Strategy war game for the complete n00b?

Unity of Command if you want an actual wargame with hexes and stuff. It's rather simple.

Company of Heroes
edit: Warcraft too

Warcraft or Starcraft series! I would recommend starting from the first ones.

Civ V. Play it on easy the first time and you should get the hang of it no problem.

Civ 5 is quite easy to start with, not sure if its the kind of game you are looking for tho, if not please be more precies and I might be able to think of more games

Panzer General 2. If you've played Axis and Allies, try TripleA.

Alien Nations was my favourite game as a kid. It can be found on GOG. I hope you don't mind the real-time and not being a war as in panzers and real life military, but as in fantasy creatures war.

If you're looking for something less simplistic, I'd suggest Tzar: The Burden of the crown, also on GOG.

I can say for both games that it's up to you on what aspects of the game you want to focus, developing your cities or building armies to crush your enemies.

As for something that's a bit more close to realism(or at least based on a book that's sort of, not really historical) I'd suggest checking out Romance of the Three Kingdoms!

Edit: Cossacks or Age of Empires might be your cup of tea. I found Cossacks to be a really easy game to come back to after not playing it for years. They are both on Steam.

command and conquer generals/zero hours/red alert 2

Depends on what you are looking for really, strategy is pretty broad.

Honestly, CK2 is pretty straight forward, as are the older Total War titles. I think that Rome Total War is the best game in the series.

Warhammer 40.000 dawn of war 1/2

Easy to play. Awesome games

i vote for company of hero's is not hard to learn and has different skill levels and still has a good online community to play online

has some good mods for it also and some nice custom maps

that would be my one big selling point

C%C 3 Red Alert

Civ V if you prefer turned based

i am not to big on turned based so i can not say much on those other then Civ V

Total War Series

Command and conquer is pretty straight forward, I think.

Original Rome: Total War is still my favorite of all time. Countless mods allow for almost infinite replayability.

Medieval II is a close second (LOTR mod like wuuuut).

I think the easiest game in the genre I've ever played is Command & Conquer Red Alert 2. Give it a try, you might like it.

I recommend "Dawn of War - Game of the Year " it has an easy enjoyable Campaing (with bullets,explosions and Swords :D) teaching you everything step by step introducing new units as you progres the Campaing.

+1 for Warhammer and Civ

both are great

Axis & Allies is the easiest modern game. Not many buildings, not many units, not many rules. Just raw conquering and buying units. Makes for a nice bridge from Risk to more complex strategy games.

The frantic pace of RTS generally makes them a bad place to start for beginners, since frantic-ness just compounds the difficulty of learning. But if you gotta go there first, Dune and the early Warcrafts have the easiest learning curve, since they're all about spamming the power unit of the level and trashing the enemy with it. So you just have to learn what the power units are for each level and how to survive long enough to get them building.

Age of Empires has a much longer learning curve, but is the easiest game overall, though, as it is a simple, formulaic structure. There are lots and lots of buildings and structures, but everything follows that set, simple formula. It's not the easiest way to start, but it's the quickest way to learn what's what in the strategy genre, since the formula learned in Age of Empires is easily adaptable to many other strategy games.

easiest strategy games in my opinion are:
total war, dawn of war, command and conquer and kohan 2

Starcraft 2. All you need to get gold league at least is to pick Terran and learn up to making marines. Then just box them and throw them at people.

Total War is the easy choice here. I'd go with Shogun 2 first.

Civilization V is pretty easy to learn, but I'm not sure if it's that "war game" you're looking for.

And, if you like turn based strategy games... Heroes of Might and Magic. I know, it's definitely not "war game", assuming that you want something with tanks and soldiers with guns. But... Who don't like HoMM?

Z is pretty simple to understand >)

star wars empire at war, universe at war earth assault.