SW Empire at war or LOTR Battle for Middle Earth II
 

Haven't really played these games for a while.

I really liked C&D, and Warcraft, Starcraft.

Which game would you go for?

IMO
SW might be too star wars-ish
and the LOTR might be more fantasy, which is okay to me.

Your best bet would be to try the demo for Empires at War, and for the first Battle for Middle Earth.

played the Star Wars one and i liked it alot.....

Doesn't that answer your question?

Are either of these games single player? Or do you HAVE to play them multi-player?

They are RTS games, so yes, they have both singleplayer campaigns and multiplayer.

I have this exact same dilema right now. To help me figure it out I d/led played the demos for both of them. I don't know how much they helped me decide, because I thought both demos were really fun to play.
Star Wars was cool to have the space battle segments and then also the invasions on the planet. I thought the space battle was more fun, though.
I was having a great time in BFME2 building my base, laying it out just the way I wanted it. Then those darn goblins started attacking me and knocking my walls down. I had to go obliterate them for that behavior.

Darth Vader looks REALLY weird in EAW. His helmet is all squished. It just bugs me. Bizarrely, BFME2 is coming out on the 360. This might be cool if it supports a mouse/keyboard hookup by USB.