I would get NTW first. I liked it much better but it is a much smaller scale game.

Both games have SOLs. From the 130 gun Spanish ship on down to the old 50 gun varieties. Smaller ships too.

The tactics are different from M2TW as it is ranged combat before melee combat. Guns are deadlier than arrows and no one is in armor.

NTW is stand alone.

The battles in NTW are much better IMO. But both games are good. ETW is just older and not as polished as NTW. Also the amount of the game out to get the player is much more obvious in ETW than in NTW. On top of that in the Peninsular Campaign DLC, NTW is much changed. I loved that one too.

If you just have to have that huge scale of world war you can get ETW. But it is far less polished than NTW.

Government is much different than earlier games. I don’t know about TWS2. I never got it. The scale and setting just didn’t do too much for me. I had more than 1200 hours play on the both of them before I stopped playing. That was mainly due to computer problems, and then lack of time.