looking to expan my gaming to games similar to c@c war craft 3
city builder base defense single player vr computer

and has to run on a crappy dual core processor

Well, Total Annihilation is on here and will run on a crappy dual core processor. That's a fun one, also has a soundtrack by Jeremy Soule.

Homeworld is also fun, but not so much on the base defense / city building.

The 1st Empire Earth

Army Men RTS

Absolutely try Heroes of Annihilated Empires. I played this game quite a bit. It can get so epic that I discarded the music and listened to the LOTR OST. Really fun game.

If you like turn-based strategy and fantasy, Heroes of Might and Magic III is one such classic.

- Stronghold HD / Stronghold Crusader HD
- Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds (basically Age of Empires II with a Star Wars setting and flying late-game units)
- Total Annihilation / Total Annihilation: Kingdoms
- Majesty Gold HD (an RTS where you don't control units, instead you motivate them through other means; basically a reverse RPG) There are no good new RTSes so all the good ones are old enough to run on shitty processors :P

It isn't like C&C or W3 at all, but i urge you to put Alpha Centauri in your wishlist, then think about it the next time you feel like expanding your gaming. ;)

Well, since we still don't have Armies of Exigo here, I'd say grab the Spellforce games, they are really good, especially the second one. It leans into RPG territory much more heavily than Warcraft 3, but it really works. Also they are really cheap right now.

Sacrifice, Warcraft 2, Dungeon Keeper 1&2, CiV 4, Panzer Corps, Age of Wonders 1&2, Caesar series, Pharaoh and Cleopatra.

The ones older than about 1995 or so are also not that great in retrospect. There's a period from about 1995 to 2005 or so where the genre had a ton of great games, but outside that range and the games suffered.

It's not here, but I love Warzone 2100 and it's completely free.

Second that. Spellforce is great, especially Spellforce II. Atleast the first two have great soundtracks, unfortunately with the release of the *Anniversary Edition* it isn't included with SF2 anymore, a pity.

Edited a minute after: Changed statement about OST after checking it again.

Since you listed "city builder" as a choice, this might fit the bill and it'll run on a VERY low-spec system.

https://www.gog.com/game/banished

That game is great ^_^

Age of Empires
Starcraft
Battle for Middle Earth
Warlords Battlecry

Warcraft 1 and 2 are here.
Warlords: Battlecry trilogy are very similar but delightfully different from Warcraft.
Empire Earth is s favorite.