'Total War: Attila' - Tiresome

I have been a fan of the 'Total War' games since the first 'Shogun:Total War' released back in 1999.  Being both interested in history and the possible alternatives, epic games covering decades and even centuries, combining both battlefield and strategic levels have appealed to me.  However, as the years have progress, despite the increased sophistication and the improved graphics, I have become more and more frustrated with basic flaws in the games, despite all the different settings, that never seem to be resolved.  With the advent of 'Total War: Rome II' new problems were introduced which now seem to be adding to the growing list.  See my previous posting about Rome II for what I see as these tedious problems: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/total-war-rome-ii-same-old-problems.html 

I am still excited by a new 'Total War' game and pre-ordered the latest 'Total War: Attila' back in November 2014.  A flaw in downloading meant that until an update in March 2015, despite reporting the problem to Steam, I was unable to run it.  Once it was functioning I was keen to play.  The 'Barbarian Invasion' expansion (2005) to the original 'Rome Total War' (2004) featuring the late Western and Eastern Roman Empires and the migrating barbarian tribes was always a favourite of mine and so I was keen to play this updated version of that expansion for the 'Rome II' approach.

The game is certainly visually stunning.  However, some of this causes problems.  In 'Rome II', the different troop and building types are represented by symbolic images.  This makes it easy to distinguish between them.  With 'Attila' they are represented by my realistic images.  This makes it difficult to tell at a glance between similar units.  It is particularly a difficulty telling between the range of buildings many of which look pretty much the same.  It is important to tell, because unlike with 'Rome II' each province has to have sufficient food rather than this being the case right across your empire.  It also has to have a sufficient level of sanitation.  This can be hard when you only control part of a province because the rest is held by an enemy, an ally or has been made desolate.  Desolation is a new factor cause by barbarian tribes laying waste to a region.  It can be revived by colonisation if you can spare enough money.  

The key problem is that even if you have a good level of food supplies you will typically find one or more provinces starving leading to unrest.  You will also find that disease caused by a lack of baths or reservoirs is far more prevalent than in 'Rome II'.  Thus, as with 'Rome II' you find yourself incessantly fighting uprisings and pumping money into keeping people alive, leaving little for fighting off opponents or developing your empire.  This is one problem of recent Total War games, they end up becoming 'Total Management' because unless you load up modifications provided by amateurs you will find yourself simply struggling not to lose your empire to famine or uprising, even on the Easy setting.  These things did happen, but bear in mind the Byzantine Empire, what had been the Eastern Roman Empire, lasted until 1453CE, a thousand years after this game is set.

Many problems that were seen as early as 'Medieval 2 Total War' (2006) and have never been rectified.  One is catapults that move around the battlefield as fast as heavy infantry and, even in thick fog or when firing into a forest or up a steep hill, are able to hit your soldiers more precisely than laser-guided weapons of today.  In turn, your catapult weapons will miss the opponents despite firing repeatedly even at a static line across flat terrain with perfect visibility.  Ships will always hunt you down when you move at sea, covering hundreds of miles to be in the correct place, again something even challenging with modern technology.  

Another problem which has continued from 'Rome II' is in terms of towers in towns.  In small towns these are typically wooden structures.  The strength of them varies considerable between how they impact on AI (artificial intelligence - i.e. the one controlled by the computer) soldiers and how they impact on yours.  I have lost entire units trying to knock down a single tower because of the incessant arrows which fire into them as they march up and take so long to destroy it.  In contrast, an AI unit can march up to your towers receiving only 1-2 casualties and destroy it rapidly.  Thus it is far easier for the computer faction to take a town than it is for you to take even the same settlement.  Similarly you can only place barricades in largely ridiculous places that do little if nothing to protect your settlement, they simply hamper moving your troops around.  In contrast, when the AI is in charge of the town the barricades prove to be a genuine defence.  You can win, but your casualties will be far higher than for a computer driven faction taking the same place.

Armies even from factions which are not friendly will precisely co-ordinate so your defenders will face wave after wave of attackers.  Even if good at fighting on the defence you are strained when the third army in a row, twice your strength comes down the same road to get you in a single turn.  The AI player never makes mistakes and for some reason while you can not march past its armies and constantly seem to be just that little bit short of catching them, your opponent will always have the precise amount of movement necessary; can march right through your zone of control and in 'Attila' will often even fight you and march off and attack someone else or a different town in the same turn, all things you will be unable to do.  I cannot understand how a barbarian horde, i.e. consisting of the entire population including non-combatants, can march faster and farther than a trained Roman army.  A crucial difference is that, unless you are extremely lucky, your neighbouring armies do not support each other.  In contrast, the AI ones are always in perfect balance and you find some armies supporting more than one offensive, something I have never been able to achieve despite very careful positioning.

The big mistake that was added to these flaws in 'Rome II' was limiting the number of armies.  In 'Medieval 2 Total War' one useful function was that you could strengthen garrisons without need for a general.  Now you are limited to 16 armies and if you are trying to control an empire as large as the two Roman Empires or the Sassanid you find yourself struggling to get from one end of the empire to the other with enough force, exacerbated by the blocking zone of control problems noted above.  City garrisons are utterly pathetic, no matter how much you develop the buildings in a city.  Rebels even revolting slaves turn up with far more experienced soldiers and crucially soldiers equipped with better weapons and more advanced armour than you can even recruit in your empire, despite them coming from that empire.  Thus, some towns are lost almost on a constant basis.  You have to leave armies to garrison in case an opponent by-passes you as they very often can which again means no expansion of your own empire.

Another flaw which came with 'Rome II' and continues with Attila is disappearing units.  I accept there are issues about line of sight on a bumpy or forested terrain.  However, even on flat plains for some reason units disappear even when walking towards you.  The problem is that any soldiers you have sent marching towards them stop dead once the unit fades and do not resume their march if it reappears.  Similarly missile troops and catapults stop firing at it and again simply spectate if it reappears.  Yet, your opponent keeps firing incessantly and with great accuracy.  

Since 'Rome II' the default setting for marching an entire army on the battlefield is that it fans out.  This causes many to set off away from the enemy.  Similarly trying to congregate them back when they have chased off the opponent sees them heading in random directions.  The soldiers have no sense of self-preservation to turn and face an attacker or aid their fellow soldiers right next to them.  Control of units has deteriorated severely since the days of 'Medieval 2 Total War'.

All of these flaws mean that you need to be able to see into the future and amass soldiers in precisely the right location to see off an opponent.  You will incessantly have to be fighting for the smaller towns and villages as their defence is so feeble.  At times it seems that the AI will not let you hold a particular town and even opponents with a few and poor territories are able to field vast, well-equipped armies that outstrip anything your country can produce.  Now, a new element in 'Attila' is that if you start hiring mercenaries their prices rise so it even proves difficult to bring in supplementary forces quickly or put in ones suited to a local environment, especially as all your money is going into building local farms and water supplies rather than recruitment buildings.

The key problem with so many barbarian tribes is that they are incessant and it is easy to find yourself at war with fifteen to twenty factions.  They are not as hard to destroy as they were back in 'Barbarian Invasion', but there are simply so many bent of destroying everything.  As has long been the case, the diplomacy system is largely pointless.  You struggle to find anyone to trade with you let alone ally with you.  Allies simply drag you into more wars and yet rarely assist you.  Trade partners often remain hostile and break off trade at random leading to a sudden drop in income.  I emphasise that these problems are playing at the 'Easy' level by someone with 16 years' experience on these games.

The only improvements with 'Rome II' that are also seen in 'Attila' is with the agents.  These used to be really pathetic in 'Medieval 2 Total War' and could not be kept alive.  Now they stand a decent chance and I have managed to get at least one of each - Spy, Dignitary and Champion up to the top level.  They add to the game and the armies.  Though I note that the Merchant has not made an appearance, they lived such a short time it was simply a waste of cash.

I appreciate the effort that has gone into 'Attila' in terms of getting it looking great and historically accurate.  What is infuriating is the persistence of gameplay flaws which have now been in place for a decade and seem to be worsening.  In many ways, as I have noted before, Sega and Creative Assembly seem to be leaving enhancement up to the amateur developer community rather than actually resolving these themselves.  They have been stubborn in not addressing flaws that mean it can be tiresome playing when hard work and clever strategy is defeated by the great advantages the AI had with its armies.  What is worse is that such situations are anachronistic and it is a shame to find that your wonderful Roman legions are effectively coming up against 21st century armies.

'Total War: Rome II': The Same Old Problems

I have been playing the Total War series of computer games, produced by The Creative Assembly, and latterly sold by Sega, since 1999.  I have realised that I am not at all good at them and I struggle to win even on the Easy level.  No-one has told me how to win on any higher levels and despite playing these games for many hours, I have never improved.  In fact, I am now worse at the original 'Medieval Total War' than I was ten years ago.  However, I love to engage with the possibility of changing history.  I am utterly useless at shooting games, whether first person or third person, but I have enjoyed computer gaming for the last thirty years.  The Total War games are certainly immersive.  I love the attention to historical detail, even the scenery that you fight over.  Naturally, I had pre-ordered 'Total War: Rome II', despite the fact that these days you really just rent it from Steam and if your internet connection slows or decides to go down you cannot play a game you actually have the disks for (hence sometimes being compelled to go back to 'Medieval Total War' which was free-standing).

Lots of people will tell you that games sales now exceed movie watching.  This is why even quality newspapers now cover the industry.  In particular 'The Guardian' got very involved in discussing 'Total War: Rome II', though the debate was less than that around 'Grand Theft Auto V', which always attracts attention in part for the twisted morality of the game.  The Total War games, are, as this coverage shows, seen as standing above your average purchase.  In part, I guess because they are bought by reasonably well-educated, forty-something men like me and to some degree we are stronger opinion shapers than men twenty years younger than us with perhaps a lower income.

Though I love the game series, I have always had gripes about them.  I was not alone with 'Rome Total War'.  It functioned well enough and had innovations of its predecessors, but historical accuracy was sacrificed for playability.  There were Egyptian troops centuries out of their time and the Gauls had their territory cut back to provide more room for Roman factions.  The Total War games always have a lot of amateur built content and many of these variants, usually free to download, tend to have a greater impact on the next phase of the series than many thousands of comments by gamers.  Thus, 'Total War: Rome II' has a far larger map stretching outside the Mediterranean area right to modern day Pakistan allowing the building of empires to rival those of Alexander the Great.  Territories have been made more complex and cities have more points to hold so making an attack or the defence more challenging. 

Graphics are very good though there has been some simplification on the interfaces to speed things up, the images look appropriate for the era portrayed (the game starts in the early 3rd century BCE).  There were issues, and it must embarrass Sega that they have had to release three patches in the first month.  In part this stemmed from over-ambition as so many factions feature that running through all of them at the end of each term really slowed down the game.  The patches seem to have got the game back on track and it loads up and progresses faster than 'Total War: Shogun 2' despite that having a smaller geographical spread and fewer factions.

If the game is at least half-decent, why am I here writing about it rather than playing it?  Well, the simple answer is that there are core flaws in the Total War game that utterly exasperate me.  Foolishly, game after game, I think they will address these.  They never do and so pretty soon I ended up downloading an amateur-produced variant from Total War Center: http://www.twcenter.net/  You can find numerous small-scale modifications, but I look out for ones that redraft the game to the way it should be.  I do not know whether it is worthwhile reprising my gripes or recognise that The Creative Assembly never pays attention and keeps including the same flaws in game after game.

My experiences of playing against real people online have always been unpleasant.  I enjoy playing against the computer.  However, in the Total War games, this is always an imbalanced experience.  It is one aspect that almost every Total War Center variant resolves.  Perhaps I like historical accuracy too much.  I cannot accept anyone pushing a trebuchet uphill in a storm to precisely hit my troops sheltered by the trees with rocks shot after shot.  In Rome II, you now even get conflicting advice.  It tells you holding a hilltop is a good position, but then points out you can be shifted from it by missile fire from below.  Perhaps with a 19th or 20th century mortar, but have you ever tried firing slingshot uphill and even arrows lose effectiveness.  Yet, I find ranks of my troops being swept away by slung stones from far below.

I cannot accept a ship even from the 20th century let alone the 14th or 1st centuries, being able to locate another ship on the other side of the Mediterranean precisely and move to sink it with exactly the correct number of ships.  The thing that angers me most is that the rules for me as the human do not apply to the computer.  Of course, it never makes mistake.  While my troops set off around the long way because I have not spotted a single spy 'blocking' my army's route, the computer's troops move exactly correctly and rapidly.

Yet, how come if I have a small, poor territory I can only raise a few weak troops whereas my computer opponent with the same land and lack of cash can conjure up huge, well equipped armies?  If you push back an opponent and seize his resources, surely he should become poorer, but no, these rules do not apply.  It is far harder and requires far more troops for you to defeat an opponent than it does for them to do the same to you.  I do not expect an advantage, I just expect equal treatment.  You will find that the morale and skill of an opponent especially in the early stages is far higher than anything you might achieve through experience or research.  One commentator to 'The Guardian' noted that even after many game years, his Spartan force simply fled when opponents appeared, totally anachronistic to what we know about the Spartans when faced even with overwhelming odds.

As in previous games, you find that rebels in one of your territories suddenly appear with a large army with troops that go way beyond the level that can be recruited at that time or in that region and with experience far higher than your most experienced armies, making it almost impossible to defeat them.  This has been a problem across the Total War games, but seems to have returned to the situation of the original 'Medieval Total War'.  Rebellions are common as you can do little to please the population.  Squalor from enlarged settlements is the main cause of dissent, so you have a choice of not to develop the cities or face unrest.  There are a few cultural buildings to alleviate the unhappiness, but confined to the capital of a province meaning unhappiness can develop elsewhere.  You can run your taxes at the lowest level possible (in this game unlike previous ones, you cannot exempt territories from tax) and people are still unhappy; neo-liberal attitudes persist here as in many city-building/strategy games.

One improvement is that your agents such as spies and dignitaries are not slaughtered almost immediately as they are recruited.  In preceding Total War games this happened constantly making it that there was really no point in paying for such people as there would be a high-level assassin waiting to eliminate them the moment they stepped outside the town.  Thus, you could never get any increase in skill.  This was at its worst in 'Medieval II Total War' in which recruiting merchants was an utter waste of time, but still persisted as recently as 'Total War: Shogun 2' made worse because newly-recruited agents appear outside rather than within the city, making them prone to attack before they even could move.

A problem which does endure in Rome II as with all its predecessors is the fact that whilst your opponents have a 'zone of control' for each army, which you cannot march through without triggering an attack, you do not have this in return.  Thus, opponents can simply walk past you even if you are in a narrow valley.  This is one flaw which if corrected would make a lot of play against the computer far less imbalanced.  One advantage of Rome II, is that a city can raise a decent garrison force, including of ships if it is a port.  Thus, if your opponent slips passed the army guarding the road to the city, they cannot simply just walk in and claim it for themselves.

Co-ordination between different armies is far harder for the human player than the computer.  You find it difficult to move two armies close enough so that when the battle comes they can support each other, the computer never has such a challenge.  The reason why I abandoned playing tonight is that I faced a combined attack from an army on land and another invading from the sea at night in a thunderstorm.  Such a combined attack would be challenging even today with modern technology, satellites, etc., in 260 BCE it would be impossible to co-ordinate let alone in a way that allows the armies to sweep right into a city.

The invisible army problem is far worse in 'Rome II' than any of the preceding games in the series.  From 'Rome Total War' onwards it was quite common when moving around the strategic map to suddenly find an army appearing right by one of your settlements or you running into in a valley without seeing it until the last moment.  I can accept you can be surprised and ambushed, but I cannot accept your spies and armies would not notice if a few thousand men was marching towards them, especially in their own lands where they would have agents and a largely loyal population to inform you.  This problem became far worse in 'Shogun 2'.  You could march back and forth across a forest but it was able to conceal many hundreds of men.  Of course your computer opponent always knows precisely where your army is an marches directly to attack you now matter where you might try to hide.

I can accept that in forest or even particular grasslands, that some units can conceal themselves, particularly if they have special skills.  However, in 'Rome II' you witness entire armies that you have begun firing at suddenly disappear, even on wide open plains or in deserts.  In reality you would hear their marching and their clanking weapons and armour, let alone the amount of dust an army typically throws up, even if you could not see the troops themselves.  Again, of course, they can see you as clearly as you would expect in such terrain.  However, I have had tens of units suddenly appear and disappear within a few metres of my troops.  Once they disappear your troops stop firing at them and it is impossible to gauge how many troops there are or who you are fighting.  This is exacerbated by the fact that fleeing troops no longer appear on the radar map.  The invisible forces make battles incredibly difficult even if you use scouts on horseback to try to find them.  Why this ability has been introduced, I do not know.  Even more than the imbalance in morale and the laser-guided artillery, the invisible army factor makes it very hard to fight any battles and stand a chance of winning.

Attacking cities is much harder.  Since you have been able to do city assaults in these games, they have often been fixed towers which fire out missiles.  These can be challenging to take and can wreak a lot of damage on your attackers.  In 'Rome II' such towers are limited to provincial capitals but their speed of fire has been ramped up greatly and you will lose unit after unit trying even to get close to the towers to knock them out of action.  With fewer artillery weapons available than in the medieval games and needing you to research to pretty high levels, this makes attacks on cities far harder.  Defending the provincial capitals is easier, but defending the bulk of towns for which you cannot build walls is very difficult.  In previous games you could build up the garrisons of towns and naturally would do this in contested areas.  In 'Rome II' you can build only a limited number of armies and as you generally need three to be invading others' territory you cannot leave too many behind.  As your empire grows they move too slowly to be able to march to cover towns.  Each town has a garrison generated by its size and the specific buildings it has, but these are generally poor quality troops and certainly are no match for any rebel army that appears with its high level forces; indeed some slave revolt armies are better equipped. 

I wish that The Creative Assembly would look at the basics of their games.  With greater balance between the human and the computer players their games would be far better.  Instead, they keep wheeling out the same flawed assumptions that were prevalent as far back as 'Medieval Total War' and have not been addressed in all the rush for better graphics and more downloadable content to sell.

P.P. 24/05/2015
Talking of downloadable content I was interested to play 'The Wrath Of Sparta' set in the 5th century BCE allowing you to play one of four Greek factions.  It seemed to be a challenge because each of them has fragmented territories spread across modern day Greece, its islands and what is now western Turkey.  However, it is a useless expansion.  As has happened in the past with 'Total War' games, the developers have created invincible forces.  In the past they did this with the Mongols and the Byzantine Cataphracts in 'Medieval II Total War'.  Now it is the Spartan hoplites.  You can have a thousand men attacking a single unit, throwing hundreds of javelins and thrusting at them on all sides (Greek troops were always vulnerable on their right hand side where they held the spear) and yet you will not inflict a single casualty on them.  With the fragmented territory you will simply run back and forth trying to hold individual cities.  The requirement of 'Rome II' for generals in order to have armies and the pathetic garrison armies means a small naval fleet can capture any old town it fancies.

As usual, play is imbalanced against the human player.  Fleets converge perfectly over hundreds of miles magically.  I played as Athens which is supposed to have the strongest navies, but with my enemies knowing precisely where my ships were and co-ordinating to trap and destroy them, they were eliminated in the first few turns of the game.  This download game has no skill element at all.  It is very easy even on the Easy setting to have lost within a few turns of beginning.  There is however an additional bitter twist.  You cannot go against your opponents' capitals, despite the fact that they lie close to your starting point.  You receive constant warnings against doing this and severe penalties if you take one.  Thus, this game is simply a process in humiliation.  You have one hand tied behind your back as you dodge around the capital cities and an array of fleets and armies turn up to crush you wherever they fancy no matter how skilled your defence.  That is even leaving out the usual unrest due to food shortage and squalor.  I do not really understand the motive of making such a hard game.  They would get the money if it was dead easy and in fact are liable to damage future sales through piling up the imbalance game play and the anti-historical approach.  If Sparta had been that strong in reality, we would not have Greece but Sparta.

The Trouble With Steam

This is not a posting about water above 100oC, it is about the online gaming service called Steam.  Now, living away from home five days per week and lacking the money and the energy to go out at all, my laptop is my prime source of entertainment.  As regular readers know I have long been a fan of the 'Total War' historical computer wargames.  Unfortunately since 'Empire Total War' in 2008, even though you buy a disk to load the game into your computer, you have to subscribe to Steam to play it.  There is no charge to subscribe, but it does inhibit game playing quite a bit and leaves me feeling resentful that many evenings I am unable to play a game that I have paid for.  You can buy games that you download from Steam too and they sell numerous classics at a discount rate, I reconnected with 'Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines' this way and was able to play it without having to download the 23 patches needed to make the disk version work.

I can see why the Steam system was developed.  It allows the company to advertise upgrades and extra content and they encourage you to buy other similar games.  There is also an online community to connect with.  There have long been options to fight battles in the Total War series online.  However, given how unpleasant the bulk of people I have encountered through online gaming are, notably so many players of 'World of Warcraft' I have no desire to play with them.  This blocks many of the unlockable achievements on the Steam system from me.  I hate being compelled to become part of a community.  I used to be a regular contributor to the online fora for Total War run by Sega itself and between being told I was utterly useless because I could not simply storm through each of the games on Very Hard setting by people unable to spell properly and having my comments censored by the company, I got very little joy from there either.

The key problem with Steam, though, is that despite having paid my £35 for the game, unlike in the old days with games like 'Medieval II Total War' or 'Rome Total War' simply having the disk is not enough to play the game.  I have owned a copy of 'Napoleon Total War' since it came out and enjoyed it.  There was a bug which meant that the game crashed about four years into the game time.  However, there was a patch that resolved that.  When I got a new laptop I reinstalled the game, but, of course, with the cyber attacks on Sega they had taken down the patch.  Thus, when I try to play it through the Steam account I am compelled to have, it simply crashes as before.  Steam are no use simply sending me back to Sega and anyone offering the patch now is in fact nothing more than a scam trying to infect your machine.  Thus, through no fault of my own except upgrading my computer, I can no longer play the game.

A new problem has arisen over the Christmas period with simply accessing games.  I have been enjoying the Rise of the Samurai scenario of 'Total War: Shogun 2'.  However, just when I have my strategy planned of how to defeat the tough clan in what is a pretty challenging version of the game, I find that I cannot get into the game.  I get time markers and then am told that the game is unavailable or has crashed.  Repeated tries bring no joy.  Again, I cannot play a game I have paid for.  The £35 only bought me the occasional chance to play the game, not regular access to it.  In addition, every couple of months there is some upgrade, some of them entirely spurious such as the one which made the opening screen which shows a 15th century Japanese castle, suddenly decorated with snowmen out the front of it, one holding a candy cane, something only invented four hundred years or so later, on a different continent.  In addition, the downloads seem to make my computer forget that I have bought the game and it tells me it is unavailable.  Initially the Steam staff again referred me to Sega, but then another told me I had to delete almost all the files and reinstall the game from Steam.  This I do diligently every time.  Again it is clear that paying my £35 has not brought the game to my computer, it has simply allowed me occasional random access.

I understand why, for commercial reasons, a hybrid online-disk system like Steam was created.  However, in terms of customer service it marks a real retrograde step.  If I buy a game I cannot be sure that I will be able to play it more than one or two evenings per week.  In the old days, as long as the disk was not scratched, once I had bought it, I could keep on playing it repeatedly for years to come.  The disk of 'Shogun Total War' that I bought in 1999 still works and I go back to it when I find for whatever reason I am unable to access its sequel. 

This model of only be able occasionally to use something you have paid good money for seems to be the acceptable model.  When I had BT internet they kept charging us month after month even though the internet connection broke down on a daily basis.  Despite a very patchy service they wanted to charge us £120 to break the contract and a further £90 to remove their equipment.  Since when did basic economics state that you have to pay for a service you might actually receive and pay even more to try to get out of that purchase of in fact sometimes nothing?  Will it spread and I will go to the dry cleaners and sometimes find my suit has not been cleaned and then be charged more if I want to have it cleaned at another dry cleaners?  Will I try and buy a burger and be told that they are unavailable at the moment and I have to come back an hour later for my fast food?

P.P. 04/02/2012
Steam has now deteriorated to the extent that I am unable to ever open 'Total War: Shogun 2' any more.  Even before that I was encountering other problems with the games I have via the service.  In the past month playing as different clans on 'Total War: Shogun 2' I have reached a certain date usually a round number like 1200 (if playing the 'Rise of the Samurai' add-on) or 1600 only for the game to crash.  I have gone back to an earlier saved game and tried picking different options to see if that will spare me from the crash only to find it still happens at the set date.

I have also gone back to playing 'Napoleon Total War' and the Peninsular War add-on which looked very interesting.  While I can still get into that game, it crashes the moment I attack someone or someone attacks me.  I have tried finding a patch for this problem on the internet but Sega seems to have stopped all the genuine ones.  The only ones advertised are in fact scams.  So another game which I paid for and used to be able to play is effectively shut off from me and Steam seems to be doing nothing about it.  The only response that I get is that I need to check my computer is suitable for the games.  Clearly it once was, well, up until January, and now for some reason it no longer is, or as I suspect something is going wrong with Steam.

Playing 'Shogun 2'

Back in August last year I outlined my ongoing relationship with the 'Total War' series of computer games which have been released over the past twelve years.  Then I was looking forward to playing 'Total War: Shogun 2' the update of the original Total War game released back in 1999.  As I outlined last year, for many reasons I, and I am sure many other players, still view the original 'Shogun Total War' with affection even though elements of it now appear dated.  The limited parameters of the game confined to the islands of Japan combined with a really evocative style combining graphics and music make a pleasure to play.  Consequently I was both interested and a little concerned to see what the update was like when it was released in March this year.  I had to wait until I got a job and was able to afford to buy a computer with sufficient specification to run it, because, as with all the Total War games they tend to be produced at the top end of the specifications current at the time.

Was 'Shogun 2' worth the wait?  Given that it pushed aside all the other games I have been playing for about a fortnight suggests that it is certainly incredibly engaging.  As before the interface is easy to use which has always been a winning point over rivals to the Total War series.  The game balances complexity with playability.  In addition, unlike some of the titles, notably 'Rome Total War' there has been an adherence to what happened historically.  Far more clans are involved not just the 'big 7': Hojo, Imagawa, Mori, Oda, Shimazu, Takeda and Uesugi that appeared in original game but a whole range of smaller historic clans.  You can play one of nine clans with the Chosokabe, Date and Tokugawa clans added and the Imagawa clan removed.  If you buy the limited edition version you also get the Hattori clan of ninjas and you can buy the Ikko-ikki Buddhist heretic faction as a downloadable update.  However, once you start playing, history can go down interesting paths and you find that in place of the clans we are pretty familiar with less common names, such as the Amato or the Besso or the Yamana, start coming to the fore, building up sizeable realms which makes the game very interesting. 

If you take a clan's last province you can make them a vassal which means they pay you a fee each year, give you one unit and fight for you.  The vassals can often start building a large realm of their own that may lead them to break free of you at some time in the future.  They can be useful, however, for supplementing your armies and pushing back your opponents on different fronts.  It is best not to make one of the nine/ten playable clans one of your vassals as they tend to be very ambitious and will run off creating their own kingdom without you and become hard to manage very quickly.

Each of the starting clans, as in the original, has a particular strength in the type of troops that they can recruit.  However, this is less important as you can choose how your clan develops by specialising in different military and civic skills as the game progresse.  Combined with this you can shape the skills that your daimyo, his brothers and sons, plus your other generals adopt, both to their individual benefit and to the benefit of the clan.  Honour is important for relations with other clans and relations with them are now far more important as they affect trade which can become a vital source of income.  Your daimyo can also make any sons who are not your nominated heir, any brothers he has and any generals, hold various commissioner positions controlling things like supply or military matters to boost actions they carry out and the welfare of the clan as a whole.

 
Further specialisation comes from the buildings you construct and what you can build, in contrast to the original game, is often shaped by the civil or military skills you choose to develop.  In addition, sometime certain materials like stone or incense are required in order to construct certain buildings. In addition some buildings use up food in a way that was never the case with the original game, so you have to balance building up larger castles or markets with ensuring you have sufficiently developed agriculture to feed them.  Even cultural developments such as holding sumo wrestling events which pleases the public, consumes food.  With such variables, you can can easily play the same clan twice and have them developing in different ways.  There are all the familiar troop types with spear, naginata (polearm), katana and no-dachi (sword), bow and matchlock firearm forces with their horseback equivalents, there are the ashigaru (commoner) versions and the tougher samurai versions, plus ninjas, geishas, metsuke (spies) and Buddhist and Christian priests.

In terms of graphics, things have come a long way since 1999 and the seasons are shown very well, with not only rain, sun and snow, but now clouds drifting across the sky.  The attention to detail is immense and it is fun to zoom in pick out individual soldiers as they march through grass wafting in the wind.  The big innovation that came with 'Empire Total War' (2009) is the ability to have proper naval warfare.  It is interesting to see the difference between European and Japanese vessels of the period, the mid to late 16th century.  If you make friends with European traders you can buy European cannon equipped ships but generally you have boxy ships firing arrows and closing so samurai can board.  The portrayal of the battles especially if you are among small islands is very picturesque and dealing with ships and the wind conditions is a very different challenge to fighting on land.

Castles appear on the battlefield in greater complexity as you build them up on the strategic map, reflecting the multi-tiered nature of Japanese castles.  However, there is one disappointment as when there is a  fighting in the open field the terrain is very much geared to where your army has advanced into a region, however all the castles seem to come from a limited number of settings, one on a hill, one on a river island and one by the coast.  They get larger as the castle is developed, but the location is pretty much the same.  This contrasts with what appears to happen in 'Medieval Total War' (2002) and 'Medieval II Total War' (2006) with their European and North African settings.

One frustrating thing on when in battle mode is trying to move large groups of units around.  The facility to widen or narrow the breadth of the units is a lot easier than it has been on some of the Total War games, as is changing the way the unit is pointing.  However, for some reason if you try to move a neat group of different units forward rather than going in a straight line they spread out in a fan shape, utterly breaking up the strong form you have.  If you are not careful not only do you quickly find that your unit is standing side on to your opponents, but that they have wandered off far from where the bulk of your units are, in both cases they simply get cut down.  You have to really send each unit singly, which is not ideal when trying to maintain the coherence of your army.

As has occurred with others in the Total War series, the AI (artificial intelligence) playing your opponent is very precise, never making a mistake which can be difficult to oppose, though the geography of Japan with restricted routes down which armies can go, to a great degree avoids the chance of you going just slightly the wrong way so that your reinforcements do not enter a battle whereas the computer's always do.  Perhaps I should do more online play, but given how unpleasant the online players are I have encountered playing 'World of Warcraft', I am loath to mix with online wargamers.  Anyway, conversely to the AI controlling your opponents, you find that your own soldiers often behave very stupidly.  They seem to have reined in the generals' units from charging up to the enemy, out of your control, simply to be cut down as happened too often in previous games.  However, you do find units standing by, idly watching while their comrades bare metres away are cut down.  You can set units to 'guard' mode, which means they do not move off their designated location to attack, but I have this disabled and yet, often in a castle, especially the large ones like Kyoto, where you have to be jumping from one side to another to cover the multiple attacks, you find one or two units of spearmen or swordsmen have simply stood by while their enemies have scaled the walls and cut all the archers to pieces even though they are only a spear's reach away from where they are standing.  You cannot be everywhere on a battlefield at once and the units lacking any common sense make it hard to keep them alive and your carefully constructed defensive position can simply count for nothing as units let themselves be cut up one-by-one.

Ironically it is far easier to defend a small fort than a major castle and despite the gains in tax raising you can disadvantage yourself by building large castle structures especially in a frontline area.  The length of walls and the distance between points of attack means that you can neither spread your troops effectively nor concentrate them for attack as they get exhausted running around the castle.  This is in contrast to real castle fighting in medieval Japan which less than western castles, depended far more on the soldiers defending it than on the built defences.  The self-sustaining towers are far too few once you build a large castle.  I would rather be defending a three-tier castle in 'Medieval II Total War' and stick to small forts for this game.


Missile troops are far more effective than in 'Shogun Total War'.  In the original game, there was really no point in recruiting matchlock firearm troops as typically a barrage of shots from them would only kill one or two of the attacking unit, if you were lucky.  Now a barrage of shots and, even more, fire from archers really makes an impact on attackers, as it should do, especially aganist densely packed ranks of soldiers marching forwards as is often the case.  The strength of general's units is also much more realistic.  In the past, in most of the Total War games, a single general had no trouble fighting off 200 spearmen jabbing at him and his horse.  Now in such a circumstance he is killed as he would be in reality.  If you select particular development for your generals his strength and that of his bodyguard unit do increase but never to the extent that they become virtually indestructable and can hold up an entire battalion on their own.

 
In terms of the ambiance most of the tunes have been copied over from the original game.  I do miss the zither-like sound effect when you advance a season and the call of the birds when you look at the map of Japan.  However, the Japanese pictures, the various death poems and the animated movies about different units or particular developments or attacks in the game are well done, without being excessive.  I used to like rival daimyo or Spanish or Dutch emissaries bowling into your audience chamber but I know people found these and all the movies around attempted assassinations too much.  I feel the right balance has now been struck.  I am pleased that they have reinstated the movie at the end when you win the game to see a statue of your winning daimyo in a modern day Tokyo square.


There is no distinction between various European emissaries.  In the past you only accepted Christianity if you went with the Portuguese and could simply buy guns of the Dutch.  Now you can adopt Catholicism as a faction or not even if trading with the Europeans.  Religious difference between your clan and the provinces you hold is far more important than in the original game.  The largest benefit contact with the Europeans can bring is cannon-armed ships which have a far superior range than Japanese ships and make a large difference in naval battles.  If you are lucky you can capture the Black Ship and even more heavily armed European vessel, but I have not managed to to this.

In the past in the Total War games there has often not been any point in trying to engage in diplomacy with other factions.  What they want of you, even when you are more powerful of them is usually excessive.  This is most prominent in 'Empire Total War' when even small factions demand all your American colonies or ten different technologies and a large sum of money in exchange for a single simple technology, let alone an alliance.  Throughout the Total War games, if an ally (faction B) of one of your allies (faction A), attacks you, then invariably faction A breaks with you and often a string of others and you can turn in an instant to facing a whole continent of enemies, no matter what you do.  In 'Total War Shogun 2', it is easier to develop trade treaties with even factions which are indifferent to you.  This is in contrast to the previous games and is necessary because, as it is, as in many of the games, you battle to get enough money ever to build any of the interesting buildings or units, even with rebellion-risking tax levels and sustained looting.  However, even your vassals have a negative view towards you, no matter what you do in terms of paying them, supporting them in wars, making sure you have the same religion as them and having a high level of honour for your daimyo.  It is inevitable on this basis that they turn against you.  The long memories of factions makes it difficult for some factions in particular.  The Tokugawa clan begins as a vassal of the Imawaga clan and unless you are lucky you cannot expand and have to wait for them to tire of you.  If you attack first all your subsequent relationships with all clans, even your vassals, will be damaged by you breaking your vassalage.

In 'Total War Shogun 2', you being alone against everyone else is even easier than in the previous games because as you advance you finally attract attention of the Shogun who will then unleash every faction on you. All your allies desert you and soon after all your vassals too.  However, it does not work in reverse.  Once you capture Kyoto and are named Shogun, you find no factions coming over to your camp, in contrast to what happened in history.  This even applies to factions which are down to one province, who you might think might choose to swear fealty to the new Shogun rather than battle on against him.  However, this is not the case.  The loyalty to the Ashikaga Shogunate lingers on even after that faction has been eliminated.  I can imagine some clans would remain hostile, especially the more powerful ones, but in fact the universal coalition against you persists with even new clans appearing, deciding to attack you straight off rather than seek to make a compromise.  In previous games you often had a sudden collapse when everyone turned against you.  It is a pity that with a slightly more sophisticated diplomacy system you cannot have something more subtle.  Even ten years after becoming Shogun you will find the whole country against you and your vassals regularly defecting no matter what you do.  The Tokugawa regime would never have survived if they had faced such conditions.

Overall the game is engaging and the variety of ways you can develop a clan and individual generals means that you can have a very varied game even if you were to play the same faction again and again.  There remain niggles, things around how the AI operates your troops and the other factions, which have not been resolved for them to function in a logical or even worthwhile way.  It was like the merchants in the 'Medieval II Total War' there was no point recruiting them as they are eliminated far too quickly by your opponents; fortunately they do not appear in this game and are replaced with province wide trade.  Similarly, there is no point in 'Total War Shogun 2' trying to form alliances as they quickly crumble.  The game is visually stunning, with most of the atmosphere that made the original such a delight to play.  I certainly anticipate coming back to this game over the next decade. 

Now I wonder what the next Total War game is, and I guess that signals that this one has succeeded in me still wanting more.  There is a lot of online speculation at one set in the late 19th century and as yet as happened with the Napoleonic Wars, as yet no-one has really created the defining strategic wargame of the late colonial era and the Scramble for Africa might be one option, perhaps with the battles for independence in South America as a supplement.  Then we reach the First World War, which is always difficult to replicate as no-one wants a game in which there is minimal action for four years, so it might have to focus on the more fluid Eastern Front.  The Second World War is more feasible, but we come to some very sticky political issues.   Consequently I think scenarios set in India before the arrival of Europeans or China in one of any number of eras from the 3rd century CE right up to the 1918-50 CE would be interesting.  For now, though, I am in 16th century Japan once more.

P.P. 09/01/2012
I have continued playing 'Shogun 2' and have found a few more irritating things.  First that when you are on the top of a hill your archers do minimal damage to your opponents clambering up the hill, often inflicting no casualties despite pouring hundreds of arrows into the air.  In contrast, the opposing archers down the hill slaughter tens of your men even while marching up the hill seems the kind of flaw that you would have found in 'Medieval Total War' and has not been resolved.
Another problem is the zone of control of armies on the strategic map of Japan.  Japan, especially in the medieval period, had strictly limited routes that it was possible to march down so the opportunity to block opposing armies is a valuable one, especially as this game unlike 'Rome Total War' or 'Medieval II Total War' does not allow the construction of forts on the roads.  You find that it pretty difficult to skirt opposing armies without being drawn into a battle with them.  However, the same does not apply to your own armies.  I have had a large army and its reserve standing in a narrow valley in theory blocking the route only to have my opponents walk right past without triggering a battle and then them wandering from farmland to workshop destroying them with impunity as my armies simply stand there as if frozen.  This imbalance between the zones of control of the human and computer characters spoils a lot of plans you may lay and makes it very difficult to defend your economic structures.

Another problem is how easily huge armies disappear.  Even with metsuke or ninja agents out and about in your provinces you find that an army marches into a province and simply disappears from view.  This is particularly an issue in large or oddly-shaped provinces as you can have your army wandering around trying to track down your opponents who then simply pop out of the woods near your castle.  I do not think this reflects reality very well as whilst small units perhaps could proceed unnoticed, unless your villagers were really hostile to you I am sure someone would alert you to the fact that a large hostile army was camped in your province.

The imbalance between you and the computer-run opponents brings me back to a problem that has plagued the total war games right back to 'Rome Total War' this is the ability of enemy fleets to be able to track down your ships right across hundreds of kilometres to arrive at precisely the right time and place with just the right amount of force to attack you.  Even in the Second World War with far more advanced technology, radio communication, aircraft, etc., it proved challenging to track down fleets and certainly was impossible in 16th century Japan.  I accept that given the more limited space around Japan's coast that it is more feasible than in 'Medieval II Total War' and certainly 'Empire Total War', but the fact that your opponents will get you precisely every single time seems unrealistic especially as when you are pursuing their fleets you find suddenly that they disappear from sight.  I find this particularly the case when chasing pirates.  It does not matter how advanced you are in naval skills or how experienced your admirals are.  The pirates are incredibly strong and will easily overcome one of your ships even if it has more troops on board, e.g. a medium bute for a clan has 55 soldiers whereas a pirate ship of the same size has 35, and they are experienced troops.

I have found a bug in the construction of certain castles.  These get more complex in a way which is difficult to handle, especially as your troops have a tendency to walk outside the castle into the spears of your waiting opponents, simply when you want to move them from one part of your castle to the other.  On one castle I found that two gaps appeared, one at either end of the castle.  I assume these are supposed to be gateways, but the structures are missing.  Your troops can easily slide down and clamber up the brown cliff that forms in the gap.  Whilst this is a bug, it makes the castle with this bug easier to defend than other large castles which have been formed properly as your opponents will naturally attack the two gaps and so ride or run right into your waiting spearmen with archers positioned behind them firing over the invaders heads to their comrades waiting below.

I have enjoyed the 'Rise of the Samurai' downloadable upgrade.  Rather than covering the mid- to late 16th century and early 17th century, this scenario covers the period of the Gempei War of the 12th and early 13th centuries.  You play one of two branches of three leading families.  As the name suggests this was an era in which the standard samurai units were being formed so you find quite different units which are interesting to play with, certainly more flexible.  The Foot Samurai decent melee and bow-armed soldiers are very useful.  There is almost a different 'evolutionary path' for units, following the older style and you can concentrate on this line instead if you prefer which enables you to gain Attendant troops and particularly Warrior Monks, always a favourite of mine.  The naval units and the various agents are all different to the standard 'Shogun 2' game.  I found myself enjoying this era more but could not escape a bug which meant the game crashed when I reached the year 1200.  Again, with Sega running shy after cyber attacks on them I do not know how long it will be until there is an appropriate patch to fix this.

The latest product in the 'Shogun 2' stable is a stand-alone scenario is 'Fall of the Samurai' for which you do not need the original game in order to play.  I like the fact that they have taken a bold step and feature the Boshin War which started in 1864 and ultimately led to the overthrow of the Shogunate and the return of the Emperor's power with the Meiji Restoration of 1868; the period featured in the movie 'The Last Samurai' (2003).  You can play one of three clans that supported the Shogun or one of three that supported the Emperor.  Britain, France and the USA also get involved and there is the chance to use the technology of the times in terms of artillery, guns and iron-clad ships alongside the traditional samurai weaponry.  There are railways and battleships can both shell shore-based units and be shelled by them.  Whilst I would liked to have seen the Mongol invasion scenario brought up-to-date for use on 'Shogun 2', this is an interesting step to take and I look forward to playing it.  It may suggest, with late 19th century technology appearing that there may one day be a 'Great War: Total War', certainly on more fluid fronts such as the Eastern Front or in the Ottoman Empire as a game of the stagnation of the Western Front or Italian Front would hardly appeal.  Given Sega have been bold with this latest step, maybe something set in India will be seen as worth the risk, that theatre is an interesting one to play on 'Empire Total War' after all.

P.P. 30/01/2012
Another flaw that I have recognised in previous Total War games but seems even more apparent in 'Shogun 2' is the different impact of running short of funds between you and the computer opponents.  In all of the games if you build large armies without sufficient tax revenue coming in or suddenly find that a trade route is cut or your trade ships sunk, you quickly find you run out of funds, it is possible to go bankrupt in a single term.  Generally you have raise taxes (often not possible given that the citizens in the Total War series, like most computer games, seem hostile to even moderate tax and quickly rebel) or cut back on the size of your armies or fleets or cancel some building projects.  You would anticipate that as you reduced the territory that your opponents controlled that they would face similar difficulties, but that is not the case.  You find that they are able to maintain much larger armies or fleets than you are even though you have many times their number of provinces.  A recent example had my faction with 16 provinces struggling to keep open any trade routes because five large and well equipped fleets kept simply sinking my ships as fast as I produced them.  I could imagine that if I was facing a far larger faction (especially as their ships have that 'radar' tracking) but I was fighting a faction with only two landlocked provinces remaining.  I could imagine that they could keep the armies and fleets sustained for a short time, but after five or six turns they were still there.  The financial implications do not seem to apply to the computer-run factions which is another factor in making the game so imbalanced.

Me and the 'Total War' Series of Computer Games

In a recent posting looking at my favourite computer games of the past decade: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/04/my-favourite-computer-games.html  I mentioned that there was one set of games that I would leave for a separate posting of their own.  These are the 'Total War' series of computer wargames.


Shogun Total War
The first, 'Shogun Total War' was launched by The Creative Assembly in 2000.  In many ways it owes a great deal to the board game, 'Shogun' (released in 1986; new version 2006; also known as 'Samurai Swords') which allowed up to 5 players to take on the role of one of the Japanese samurai clans fighting for dominance in the Sengoku period ('Age of War') between 1467-1573 CE.  The victory of the Tokugawa clan in this conflict led to the establishment of the Shogunate which ran until 1868.  The aim was to conquer territories and eliminate opponents either in battle or through assassination.  It was often difficult to get together a group of five players, so the appearance of a computer version in which you could play one of seven clans, fighting against the computer, was ideal.


'Shogun Total War' was never a mainstream success, but gathered a very loyal fan base, many of whom who have continued to buy all the Total War series in the following decade.  One reason why it was never going to be a mainstream success is that it is very involved, like any wargaming.  The game spreads over decades and it combined strategic planning on a wonderfully rendered map of Japan on which you could move soldiers representing your armies (so replicating the board game) with three-dimensional real time battles when your armies came into conflict with other. As with many strategic games, provinces you controlled varied in terms of resources and the types of troops that were the strongest recruited from there.  You could develop your tax revenue, harvests, trade, and troop training and equipment by constructing various buildings, so you had to balance the economic as well as military aspects.


The province-running had been seen in many games before, but the use of three-dimensional battles was what really marked a leap forward in computer wargames. Previously you had to settle for static icons or at best the small animated sprites of the kind used in the Talonsoft wargames.  The battles were real-time rather than turn-based, as all the other computer wargames of the time used.  In 'Shogun Total War' you got three-dimensional units moving independently across the landscape.  A huge reason for the success of the Total War series is that the game controls become intuitive allowing you to fight a battle effectively even when you have hundreds of soldiers on various parts of the field.  There are factors like tiredness, experience, morale, running out of ammunition, to take into consideration. You did not have to play the full campaign, you could play sequences of reconstructions of historic battles or create your own if you just wanted to concentrate on fighting rather than management too. Those facilities would appear in all the other Total War games. 


Alright, each soldier looked the same, but you could zoom down to their level and 'march with' them across the landscape, a huge leap forward. These days the graphics might look a little simplistic, but still hold their own against many other games.  The varied landscapes of Japan which impinged on your troops, (i.e. one column in your square could move slower than the rest if it went into the trees or a slightly steeper slope) and the very varied weather made the game all the more engaging.  The attention to detail of the troop types, assisted by the highly renowned historian of medieval Japan, Stephen Turnbull appealed to gamers like me who were looking for an authentic experience.  There is historical reference to things such as the arrival of the Portuguese and Dutch in Japan, and the appearance of firearms and Christianity. Of course, the minute you start playing you are moving into counter-factual scenarios, but it is nice to have that in a genuine context.


One flaw in the game that was not a big issue in this one but would become so later, was the strength of 'special' units. In this game, the key unit type was the Yamabushi, Buddhist warrior monks. They were a strong unit that could easily defeat others though were not invincible, especially if outnumbered. Conversely, there is no point recruiting arquebus or musket carrying troops in the game as they are so weak; it is better to stick with archers. In reality by the time of the Battle of Sekighara in 1600 the one commander who brought archers was laughed at for being so behind the times. Saying this, as late as 1815, the Duke of Wellington noted that his troops would have had more effect if they had carried bows rather than muskets. However, it must have been more than fashion that led daimyo to abandon bows in favour of guns by the late 16th century. In this, however, game you are lucky if a whole unit of musketeers can kill a single infantryman or cavalryman.


The styling of the game was important in adding to the engaging experience.  Things like the style of the frames, the shouting of the soldiers in Japanese and especially the music and incidental sounds gave the game a real flavour.  Unlike the following games in the series, this first one made great use of mini animated movies, notably when you are approached by the representatives of other daimyo (provincial rulers), the Portuguese or Dutch and when you launch an assassination attempt against a general or daimyo.  Ninja feature in the game as do other strategic characters like ambassadors.  After a while the movies became a little repetitive but were great for adding flavour.

The cut scenes at the climax of the game had an approach I would love other wargame programmers to copy.  Assuming you are victorious, a little movie plays outlining what happens in Japan after your faction has won.  Even if you have been a Christian faction you end up kicking out the foreigners and banning Christianity in the way the Tokugawa did.  However, the final scene is of a precinct in modern Japan at night and the camera goes past a statue of whichever leader you picked to play the game as.  As a counter-factual fan I just loved seeing an Uesugi or Mori or Imagawa shogun being celebrated at the end because of what I had done.


One of the advantages of battling in medieval Japan is that it is finite.  Though you could easily spend weeks playing the game, the conquest of Japan could be achieved in a few days' worth of hard gaming covering a few decades of conflict.  This is in contrast to subsequent games in the series in which you can be battling over four centuries to conquer the whole of Europe or North Africa, fun, but a different experience.  The Total War series has evolved in sophistication since 2000 and it is nice to see that a sequel 'Shogun 2: Total War' is planned for 2011 with you able to play one of eight factions in the years following the Onin War of 1467-77 CE.


The success of 'Shogun Total War' led to the release of expansion kit in August 2001.  This added extra troop types and historic battles to the original game and altered the representation of the maps, doing away with some of the movies too.  However, the game now opened with a extract from the movie 'Ran' (1985) by Akira Kurosawa which certainly got you in the mood for gaming.  The expansion allowed you to start you campaign in different periods rather than always starting from the same year as in the original game and it was interesting to start in an era when each of the factions was much weaker.  The big new opportunity was to play in the 13th century facing the Mongol invasion of Japan, which they attempted to do in reality in 1274 and 1281.  The Mongols had a whole different set of troops and the challenges of being an invading rather than an indigenous force.  The Japanese still had crossbowmen, a unit that had gone out of style by the 16th century.  It was interesting to play a different type of army and at least in this game the Mongols can be beaten.  A new ending was added for if the Mongols won which showed a statue of Kublai Khan in the precinct, talking about Japan as just a province of the great Mongol empire, very nicely counter-factual.


Medieval Total War
The release of 'Medieval Total War' in August 2002 by The Creative Assembly and Activision was as much of a step forward in computer wargaming as the release of 'Shogun Total War' had been two years before.  This game also won mainstream appeal and topped the charts for sales.  You did notice though a lot were dumped onto the second hand market pretty quickly as a lot of gamers more used to first/third person shooting games sold off their copies pretty quickly.  'Medieval Total War' needed real commitment.  Its scope covered all of Europe and North Africa in the period 1087-1453 (i.e. the fall of Constantinople to the Turks) and evenings could go by and you would find you had only covered a couple of years in the game.  It could take months to complete a whole game, though you could start in 1205 or 1321 if you preferred.


The approach of the game was similar to 'Shogun Total War' combining the strategic map divided into provinces on which you moved the tokens representing your armies and then the three-dimensional battles.  In 'Shogun Total War' there had only been one battlefield per province.  In 'Medieval Total War' the battlefield you came onto in a province depended on the direction you had marched into the province from.  There was again a variety of weather, everything from snow and thunderstorms to desert sandstorms.  Sometimes it was almost impossible to find your opponent in the fog or whirling sand.  There was a huge range of factions, covering the leading powers of the time.  A lot of actors were employed to give appropriate voices to the different nations which varied from England, France and the Holy Roman Empire right over to the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires and the Egyptians.  There was a huge range of different troops, some unique to particular factions.  Covering such a time period there was evolution in weaponry as the years passed.  Religion also played a part with priests, imams, crusades and jihads, all available.  You could win by achievements such as building a particular cathedral or holding specific provinces but the usual way to victory was conquest of the whole map.  I found when I travelled to the countries concerned, and in this period I went abroad far more often than now, I would come back wanting to play the state I had visited.  In this way played 'Italy' after visiting Venice and the Holy Roman Empire after travelling around Germany, France after a holiday in Normandy, then Spain after going to Barcelona.


Again, there was attention to historic detail (though in some cases playability meant conflating some things, such as having an 'Italy' rather than a multiplicity of states) and the landscapes and buildings were a delight to look at.  The atmosphere was assisted by the voice acting (even the sounds of camels were used where appropriate) and the music was different for the location you were battling in.  There was also a greater role play element as different rulers, generals and agents developed different characteristics and could become more or less loyal to their faction, offering the chance for rebellions and civil wars. 

This was an immensely engaging game.  You could play the same faction and have completely different outcomes.  Developments could be happening in other parts of the world without you being aware of them.  I remember realising when playing 'Italy' that history had diverged greatly when the 'Earl of Wessex' turned up in a battle and he was from the Egyptian faction.  You could award your generals various titles adding to their management or command abilities, a nice feature that was dropped in subsequent games.


'Medieval Total War' had a siege function which allowed you to attack castles and forts.  It was seen as rather simplistic and the catapults wrecked castles in minutes rather than the days or weeks it took in reality (even when cannon came in), but I suppose that was a compromise to playability.  The problem of special units began to be very apparent in this game.  You would see a single Kataphrakt cavalryman (a heavily armoured unit from the Byzantine Empire) managing to battle off two hundred spearmen for ages, inflicting a numerous casualties.  While the special units should have been tough, in this game they became superhuman.  In such a situation the Kataphrakt would have probably been crushed by the crowd let alone pierced through with numerous spears.  The Mongols appeared in this game and were hard to defeat even in circumstances that they were defeated in real life, i.e. fighting in forests or over ploughed and hedge-rowed farmland.  I know that the Mongols were a potent force and drew on sophisticated Chinese technology to successfully besiege cities and it was more luck that spared Europe from them, but they were certainly not immune to damage and coming up against longbowmen, the Mongols and their horses would certainly have suffered far more casualties than the minimal ones they do in this game. 

Rebellions and civil wars are always a challenging aspect of wargames with a strategic aspect, but in 'Medieval Total War' they were particularly troublesome.  The key difficulty was that the rebels and groups, such as returning factions that had previously been eliminated, would have such strong armies suddenly appearing meaning that you could do nothing except flee the province.  These armies were often far larger than the province could have sustained, and yet, even holding a single province these rebels did not lose troops over time in a way you would have to do yourself with such a small territory as you would not be able to fund the upkeep of the troops and would soon face bankruptcy.  I can accept that medieval rebels often had noblemen and knights at their core and that they could often draw on foreign forces and mercenaries, but certainly they could not draw people from the future.  Often you would find the rebels with far more sophisticated weaponry than the highest level available anywhere in your empire or those of your neighbours, making it very hard to raise an army well enough equipped to defeat the rebels.  I am glad to say that this aspect was rectified to a large extent in the following games.


Another difficulty which would increase in subsequent games was using strategic agents.  These were people like princesses, ambassadors, spies and assassins.  In the latter case it was almost impossible to build up their expertise as their death rate when carrying out the first few missions was prohibitive and it was pretty much pointless spending money to recruit these agents.  Despite these flaws, this game kept me entertained for years.


In January 2003, the expansion 'Medieval Total War - Viking Invasion' was released.  It added some new factions to the original game and things like flaming arrows.  Importantly you now could line up the order in which different reinforcing troops would arrive on the battlefield rather than having them coming randomly as before, which meant often your weakest, smallest units would appear and soon flee, just when you needed the best troops to tip the balance of the battle. 

The expansion also introduced a whole new campaign, purely focused on western Scandinavia and the British Isles 793-1066 CE, i.e. from the start of the Viking raids to the Battle of Hastings.  In this era, generally the technology was less advanced; in particular it took longer to develop farming.  As the game wore on some units appear which really belong in later centuries, but given that it is counter-factual if the Vikings had gone to war in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland as they tend to do full scale in this game, then new types of force may have developed.  The Viking expansion campaign is one of my favourites.  I liked turning the whole British Isles into a Pagan Viking kingdom, though you can convert to Christianity if you like.  You can play as Saxons, Mercians, Lancastrians, Welsh, Scots and Irish too, each with distinct units. For the first time, rebel factions were named and would collaborate with other rebels rather than just clinging to a single province.  I think, as with 'Shogun Total War', the finite nature of the game focused on one region adds something.  Again, the early medieval music and styling of the game really contributes to your engagement with game.


Rome Total War
'Rome Total War' was released in September 2004.  It is probably the most seen game outside the gaming community as it was used as the basis of the television series 'Time Commanders' (2003-5).  In the programme teams of non-wargamers had to command a particular force in an Ancient battle, sometimes doing surprisingly well, for example, defeating the Germans trying to kill Varus's legion in 9 CE and other times failing very badly.  The graphics were of a standard deemed good enough to use on television so it is unsurprising that we waited with anticipation for the game to be released.

The game covered the period from the 4th century BCE in the preliminary stage and then 270 BCE-14 CE in the main part of the game. Now, rather than having a map of provinces into which tokens representing your armies were put, the armies actually walked around a relief map and would often struggle to find a fast route or get backed up behind other armies.  The computer-run factions never made such errors, always moving the armies precisely which put humans at a disadvantage and needed you to make regular saves when trying to assemble a sizeable force just in case your army decides it wants to walk to the target location by a very round-about route.

Conversely the ships that your opponents use are far better at tracking down your fleets than even modern day warships are with all their radar and other equipment.  I found it galling that, given even in the 1800s, Lord Nelson had to chase the French fleet back and forth across the Atlantic before bringing them to battle, in this game I found that whenever one of my ships or a fleet set out it was immediately intercepted by my enemies, no matter which route it took.  As with the agents, this made it very difficult to build up an experienced fleet which meant that even if you came up against a weaker fleet you would often lose.  Given that much of the game is around the Mediterranean, again this made it far harder for human players.  In contrast to the computer-run factions who always found you straight off, as a human you would often spend ages sending your ships back and forth trying to find the elusive enemy fleets, just as Nelson was to do 2000 years later.


Though the graphics had been improved and the successful mix of strategy and three-dimensional battles was continued, during development, playability seems to have won out over historical accuracy.  The attention to detail in terms of armour and weaponry was excellent, the key problem was in the political set-up.  Rather than having most of Italy under the rule of the Roman Senate, in the game this only controls the Rome itself and much of the peninsula is divided into three Roman factions: the Brutii, the Julii and the Scipii.  Annoyingly it is as one of these factions that you have to complete the preliminaries before unlocking other factions.  The Gauls are shown as controlling less of Italy than was the case in reality.   A key problem for all the Total War games from this stage on is that there are really too few cities on the game (this is often one of the first thing fan-created modifications alter) and, with your armies having to tramp between them, it can be very frustrating.


Another flaw is the portrayal of the Egyptian forces.  By the time the Romans interacted with the Egyptians they were under the control of the Ptolemies, a Greek dynasty, who had been in power since 305 BCE.  Alexander the Great had conquered Egypt in 332 BCE and, after Alexander's death, Ptolemy, one of his companions, took over running Egypt in 323 BCE, ultimately establishing a dynasty.  Whilst the later Ptolemies (the last of the dynasty was the famous Cleopatra VII, lover of Mark Anthony and Julius Caesar) tended towards Egyptian dress and style, the earlier ones had been clearly more Greek or, at least, Macedonian in culture.  Thus, it is anachronistic to see the Egyptian forces in chariots and with axes of a style that was centuries out of date by the time this game begins.  Their forces should look more like those of Macedonia or the Seleucids, another successor kingdom to Alexander's empire, controlling modern Iran.  The game developers apparently did not want another phalanx based army and felt mainstream gamers would prefer the traditional Egyptian forces.  They are fun, the chariots are unstable but deadly.  However, it would have been better to have an expansion or something that went back in time to before Alexander if they wanted to include these.  That would have been interesting as you could have also had the tribes of Italy such as the Samnites, Latins and Etruscans battling for dominance of Italy.


Obviously the game allows lots of nice counter-factuals such as Carthage being victorious and the Roman Empire being destroyed by the Gauls or even the Macedonians.  As in all the Total War games, the scope for shaking up history is immense.  What I also like is that the Marian Reforms kick in at a different period each time you play the game.  In our history these were introduced to the Roman Army by Gaius Marius in 107 BCE and transformed the leveed, three-line structure into the legion system with the armour and weaponry that we generally think of as being the classic Roman Army.  In the game, these reforms can come earlier or later, because some other general introduces them instead.


I enjoyed 'Rome Total War', but, like many players, was irked by the anachronisms and lack of historical accuracy.  This is when I was told about how fans were developing their own modifications to games.  This has always been the case with strategic games, it was a phenomenon I noticed as far back as the days of 'Caesar III' (1998) a classic city-building game set in Roman times.  On the internet you are able to find tens and tens of new scenarios, some historic, some fantastical (e.g. Romans in China or in a chequer-board land-lake country) developed by fans.  Strategic games requiring months of work to play attract attentive people often with the computing skills to develop modifications.


For 'Rome Total War' the modification which stands out above all others is 'Rome Total Realism', released in 2005.  It made the game into what it should have been.  It has an immense attention to historical detail and more complex development in terms of building up your territories.  There were a great deal more cities which made the game more engaging and playable.  It also stretched the map East as far as India allowing much more involvement of the Seleucids and the Bactrians. Development has gone on to the stage that we are now at Version VII with sub-sets such as battle for the western Mediterranean and the Carthaginian invasion of Iberia.  I never went back to the original game.


There were official two expansions to 'Rome Total War' and the first of these 'Barbarian Invasion', released in September 2005, is probably my favourite of all the Total War settings.  It covers the period 363-476 CE when the Roman Empire had split into two and Europe was facing 'hordes' of steppe peoples, notably the Huns and people they had displaced, such as the Goths and Vandals, coming into the continent.  In this game, when rebellions break out, especially in the Roman empires, new factions can appear which is a nice aspect rather than having generally nameless rebels to oppose.  You can actually enter into diplomatic relations with these rebel forces.  In previous games you could only bribe them to join you.

It is a difficult game, because if you start as a settled faction or are one of the nomadic ones which settles (as happened with the Goths in Spain and Vandals in North Africa in reality) you have these immense hordes to contend with and it is difficult to bring sufficient forces to bear on them.  However, this is an era which is less well covered in popular histories and elements such as the nomadic peoples, the competition between Christianity, Zoroastrianism (practised in the Sassanid empire of modern day Iran/Iraq) and Paganism is interesting.  Within Christianity some individuals follow 'heretical' views too, such as Arianism or Donatism.  The troop types are very varied, being the link between the classic Roman legions and more medieval style units.  I ended up playing a modification which started in 420 CE but allowed you to play more factions and gave the Sassanids some half decent infantry for the first time.  Playing as the Romano-British restoring the empire is fun, as is playing as some of the horde factions.


The 'Alexander' expansion set came out in the Summer of 2006, but I was deep in 'Barbarian Invasion' still and though I bought it, I have never played it.  It covers the brief period of Alexander the Great's conquests 336-332 BCE.  Rather than encompassing a season or a year as in the previous Total War games, each turn in this one covers 7 weeks.  It allows you as the Macedonians (the only playable faction) to fight some of Alexander's greatest battles.  This kind of approach was not followed up with other generals, it would have been good to follow Julius Caesar or as with the latest Rome Total Realism expansion, Hannibal.  Despite the timing I wonder if the release was triggered by interest in Alexander following the 2004 movie.


Medieval II Total War
This was effectively an update of 'Medieval Total War' introducing the relief map approach pioneered in 'Rome Total War' to the medieval period.  It was released in November 2006.  Though The Creative Assembly developed the game, the publisher was now Sega rather than Activision.  Sega also took over publishing the previous games and the various bundled packs that included them.  It maintained the mix of strategic turn-based and tactical real-time battles.  It covered a longer time period running from 1080-1530 though in 2-year turns.  Of course, many of us added on a modification to return this to single year steps.  The longer time period allowed the introduction of the discovery of the Americas and the chance to build an empire there, fighting groups like the Aztecs.  This opened up wonderful counter-factual opportunities such as an Almorad empire in Mexico.  Gunpowder units also got to play a larger part by the end of the game.


Many of the flaws I have noted above, continued, for example the fleets able to flawlessly track you down.  In this game the Mongols were even tougher than before and it was basically pointless playing eastern states such as the Poles or Novgorod after the Mongol invasion of 1240.  Interestingly, given that the Mameluke Egyptians were able to defeat the Mongol forces in reality, they find it far harder to achieve that in this game.  In addition, forces such as the Timurids with elephants carrying cannon on their backs (a historically authentic force) are again almost impossible to defeat.  The only way to see off such forces is to jam them in the streets of a fortified town.  Even here the Mongol cavalry are far more effective than they would have been in reality.  The overwhelming nature of the Mongol faction totally imbalances the game and makes it pointless to play some of the factions.

The use of catapults on the battlefield was ridiculous.  Siege weapons were wheeled and as a Channel 4 programme proved a few years ago, trebuchet actually work better when on wheels rather than fixed.  However, never in human history were catapults able to move around the battlefield like armoured vehicles of modern day.  Even a ballista, effectively a huge crossbow would take time to move into place, let alone to get it firing accurately.  However, in 'Medieval II Total War' you can have your troops aligned at a top of a hill and find they are being shelled accurately from the first shot and at angle that would be challenging even for modern day artillery.  Try doing the same in reverse and you find your catapults drop rocks everywhere else but on the enemy.  I know they are supposed to build up experience and become more accurate over time, but it proves very difficult to gain experience as you only get that when your missiles kill enemy soldiers, not from breaking down walls which was their prime purpose.  This is a terrible imbalance between the human players and the computer ones.  The sight of catapults trundling around the battlefield (even in Napoleonic times cannon were hauled by up to 16 oxen) and firing so accurately up hill, would be comic if it was not frustrating.


The problem with agents was increased.  The introduction of merchants who could be sent to exploit particular resources was a nice addition.  However, they were driven out of business almost immediately by more experienced computer-run merchants.  This meant your merchants could never build up the experience to see off such challenges.  As with other agents in the previous game, this left you feeling there was no point in recruiting them. 

Inquisitors sent by the Papacy or other factions could also make your life impossible, especially if the Papacy, as a military power, turned against you.  When playing Spain I could not move any of my generals out of cities without them being seized by an inquisitor and being immediately executed.  Despite diplomatic efforts, I could not win the Papacy back over and so was doomed as my dynasty was steadily wiped out. 

The capricious nature of the diplomatic system was also frustrating.  However, hard you worked to build up alliances and good relations, it only needed one state to decide to attack you and generally you found all your allies deserted you immediately and you were almost instantly against the bulk of factions.  On one hand diplomatic relations were hard work, that was proper, but the way the systems crumbled as a result of nothing you had done, was frustrating and again made you not bother to engage with this aspect.  Given that the game designers had balanced playability against historical accuracy, you think they could have better balanced these aspects too.


Ulitmately, of course, I turned to modifications which better balanced the game play and also introduced far more cities and allowed you to play different factions.  The amount of work amateurs put into these modifications is astounding.  Some simply produce new 'skins' e.g. so that the soldiers appear in particular armour; some introduce new factions, I remember Portuguese and Swedish players providing modifications so you could play their countries, others bringing about an overhaul of the whole game.  Being able to tweak the game because of these modifications has certainly allowed me to enjoy it more and be able to overcome the flaws that the game designers seem unable/unwilling to tackle.

The game producers are a very defensive bunch and the official online discussion fora, though very active, are strenuously policed and anything which is critical of the game is shut down.  I believe this comes from the corporate culture of Sega which, in line with many other Japanese corporations, is happy to elicit fans support but is unwilling to stomach any, even mild, criticism.  This kind of attitude in the software/media context was well characterised by the cyberpunk author William Gibson in his novel 'Idoru' (1996) though interestingly he overlooked internet-based updates of a bought database.


In August 2007 the expansion pack was launched called 'Medieval II Total War - Kingdoms'.  This unfortunately did not update the Viking Invasion expansion of 2003 but provided four new regional scenarios.  These were Teutonic campaign set along the Baltic coast in the 13th century allowing you to play the Teutonic Knights, their opponents the Pagan Lithuanians and other regional powers such as Poland, Novgorod and Denmark.  Obviously the Teutonic Knights with their overblown armour and their bullish approach are an attractive force to play.  Playing as the beleaguered Lithuanians is a real challenge, especially if you remain Pagan.  An interesting phenomenon are the crusading 'tourists', European nobles who pay to fight with the Teutonic Knights and reward the faction depending on how much action they see.  This is based on actual historical developments.  The Mongols appear, and whilst a challenge are not unassailable, as they are in the original game.


The Crusader States in the the 12th century, provide another scenario,which is very enjoyable and opens up wonderful counter-factual opportunities.  Of course, if you do not behave as foolishly as some of the crusaders did, you can hold on to Jerusalem far longer.  You can play as the Principality of Antioch (encompassing the County of Edessa and its specific troops too), a state which has always fascinated me (though in the game they speak French rather than Occitan) as well as the Kingdom of Jerusalem (including the County of Tripoli), the Turks, Egyptians or Byzantines.  There are interesting units and it is good to have a finite space in which to operate without the game going on for centuries.


The Britannia campaign is set in the mid-13th century when part of the British Isles was controlled by Norway.  The ability to build forts across the map had been available since 'Rome Total War' but in this game they can be developed further freeing you a little from the established geography.  This is a pretty straight forward campaign good if you like the standard game but want to play something a little quicker.

The Americas campaign is the most exotic allowing you to play the Spanish settlers in Central America and various tribes, not only the Aztecs and Mayans but also lesser known ones such as the Chichimeca, Tlaxcalans and Tarascans.  Aside from the Spanish, no-one, bar the plains tribes you later encounter, has cavalry, so it is a different form of warfare with specialised troops, wearing outstandingly colourful uniforms, in some cases.  It is again a great opportunity for counter-factuals, especially playing an American tribe pushing the Spanish back into the sea or ruling an Aztec empire running from Florida to Venezuela.  The Kingdoms games all seem pretty balanced and whilst you face different challenges when playing different factions, these scenarios seemed more rounded in the way 'Shogun Total War' and to a great extent, 'Medieval Total War', had been.


Empire Total War
The Total War series has always demanded the latest specification in computers.  I had to delay playing 'Medieval II Total War' until I bought a new machine.  With 'Empire Total War' I had to wait from March 2009 when the game was released until November when I got a job that gave me a powerful enough laptop to play the game.  Unfortunately, having been laid off, my second redundancy in 12 months, I had to give it back and currently cannot play this game. 

'Empire Total War' marked a change in the way you access the game.  Up until now generally people bought the CD/DVD-ROM and loaded the game that way.  Being able to purchase it and download had come with 'Medieval II Total War'.  However, with 'Empire Total War' even if you bought the game on disk you still had to access the game via the Steam website.  This did enable updates to be installed more easily an aspect which was more important after the huge patches such as the 1.2 patch of 613MB for 'Medieval II Total War'.  It did mean, though, that if playing on a wireless-equipped laptop in a town with erratic coverage (as I did), you would often find yourself unable to play whereas before being able simply to stick the disk in and play had been a benefit of the earlier games.  To some degree it may have also been a way to draw some attention away from the modifications provided by amateurs, because these days 'Rome Total Realism' is a bigger draw than the original game.  By letting out new troops and other upgrades at regular intervals, it keeps the interest of the core fans of the Total War games coming back and raises revenue as though reasonably priced these upgrades are not free.


I had long been awaiting a game set in the Napoleonic period and had had my hopes dashed by 'Imperial Glory' (2005) with its pathetically small units and repetitive missions though with surprisingly excellent naval combat that 'Empire Total War' seems to have copied, and 'Crown of Glory' (2007) which was fine on the economic management but weak on the battles.  However, 'Empire Total War' just covered the 18th century.  Again, as with 'Barbarian Invasion' it was a bold move to focus on a less well known period and actually makes for a very interesting game.  There are three zones: Europe/North Africa, the Americas and the Indian subcontinent, though, in fact, you can walk from that zone into and out of Europe/North Africa.  With gunpowder weapons being dominant the gaming is different to the previous titles.  The muskets inflict what seems to be an accurate amount of damage rather than being underpowered as had been the case from 'Shogun Total War' onwards.  You can play a whole host of factions and states like the United Provinces and Poland-Lithuania turn up.  I also like the fact that you can play the Indian states of the Maratha Confederacy and Mughal Empire and can kick the Europeans out of India (and, in fact, out of Europe).


The big jump was in terms of naval battles which is appropriate for the era.  On previous Total War games naval battles were resolved without you participating.  This meant that as a skilled commander you could not pull off a clever victory over a larger force in the way you could on land.  Having been playing these games for a decade now, I imagine if I dropped through time to one of these periods, my experience in fighting hundreds of battles from 240 BCE to 1800 CE would allow me at least to make a good showing with any army I commanded, but that may just be an illusion.  Anyway, the naval combat, dependent on winds and capabilities of the ships, is very interesting and needs you to develop a whole different skill set to charging a group of concealed cavalry in to save the battle.  You can see your powerful fleet outmanoeuvred by a weaker force with wind on their side.


Many of the flaws of the past seemed to have been rectified.  No faction is so powerful that like the Mongols it wrecks the game.  Agents still seem difficult to keep alive, but there are more chances of escape from a failed mission than there have ever been before so you are not getting through spies on a turn-by-turn basis.  You can also control members of your government too, though you naturally have less power in a democracy than those factions with an authoritarian government.

The technological developments are interesting, fostered by 'gentlemen', 'scholars' or 'brahmin' at your universities.  Ironically, the political gains make your population restless for more and you can find yourself demolishing universities to keep down clamour for reform.  Weapon developments have a real impact on the battlefield, for example having bayonets.  They also allow the recruitment of specific units and types of ships.

What is nice is how many factions there are and it is interesting dealing with small states like Bavaria or Savoy.  The diplomacy is rather cranky.  States make unreasonable demands, such as demanding you giving them all your American colonies and they get aggressive if you refuse.  However, if you want to try to swap technology even to get one advance, you have to bribe them with money and a whole slew of technological advancements. There is a real imbalance here.  I accept that states will work to get a good advantage but they seem unwilling to compromise, asking repeatedly for very generous offers even when you are far more powerful than them.  Why does Denmark demand Virginia, steam engine technology and 2000 gold in exchange for just telling me about field enclosure?

The real let-down of this game for me was the 'Road to Independence' section based on the Thirteen Colonies and the American War of Independence.  I had hoped to fight the war in its own right, but rather you get almost a training series of connected missions, the early ones of which are very easy.  You can only get to play the colonies, not the British.  I imagine this is a sop for the American consumers, who, as I have noted here before, are always unhappy with any game that allows players to overturn the 'manifest destiny' of the USA and let another country win. See my posting: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2007/11/denying-counter-factual-issues-around.html  This is a shame because the British could have won the war so changing US and British history.  In the main game, if you rule the Thirteen Colonies well, then they remain a British protectorate and the USA (or another grouping of American states with a crown in the place of the ring of stars on the flag) only appears through rebellion.  As the British in the main game, I never let this gain ground so never effectively has a war of independence.  This element of the game, is not really, as suggested on Wikipedia, an expansion, it is there in the original game.

The real expansion for 'Empire Total War' is 'Napoleon Total War', rather than this being a separate game as Wikipedia suggests.  You need the former game installed in order to put 'Napoleon Total War' on.  This came in February 2010 and finally allowed the playing on the Napoleonic Wars one of the most popular settings for wargamers whether with figures or on computers.  Aside from simplistic, though interesting games of the late 1990s, computer wargamers had been denied a decent Napoleonic set game. 

This game adopts a mission-focused approach with Napoleon's fight at Toulon then his campaigns in Italy and Egypt to get through before you can begin conquering the whole of Europe or playing one of the states opposing him.  This is great fun.  I managed to conquer Russia by 1808 and launch a successful invasion of Britain after the inconclusive Battle of Portsmouth of 1805.  Alternatively, you can unite Germany under Prussian dominion 70 years early.  You do not have to conquer every territory, you can create protectorates which retain their identity but work with you.  This nicely reflects how Napoleon ran his empire, for example creating numerous Italian and German republics and a Polish kingdom rather than ruling them from France.  An expansion kit focused on the Peninsular War 1808-14 is promised.  This would be good, as if you play well in the main game you can have victory by 1808 and so miss out on the Spanish and Portuguese resistance, backed by Britain, which, second only to the Retreat from Moscow, was a key factor in bringing down Napoleon.  I just have to see if I can get hold of a powerful enough computer by the time it comes out.

I have no idea how many hours/days of my life have been spent playing the Total War games.  Some would say it was time wasted, but it has been a key aspect of my leisure time for the past decade and I expect it will be well into the 2010s.  I am not alone in my dedication to and enjoyment of the games, there are thousands of us out there.  Probably many are those men of a certain age who once would have played figure-based wargames on tables, though despite the complexity of the games I know younger people who enjoy the games too.  The combination of wonderful graphics and audio with interfaces which quickly become intuitive and the combination of strategy and tactics are what make these games so easily engaging.  They are not without their flaws and these can be incredibly frustrating at times.  Fortunately modifications produced by amateurs, but as good as much professionally produced work, can overcome these.  The community of Total War fans is an added strength of playing these games and for me has continued my engagment with them when I might have turned away a little exasperated.  As I have noted above, this is pretty common for strategy games, as the woman in my house has found when digging out modifications and additional scenarios for 'Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile' (2005) city-building game.  While the companies may be ambivalent towards fan-produced material, they should see it keeps a base of support alive which is liable to snap up their next official product.  Over the years I have thoroughly enjoyed turning history on its head and I have no doubt I will continue to do so, returning to these games even when they look terribly dated.