Multiplayer is where Men of War is very good, though it's still extremely frustrating at times, especially when the unit AI is concerned. I don't think I even played past the second Soviet campaign mission, though that might be in part because the campaign tends to be rather hard too.
IL-2 doesn't strictly require a joystick, seeing as I played it quite a lot before I got one, but it's rather hard to manage without one. If you absolutely can't get a joystick, I think there might be better games to get.
As for other games, it might help if you're looking for a specific genre. At the moment I can say that if you like Hearts of Iron 3, you should check out Paradox's other grand strategy games (Europa Universalis III, Europa Universalis: Rome, Victoria II, Sengoku and Crusader Kings II being the latest iterations). Each covers a different time period at about the same scale as HoI3, though they also have different focuses, so different features are expanded more upon in each one (HoI's focuses on warfare, Victoria on politics and economics, CK's on characters and dynasties and so forth).
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