Creative Assembly have kept us waiting a very long time indeed. Initially rumored as a patch for the first in the series, some eight years later it seems we might finally get the highly desired campaign. Not straight out of the box, of course, but in the form of, well, a patch. So it is a very good thing that have seen fit to stuff Empire: Total War with lots of new toys for series aficionados.

Moving us forward a good few hundred years since the last installment, Medieval 2, Empire finally takes us into the realm of the rifle and the square formation. Sure, rudimentary firearms were present in the very first Total War game, Shogun, and explosives have crept into latter titles, but Empire is the first time that melee weapons are sheathed in favor of tons of gunpowder and iron balls. It is also the first time that ship combat is handled using the same battle engine which has brought the series such accolades, rather than being taken care of by an unseen roll of the dice as before. And they are impressive affairs; beautifully rendered ships animated wonderfully, with cannon balls flying and sailors scurrying all over the rigging it has been engineered into a real gaming thrill. In the past if your trade routes were being suppressed by enemy fleets then your only option was to build a load of vessels, create a fleet and fling them onto the enemy then sit back and pray for victory. No longer do you need to leave this up to the gods that reside inside your CPU. You can now take direct control of your ships and show those dogs exactly how things are done when it is your colors that are fluttering from the masthead. The years spent toiling on the ship combat until it was something which the developers were comfortable including in the game have evidently been spent well. This is no simple case of lining up your ships and clicking 'Blast 'em!'. The tactics go as far as allowing you to bring down the masts of an opponent's ship with the area-effect of grapeshot, and then send over the boarding party to capture the now stricken vessel. The battles truly are a sight to behold, and for people who have been yearning for a naval combat simulator from the last age when ship to ship combat involved getting close and personal, Empire is pretty much a worthy purchase just for this single element. Maneuvering you fleet so they can take the wind just right that it brings them into the perfect alignment to rain murderous fire on top of the enemy ships is no easy task, yet it's highly satisfying even in the attempt.

However, I get terrible sea-sickness so it's a good thing that Empire not only continues to include and improve upon the land battles which have brought it so much attention, but the screen has blossomed with far more fullness than any young media maiden who has recently come of age. The main theater of is broken down into close to a dozen major nations with many, many more minor nations. A number of these minor nations are nowhere to be found at first, as they occupy one of the other two new theatres, North America and the Indian subcontinent. Add in three additional trade areas and the scope of Empire is immediately stupefying. It took me a number of hours to realize just how vast this title was, and I'm not new to the series. The map looks fantastic and while some of the clarity of old is inevitably swamped under Technicolor pizzazz it doesn't take long to grab the UI by both hands and use it to steer your nation into the face of the enemy. Towns and industrial sites spin reminding icons above them when they have buildings that need upgrading. Lots of lists and menus make the new concept of delegating production away from centralized cities and into the surrounding countryside that much easier to cope with. However, when you find yourself with a large number of farms, sheep farms, weavers, iron mines, silver mines, barracks, ports, universities, and more to manage you find yourself pining for some more effective filtering when you are trying to get an overall view of your empire's status. CA have done a commendable job with the interface's utility but I continue to wonder why such are not addressed during the testing phase.

You will have plenty of time to rue some of the design decisions that have been made as the campaigns are of an epic nature. Even the shortest of the Grand Campaigns lasts 50 years. With each year comprising a winter and summer turn you can easily appreciate that this is not a game to be completed in one sitting. Which, in my opinion, is fantastic stuff; just the sort of thing I look for in a game. For those a little more pressed for time and for whom even the automatic battle resolutions are not enough, there are a number of smaller linked campaigns which deal with the Road to Independence of the American colonies. However, the game takes even longer to play as the AI turns take an inordinate amount of time, and the whole interface becomes more sluggish as your empire grows in size. In this day and age it seems a real shame that support for multi-core processors is evidently absent.

While playing this game last night a friend was over. He asked me what was the main situation you had to deal with in the game. After thinking for a bit, I realized it was this: making sure your armies are hard enough to deal with the other armies. The joy in the strategy game comes from keeping your population in the right state to allow the clever clogs to come up with new ways of killing and producing while not spending so much money that you cannot afford the troops you need to keep yourself safe. Of course, by attempting to surround yourself with allies you can reduce the need for actual troops, but an AI that understandably - given the historical context - is not keen on exchanging pleasantries about the weather for 100 years ensures that you will enter some combat at one time or another. Couple that with a truculent diplomatic corps and your chances of erecting a shield of allies are also somewhat slim. So, no matter for how long you may try to follow the path of peace, eventually there's going to be a fight. This is actually quite handy, as you're never going to actually win the game without conquering enemy territories; it's not called Empire: Total Accord, after all. Of course, you have more subtle means at your disposal, such as agents of either the cloth or the stiletto, but when push comes to shove it all boils down to guns and bigger guns and who has more of them and who has the ones that make the biggest bangs. That, and tactics.