What happened to Expeditions: Conquistador? I recall you being anxious to get it and then excited to play it and that wasn't that long ago. Its turn based with a historical story as the background. Imagine it meets all your other criteria too, unless the graphics card can't handle it. That may be the only hangup since I've read its a bit of a resource hog.

If not that, I like the idea of Colonization. Similar kind of game and the recommendation for it in a prior post hits all its good points squarely on the head.

I'll pitch my vote in for Conquistador. I finished it the other night. It was great.

I had to turn down my graphics settings to medium since it really enjoyed crashing a lot, but other than that the game is an interesting challenge.

XD I thought I was the only one who had that problem.
THANK YOU!

Play Etherlords 2 (or E1, but I can't really recommend that as I haven't played yet).

RPG(ish), turn-based with cards. You can play a few battles, stop and do another thing, come back and play a few more battles, stop, repeat... You don't even need a PAUSE button! ;p

and then when you have finished with it, you can play again with another faction.

My dudes would always die of (what I assumed to be?) dehydration since I couldn't figure out how to get them to drink water, let alone FIND it.

Also, I could never figure out how to change the day.

That is to play on my main computer at home and definitely won't run on my girlfriend's computer. I haven't even tried to install the graphics card yet(am hoping to not need it) as it is ancient and finding a driver will drive me nuts :P I am limited in what I can download at home as I run the net through my mobile phone (with a 5gb a month data limit) as I can't get fixed line internet where I live. That means I download games at my girlfriend's house and then install them at home. Unfortunately with Steam, that means sometimes the installation wipes the transferred files and starts to redownload it again, which is quite frustrating. From memory something happened with the attempted installation of Expeditions, but I'll check when I get home today as yes I am very keen to play that game :) The other issue I have with my main computer at home, is trying to get to use it. It's a power gaming PC and my girlfriend loves games and she somehow manages to get far more use of MY computer than I do :P

Edit: I own Expeditions on Steam, which rules out using it on the computer I mentioned :)

My bad. Wrongly remembered you getting it here on GOG so yah, that isn't in the cards.

Regardless, lots of good recommendations in this thread so you can't go wrong. I don't know how I forget about Eador. When I was found the code for it in a scavenger hunt here, I didn't know what I was getting into. Ended up playing that game exclusively for months. It has so much depth even if it looks simplistic. When I kept uncovering more of the inner workings of the game, it became one of my top 5 favorite games of all time. Also, her pc should easily handle Genesis.

I finally found a driver for the old ATI graphics card. It was worse than I thought, 128mb. Hopefully I can get it set up and working :)

Edit: no I didn't, I found a set-up utility from a site that wasn't ATI. I need to be not half asleep when doing this! lol

This is the card I'm looking for a driver for(hopefully I can download it from ATI on this computer and transfer it to the other) http://www.thebestpartinc.com/109-a33431-00.html

Is this one?
http://download.cnet.com/ATI-FireGL-V3100-Display-Driver-Windows-XP/3000-2108_4-102930.html

edit: or this?

Thanks Stooner I'll try those as Ive had no luck so far getting it to work :)
Nope no luck there. Installation says cannot find a driver matching the hardware. I'm stumped lol This is an ancient card from my mother's old computer that I've had sitting around for ages.

Identifying the right card might help :P It's an ATI Radeon X series card. Grabbing a new driver now that should work :)

Wohoo graphics card installed and working :)

My advice, if you are still looking, would be RPG:

Dink Smallwood.

But if you have already played it, then I would recommend Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic or Hard Nova

Read the manual. Seriously. Then read the reference card. Then read the manual again.
Jagged Alliance does have a weird interface, and trying to figure it out on the go isn't recommended. I know I couldn't figure it out back when I first played it (can't really recall when that was), and I haven't really tried it since.
Alternatively, you should be able to play JA1 using JA2, take a look at the Bear's Pit for the modification, though last I checked it was still work in progress. The game's forum should probably have a link.

I can't believe how much fun I'm having actually playing a game right now! This is even more fun that collecting games :P lol Will write a little about my experiences today once I've played a bit more :)