Looking at the Rome Total War 2 videos (battle of Teutoburg Forest here):
Other than pissing myself with glee after, during and before watching the above video, I sparked up Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion this weekend and just had to record it and make inane commentary. If you haven’t played the series, RTW 2 is likely to be the best there is.
The awesome aspect of the Barbarian Invasion expansion is the concept of Hordes. When a faction is bereaved of it’s last city it turns into a horde– a mass of 5-6 army groups filled with the basic troops of that faction and a few other units sprinkled in. This represents the people themselves fleeing en masse from their fallen city. The faction then either has to take and settle an enemy city (and everyone is an enemy at this point) or dwindle away to nothing via attrition. These Hordes pop up constantly during the game and thus you never know when a massive beast of an army will wander over the horizon and into your carefully crafted territories. If you play as a western European faction, you will see fewer of these but they will have greater effect because the factions their are right on top of each other. Playing in the East, where cities are far more spread out, Hordes are everywhere mostly due to the Huns destroying city after city and sending waves of Vandals, Samartians and Roxolani into western Europe. What all this adds up to is an extremely dynamic campaign situation, one where you are not simply grinding down the nearest factions– you have to keep an eye on all of Europe to safeguard against the destruction one of these hordes can cause– whether it’s on your nearest enemy or on your faction.