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Fog: Empires: 80 hours and no longer installed
Empires doesn't have a RPG layer to it, but has a strongly scripted historical event flow underneath. It offers lots of nations to choose from and many of them have detailed historical goals, and lots of ways to play. You cannot choose a map or generate settings, but with its Persia DLC, it offers two grand campaigns and a short Epirus scenario.
I think many OW players also play FoG II without Empires, on its own. That's the tactical, military engagement and campaign layer to Fields of Glory. I like it a lot, not just because it covers an immense time frame of history with many cultures, armies and campaigns, but due to the ability to import battles from FoG: Empires, play them and export the result back to Empires.
(For full completeness, I also play Imperiums: Greek Wars. Maybe others will correct me, but I think it's somewhat closer to OW than Empires, as it has a Civilization-like gameplay. One big positive thing in the game for me is the DLC: Age of Alexander. I've played Imperiums the least of these games, I still need to learn more about it.)
It's not that I didn't enjoy FoG Empires so much as it just didn't hook me nearly as much as Old World did. Although FoG Empires is essentially a strategic layer to the FoG II games, it has some grand strategy elements to it too, perhaps the most innovative being the cultural degeneracy mechanics which are tied to so many elements in the game.
But there is just something missing from the experience. It's a good game and you'll get your money's worth out of it, ESPECIALLY if you export the battles to resolve in FoG II. That's another issue I had with it - because you can export the battles to resolve, AGEod dumbed down the in-game battle resolution from their previous, highly sophisticated system in their games. It really is just roll some dice and add a number of small modifiers to it and compare the result. Resolving in FoG II is much better but it means you'll spend a LOT of time playing FoG II instead.
Old World is a more traditional 4X game with some very innovative systems as well as a non-trivial RPG element. It also has a fairly decent AI opponent, something that AGEod games also used to have before they became too big (To End all Wars for example)
I see Tomi has also mentioned Imperiums Greek Wars. That is perhaps a better fit for somebody who wants a Civ IV-like experience set exclusively in the ancient era. Like Old World, you can play on a randomly generated map as well as the real-world campaigns. It's also a very sophisticated game with systems that are much deeper than you might first appreciate. But overall, I've spent 20x the hours I've spent playing both FoG Empires and Imperiums combined. Maybe if there had been no Old World, I might have spent more time in Imperiums but not FoG Empires. I prefer the FoG II game instead.
Best wishes to all!
FOG:E is not a particularly good game imo, BUT it is an interesting game, the design choices are different from many other games. First I found it too arithmetic, too brainy. Second try I just ignored all the statistics and such and just played, which i think gave me a better chance to immerse myself. Understanding the mechanics then comes later. As I said, I think the mechanics are somewhat forced, but they do a decent job to simulate some aspects of empire management.
Old World is ... well, if you have played CIV for many hundreds or even thousand hours then you just feel "at home" but it's also kind of dull. The character stuff I wished I had disabled after a few dozen turns, but yeah, I guess it's still interesting to see that married with a 4x game. The often artificial dichotomy of laws feels forced and this could be said about quite a few other systems. I appreciate the ideas, however you feel it comes from someone who wanted to make a "better CIV". But in this list, Old World with continous updates and DLC is also the richest game content-wise, which means there's a lot of optons and new stuff to see.
Imperiums: Greek Wars also has a few good ideas, but it's held back by it's gruesome GUI which seems to make it more tedious than it needs to be. It often feels like a mod to a different game, I'd say, e.g. the Troy scenario... I mean it's very very indie. Still there's lot of effort and love put into this game from the dev, there's a special atmosphere to it and I appreciate that. It's a lot more wargamey than Old World.
A game that has not been mentioned yet, but which I feel deserves to be mentioned is Hegemony III: Clash of the Ancients. It's a kind of a hybrid game between grand strategy wargame and 4x, I'd say it really nails the hit and run raid warfare of ancient tribes. While Imperiums is a 4x wargame, this is a GSG wargame at heart with an execellent atmosphere and some cool concepts that don't overburden you with brainy statistics. It's also real-time with pause while the other games are all turn-based and I like it for that.
Now as I said, all these games have a place. All of them are fun in their own right. It's difficult to chose.
It's not a pretty game for a start. The map looks ugly, units look boring and dull and the UI is varying shades of brown, black and grey. The game prides itself on its trade mechanic, but info about trade goods is hidden behind menus and buttons and there's no easy way to see what a province is importing, exporting or needs from the region tab.
There's very little to do on Empires except move units around and build buildings. There are very few interesting decisions. I've recently started an Old World game and was surprised at the amount of decisions I made per turn - where should I put my worker? What promotions do my units need? What family should I give this city to? Should I leave this character as a general fighting in the war, or retire him to tutor my children? Should I marry internally to keep my families happy, or a foreign power to keep my borders secure? Should I use civics to rush this unit for the war, or save them to implement a law? Empires has none of that. The most exciting is deciding between a randomly selected green building that might give me fruits or a purple building for some culture. The decadence system is easily overcome - just micro your citizens into culture. There isn't a politics layer, no characters to interact with outside of generals, no interaction with the map for building improvements, the diplomacy is barebones and the battle resolutions are very unsatisfying. Shame, because I really wanted to use FoG II to play out some cool battles as they far exceed Total War battles in terms of tactical depth and consideration needed.
The wait for a good Roman era grand strategy continues.