Best Strategy Games of All Time?

[CourtneyCC]

I'm really curious what people come up with here. Each game has a pretty devout following, and I wonder what we'll say.
Anyways, lads, toss out your favourite video games of the strategy genre, one for each of the following categories:

Game Mechanics:
Graphics:
Mod-ability:
Community:
Nostalgia Value:

As far as it goes for me;

Game Mechanics: Company of Heroes
Graphics: Starcraft 2
Mod-ability: Warcraft III
Community: Warcraft III
Nostalgia Value: Age of Empires II

GLHF

 

[Hargrimm]

Game Mechanics: Dwarf Fortress
Graphics: Supreme Commander
Mod-ability: Medieval II
Community: Europa Universalis III
Nostalgia Value: X-com

 

[Nouw]

Game Mechanics: Company of Heroes.
Graphics: Supreme Commander
Mod-ability: Starcraft 2. If the World Editor doesn't count, Warcraft III.
Community: Don't know.
Nostalgia Value: Dawn of War. It got me into videogaming really.

 

[ErwinGodfrey]

Game Mechanics:Crusader Kings 2
Graphics:Crusader Kings 2
Mod-ability:Europa Universalis 3
Community: Paradoxian Grand Strategies all have pretty much the same community
Nostalgia Value: Victoria

 

[JaceArveduin]

Nostalgia Value: BFME2/ROTWK

I haven't played many RTS's, and I just couldn't get into Warcraft *shrug*

So, who wants a Balrog to the face?

 

[Frankster]

Game Mechanics: Company of Heroes
Graphics: Coh as it was one of the few games I could play almost on ultra high settings so got to see most of the fancy physics and explosions.
Mod-ability:Sins of a solar empire
Community: Dawn of war/40k community was good to me in its heyday.
Nostalgia Value: Pharaoh from sierra's city buiding series (city building games are a subset of strategy right? Or is it just rts+grand strategy+tbs? In which case xcom)

 

[Atmos Duality]

I'm out of touch with current strategy games. So I'm only going to comment on Nostalgia.

Nostalgia Value: Master of Orion 1 (yes, 1, not the more-popular MOO2)
Amazing AI, great mix of depth and complexity without going too far down the rabbit hole.
The partially randomized tech tree gives it infinitely more replayability than its successors.

But really. The AI for that game is SHARP.

It regularly targets planets of great strategic importance, it engages in fair-diplomacy (that is, it doesn't just hate the player, and it cannot be broken by daisy-chaining or brokering it to other AIs so easily) and it acts like a faction that knows what it wants and builds towards that goal rather than just slinging whatever they have and hoping for the best.

And it is for that reason that I barely have to put it ahead of X-COM 1&3.

 

[gunny1993]

Game Mechanics: Shogun 2 Total War
Graphics: Shogun 2 Total war
Mod-ability: Rome total war
Community: ... honestly can't think of one for this
Nostalgia Value: Red Alert 2