The colalition was actually ruled by Emperor Ming from planet Mongo...
Priv2 is surelly great, and weird, and feels nothing like WC. Still great, though. the best non-hardware accelerated graphics. The art direction was very different from usual US space sims.
Priv is THE best space mercenary (in the lato-sensu) game. It is great. all of it.
WCP is very good, the best engine of all WC games. I find that wc1-2-priv's engine is too cluncky. the Vision engine just floooooooows. And it's pretty too. Not very good FMV though, compared to WC4.
WC3 and 4 are amazing. nuff said.
the original 2 are very fun and challenging (even if too clunky, as I said above). And the story is fun to follow, especially 2.
Armada is fun for a short while, but gets repetitive.
Academy is kinda useless. it's an uber-sim like the one in WC1. But it's barely a mission builder, way too limited in scope and depth.
I think you shoudl get and play all of them, and all of the Exp. packs too
Starlancer has a lot of potential, but the missions are scripted as hell. annoying, really.