_on_gog_for_dummies/post57

Not entering (a fellow GOGger made me happy today to gifting it to me), but +1 for the giveaway!

If Alpha Centauri is not returned immediately to its lawful inhabitants, you will be destroyed 'cause of alien crossfire! ;)

Here: http://www.mobygames.com/game/sid-meiers-alien-crossfire

Unfortunately not. It was a big disappointment for GOG fans of the game...

*disappears quickly to avoid being lynched by too many offtopic posts*

I have the game, just here to say thanks for the contest and +1.