As many of you may know, Creative Assembly has been producing
strategy war games for PCs for quite a few years, and with great
success.
Shogun Total War, Medieval Total War, Rome Total War, and the more
recent Medieval 2 Total War, which has been a fantastic addition to
the Total War line, are all played with great following and admiration.
The newest addition to this family, which I have procured this
morning and am preparing to play, is the expansion for Medieval 2
Total War, titled "Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms," and encompasses a
more thorough breakdown of following four playable campaigns -
Teutonic Order, Britannia, the Crusades, and the New World (Spain,
Mayans, Apacheans, Aztecs, and a few others).

As exciting as this latest edition is (and if anyone has questions
about these, please feel free to email me), I wish to inform you on
the brand new endeavour, due out in the near future, which Creative
Assembly has begun.
Empire: Total War.
Following is an article I found regarding this incredible PC
strategy game news...
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Preview - Empire: Total War

Format PC - Developer Creative Assembly - Publisher Sega
Genre Sim / Strategy

18-Sep-2007
Jamie Sefton fills his wellington boots with possibly the finest
strategy game ever to sail the seven seas...

All hail the power of mystic Will Porter! Back in time, PC ZONE's less-
than-ancient sage declared that if the logical next step for the Total
War series was implementing naval combat, then "it would be a good
opportunity to bring it into the Napoleonic era".

Nine months on and here we are with the announcement of Empire: Total
War, the brand new game from The Creative Assembly, and a true
revolution for a series that, like a sailor knocked overboard at the
start of a sea battle, has been treading water for too long.

Empire: Total War takes place during the period from the 1700s to the
early 1800s, a turbulent era in history when technology was being
fuelled by a new industrial age, and for the first time various powers
were fighting for control of the Old and New Worlds on a global scale.

This is the age of the French Revolution, Voltaire, the American War
of Independence, Mozart, Wellington, the British Empire and, of
course, Guybrush Threepwood, Captain Jack Sparrow and Blackadder The
Third.

As you can see from these decidedly gorgeous screenshots, Empire's big-
ticket attraction - its unique, ahem, sailing point - is the
introduction of proper naval combat to the Total War series.

As with the complex land battles, the sea warfare will involve real-
time 3D action, but instead of troops, you'll command single ships or
fleets of up to 20 craft, which vary in size, speed and
manoeuvrability, ranging from small brigs to powerful ships of the
line.

Vessels will be able to let fly with chain shot, grapeshot, musket
fire and cannonballs, which you can aim at your foes' destructible
sails, decks and/or hulls so they sink faster than Robert Maxwell.

You can also opt to grapple and board enemy ships for exciting fights
on-deck with muskets and sabres, any captured ships becoming part of
your fleet, and thus available for use in subsequent battles.

Also boasting real-time weather effects such as fog and ever-changing
sea conditions, Empire: Total War promises to deliver some of the most
realistic and visceral sea battles ever seen in a PC game - with
everything except the smell of salt, gangrene and fish in your
nostrils.

As well as taking part in the all-new offshore encounters, you will of
course be commanding your armies over land, in a campaign that spans
Europe, North America, the Caribbean and India, and features revamped
trade, diplomacy, mission and espionage systems.

New tactics have evolved on the battlefield, so you'll be able to
destroy buildings and walls and use them as cover, deploy defences and
employ a variety of new unit firing drills and formations - such as
the classic hollow square that's effective against a single target but
very vulnerable to cannon fire.

The campaign itself includes historical figures such as French
dictator and pint-sized comedy staple Napoleon, and ten playable
factions vying for economic and political supremacy, including Great
Britain, America, France and Prussia.

The Creative Assembly promise plenty of variety in the different
factions and their units, with abilities and tech trees evolving
throughout the period - so playing as a naval power such as Britain
will be very different to playing as an emerging continental power
such as Prussia, for example.

Empire: Total War will also feature a new fully animated, non-grid-
based campaign map for planning your empire-building, allowing for
tighter control of army movement as well as a closer relationship
between the terrain you see at this strategic level and the terrain
you start with on the battlefield.

Also, buildings will now be visible on the map without you having to
click on the settlements that they're in, so you'll be able to click
on them and upgrade directly from the map. Apart from the added
convenience, this means you'll now be able to see at a glance how
developed a region is without trawling through a menu to investigate,
and in addition use your armies to attack and destroy individual
buildings.

Medieval II: Total War was a superb game, but more evolution than
revolution - Empire: Total War is definitely the latter, a complete re-
imagining of the famous RTS series, retaining its turn-based map and
real-time battles, but introducing a whole raft of new features such
as naval warfare and wrapping the whole package in stunning next-gen
graphics.

Apparently the team have had one programmer working solely on the real-
time seascapes for a whole year, and the title will also feature new
landscape and flora systems, dynamic weather that'll affect gameplay
(rain dampens musket powder, for example) and destructible buildings.

It's still very early days for Empire: Total War, but it looks as if
this game about conquering the known world could well see The Creative
Assembly achieving a massive expansion of their own strategy empire.

Jamie Sefton - PC Zone
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=171987