psgels

Hey everyone, I'm new to this forum so I hope that I'm posting this at the right place. I was wondering if I could ask your help on recommending me some interesting strategy games that I could play. The thing is, I both love and loathe strategy games. On one hand I love exploring all these intricately complex games and systems that have been designed. On the other hand, I suck at them. Horribly. I've been trying game after game after game, Age of Wonders, Civilization, Baldr's Gate, Total War (okay rpgs with some strategy influences as well), and I found them all very interesting at first, only to be kicked in the nuts because I forgot to optimize, micro-manage, build an army, or forgot to research and am now so far behind that it's basically pointless in continuing further. I'm looking for a game where I can have fun: where I can just goof off, don't have to pay attention to whether or not I'm creating the strongest thing, but I can still have fun with non-optimized strategies that just seem interesting, and where I don't feel punished for being a terrible player. Does any of you know of a game that sortof fits these criteria? An example of the kind of game I'm looking for is The Temple of Elemental Evil. It was very rough around the edges and not balanced at all, but you could fully create your own array of characters and you could make them incredibly flawed and you'd still have a blast playing due to all of their interesting powers and synergies together.