The Total War Thread

[SoBe Clock]

So I recently got back into Total War. I'm playing through all three games that I own again.Total War is one of my favorite strategy series. I have Rome: Total War, Medieval II: Total War, and Empire: Total War, and all the expansions and DLC that goes with them. I also plan on getting Napoleon: Total War soon, but I don't have it yet. I was wondering if anyone else in the CC plays Total War, because I'd like to play some multiplayer sometime.

For those of you that don't know what Total War is, I'll explain. Those of you that do know can skip this paragraph. It's a series of strategy games that blends an intricate turn-based campaign system, with a massive real-time battle system. There's the Grand Campaign, which lets you pick a nation to play as, and gives you a set of victory conditions to meet before the game ends. The victory conditions are different for each game in the series, and different for each nation in the games, but they amount to "Hold x regions on the map including these regions." The grand campaigns can be long or short, depending on which kind you start, but even the short ones can take days to finish. There's also more focused campaigns seperate from the grand campaign in the Total War games, these campaigns focus around specific wars during the time periods of each of the games. In addition to the campaigns in Total War, there are Historical Battles. These are basically recreations of famous battles in history that you can play. The final part to Total War games is the multiplayer. Multiplayer in every Total War game up until Empire was basically set up the same way. You have money before a match starts, you spend that money to make an army, and you then do battle with that army. You can change up victory conditions or battle conditions such as giving one player a castle to defend, or just having both players without anything to defend. It's pretty fun, and I'd love to get more into it. Napoleon: Total War added campaign co-op, which had previously never been seen in a Total War game before.

Another thing Total War is known for is having pretty much the best graphics of any Strategy game whenever they come out. I'll show some screenshots from Medieval II: Total War, Empire: Total War and Napoleon: Total War. Please note that these are all in-game and they are not cinematics.

Here's some screenshots from Medieval II: Total War






Here's some screenshots from Empire: Total War





Here's some screenshots from Napoleon: Total War





Rome: Total War Complete is on Steam for $10 (same price as Rome: Total War Gold but it also has the second expansion, so, good deal)
Medieval II: Total War Gold is also on Steam for $10, which is also an awesome price.
Empire: Total War is on Steam for $30 and there is about $23 worth of DLC too. I like the DLC, because all of it together comes with a lot of new units and an entire new campaign.
Napoleon: Total War is on Steam for $30 and has about $14 worth of DLC, which is worth it too.

If you're looking to get into Total War, both Rome Complete and Medieval II Gold are only $10 each and I personally would get both of them. Even though Rome is the oldest Total War on Steam it's still pretty good.

So if anyone has some Total War games, let me know and we can play sometime. This thread is also to discuss Total War games including the upcoming Shogun 2: Total War.