Its like your reliving my past, just the other month my friends and I loaded up some good old Age of Empires 2 for LAN play.
I recommend:
Company of Heroes
Rise of Nations
Anno (series, there is alot of them).
I also found these links handy:
http://www.squidoo.com/similar-games-like-age-of-empires
http://gameslikefinder.com/games-like-age-of-empires/