jungletoad: Well, I decided to try Ground Control 2 and The Lords of the Realm 1&2 pack.
I never grew up as a strategy gamer, so any time I see a modern RTS that is played online I am immediately turned off because I'm sure I'll get wasted before even figuring out how to play. I'm trying to break into the strategy genre a little more and these older games seem better for that than some of the newer strategy titles. They look and feel a little more akin to complex board games, and that somehow makes them less intimidating than some crazy competitive online war game.
Lotr 2 is a turn based game, the rts part isn't very well developed, you can even skip that part and let the cpu do the battle instantly, and that's how I usually play, it's more a management game than an rts, but it's wonderful nonetheless