On the strategic level, you can engage into diplomacy with other nations, this time without the need for a diplomat, or you can play around with the three types of agents that you have in Empire: Total War. I would recommend universities and a few new workshops. Also, be careful what you choose to build in those emerging towns.

This setup means that there are more locations to look after, which can be a bit unnerving, but Creative Assembly implemented a visual cue to show you which zone needs your attention. Each region now has a capital, which has number of building slots and, if conquered, leads to the loss of the entire region. They can be individually targeted by the enemy and are precious on their own. You have towns, which can be developed to produce wealth, create research or to improve happiness. The strategic map is now much more crowded than in previous games. Get ready to build your empire, if you can get over the lack of stability of the title and if you have the gaming machine to run this hog of a game. It manages to juggle a lot more stuff, the complexity factor has been taken up and the whole philosophy behind tactical battles has been changed. If you look at Medieval 2: Total War like the high school years of the franchise, where finesse was necessary but brute force could still win the day, then Empire is where Total War really goes to college. There are some significant changes to the way the game is played and there are some good ways in which the series has progressed. One could argue that there are two significantly different periods in the history of the Total War series, as created by Creative Assembly: there are the first two games, Shogun and Medieval, where the strategic map is more of an excuse for players to get into the innovative (at that time) and beautiful tactical battles, and then there are the last three, Rome, Medieval 2 and the recently released Empire, where the tactical battles and strategic map are equally important, leading some players to even ignore the previous releases altogether, playing the entire game as some sort of period-themed empire builder.Įmpire is a fine balancing act between the overall strategy and the tactical battles, with a better Artificial Intelligence than its predecessors and with a diplomatic system that works just a little better.

Empire total war civil war