Erm, Age of Empires 2 is pretty fucking tactical, what with the formation controls, attack stances and the hotkeying. I'll normally have maybe four or five groups on the go at any one time during a big attack (a large central unit in square formation, normally set to stand still, generally consisting of pikemen surrounding a core of arbalests, hand cannoneers and elite skirmishers protecting a couple of trebuchets, a couple of skirmishing units of horse archers, knights, berserkers, samurai, whatever, a big group of villagers and maybe a unit of monks, especially if I'm after some relics). The villagers are to facilitate my favourite tactic of castle-hopping, to wit: you plough straight into your enemies base with a huge assault, and then, whilst he's desperately defending his town centre, castle, maybe king, monument, whatever, you build a fucking castle in the middle of his base. Then the twenty villagers all get in, and they can fire arrows from inside the castle!
Often if the opponent isn't very good, it just becomes a case of building forty of whatever my elite unit is, sending them out to kill, and going off and building another castle. Of course, trebuchets make things far more interesting, as does the garrisoned rams in Age of Conquerors. Setting up proper defenses with clearly defined killing fields and protective mazes of palisade fence becomes very important.
As for turn based strategy, I am all about Paradox games and Alpha Centauri. Europa Universalis 2 and Hearts of Iron have stolen incalculable portions of my life. My favourite Hearts of Iron Game? I played as the USA, and just sat out completely till 1942, pouring my whole economy into research until I was at a 1950's level. Then I started declaring war on South American countries one by one until the Presidents approval rating dipped so low that there was a communist revolution. America became a Stalinist state, I joined the Comintern, then I took over the Comintern, and then we declared war on the Allies and the Axis at the same time, who put aside their differences in order to combat the threat of global communism.
Unfortunately for them I already had sub-launched nukes at this point. After reducing Berlin, London, Manchester, Koln, Paris, Rome and Dusseldorf to radioactive slag, they surrendered. Japan I took out in the approved historical way.
US battlefield and civilian deaths? ZERO.