Wargame is an extremely fun game, though I've found a year of not playing from having a broken comp screwed me over massively, I routinely get curb-stomped when I try multiplayer in Red Dragon right now.
That said, skirmishes, the Second Korean War campaign and the Russia vs Japan/USA campaign have made up the most of the 87 slightly shorter Steam hours I've been playing it. SKW was actually fairly doable, despite the fact its supposed to be very hard, definitely once you get NATO arriving in force and you're fighting the NK reservists it starts to become fairly easy. I actually delayed my progress 2 turns just so I could use the Leopard 2A5 company and Commonwealth Airborne regiments.
With Total War, Empire is the bomb. People have criticised it endlessly since launch, and its basically the marmite of the series. With Darthmod it is a supremely fun and visceral
RTS.
....Yeah. I got addicted to my last
DM playthrough as Russia, conquered most of the world. Funnily enough, when I conquered GB, the colonies immediately became the United States Faction. I then invaded them, too.
Darthmod is different from the vanilla experience in that its slightly more complex, more difficult, larger scale, and there are considerable differences to battles. Firstly, regiment size is based on the country you're playing. British "Line Infantry" regiments have 225 men, but have high stats, whereas Russian Line Infantry have 337 men, but have sub-par stats, and secondly, artillery is far more effective. There's actually a reason to get it beyond knocking down fort walls, if you even include forts in your game at all, because they're toggleable.
RTS' worth looking at:
Supreme Commander and the Forged Alliance expansion
Future warfare, on a ridiculously massive scale. Its on a slightly similar scale to Wargame, except everything is deathbots/tanks/whatever, and there are also giant 6 six legged robots with lasers, submersible aircraft carriers, independence day style disc motherships with lasers, etc that can destroy entire armies or bases.
Star Wars, Empire At War
Not the most impressive looking, but its very cool to have battles in space and land across the whole Star Wars universe.
Company of Heroes and Opposing Fronts/Tales of Valour expansions
Looks impressive, is fun, tactical and difficult in a way that is enjoyable.
Avoid:
Supreme Commander 2
Its a smaller scale
SC:
FA with lackluster experimental super-heavies, a more boring story and more emphasis on grinding little gains by tedious methods.
Napoleon Total War
Buggy, and the AI is hilariously bad. The first, second and even third time I saw the AI attempt to blatantly flank me with his entire army by turning everything 90 degrees and walking around the edge of the map, I died laughing. I also died laughing when Crimean rebels I fought as Russia had face textures sewn into their uniforms, in perhaps the weirdest bug I've ever seen. It looks slightly prettier, and that's it.
The Men of War series
Okay, there is an argument to be made that this series can be enjoyable. But it is infuriating. When literally 3/4 of the challenge in the game is babysitting every single man in your force so he doesn't fail to kill the fragile hard counter about to destroy your entire flank, or bust your tanks, or get sniped all of a sudden, you start to get a bet pissed. Don't bother with it unless you're ready to go through the entire battle at slow motion and do an insane amount of micromanagement.
