>>14170077
Add Heroes of Might and Magic 2 to that. It's older and more primitive, but it has it's charms, such as the ultra-comfy graphics and the generally faster and more fluid gameplay due to castles producing way less gold meaning you have to go out there and do something in order to have an economy. (The battlescape AI is retarded though).
Another interesting option would be the Impressions city builders:
Caesar series
Pharaoh
Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom.
They're a bit counterintuitive at first, but a bit "deeper" than most city building games.
Then there's Master of Magic. Looks like a civ game, but it's actually closer to Master of Orion. Use the Caster of Magic. It changes a lot, but makes it over all a greater game.
I don't know how potato his "craptop" is. But if it isn't, like, 20 years old or something it should be able to run Civilization 4 which is the high point of the main Civ series. Again great mods out there. At very least use the BUG mod for a better interface, but there's some other interesting shit out there such as Realism Invictus, Rise and Fall, Fall form Heaven and (my favourite) Dune Wars Revival.
And we could add Xcom here as well. The original classic holds up ad with Openxcom there's excellent mod support. Do beware that X-piratez is really RAM intensive on startup though.