The Dogs of Total War

There are a number of ways to get really stuck into Empire: Total War and the game can easily accommodate to your specific needs by offering a variety of quick battle modes, as well as a small introductory campaign based on the colonization of America.

For acolytes of the series though there’s only one place that the game can really start; this monstrously long and difficult singleplayer extravaganza that’ll devour all your time and probably reward you with only a Game Over screen. It’s called the Grand Campaign and you should fear it more than that man standing behind you.

Made you look.

The Grand Campaign forms the main bulk of the game, with players choosing a country to govern and then trying to eke out an empire throughout Europe, India and America. There’s a massive selection of different countries to choose from, from the obvious British and French factions right through to groups I’ll have to confess to never having heard of, like the Maratha Confederacy.


Each country has a different set of win conditions that detail what territories you have to hold and for how long, the fact that each is unique giving the game a more scaled sense of difficulty than you might expect. Each country starts off differently too, with a quick voiceover telling you the history of your nation and what you should expect to deal with in the near future. Are those treacherous Ottomans eyeing your land, or should you be more concerned about making peace with the British?

Once you get into the gameplay it’s ostensibly much the same as most Total War games, with the big difference being that your cities are no longer centralised as much. When you elect to build a farm or mine around one of your capitals then it won’t invisibly fall into existence inside the city but will appear on the map outside the city.

On the plus side that means you’ve suddenly got a lot more locales to take advantage of, dropping your scholars into your universities to improve your research speeds and spreading your armies out to protect critical locations more effectively. On the down side though your forces can become too thinly spread and enemy agents may have more places to hide – growing your cities too fast is suddenly quite dangerous.


Spreading cities out like this does have a huge impact on the overall look of the game too and, with 3D trees, farms, mines, ports, cities, ships, agents, armies and enemies all jutting out of the landscape Empire: Total War can be totally overwhelming to start with. There’s just too much on the screen at once even at the start of the game – and you know it’s just going to get worse.

Compacting this problem like a loaf of bread in already constipated bowels is the fact that there’s no truly helpful tutorial to the Grand Campaign. There’s a quick guide to fighting strategic battle (though these manage to skip over some of the more advanced, but still fundamental tactics) but they aren’t of much help.

There’s an introductory campaign called Road to Independence too, but it’s paced slower than a snail sinking in treacle. It’s not that the game is harder than ever before though – just that the interface needs a few updates or toggles. We’d love to turn the map entirely 2D except for armies and agents, for example. For now it seems like we’ll have to be content with the window-driven list system instead.

While we’re doing that we’ll have to try and forget how mind-blowingly huge the game map is too – so big it’s had to be broken into three totally distinct areas, each of which is huge in its own right. Again, that’s not a bad thing, it’s just worth bearing in mind that Empire: Total War isn't the most beginner-friendly game available and that even accomplish strategy players may be overwhelmed. No amount of friendly-tactical tips offered as you play is going to change that.