Getting in to RTS games

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And you should try, Men of War, or Faces of War.
I loved CoD and both the expansion, I still play them.

But imagine CoD but 10x the tactics, CoD is tactical but Men of War is going to rock your socks off, give the demo a wirl, glad I did.

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Empire: Total War demo is only a small part of the game (Just Battles) there is a lot more to it

Try Medieval II: Total War, I think you can get it for $9 now it would give you an idea what the game is really like, it takes a little while to figure out but once you do it's hard to stop playing.

Company of heroes and Age of Empires II are fun you ever play C&C Generals thats all I use to play years back.

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The battles you did in the demo were just the RTS part of the game.

A huge portion of the game is turn based strategy (like civilization) - but it's great because you will actually have to go to the map like that to defend your cities and fight battles on the map.

But there's things like... if you lose 12 guys from a unit in one battle, the next time they battle (unless you reinforce them at a city/fortress) will have 12 less.

So sometimes you'll have a fight where you'll just stop them (3000 vs 200) and some fights where it'll be like Custard's last stand - thousands vs. a couple units. (Those can be a blast!)

But you've worked to build these armies, and one army can last you a long time, and you get 'attached' to your army, might get used to the playstyle. You might go artillery heavy.. or cavalry heavy... or just lots of infantry... or a mix... you'll develop your on strategy. But you have to worry about costs too.

And the more a unit fights successfully (unit being a group, not a single unit like in other RTS) they higher their 'rank' (experience) gets, so after a half dozen battles, your front line infantry could be hardened vets. They won't route as easy, they'll aim better, defend better, everything.

VERY complex. I didn't even scratch the surface.

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If you want to see if you enjoy the play style but don't want to drop $50 right away, look into Medieval 2 or even Medieval or Rome. (Total War, all of them)

It'll save you money if it turns out you don't like it, and if you do like it, you'd want to grab those older ones anyway.

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If you do get it don't get discouraged, it takes a little while to figure everything out but that's part of the fun

There's a lot more to it than most RTS games, if you want a simple RTS stick with company of heroes or supreme commander.

Best part about empire total war is that for the first time they have made it have campaign online, although only 2 players its still pretty cool that they decided to do this (even though they delayed it a month to do this).

That was the only thing lacking in medieval 2 even though that was still a really kick ass game that I probably spent a couple hundred hours on