What game combined RPG and RTS between 2002 and 2006?

Question

Between 2002 and 2006 I played a PC game that combined features of both genres, RTS and RPG.
I can remember that you controlled a character, or a group of up to 3-5(?) character which could be equipped with items. Sometimes they walked through a city and talked to NPCs, merchants and quest givers. Those characters leveled up during some small battles and could equip something like runes.

Those runes determined the units you were able to use in the RTS part of the game, which took place on a whole different map in a traditional rts-style: You started with some buildings and workers and had to take one or more enemies down with the army you built up. When this map was won, you came back to the RPG part.

I think there were 3-4 races playable in the rts-part, something like Humans, Elves (with walking trees as ultimate units, something dwarf-like.

Answer

This sounds like one of the Spellforce games. There is Spellforce: The Order of Dawn and Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars. The runes part makes me think it was the first one, as you played a Runewarrior in that one. From the Wikipedia entry on the first game:

The Circle Mages needed vast armies that would be loyal and could be gathered quickly,This is when they had the idea of the runewarriors. The runewarriors were fighters and mages whose souls were trapped in stones their masters could summon them forth to do their will any deaths would be meaningless as they could be brought back even after death because they had the gift of immortality. With these stones the mages could form armies quickly and easily sending them forth in unhaltable tides they would serve their masters for eternity had it not been for the convocation.

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