Time to wake from the dead here, been reading this forums as a ghost for far too long...
Here's something free and fun, the new Star Wars RTS, "
Empire at War". There is a demo on several download sites that lets you play a few tutorials and a very short campaign. However the real fun comes when you actually find out that people have been modding the demo unlocking a lot more features. There's still a lot unbalanced and much is not as it will be in the final release, obviously since the source is only from a demo, but it's still something to spend a few hours on.
The're quite a few mods (you can find most of them
here) but most of them does the same thing, unlocks pretty much everything that was locked in the demo. I found the "Warlord" mod the most stable and fun since some are very unbalanced and some doesn't even have AI unlocked so the enemy ships just stays there.

I'm actually thinking of buying the game in a week or so when it's released, love space fights and the possibility to conquest the galaxy

and to ease the wait for you know what..
Besides that I'll be playing Civ IV and Morriwind of course.
