Some of the games have 'how to' After Action Reports that are very good.

Only since they teamed up with NeoCore so I can get King Arthur in the same transaction. :P
They have Mount and Blade, so they only need ARMA, once that's done it will be the only place worth getting games from. If they teamed up with GOG and GOG became the repository for all indie games like Frozen Synapse and eventually Blade Symphony... Never buy from anywhere else except for the occasional Tom Clancy game.

They have brief explanations? When the tutorials work, not sure if it's the Steam versions (DON'T GET THE STEAM VERSIONS!!) or just in general but the tutorials have a habit of crashing. Think of it like Civ or Master of Magic. Open a game, set it to the easiest possible setting, and play. Work through the game, see what happens when you toggle a setting, change the inflation rate (because a simple low-medium-high tax setting is for noobs.), build more armies, build better armies, etc. Time consuming to get used to the first one, but once you've managed to get through the first, the rest follow a similar structure and you'll adapt to them much more quickly.

Then you'll be ready to start playing for real, and can embark on a Great Campaign (Start a game in Crusader Kings, export to Europa Universalis II, then to Victoria and finally to HoI II). No idea if you can do that with the updated versions, should try.

Ok thanks, I'll start with CKII then. And, if you don't mind another question about Europa Universalis series, is there any reason to get the original EU instead of going straight for EUIII?

i only have EUIII (and EU Rome). i see no reason to buy the earlier games in the same series. if you buy all 3 of them now you probably won't get around to playing them all anyway...

EU 2 is basically EU 1 but better, but there is a huge difference between EU 2 & 3.

Got Sengoku the other day. First time I have had to read a game manual in ages ! Thank God it had a decent paper manual and not a PDF. Good game though.

CK2 is a good choice for a newcomer to Paradox grand strategy games. Once you're comfortable with that (and if you like it, of course), you can go out from there. The Hearts of Iron series are hardcore WW2 games, the Europa Universalis are dynasty builders that go for hundreds of years, and the Victoria games are much more economic oriented.

edit: taken

EU3/HoI3/Vic2 are very different from each predecessor,and there are difference between EU1 and 2.EU2/Vic2/HoI2 are historical event driven game.If you are historian love those than newer games that lack historical events and completeness.If you have not played without EU3/Rome you still don't know why Paradox got present position.