In terms of strategy games, you will never find anything finer than the Hearts of Iron series. (HoI 3 is the latest and greatest one, the others are horrifyingly glitchy).
You're running a country between 1936 and 1951 (i think) and you run EVERYTHING, elections, military, R&D, diplomacy etc. It's really remarkable and I've never played anything like it before.
It's got a learning curve like Mount Everest, and is nigh on impossible to figure everything out in one round. It has really terrific AI automation protocols that let it run segments of the country for you, so you can focus on running one portion of the country at a time, I often concentrate on the military side of things and let the AI run the country, but you can play at all levels. Greatest strategy game I've really played.
As someone said, Total War Games are IMMENSELY fun. You won't find anything quite like them in the gaming world either. The latest and greatest are the best, but everything back to Rome Total War is amazing.
To echo what Alci said, any paradox interactive game is fantastic.
Paradox interactive specialise in their grand strategy games, meaning a game where you dont just focus on kill the enemy, it goes into depth on economics, politics, relations, war, peace, trading, industry, leaders and MORE.
I know that all sounds a little daunting but it shouldn't as while the learning curve to master them is steep, the learning curve to play them is ridiculously small. Thanks to some of the most advanced and flexible AI control options I have ever seen in a game, you can focus on the things that interest you the most in the game.
Im gonna do a break down of their titles and the features unique to them with easily followed headings so you can reference what interests you the most.
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Titles....................................................................................................
There is a feature within Paradox interactive games called the grand campaign, this allows you to port from 1 title to the next to play over 1000 years of history, as such titles are in historical order
Europa Universalis: Rome
an amazing expansion on the Europa Universalis Title's, EU:rome, places you dead in the center of roman europe, starting with romes conquest of the greek city states on italy proper. You can play as any country during ANY POINT in roman history! With a country selection system unique to the EU:R, you can choose not just a year but the day and month stepping into the shoes of a great general on the verge of a prominent battle, or going back a couple years to change the course of history itself!
Features:
-Start at any date between 280 B.C. and 27 B.C.
-Choose between 10 different cultures, including the Roman, Celtic, Greek and Egyptian civilizations.
-with more than 53 playable factions on a map spanning hundreds of provinces.
-Watch your characters develop new traits through political intrigue and various interactions with thousands of other characters.
-Trade, negotiate or fight with your neighbours and advance your technologies to unite the Mediterranean World.
-Beware the Barbarian HORDE! marching through a barbarian provrince may anger them, causing them to take arms and go a pillaging, if your not careful you could be facing barbarians at the gates of rome itself!
Note: It is possible to port from EU:rome to CK, however as the time span between the end of rome and start of ck is over 1000 years, its not a very comman inclusion in players choice for a "Grand Campaign"
My reccomendation:
Getting EU:r gold version (which include vae victis expansion) is the best choice you could make, its an excellent introduction to the genre not to mention an extremely fun and ridiculously replayable experience.
Crusader Kings
Crusader Kings, puts you in the role of a fuedal lord in medeival europe, around the time of the first crusade. As the title implies, a large portion of the games mechanics is geared towards Crusading against the "heathen" in the holy land (and elsewhere
).
Features:
- Choose to play as any (christian) fuedal lord in europe, including counts, dukes, princes, kings and emperors, while interacting with many other christian and non-christian lords.
- Part of something bigger: Instead of just stepping in and trying to rule the world you can choose to play as a count, who may be vassel to a duke, who could be a vassel of a king or even an emperor.
- Feudal politics within your own kingdom (between you, your vassals, your lord and even your vassals- vassals (yes thats right, your vassals- vassals dont answer directly to you!))
- Assasins: to weak to fight a battel? Diplomacy has failed? KILL THEM ALL! Send in your assassins to take out an enemy general or even their king, perhaps you may even kill someone from whom you stand to inherit, an easy
- War: without a solid casus belli, you simply CANNOT declare war on a fellow christian, even with one, the world wont like it.
- Heathens: go on crusade and free the holy land (or wherever the pope wants) from the heathen, gaining prestige, piety and land that comes at a much lower badboy cost then christian land, or just take the heathen *******s closer to home.
- Mongols: Be prepared, in the 13th century, the mongols will come, if your not ready, or there is to much fighting within europe they will soon burn paris and rome!
- the black death: Huge swathes of your population wiped out by plague, but be weary, for you opponents may not have suffered such heavy losses.
My recommendation:
Crusader kings is the single greatest game I have ever played, A brilliant introduction into the Grand strategy games of paradox interactive, as well as being a ground breaking and innovative look at one of the worlds most interesting periods. If your interested in obtaining this game I recommend looking at CK1 as opposed to CK2 (the difference between CK1 and CK2 is the difference between age 1 and age 5) CK1 has everything that makes the game great but with a much lower learning curve, stepping into CK2, as a newcomer to the game is just ridiculous you will think WOW what an amazing game, then you will spend 45 minutes on the loading screen picking a country.
Tl:dr best game in the entire franchise, pick CK1 over CK2.
Europa Universalis
Europa universalis is set in the later middle ages, it gives you the option to play as any country of any religion that was discovered inside the period of time that the game covers. You can port you CK or CK2 save file to any Europa Universalis version.
I am personally more familiar with EU 1 and EU 2 then the EU3, so I may miss some of the latest features of gameplay.
- 100's of countries to choose from.
- get promoted as your country expands, prospers and becomes renowned.
- fulfill missions to obtain bonuses
- recruit Leaders, (some historical others not) who will grant you fantastic bonuses... wouldn't leonardo divinci make a good head of science?
- Marry your royal family around to other powerful nations to form closer ties and maybe even create a union (where another country joins yours under one monarch!)
- discover the new world and drive out the mayans, or exploite the riches of far away india.
MY reccomendation:
this is the game that got me into the series, I never really had a chance to play EU3, but both 1 and 2 are amazing games, with reasonably low learning curves... the real difficulty is in mastering it!
Victoria
The only thing I have spent more time playing then Victoria, is VIctoria 2. An amazing game with a rather well tailored learning curve, due to the ability to switch on and off AI control for most feautres, you can concentrate on the basics, releasing more responsibility to player control, as you need it.
Set in the 19th centure, Victoria follows the rise of nationalism and colonialism in, primarily, europe. WHile you can play as any country in the world, only european countries stand a chance of building a true colonial empire, although its always interesting to take a country like persia and attempt to westernize while holding off the colonial might that will slowly but surely sorround you.
Features (V2)
- Free choice of nation.
- Political freedom like no other game, start as a totalarian government ruled purely by the king/queen (Her/his majesties government), give your people some freedom to keep down the liberal rebels or fight to keep all democratic ideas out of your nation! On the other hand you can play as a democracy or constituional monarchy like great britain and spread the liberal ideals on the flags of you warships!
- Within V2 is a complete economic simulator, a mini game if you will, of price rise and falls, supply and demand, The introduction of a new good to the market (invention of the automobile for example). The world wide war that has cut off all access to Tea!
- Diplomacy, build alliances, sow distrust, spread fear and anger, then strike while there reeling, whatever it is you wish to do the option is probably here.
- Warfare, call your allies or march alone, either way you can summon up your reserves, mobilizing a percentage of your poor strata to fight for you, but beware this can drastically hurt your industry and economy.
-Sphere's of influence: Great powers often controlled the smaller powers around them through diplomcy, cultural influence, economic means, or other more devious ways... Spread your influence and build up a sphere of influence on those countries you wish to control and boost your own economy, power and prestige, while gaining a loyal ally who will obey your ever whim!
- so many more features that I am to lazy to cover!
My reccomendation:
Get this game Victoria 2 is in an investment you will not regret, easy to drop 100 hours of your life into this baby without batting an eyelash!
Hearts of Iron
I believe Alci has covered this well enough.
The Grand Campaign
There is so much flexibility within Paradox interactive games, that you can play a period spanning 2000 years of history and then replay it 100 more times, never doing the same thing twice.
My reccomended choices for a grand campaign are:
CK1 -----> EU2 -----> Vic2 -----> HOI3
I left out EU:rome, as there is 1000 years between it and CK1, as such I do not include it in my games. I also dropped back to CK1 instead of CK2 and EU2 instead of EU3, for 2 reasons, I am more familiar with both CK1 and EU2 and also there not quite as in depth games, making the flow on experience of the grand campaign more enjoyable, for standalone games you may want to look into CK2 or EU3.
Ok, so now That I have done that wall of text, the other strategy game that i would highly recommend is Creeper World. Nice, in depth, yet also casual, strategy with a unique and brilliant concept behind it.
I find Creeper world a hard game to explain so instead here is a link to a flash version created to advertise the game, absolutely amazing!
Creeper World - Training Simulator
http://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld/web/play.php
Creeper World2 - Academy
http://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld2/web/playcw2a.php
With creeper world 3 in the works now is a great time to jump on the bandwagon for this ridiculously cheap and addictive game. If you like the flash versions please go buy the full game 100 times better!
All games I have reccomended here can be found at www.gamersgate.com, this is in my experience the cheapest and most reliable site for purchasing of games.
