Flash of Steel header image 2

Empire: Total War on Land

September 29th, 2008 by Troy Goodfellow · 2 Comments · Creative Assembly, Preview

Not a lot of stuff we didn’t know in the new trailer (number two of five), but that hasn’t stopped me from writing yet.

1) The campaign map looks great in the three seconds we see of it. I expect that will be the next thing we’ll see.

2) Elephants. Always with the elephants. Part of me wonders if they just stretched the map to India so they could fit some pachyderms into the game.

3) The battles look very nice, but this is what these guys do. The battles also look much bigger than anything we’ve seen from Creative Assembly. At E3, they said that the game can handle thousands of dudes on screen, but I wonder how many units that is.

4) Will the AI be able to keep up with everything that is going on here? Garrisoning buildings, using terrain for cover, balancing the utility of ranged fire and column charges with a particular unit…I love the Total War games, but I won’t pretend that the computer opponent has a firm grasp on tactics.

5) Artillery – queen of the battlefield. And with line of sight and terrain being so important, every little hill will be a crucial battleground, just so you can get your cannons up there, or at least prevent your enemy from doing the same.

Five months now.

Tags:

2 Comments so far ↓

  • zodmaner

    I hope and pray that they have been giving the same amount of attention to the AI. The major flaws of Total War series as of late is the utterly weak AI (both on the battle field and on the strategic map).

    To be honest, I’d rather have them focus on improving the AI than the graphic.

  • shanicus

    I totally agree with Zodmaner.

    However, those graphics are sweet! And the first part, with the sea battles, wow!

    I only wonder about system requirements…