AoD is definitely worth a shot, but the opinions you'll get here might be somewhat biased. I think it is the most fun to play in the whole HoI series, and has a very elegant design - it tries to add detail only where it really improves gameplay. The AI automation is not as comprehensive as in HoI3, but probably the best in all HoI2 derivates. After setting it up in the beginning, you can just let it do its thing with trade, economy and spies and get pretty good results. I still check up on it occasionally, but unless I want to switch my strategy, I rarely find a need to change anything.
Darkest Hour has way better modding support (so you'll see more mods over there), but I still prefer to mod AoD because I find the underlying game to play better.