I don't think I'm the only one who really enjoys the Total War series. In the real-time strategy genre, I'd have to say it comes in right behind StarCraft. I love the creativity, depth and complexity these games offer. The only thing I don't like is the apparent company focus. It seems Creative Assembly has a strict timetable to which they are resolved to always adhere to. While I understand that may be good from a profit standpoint, it sometimes really makes problems when you pair it with their ambitious goals. These games are huge, there's so much detail, and it usually feels like they started this gigantic undertaking, got 70% done, and threw the rest together in 10 minutes to make sure it got out the door on time. It really saddens me when I compare it to the way Blizzard does things, with their whole - we don't release a game until it's perfect by our standards - thing. Blizzard may take twice or three times as long to make a game... but they still make tons of money too. I wish more companies would adopt their approach. Anyway, I'm looking forward to Empire:Total War and the ability to control naval battles finally... I'm just already resigned in my mind to waiting 6 months after release to purchase the game so hopefully they'll have at least MOST of the inevitable gigantic bugs worked out... =/
http://www.totalwar.com =P I first played the series with Medieval: Total War. The game is traditionally split into two parts. There is a campaign Risk style map, where you make your strategic decisions like whether to build economic, military, etc buildings - where to move your armies, etc, etc... and then there is the battle map, where 3D battles take place with you commanding thousands of soldiers. Then they came out with Rome: Total War which introduced a new style of map where they made a battlemap literally for every location on the campaign map. So if on the campaign map, your army met the enemy where mountains were shown - you'd actually go to a battle map with those specific mountains. Then they came out with Medieval 2: Total War which introduced a new soldier model setup. Previously, soldiers in units all had the same models. But in Med 2, they made it so each soldier is made up of modular parts which the engine automatically swaps around randomly so when you look at a unit of soldiers on the battlefield - each man looks unique. Next up, coming soon is Empire: Total War, in which they have finally added naval battles. Always before naval engagements were AutoCalc by the computer. Now you control your navies and your armies. Looks pretty awesome so far. The games of course have many more features, I just summarized the most outstanding.
