so, say I wanted to play a game that is a bit more hardcore than Civ...
I've heard good things about Hearts of Iron and Europa Universalis but don't have any clue how these games actually are.. what would you guys recommend? Which of these is more forgiving?
I've heard Hearts of Iron has a really tough curve compared to EU4, but haven't played it yet myself. HOI4 also just came out, so it likely doesn't have the same level of polish that EU4 does, but it also won't suffer as much from feature creep and feeling a little unfocused.
From experience EU4's curve will take at least a few hours to get started and around 10 hours to reach a good level of knowledge, but the good news is that a lot of the features that have built up over the years aren't absolutely necessary to learn the game. The bad news is that if you want the full experience you do need to pick up a few expansions (probably Common Sense, maybe Cossacks, maybe Art of War). Hearts of Iron wouldn't have that problem.
I love EU4 to death, though. The assymetric start and historical flavor lends a lot more personality than Civ gives to the major players, the depth of the game is pretty much unparalleled, plenty of achievements of varying difficulties to give players of any experience level good goals and the game can be played in sessions from 10 minutes to 4 hours easily.
Game flow is very dynamic - it's real time with pause, so you will mostly be reacting to events as they occur or as you find opportunities to act - if you see a neighbor getting their head handed to them in a war, you can forge a claim on their territory and strike while they're occupied, for example. You'll be doing a lot less building than Civ, and military is quite a bit more abstract (only three unit types which gradually improve and change over the course of the game, with generals being the biggest variable in their performance). You have a lot less control over technology compared to Civ.
If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them - I'm sure others will respond that have played both games, too.
Most people recommend a youtube tutorial to try it out, but I'm not big on that personally. I'd suggest reading up a bit
here and then trying out Portugal, allying Castille and then doing what you want - as long as you don't cross England or France, you won't have anyone bullying you.
Finally, if you do decide to pick up EU4, I'd either wait for a sale or only purchase the base game for now. The game and its expansions go on sale once a month or so, and most will probably be 75% off or more in the Christmas sale.