Quote :

"Empire: Total War™ is set in the 18th century a turbulent era that is the most requested by Total War’s™ loyal fan base and a period alive with global conflict, revolutionary fervour and technological advances. With themes such as the Industrial Revolution, America’s struggle for independence, the race to control Eastern trade routes and the globalisation of war on land and sea, Empire: Total War™ promises to be amongst the richest and most dynamic PC RTS games of all time. Empire: Total War™ will see the debut of 3D naval combat within the Total War™ franchise. PC Gamers will be able to intuitively command vast fleets or single ships upon seascapes rich with extraordinary water and weather effects that play a huge role in your eventual glorious success or ignominious defeat. After pummelling your enemy with cannon fire, close in to grapple their ship and prepare to board taking control your men as they fight hand to hand on the decks. Along with the revolutionary introduction of Naval Combat, Empire: Total War™ will see further enhancements to the Total War™ series signature 3D battles and turn based campaign map. Real time battles will pose new challenges with the addition of cannon and musket, challenging players to master new formations and tactics as a result of the increasing role of gunpowder within warfare. And the Campaign Map – for many the heart of Total War™ – will see new improved systems for Trade, Diplomacy and Espionage with agents, a refined and streamlined UI, improved Advisors and extended scope taking in the riches of India, the turbulence of Europe and the untapped potential of North America."

Quote :

"The game will include 10 playable factions including Britain, Prussia, France, Spain, America and the massive Ottoman Empire."

Looks incredible.

I loved the Napoleonic mod for the first MTW. There will probably not be very much hand to hand though in this game, except cavalry. So I will probably miss all the unit variety. But the naval battles make up for it.

http://www.totalwar.com/index.html?page=/en/newsandpress/index.html&nav=/en/5/
http://www.totalwar.com/index.html?page=/en/communityandforums/empire.html&nav=/en/6/8/

[Edited on August 23, 2007 at 12:46 PM. Reason : oh shit, wtf is tptal?!]

8/23/2007 12:46:01 PM

Quote :

"Tptal"

8/23/2007 12:46:29 PM

The name of the last Total War thread was screwed up too.

message_topic.aspx?topic=424600

I'm just continuing the tradition.

8/23/2007 12:48:12 PM

because of the typo i actually read

Empire:Typical War

ahahahhahahahah

blahhh... fighting these savages is SO BORING

8/23/2007 12:49:21 PM

sweet!!!

8/23/2007 1:55:44 PM

Empire: tptal pwnage?

8/23/2007 2:06:00 PM

oops

8/23/2007 2:15:32 PM

i'm excited about this game

8/24/2007 9:43:27 AM

me too

8/24/2007 11:04:12 AM

Hot shit!

That looks awesome.

8/24/2007 12:07:52 PM

Oh sweet! Another $50 already locked down.

8/24/2007 2:08:22 PM

I hope guns wont ruin the game. But if it gets done right, we could get all the way to modern combat and the introduction of the air campaigns

8/24/2007 2:38:34 PM

i wanted an american civil war total war, with like 50,000 little dudes in a battle............but this shit looks sweet.

im gonna need to upgrade my comp to run this, but it will be worth it

[Edited on August 24, 2007 at 3:31 PM. Reason : .]

8/24/2007 3:29:21 PM

Quote :

"because of the typo i actually read Empire:Typical War ahahahhahahahah blahhh... fighting these savages is SO BORING"

lol, i'm funny

6/27/2008 5:37:24 PM

First land battle screen released!




Hi Res Pic:
http://www.pcgamer.se/bilder/arkiv/u/u052r7xejdcnm4gziqhok1pba36vws98.jpg

[Edited on June 27, 2008 at 5:50 PM. Reason : image size]

6/27/2008 5:47:48 PM

oh my.

oh fucking my.

looks like someone is going to upgrade his computer soon. Good thing that new ATI card just came out.

6/27/2008 5:55:56 PM

Oh wow, thats an awesome looking game, I guess I'll be getting back into the Total War series.

6/27/2008 5:58:42 PM

what does this game have that the last 9 didn't?

abridge version please.

6/27/2008 5:59:45 PM

can i install this on my PS3?

6/27/2008 6:00:09 PM

^^
Sea battles
Post renaissance warfare

^
no

6/27/2008 6:31:20 PM

to be quite honest, the era this fighting takes place doesn't make me excited. But I will get it anyway.

I want to know how they are going to integrate cover into these. They have to once they get to modern warfare

[Edited on June 27, 2008 at 9:43 PM. Reason : asd]

6/27/2008 9:43:08 PM

There's probably not going to be a modern war TW (this one ends in the mid 1800s).

The unit system just wouldn't work, troops don't move in squares anymore. Modern warfare should remain the domain of games like Company of Heroes (although that could be done to a larger scale)

I can't imagine tanks and airplanes in a TW game. It just wouldn't work.

[Edited on June 27, 2008 at 9:46 PM. Reason : ]

6/27/2008 9:45:57 PM

I feel sorry for the total war people because they have done everything thats kewl in ancient warfare. Only other steps I can see is revisiting shogun total war, or see where this next one leads as far as gun battles are concerned. Maybe civil war?

Duh, revolutionary war would work after this.

Nothing kewl though.

6/27/2008 9:49:47 PM

Revolutionary war is actually going to be covered by this game. It starts in 1700, and one of the factions (not sure if they are playable) is the 13 colonies, who I assume will be the subject of England. They can rebel eventually.

But there's still plenty of ancient possibilities left.

Several periods in China would be great (Three kingdoms era for example)

The Renaissance era (1500-1650)

Hellenic Classical period (warring Greek cities, Persian empire, etc)

[Edited on June 27, 2008 at 9:58 PM. Reason : Shogun bores me though, every faction is the same. I don't want another one of those]

6/27/2008 9:57:34 PM

One of my problems is that everything starts looking the same with sword battles. It usually ends up being the same thing over and over. I am not one of those guys that loves looking at the different units and admiring the armor and differences. I usually play far above the units winning the fights. So, any more games with ancient warfare like china you mentioned will be the same thing, just different names for the units.

Maybe I should try playing the game on the hardest difficulties to extend my enjoyment.

I dont know, I wish multiplayer worked without all that damn lag. I love that shit.

6/27/2008 10:13:36 PM

Quote :

"I want to know how they are going to integrate cover into these. They have to once they get to modern warfare"

Apparently they've got a system for cover in this one. I'm not sure how it'll work though.

Oh, and I bet that their expansion for this is going to be the Napoleonic Wars. I just can't imagine going all the way into the American Revolution without talking about everyone's favorite Frenchman.

6/28/2008 2:06:50 AM

I wonder when they will introduce the French units special abilities of giving up?

6/28/2008 11:31:35 AM

New teaser trailer on totalwar.com

No gameplay footage, but still cool.

http://www.totalwar.com/

also here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jItLpux132Q

Game released feb 3.

[Edited on July 11, 2008 at 1:08 PM. Reason : ]

7/11/2008 1:05:40 PM

Will buy. Not completely confident of my enjoyment of the period. Hopefully I will get into it.

7/11/2008 1:18:34 PM

i loved Rome TW with all of the realism upgrades, and this looks really cool. I love this era of history so Im sure I will get this. I will need to seriously upgrade my comp to enjoy this, guess i better start saving up now

I still think an American Civil War TW would be the shit, if the vamped up the engine to allow for literally tens of thousands of men on a battlefield

7/11/2008 2:13:08 PM

CA being a British company, I figure we will see a War of the Roses game before an ACW game.

7/11/2008 2:31:51 PM

Quote :

"Hellenic Classical period (warring Greek cities, Persian empire, etc)"

didn't they do this?

7/14/2008 10:38:20 AM

Quote :

"I still think an American Civil War TW would be the shit, if the vamped up the engine to allow for literally tens of thousands of men on a battlefield"

I wonder if they could do this? I mean, the period they're going to do will probably skirt the Civil War on the later end. Then again, they'd have to develop things like railroads and whatnot to represent the strategic issues of the era.

7/14/2008 3:09:48 PM

^^ no

The closest they came was a mini expansion of Rome that featured Alexander's empire.

7/14/2008 3:18:49 PM

^^ like they have roads now?

7/15/2008 10:41:29 AM

if they did an American CW game, and did it right, that would be the shit. The average CW army was larger than the average army of they 18th century....although by the Napoleonic Wars they started to get pretty massive. If they did it right and allowed for the massive armies seen in the CW, bigger then what the game currently can allow for, it would be cool. And the unit size would need to be upped as well. Lets say the unit size was upped from 120 (in the game now) to about 1000 (a civil war regiment) and each army on the strategic map could hold like 90 regiments, then you would be in the ball park range of a large civil war army. Now lets say the other side had an army of roughly that size and you two clashed on the map near Gettysburg and had a massive marathon of a battle (3 days in real life, several hours in the game)....that would be sweet.

now i know the way the little soldiers are programed and molded would call for a ULTRA SERIOUS machine to even play that battle at a close to normal speed, but its a cool dream if they ever figure out a way to do it.

7/15/2008 4:42:57 PM

The graphics have come a long way in the past year

7/25/2008 12:37:19 AM

This game and Half-Life 2 Episode 3 are the only ones anywhere on the horizon I care about.

7/25/2008 4:26:41 AM

I love the TW series, but I am some serious reservations about this game. The AI has been really week in the past two games(RTW and M2TW), and adding the naval aspect might make it worse. The battle AI has always been pretty so so as well, and they are going to have to completely redo it since it will be more range focused than ever.

I wish they would go back and redo Shogun.

7/25/2008 5:47:06 PM

You want to get me back into this series? HUH

WELL DO YA??!?!

THEN MAKE A MULTIPLAYER SYSTEM THAT ISNT SO DAMN LAGGY OR BITCHY TO SET UP!

otherwise, I will still buy this game. But wont get into it like I can with HL Ep 3

Quote :

"This game and Half-Life 2 Episode 3 are the only ones anywhere on the horizon I care about."

I like the way you think.

7/25/2008 6:17:11 PM

afaik the ai has been pretty flimsy in most tw games, at least with regards to quality units.... there are mods that fix this though, i recommend stainless steel mod for M2TW

7/28/2008 9:52:53 AM

JESUS CHRIST

http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/958390/empire-total-war/videos/ETW_081208.html

Naval battle gameplay footage.

8/14/2008 12:36:40 AM

that was awesome.

8/14/2008 10:45:06 AM

swwweeeeeeeeet

8/14/2008 11:02:37 AM

Sweet jesus that looks amazing.

8/14/2008 11:16:11 AM

Lord Nelson approves.

8/14/2008 11:37:33 AM

Quote :

"The graphics have come a long way in the past year "

Not really, they just added rigging to the ship models and turned on lighting bloom.

Now EVE Online's Trinity graphics upgrade is what i'd call "a long way"... Different metals on different ships react differently depending on the color of the star in the system you're in. More polygons. Full shadows on everything. And lighting bloom.

[Edited on August 14, 2008 at 11:51 AM. Reason : eve]

8/14/2008 11:50:32 AM

agree with both

8/14/2008 12:17:39 PM

Check out the prow of the ship. It's clearly much more detailed.

The textures also look improved.

Besides, the addition of the rigging makes a pretty big difference IMO.

[Edited on August 14, 2008 at 3:05 PM. Reason : ]

8/14/2008 3:04:04 PM

Looks like a huge graphical improvement to me.

8/15/2008 10:30:30 AM