From my experience the AI is "okey" but very easy to trick.

For example in the battles you can always surround it with few cavalries and it wont do anything about them as long as you keep them a bit far and have your main army in front of him.

So basically go with a big line of line soldiers, send cavalry on the flanks and back, engage with line, charge one "easy" target (archers or light infantry) from the back with cavalry, enemies start to panick and run, snowball effect, you win.

This "strategy" basically would win you most of the battles in the game if the AI does not have a huge numerical/quality superiority.

Total War games have strong single player campaigns that you can play for a long time. The AI is just a small part of it. It is an empire building game too. Not just straight RTS.

I also most of the times never play online but I never regretted buying the Total Wars yet yar, the single player is pretty nice.

I loved how in the medival you unlocked smaller factions after finishing the game the first time, gave it a lots of replay value as some of the races had really different units and buildings.

Dude, Mongols only around early 1200s lah. And no, it wasn't from China entirely. You must understand that when the Mongols invading Europe, those groups weren't the ones who came from China. More like people from the steppes, crushing Abbasid and Khwarezmian kingdoms before going into Europe. Most technologies they brought to Europe were from those fallen kingdoms instead of China. That's just a little bit history for you.

Empire Total War is around the 18th centuries. The time where China already declined in its power.

The origin of cannon is unclear though. Despite Chinese being the first who found gunpowder, it is unsure who actually proposed the idea of putting a big rounded metal into a tube where the tube then ignited to launch the rounded metal onto the target. There's a dispute about who actually using the cannon first; Mongols or Arabs? In fact, the recorded battle of the first usage of cannon was between Mongols and Mamluks that happened not far from Jerusalem. Even if its true that it were Mongols who brought the weapon to the battle, I believed the weapon was taken from the fallen kingdoms that stood along the path of the marauding Mongol armies. I don't really think that Mongols were that capable of doing things back then as they're being expansionists and aggressive. Of course, there's claim that it was Chinese who used a new weapon such as that but no physical evidence over that matter except something that proved to be a hundred years later than what the Arabs-Mongols did and also an account on historical journal.

Each new version was an improvement of the previous ones. Of course people will have their own favourite due to the historical time period etc...So I have no doubt Empire will improve the gameplay dynamics of the series.

What feature? You mean gun powder ah? Gun powder was available in Shogun Total War late game as Dutch expeditions set up missions in Japan and introduced Arquebusiers...well not so late game...more like mid game. You couldn't use them at all in rain...which was cool

PS : The expansion pack for Shogun was Mongol Invasion...So Mongols were there in total war games way back. They didn't have the rocket siege equipment...they had some sort of exploding grenade like thing.

EDIT : Historically a mongol invasion never happened...There was historical evidence of it being planned and even wreakages of invasion fleets of the coast of Japan...Some Japanese early writing cited intervention of the divine wind to help them stop that mongol invasions...
Source : http://www.taots.co.uk/content/view/25/30/

That rocket barrage weapon was origin of Chinese. But it's not like what the game shows though. It's a multiple arrows launcher. In M2TW, the thing can destroy a stone wall (I tried it) but in reality, it's just a bunch of wooden arrows with metal tips that launched against the enemies.
Thus, the origin of Kamikaze appeared at that time. That grenade thing was naphta throwers (in M1TW, it was Naffatun).

There was only seven different factions. All unlocked of course. The whole Unlocking factions thing started in RTW...If I'm not mistaken. The original MTW had all factions playable...of course there was the minor factions that you couldn't play...like Kingdom of Aragorn etc...

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Added on January 14, 2009, 1:52 pm

Yeah all yari this or yari that...but some factions had bonuses to particular units...thats about the only thing unique about them other than faction colour.

MTW brought unique units to each faction.

Release Date 3rd March....not sure for our region yet...also new screenshots in my post...PIRATES!!!

http://malaysian-gamer.blogspot.com/2009/0...nd-minimum.html

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 have one successful naval battles. On the pixel thing...isn't it the same with all previous total wars? There are some animation issues though that I admit.

Total War games all based on this type of engine....zoom in 3d zoom out 2d...that is how they draw that many units on screen.
Exactly what is the issue with naval battle? Is it a technical problem or tactical problem?

The game(the demo) limits your options based on your hardware.