Can you point me to a campaign screen?

I don't agree however that a global map means better game. Imho the smaller the better. Shogun had only a map of Japan, but it was more detailed. From then on the campaigns grew in scope, but got more and more generic. If we reach a point where all of a whole country - lets say France - is one "province" it gets ridiculous.

The cannon ball thing sounds awesome. Artillery is one of the aspects of this game I'm really looking forward too.

I'm pretty sure they reworked the old province system, since you can found new cities in the game

I think it's high time they completely retooled the strategic aspects of the Total War series. I don't mean add some new features, I mean rip it out, burn it and start over. A fancy 3D map is nice, but I'll take a well-drawn 2D one if it means I get loads of new macromanagement features, new strategic game mechanics. There just isn't much to do in the current strategic portion of the TW series. Well, apart from having to manually move dozens of priests and merchants in the late game.

Ideally, the strategic layer would operate in realtime, and have more of a Europa Universalis or Hearts of Iron feel to it, while we get to keep the wickedness of the current battle layer. Just my opinion, still love the TW franchise, just think while the fighting part keeps getting better, the strategy part is not evolving nearly as much.

From what I heard they massively improved the strategic game, but I doubt it'll be as complicated or real time as HoI, Victoria or EU

Just to chime on with my opinion, I'm also a fan of RTW, especially the Total Realism - mod. Never played STW. I tried out the demo of MTW2 and thought that it wasn't as playable as Rome, somehow controlling a 'block' of dismounted knights or something in a tight formation doesn't seem plausible. Not sure if the core TW - system lends itself to more modern warfare.

Someone mentioned "Caveman - Total War", there actually might be a game there. Controlling different tribes against other tribes for control of food sources etc. :)

What I wonder is how they're going to deal with the Holy Roman Empire in this game, since the way they did it in the last game is obviously not going to cut it in the 18th century

There is a interview from CA about the game and from the information this bloke has said it sounds like its going to be one hell of a game :up:

http://www.gry-online.pl/s014.asp?ID=185

Also steam ships have been confirmed in this interview!!

yep steamships and snowstorms (snow is what we miss in SHIII)
Seems to be a blokbuster empire total war but perhaps to heavy for mij PC :damn:

Steam ships? That means the game will go well into the Victorian era, yay

Yep the snow storms and typhoons sound fantastic. The rain can also affect gunpowder on the ships. ;)

The game will end in 1815 apparently. The bloke said the game will have some technologies that were not actually present at that time

But that's 35 years before the first steam-powered SoL...

I certainly hope not

Good news is there will be a new trailer out tommorow (thur 25th) with the first gameplay clips of the land battles :up:

:rock:

PC Zone published a preview of ETW

Rocket Ships, water based artillery launchers that fling fireworks. Now isn't that incredibly silly?