I've been playing Dominions, an interesting, Risk-oid game from Sweden's Illwinter. The computer plays a strong game, in part because it knows the rules -- rules which are extremely baroque and often idiosyncratic. Unlike most games lately, though, Dominions gives you plenty of degrees of freedom and lots of room to experiment.

The writing is, frankly, pretty terrible. Not as bad as Diablo, at least if you allow for the translation issue, but still a feeble afterthought.