[Marcov]

Well, the game where you play a Daimyo and have ninjas to assassinate generals and have armies, and were the battles can get quite boring unless you let the computer decide the winner.

[General Battuta]

Sequel's coming out pretty soon. There were also about five games in between (Medieval, Rome, Medieval Two, Empire, Napoleon)

[NGTM-1R]

I'm still pretty upset with them over the failure to properly betatest Empire. It has far too many showstopper bugs.

On the other hand, the naval combat is a lot of fun. Though I may perhaps be enjoying sending in the HMS Victory special unit and seven Heavy First Rates in to beat up on the AI's frigate collections a little much.

[Dilmah G]

This has reminded me to go out and buy the rest of the series. Although last time I sat down and played a 'Total War' game, I'm quite sure I lost weight and eyesight...from the awesome, of course.

[General Battuta]

they're almost all ****; Rome was the last good one

[Flipside]

Was Rome the one with the Greek states in it? I always remember the curiously Scottish accent of the Spartan captains

[Pred the Penguin]

Rome really was the most enjoyable despite the botched naval warfare. Medieval 2 wasn't all bad though, plus it's modability is big plus.

Also, I'm pretty sure I won't have a computer in the near future that is capable of playing Shogun 2.

Was Rome the one with the Greek states in it? I always remember the curiously Scottish accent of the Spartan captains

Those accents did sound kind of weird... I dunno if they were scottish. And it was Greeks under one nation instead of different states in the game.

[Mongoose]

My brother loves the hell out of Medieval/II (though the former won't run with his video card anymore), and since I bought him Empire for Christmas, I'm sure he'll sink plenty more hours into it.

[NGTM-1R]

they're almost all ****; Rome was the last good one

Medieval 2 is actually pretty good. The AI is cheaty as hell, but at least with the console you can cheat back if it gets unmanageable.

It also doesn't barf with clockwork regularity like Empire.

[zookeeper]

Shogun is/was a great game. The only other of the series I've tried was Medieval 2, and it was so bad I quit after half an hour or so. But Shogun was really enjoyable.

[Spoon]

I'm still pretty upset with them over the failure to properly betatest Empire. It has far too many showstopper bugs.

This, a thousand times this.
I actually broke my disk of that game (and recently discovered I still have it on steam :/ ) out of rage. Game was crashing every other turn, never finished the grand campaign I started because the game was so full of ****.

The best part, they released a patch which supposely fixed a crash that occured when you clicked on one of your fleets. I never suffered from that crash before the patch, after the patch though... yeah, now I can't use any of my fleets because lolcrash.
what a load of utterhorse ****, I still rage when I think back about it. Utterly inexcusable to release the game in that state. And instead of properly fixing it they just released that napoleon expansion for some more quick cash in.
Shogun II has me interested but I'll be damned before I ever buy a game from that company again

Multiplayer was fun as long as both sides agreed not to use the lolmortars. Nice balance testing there too, mortars had like pinpoint accuracy and did massive damage with their explosive shells even though they were the cheapest piece of arty around. All the other shell types didn't seem to do much of anything.

[Turambar]

Medieval 2 has mods like Stainless Steel and Third Age that make it awesome.  Empire and Napoleon were released without mod tools, and thus have no such mods and are lame.

[QuantumDelta]

What's wrong with empire? x_X
Been playing it since it was on the steam sale an hour a day at least and it hasn't crashed or even whimpered once.

[NGTM-1R]

What's wrong with empire? x_X
Been playing it since it was on the steam sale an hour a day at least and it hasn't crashed or even whimpered once.

There's the end-of-battle hang (never ever continue a land battle to run down fleeing remnants of the enemy like you would in Medi2; sea battles seem to be reasonably safe though), a glitch during fortress attacks that causes a breached fortress wall to create a memory leak that eventually slows the game down to the point it's uncontrollable, and the good old fashioned switch-theater-select-fleet-hang.

Don't get me wrong, I've sunk a good two hours into the game a day since I got it too, it's a good game and I love the naval combat engine to death (even if it's hideously wrong about how hard it is to sink a wooden warship), but it's got some awful problems

[Pred the Penguin]

Shogun is/was a great game. The only other of the series I've tried was Medieval 2, and it was so bad I quit after half an hour or so. But Shogun was really enjoyable.

You should really try out Rome then... Watching actual 3d legionaries marching across the battlefield never gets old.
And like Medieval 2 it has a large number decent mods for it.

[QuantumDelta]

Not had any of that :<

[Grizzly]

they're almost all ****; Rome was the last good one

Medieval 2 is actually pretty good. The AI is cheaty as hell, but at least with the console you can cheat back if it gets unmanageable.

It also doesn't barf with clockwork regularity like Empire.

Medieval 2 was btter then Rome IMO. Mainly because Rome was to much focused on Rome, like they had some sort of inherent awesomeness. Medieval 2 is better balanced IMO.

But yeah, Shogun is completely awesome. But may people overlook the Medieval 2 Kingdoms expansion with it campaigns, which have more or less the same formula (KISS).

[ShadowGorrath]

Played Rome, Medieval II, Empire and Napoleon games. My fave of all is probably Rome Total War. Only reason I liked Medieval II is because of the Stainless Steel and Baltic Total War mods While Rome is just great on its own, not to mention that 'Ogniem i Mieczem' ( Fire and Sword, set around year 1500; has a lot of regions/cities ) mod, as well as a Rome Medieval mod which allows you to play a game similar to Medieval I/II on RTW's engine. Empire and Napoleon aren't that great ( in ETW, France has like two regions only, in Europe ), and while the timeline is more interesting of ETW's, Napoleon Total War is better due to its quality- basically a fully fixed and vastly improved version of ETW, with stuff like being able to liberate nations as well, and set 100 years later.

Never played the original TW games ( Medieval I and Shogun ), so can't say anything about those. Having started with Rome Total War, I probably wouldn't even like them

[QuantumDelta]

I am having a random bug in Empire now I think about it; Armies 'stuck' inside cities, they can't move, they're not garrisoned, and they're not out of movepoints, it's asif they're on the map, but still inside the city walls an unable to move out (*they do seem to be able to fight, but the only way to do anything other than defend with them is basically disband and re-recruit).

[Pred the Penguin]

they're almost all ****; Rome was the last good one

Medieval 2 is actually pretty good. The AI is cheaty as hell, but at least with the console you can cheat back if it gets unmanageable.

It also doesn't barf with clockwork regularity like Empire.

Medieval 2 was btter then Rome IMO. Mainly because Rome was to much focused on Rome, like they had some sort of inherent awesomeness. Medieval 2 is better balanced IMO.

Romans were awesome...
But if you're looking for variety, ton of mods here.