EU III is fun, 14th-18th century based game, and from what I've noticed - doesn't emphasize on anything specifically, since it has everything - personal unions, dynasties, heirs, warfare, Holy Roman Empire, the Papacy, trade, colonialism etc. From all those games, this one covers the largest timeline (not sure about CK2, I don't play it), altho the time does go way faster than in other games (ex. HoI 3 has hour counting, since it has a very short timeline).
HoI 3 is extremely warfare-related, since if you play any of the majors, you'll most likely be involved in a war almost the whole game from the point you join it (the game is pretty much over after winning the world war, since the whole game is based around it, but you can go on a WC etc., altho it's not much of fun to do it in HoI 3, IMO). It definately takes the most micromanagment from all games and more than all games combined, unless you, of course, let AI do most of it (ex. managing your campaigns etc., which is a bad idea since the AI is reckless and doesn't do things the way you'd want to). You have to plan out your offensives, retreats, technology research (not like EU 3 where falling back in one tech doesn't do much harm for most part, in HoI 3 every detail is important), how to defend your nation etc. etc.
Not like EU3 or Vic 2 where you just put your whole army in 1 stack and go enemy hunting, since that way you can get encircled and all your armies destroyed in HoI 3, especially considering 1 major difference between HoI and the other titles - provinces don't get sieged, they're instant occupied the moment a hostile division moves in. The siege is sort of represented by the actual battle, so if a division is protecting the province, then the attacker, in some terms, could be considered to be sieging the province in Vic2/EU3 thinking, which is also represented by various maluses (ex. attacking dug-in troops, attacking province with forts etc.).
Victoria 2 is centered around economy & colonialism, quite a fun game and the new expansion looks to be very promising, adding very important features that would perfect the game. Based around 1836-1936. Not much I can add to this, the game is pretty decent, altho warfare is poorly represented in the late years of the game and I believe the timeline, sometimes, might seem short if you're playing some need-to-westernize power, since you might westernize too late and then you'll just be ready before the game ends. But you can always extend the timeline thru file editing & it isn't poor design choice or anything, it's just the timeline it's based on and whatnot, it takes pretty long to finish a game, tho, so it's okay.
