so i have fallen in love with starcraft. I used to play a lot of stronghold back in the day, but are there any more awesome rts games i should know about? I check out warhammer and its a bit much for me lol

you should check out Shogun 2 total war. 

An dont forget Age of Empires 

First Spellforce game was awesome. A mix of RTS & RPG.

AGE OF EMPIRES 2

i used to spend hours creating my own levels which contained thousands of soldiers on an plain feild going at it. 

isn't that game super old lol?

I created an impenetrable island!!!

It was so awesome...any ship getting close was destroyed instantly.

I had 2 sets of walls around the island....then those tower thingy's that shoot arrows on every alternate square in the gap between the two sets of walls!!!

It took 5 hours to make (this other faction was on the island too so had to kill em first and build up my empire to have enough money to make the wall).

Age of Empires 3. Every unit has a counter so the battle is always tense. Teams are balanced too. You need to focus on lots of different tactics to win a game. Watch some replays from gamereplays.org and you will know.

With the RTs genre age doesn't really matter.

A certain amount of graphics is needed to not hamper enjoyment...Age Of Empires 2 is definetely reaching that "level" of graphics needed to not hamper enjoyment!

Age of Empires II took over my life back when I was at primary school school

I played it so much that even now about 2 years after I last played it, I can flawlessly remember the entire tech tree and can recite the cheats off by heart.

I wouldn't be surprised if I put 800 hours plus into that game.