If you are serious about turn-based strategy, pretty much all the good stuff over the last few years has come from either Stardock or 1C (Dominions 3 was also good though could have used a bigger budget, and of course some excellent Civ4 mods). Fantasy Wars is a great title but the Orc campaign is punishingly hard at the end. Could have used a tad more balancing. The "turn-limit" in that game is the developers' way of gauging difficulty level. Trying to race across a map against the clock raises risk considerably and will result in casualties but in return is rewarded with better prizes at the end of each scenario. If this makes the game too difficult for the methodical, then just lower the difficulty to "easy". I would not recommend playing on "hard" as the scenarios are pretty challenging on "normal".
Fantasy Wars had some really nice Developers - the turn limits they give you are incredibly lax compared to what they derived it from. Fantasy General gives you limits that really make you think about how you can win a given scenario without losing the war via attrition.
Incidentally, Fantasy General's harsh difficulty is explained by it's backstory - think Lord of the Rings, if Sauron had won and, a decade later, you lead a ragtag army into the heart of Mordor. Obviously, one defeat will result in you losing, well, everything - and any taking too long will result in a deadly response from the evil guy.
best fantasy TBS of all time!? thats a boostful claim. Well, you just motivated me to go find it and play this. I accept your challange, lets see if its as good as you say.
Well, it is an SSI game, which should mean a lot to a connoisseur of Turn based Strategy.
Note that I don't count the Master of Magic, Age of Wonders, etc. style games as being in the same genre as FG - the former are pretty much Fantasy (Turn based) 4x games.