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Steam is having a sale on all Total War games.

Empire is $13.59

Empire DLC pack which include Elite Units of wherever and Warpath is $16.19

The Total War megapack which includes Empire, Medieval II+Kingdoms, and Rome+Barbarian+Alexander is $20.39

Not on sale is Napoleon which is still $40.

If you own a computer that has a Pentium 4 or better, I strongly recommend the Megapack. Rome's specs are a 1gz cpu and it's a great game; and if you ever upgrade Medieval and Empire will be waiting for you to install.

Even if you don't want the Megapack, Rome Complete is only $3.39.

Meh, too bad I've already got Rome, Medieval II and Empire.

When's this end? I won't have my new PC for nearly 2 weeks, and my old one is, not to put too fine a point on it, knackered.

I have Rome, and played Medieval 1 back in the day. I've have been wondering whether there's any value to trying Medieval II and the other newer games, but heard some bad things about their setup, gameplay, and performance. Are the newer ones substantially better than Rome?

Medieval 2 is to Rome as Medieval was to Shogun -basically the same game, only better and prettier.
Frankly it hits Uncanny Valley for me. It's so realistic I start to get frustrated by what I can't do instead of revelling in what I *can* do. Great fun though.

Haven't played Empire.

Empire is much improved from its release, as is Medieval 2. Both were plagued with issues early on, but they've since been resolved. For $14 Empire is a steal.

Sinewmire wrote:When's this end? I won't have my new PC for nearly 2 weeks, and my old one is, not to put too fine a point on it, knackered.

Games you buy are tied to your Steam account, not any particular machine. You can just buy them now and download them when you get your new PC.

While there's a video game deals thread open, Barnes and Noble has Battlefield Bad Company 2 pre-orderable for $20.

If you buy those games through Steam, are they all tied to the Steam client? Even the old ones like Rome Total War? Does that mean they've been rewritten to use Steam?

^Yes, that is the case. I would guess it is mostly the dataformat being changed into the steam files.

It makes me wonder how this would interfere with mods.

Thanas wrote:^Yes, that is the case. I would guess it is mostly the dataformat being changed into the steam files.

It makes me wonder how this would interfere with mods.

There will be some difficulty in installing the mods, but mods can still be installed.

Sinewmire wrote:When's this end? I won't have my new PC for nearly 2 weeks, and my old one is, not to put too fine a point on it, knackered.

It's through Monday the 15th.

Thanas wrote:^Yes, that is the case. I would guess it is mostly the dataformat being changed into the steam files.

It makes me wonder how this would interfere with mods.

Mods are no trouble. I was playing SPQR on my Steam copy of Rome.

Some mods have special install instructions, but nearly all of them work. I played Third Age on my steam install.

Darth Wong wrote:If you buy those games through Steam, are they all tied to the Steam client? Even the old ones like Rome Total War? Does that mean they've been rewritten to use Steam?

My understanding is that they need the client/account, but the offline mode will let you run most games without the Internet connection. Heck, the X-COM games run through an included, preconfigured DOSBox.

Why would anyone buy Empire when Napoleon is two weeks from release and basically (supposedly) contains everything that should have been in Empire?

Some of us find the 18th century more interesting than the 19th?

It's actually kinda hilarious that if you achieve the victory conditions in a MTW2 game your empire must be so massive the history of europe itself is changed forever - I mean as England I commanded all of western europe, northern africa and the holy land. And America.

Contrast to the piddling little British Empire at the start of ETW.

I'd love it if you could somehow 'link' the TW games together.

Start in Rome:TW, then import your empire (with appropriate attrition and other issues; hell you could make a metagame out of that aspect) to BI, and then on to M2, then Empire and so on. 18th century Roman Empire!

Dominus Atheos wrote:While there's a video game deals thread open, Barnes and Noble has Battlefield Bad Company 2 pre-orderable for $20.

Aw, crap. It's out of stock. I already pre-ordered the game from Steam, but I've been looking for a good deal for my friend.

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:Some of us find the 18th century more interesting than the 19th?

In addition, it seems unlikely that Napoleon:TW will be $14 any time soon. Plus, Total War games are apparently unplayable around release time, but I've never bought any of the games in that timeframe so I can't comment myself.

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:I'd love it if you could somehow 'link' the TW games together.

Start in Rome:TW, then import your empire (with appropriate attrition and other issues; hell you could make a metagame out of that aspect) to BI, and then on to M2, then Empire and so on. 18th century Roman Empire!

If only this could be done in a way that had goals and victory conditions so you didn't win in 51BC and have another 1800 boring years of chasing spawning rebel armies?

Grandmaster Jogurt wrote:

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:Some of us find the 18th century more interesting than the 19th?

In addition, it seems unlikely that Napoleon:TW will be $14 any time soon. Plus, Total War games are apparently unplayable around release time, but I've never bought any of the games in that timeframe so I can't comment myself.

That's assuming they get better. Medieval II remains nearly unplayable even after all these years.

What? Medieval 2 is fine. I was just playing it on my laptop over Christmas break.

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:What? Medieval 2 is fine. I was just playing it on my laptop over Christmas break.

I assume you didn't have to defend a fortress, and then wait for an hour as the AI gets stuck on the first wall. Or try to use missile cavalry to run down routing troops. Or select a group of archers and tell them to fire at a specific unit. Or expect the enemy to do anything that wasn't "run straight down the middle into the center of your lines". Or expect the enemy to respond appropriately when you try to do anything that wasn't "run straight down the middle into the center of their lines". Or any of the hundreds of other things that are broken in that game that I can't remember off of the top of my head.

I mean, it's true that nothing causes a CTD or freeze, but it's still an exercise in frustration to try to play it.