I always liked the old "Civil War Generals" game; though it was buggy as hell and is now quite dated. It was highly intuitive.

I wish there were Avalon Hill style games out there in computer mode (the old board game Third Reich was a favorite of mine), but the genre seems to be dominated by shooter games rather than by generalship.

Hearts of Iron is an excellent WW II computer game, though mind-numbingly complicated. It's AI is also pretty nasty.

Have you considered Civilization IV?

If you get that, you can join the online fray that Buckethead and I are about to initiate. (The solo mode has a very competent AI, so you can play with yourself, too).

[Wry emoticon withheld].

Colossus, a couple of years ago I found a site (I believe it was linked from a grognards site) with a download of the computer version of Avalon Hill's Third Reich. I couldn't find any new versions of it for sale, so I felt no guilt in downloading it as "abandonware."

I have to run it in W98 emulation mode on XP, since it's a DOS game, but it works pretty well (the AI usually beats me on Difficult settings). I have won as both Allies and Germans. I haven't played it recently, but it was as fun as I remember the original tabletop game being. It's much easier to stack units with mouseclicks than to fumble with the small cardboard squares. It's nice, too, for the computer to keep track of the turns (the rule book for that game read like the tax code!)

The save file is small enough to be emailed, so in theory, a group of interested folks could play be email.

Email me if you're interested in learning more.

Bring. It. On.

The Teutonic Knights can usually beat 3 allied teams of the Brits, or my favorite combo to play against, the Brits, the Chinese and the Japanese (2 different archer civs and a swords).

John, I'd love CivIV a hell of a lot more if it weren't for the black-terrain bug. Have they finally patched that yet?

Lysander, there is a patch, but I don't know if it fixes the black terrain bug (I resolved that with a new video card a few weeks ago). You can probably learn more from the Firaxis website. Or you just roll the dice, start the game, at the main menu click "Check for Updates," install the patch, and see if it fixes your issues.