The Total War series are certainly my favourite PC series, and I was hoping that someone would be able to advise me as to what other games I should be looking at in that genre. My favourite parts of the games are the grand campaign parts, so a game which has a similar mechanic to that would be preferable

Thanks for any help

I can't but on that note i'd like to say that i want a Shogun Total war 2 game :P
Anyways if you are into RTS games .. and if you like games like starcraft too (i can't say if you do since total war games are an abbrivation of the regular rts genre) you should look into "Universe at war: Earth assault" highly underrated. Made by the new studio formed by the old guys from westwood studios (the guys who made command & conquer, the dune RTS and invented the RTS genre)

I do like those kinds of games, but Empire Earth: the Art of Conquest has kept me happy on that front for some time, it just feels perfectly balanced, it is the total war type games that I am more interested in

Rise and Fall. You can download it legally for free (ad version or whatever) anyways, it sort of has what you are looking for. With massive armys and stuff age of empires kind of build up (yet a bit different) .. it also has heroes whom you can go into third person with and control manually if you want to (generally it's in rts view)

Interesting, I will certainly give that a go

Those games are nothing like Total war games. Actually there isn't really games that are like Total war games.

I can't think of any games that are like Total War..

But I can tell you what other two games I have that I rotate with my Total War games
- Mount & Blade
- Hearts of Iron II

Although not alike, both have elements of the Total War series

there is also one more game

warhammer:mark of chaos

I think you should give it a try..it's love or hate type of game

Hearts of Iron is awesome, but I didn't like the 2nd iteration, something was amiss...

You might want to check out the Europa Universalis (EU) series EU3 with the In Nomine expansion being the latest, but you might be able to get EU2 cheaper and that is also fantastic. You don't take charge of the battles like in Total War but your rather control and expand your empire in the grand campaign (roughly 1400-1800). You can start playing as any country from any point in this time period.

For the 19th century check out Victoria:Revolutions.