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[Wooty]

If you're thinking of buying Empire: Total War, imagine how fun the rest of the total war series would be if you auto resolved every battle. Once you've played E:TW for a few hours, you start to notice the AI is bad. Really, really, bad. Sometimes the AI will split up into little groups and wander around the map, and sometimes they'll just stand there while you circle around and destroy their artillery. Your own units have no pathfinding skills at all and sometimes totally ignore your orders until you tell them to do something three different times. The AI is so consistently awful that you can destroy a force five times as big and just as experienced as yours, just because you can slowly isolate and destroy them piece by piece while they break formation and go off in random directions, or simply stand there and do nothing. You'll start noticing that you're doing repetitive, easy tasks over and over and over and over again, to the point where you almost begin to expect a little "level up!" notice to pop up when you finish a battle every now and then.

Empire Total War is fun for a while just because Rome:Total War with guns is amazing, but the AI and pathfinding and unresponsiveness ruin the only part of the game worth playing.

I recommend the orange box, you won't regret playing any of those games.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Portal isn't really an FPS.  It's more of a first person puzzle game.  There are no guns or enemies unless you could the portal gun and the environment itself.

[Javewa]

I have to n-th the Orange Box. Probably most bang for the buck.

As for historic strategy, Empire:TW's meat is more in the tactical battles than the strategic build-up. I always liked Victoria: An Empire under the Sun much better than any TW- or EU-title.

Recently, I found 'Light of Altair' very entertaining. For 12$ it's a steal and the game design is refreshingly old-school. Speaking of old-school, the Avernum series is worth a recommendation if you don't mind graphics of decades past.
Sword of the Stars with all it's expansions is also a very nice and rather cheap 4X-Game; more so in multiplayer.

[Mr Tk]

Orange box.

Not only do you get Team Fortress 2, one of the best multiplayer games out on the PC at the moment, not only do you get Half-life 2 with not one, but TWO of the episodes that follow, you also get PORTAL! Which pretty much makes the game worth it even if you don't like any of the others.

Otherwise if you can if find Rome: Total War. It's the bets of the series, due to having most likely the best of the AI.

[PenguinOverlord]

I got the Box.