There are some major differences though between some of the games you named, so much it's hard to compare them in my opinion.

Civ, King Arthur and Total War are turn based.

HoI3, EU3 and Victory are not turn based but actually "active pause real time", there is no turn but you can choose the speed the time goes until you can pause it and give all orders you want while paused.

Also I would not really put games like HoI3 and EU3 in the same category as Arthur or Shogun, they simply are too different. In HoI3 you don't see "real battles", you just simply move icons on the map, tune sliders around and take some overall strategic decisions. In Arthur or Shogun you move armies and then play battles in real time.

To be honest I would put Paradox games like HoI3, EU3 (and all their "descendants") in their very own category as I have not found games very similar to them.

Personally I play King Arthur and while it has some very good points I found the game to be badly balanced, archers are using M16 instead of bows as if you stack a few units of them enemies units simply vanish and overall in the campaign I found it is very easy to go off the track the developers wanted you to go and get struck in an un-winnable (or at least madly hard) stage, like if you don't go where the game tell you to and trigger some strong enemies early on etc.

If you want something similar to Arthur I would actually suggest Lionheart King's Crusade which is pretty similar and new.... and produced by Paradox
It has turn-based gameplay pretty much like Arthur but no cities to manage, just the battles with some good decisions in-between them and before them, army management etc.

I played Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI too on PC, bit old now (but it's the last of the series on PC I think), not bad as well and another game line that is pretty much unique in its gameplay, and it's in English.

Honestly it's hard to say what is bad on your list, there are only good games in there, Arthur would be for me the "weakest" if I had to choose but it's my own personal impression. Shogun2 is not out yet and I have been disapointed by Empire Total War so much I skipped Napoleon (the latest of the series so far). But I am still playing Medieval Total War 2 for some of it's mods even today

Edit coz you guys type fast: yes, Paradox games release bugged but they do end up fixing them (even though I still wish Semper Fi was added for free in HoI3...) and they do make awesome game, my very first HoI2 game was an eye opener for me (Or "what the fu** am I supposed to do here?!")

Edit2 coz I didnt understood you wanted suggestions: it would really depends on exactly which type you like, some people like Total War/Arthur type while others prefer Eu3/HoI3 type. It's like people prefering CS or Unreal Tournament, even though both are fps they still play quite differently.

For Total War style I would recommend Lionheart King's Crusade as I said or wait for Shogun2, Civ5 is an amazing game but it's also pretty unique in its genre. HoI3 is a very deep game too, EU3 I have not had the time to really spend on it yet but the bit I read made me feel it was "srs business". Otherwise in other more futuristic games there is AI Wars which is highly recommended by few people on this forum (I love this game and I know frags highly recommend it too) and it keeps getting updated by the creator.

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Dec 8 2010, 11:51 PM

I am just starting on Sword of the Stars too, it sounds pretty interesting as well in the genre yar, got it on sales recently on Impulse when it was very cheap.
I also got Galactic Civ2 from Impulse a while back (actually on Impulse I have Sins too, somehow most of my 4X games are from there...) but never managed to get into it somehow

@ashx: yar, I follow a bit this kind of game too through some specialists websites, it's a niche type inside the what I call "complex strategic games" type which is already a small niche inside the strategic game.
I played a few of them but honestly they require a bit too much investment to really get into each systems so the last time I really played this kind was during uni and it was Steel Panthers and "Bataille des Ardennes"

@frags: true that's the meaning of the GSG term but (as you said) many games mix things from multiple levels (Total War are good example) so it's not really cut and dry anymore
There are operational level PC games in pure wargames style that recreates only one battle or successions of battles in a said zone. They do sometimes add a thin layer of strategic decisions but it's usually very limited since the time span in this kind of games is few days, weeks or months at most

Damn For the Motherland is on promotion too >_<

Goddamit I shouldnt have gotten HoI3 on Steam >_<