Just got my subscriber edition with the exclusive review. It got 94% After i've read it i'll update with details (but no scans).

edit; Oh, and there's no demo on the disc

Ok I'm back: First off it's the UK edition. The review is by a journalist called Jim Rossignol who is a decent writer but, imo, not the best reviewer. He's also not a long term TW fan despite writing last months retrospective on the other TW games. Chances are he will be looking at the game from a different perspective to us.

Anyway: he says that he went GB in his campaign and the victory conditions were to control Egypt and a chunk of both India and North America. He says that he had to do a lot of "buttering up" to avoid wars with Spain and France to reduce pressure on his shipping and maintain the 13 colonies.

The map is split into two sections: NA and Eurasia. "The core map stretches from Iceland on the top left to Sri Lanka on the Bottom right"

He says the 4 trade regions: SA, the Ivory Coast, the straits of Madagascar and the East Indies are purely coastal.

"Once at war with the Ottoman Empire, my Great Britain campaign saw me bottling up the Ottoman fleet in the Mediterranean, keeping my Atlantic traders safe from attack"

"An empire can have up to 4 eductational establishments and use them to research many different technologies at once."

You have to balance where your money goes between investing in tech and getting the lead on the battlefield and leaving your populace underdeveloped. Not researching democracy leads to negative sentiment and a chance of a revolution.

"the tech tree and research process is one of the areas that Empire seems to have nailed down best." He likes the feedback from the main game based on your choices there whether it better bayonets or increased farm revenue. He says the tech races really pay off and that you can share tech via the diplomacy screen.

It sounds like enemies will raze your outlying towns and infrastrructure if you bunker down in your capital.

The campaign Multiplayer won't ship with the game.

"To take the regions required for a Grand Campaign win condition will always result in armed conflict"

"There's still some errant unit activity" But he says it is improved over previous games.

"The harder AI has been an absolute ******* to take on toe-to-toe. Enemy Generals work to split your ranks or to funnel you into the firing line of cannon, or to avoid your flanking tactics. They'll drive through your lines then fan back around, attempting to split and isolat your troops."

"It starts to feel like a more mature game"

"It's about judging firing arcs and reloading times and coaxing enemies into a killing field"

"The most crucial problem for me isthat the new real-time naval battles, although spectacular, are unconvincing" He says that they don't feel like sailing ships and that the battles just descend into chaos. Managing more than a handful of ships becomes a chore. they're too much like a naval version of land battles rather than a unique approach for a totally different type of warfare. "I found myself rapidly defaulting to auto resolve fleet conflicts"

"the Ai turns remain achingly slow"

Then he writes about how much he loved the game and can't stop playing it.

Info from the box outs and screens: Knights of Malta are in and there's a pirate capital in Antigua.
There are missionaries as campaign map units.
Ports can be fisheries, trading ports or military ports.
the area of influence round ships is sizeable at a gues i'd say it extends about 75 miles in every direction so a single fleet controls about 150miles of coastline. Therefore two fleets will be able to deny the south coast of England to invaders with ease.

For the lulz!!!

Sigh I saw many variations of this clip

So...really....WHEN is E:TW out again?

I'm planning to get this game out of steam thru digital download.
good idea?

Sounds pretty good, I am a single player only so I am very happy to read the AI sounds tough to take one, because in the old versions you had a lot of way to cheese fights against it (kite to towers in sieges, easy to surround and charge from behind etc.)

Now I am getting impatient, will definitely buy a release box when they come to Malaysia 

I just looked at what is inside the Collector edition, not bad, lots of goodies and the wodden box looks neat.

I do not think I will buy it since it's just a big too "big" for me as I am moving very soon but sounds like a good collector.

I just now hope my laptop will be able to run that game without too much slowdown during big battles, I am slightly above the recommended spec so should be fine 

The game graphic itself looks pretty nice, that was always part of the attraction in the Total War series for me: the huge frikking battles with lots of people on each side. As the period handled in this version is one of my favorite, I feel I am gonna love that game.