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I'd get Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic of those. AoW was awesome and had a nice feel, but shadow magic is superior in a few ways that shouldn't be overlooked : more races with more units, better graphics, better AI, better combat, and mid-high level heroes are much better balanced.
Then again, AoW 1 has a much cooler base campaign with occasional choices in paths you can take, more players per map (big plus for me), less obviously balanced races (this can be a good thing), and your leader didn't have to really be a wizard. It also gets style points in interface design and hand painted style of portraits and such.
If you like one though, you'll like the other, and I spent hours and hours and hours on each of the AoW series. There are tons of player-made scenarios (and for AOW: SM, campaigns) for each game, and I believe there's a 3rd party converter of AoW 1 scenarios to Shadow Magic, but that's just heresay because I haven't tried it. There are also mods that add scores of units and such for Shadow Magic, and the editor is (or became after a patch, rather) much more powerful than AOW1's, which makes for cooler custom content.
I hope they make a 3rd in the series.
Oh, and I'm not sure about XP Pro. XP Home SP2 is fine afaik.
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