If you like RTS builder games with some combat but more of a focus on building, I have been playing Anno 1404 Dawn of Discovery.  It is an excellent RTS builder game.  There is a large focus on building and managing your empire with a simple, yet effective combat element to it.  Not nearly as involved combat wise as AOE or SINS, but it is a great change of pace.

Get Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance, which are both on Impulse.  Just ignore the sequel.

Hegemony: Philip of Macedon is like SoaSE in Ancient Greece without the base-building, and I think a tad bit more strategic depth.

If you're looking for space 4X, you aren't going to find another 4X-RTS until Star Ruler (as far as I can tell).

Good 4X space games include;

Sword of the Stars (Thank you acare)

Space Empires 5

Distant Worlds

Funnily enough, without intending to, that list is more-or-less in order of complexity, as well.

The Homeworld series is slowly aging, but is still stupendous. It's responsible for the games I just listed as well as Sins.

Games in the mould of Age of Empires could be;

Rise of Nations

Empire Earth

And finally, to round out the list, a few games that don't really fall into any major category, but are still heavy on the strategy:

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident (squad-control, single fleet based, no-building, scenario driven)

Commandos (much of the same, but a bunch of WW2 commandos each with special talents, challenging)

Majesy (ONE! 1! Don't get 2. You have no direct control over the heroes you build, and have to entice them to do things. they all level and can buy equipment, very RPG style for the heroes)

Darwinia (Try the demo. It seems to be a very polarizing game. You love it, or you don't.)

DefCon (The movie War Games, with you playing as the computer doing the simulations)

Hopefully something in these lists catches your fancy.

supreme commander forged alliance.

Well, I would have suggested SotS, except this guy is looking for 2d stuff, and some of the more 3d SotS maps can cause temporary bewilderment and lack of conscious thought thanks to their complexity (I'm looking at you, Real Space!).

Kings Bounty Armoured Princess is a nice way of removing your real life

It doesn't get that much talk because it's just not really that good.

Granted it's a novel approach to the genre and deserves credit for that, but meh, ultimately it's just kind of boring and disjointed.

The entire 'let the AI do it' part is cool though, I appreciate that, only that it wasn't pulled off well enough.

That and the old school graphics don't help.  They don't hurt mind you, they just don't help.

No, I've not played the latest patches, because from my pov, even making the AI less intolerable, the game was still lacking a hook to keep me engaged in it.

It just felt rather lifeless, which it shouldn't have with all the automated ships running around doing their thing.  The tech tree and research system also left me rather cold, as did the lack of interesting ship design choices, to say nothing of the horrible functionality of ship design (though maybe that got fixed).

As you say, to each their own, I don't begrudge anyone for playing and enjoying that game, I just don't feel it's really worth all of the hype it has received.  And reviews are what they are, I never take them seriously, especially when DW got an 8/8 based on 'potential', because clearly at release the economy was pretty well broken, and the AI control lacked necessary options to make fleet handling anything besides maddening.