If you want single and multiplayer and many hours of fun, you should get aoe4. I think it's a great rts game and new civs were recently added for free, no dlc to pay for. Multiplayer rounds 3x3 or 4x4 typically lasts 30 min - 1 hour, rushes not included (there is also 1v1, 2v2, ranked and coop but I rarely play those). A round can be even longer, in the longest round I played neither side could hold the sites nor build a wonder, it lasted awhile.

I found CK3 a bit disappointing after quad-digit hours on CK2 (good foundation but lack of depth and got boring quickly), and it's still gonna get a million DLC so it might be good to wait on that one.

Don't know F1 manager but it sounds like it might be fairly shallow/narrow compared to Football managing style games, so I'd say AoE4 although I haven't played it yet either.

First of all, thank you, victoria 3 and crusader kings 3 seem very similar to each other except for the period. Instead of playing the same two games, I'd say get one grand strategy, one real time strategy and the other mmorpg. :D

quad-digit hours!? Wow tyvm for your comment, it is incredibly valuable.

Ck3 is a game I put 1k hours into. I love it

CK3 is really good to get into if you enjoy role playing and potential chaos playthroughs.

Something like HOI4 is this CK3? If so, I'm already doing exactly what you described in Victoria 3. I like war with economy more than normal war in grand strategy.

I have over a thousand hours in CK3. It's really good. Plus, mod support. It's good.

I’ve played a lot of CK3 and AoE4 but I’ll say CK3 because you have way more mods to play longer. Even if the base game may be sometimes a bit boring when you’re playing for 200 years.

f1 manager has some problems and they dropped the support for the game to make a new one

CK3.

HoI and CK are very similar but differ in purpose. While both are strategy games, the purpose of CK isn't just to conquer as much territory as possible, but create the strongest dynasty. In that purpose, the game makes you role play as the head of your house. This can be interesting or unique when your character dies and your hier takes over.

In medieval times, if a landed noble dies, their assets are divided up and given to the next in line to inherit. That land may not even be the same country that you were controlling, meaning that the focus of the game is less about making a strong country, but creating a political situation where the members of your house are secure, which often means making a strong country but could also mean marrying into your neighbor's family and making their heir's baby a part of your house, effectively taking over their territory.

There is also a stronger focus one roleplaying as an individual -- the current head of the house. You don't control your territory, you control the head of the house, and there are many events that occur during the game that are specific to your dude or dudette.

So that's what makes CK a bit of an outlier to the other Paradox grand strategy games. That and CK3 doesn't have $500 of DLC yet.

Wow that was really long. Managed to write it all during my restroom break tho 👍.

Thank you for explaining that better than I could hahaha.

Great write up, got me interested, thanks!