Chaps,
When I'm not flying IL-2, I usually enjoy playing this other game called Mount&Blade.
It's a cool game were you role-play a mercenary Knight in a fictional land. You start off on your own, with a few bob in change and a couple of farmers armed with wet loaves as your troops. Then you travel the land taking on relatively easy renegades and bandits, all the way up to dangerous armies of other Knights and warbands. You can even lay siege to castles or defend your own.
You build up your cash by selling the surviving enemy troops you capture on the battlefield and then also selling their weapons.
There are loads of medieval weapons to suite your style. You could be a lethal archer. But I prefer the armoured Knight riding a Warhorse, armed with a lance and sword and shield.
I made a little video of my warband attacking a handful of River Pirates, check it out...
(The video is not the best quality, as I had to shrink it down from 1GB! In this video, on my first attack, you see me lance two guys dead and my horse runs over the last enemy archer. Then as I turn around, I miss lancing another guy, before I turn around and draw my sword. Then I slash that guy dead and I'm just about to kill the last archer, before one of my archers kills him just as I get close to him.)
The game is free to download and play, but once you character gets to level 6, you need to purchase a license to continue. So give it a