After More than a Decade, Two Total War Games Receive Updates

Total War: Empire (2009) and Total War: Napoleon (2010) both recently received updates from Creative Assembly, their long-time developers.

Despite releasing more than a decade ago, both games are now fully compatible with 12th-generation Intel CPUs, but also have received updates that will make them run significantly smoother on all modern computers. This is a wonderful step not only for the playability of the games, but their ultimate preservation.

Due to support and moderation issues, in-game chat has been removed from both titles. Creative Assembly encourages players “to make use of the official Total War Discord server as a free chat and voice option, or to use one of the many third-party programs available to communicate with your teammates.”

These titles were, for many years, two of the most ambitious entries in the real-time strategy series. The series became well-known in 2004 with Total War: Rome. Exceptional for both its historical accuracy and depth of strategy, it spawned two television series. The History Channel’s historical recreation series Decisive Battles, at a time when that association would be an endorsement instead of an insult, and which put emphasis on the actual tactics and personalities which impacted Roman wars. As well as the BBC’s Time Commander, which had historians comment on an e-sports gameshow—an e-sports gameshow explicitly played by contestants unfamiliar with video games. The show aired for three increasingly short seasons. Famously, due to the BBC’s charter, they could not say the game played was Total War: Rome.

Total War: Empire and Total War: Napoleon increased the complexity and depth significantly, adding more systems, larger maps, and entirely new kinds of battle (such as naval). But the games were plagued with performance issues and incomplete systems. They are now matched and exceeded by the breadth and depth of the Mortal Empires campaign from Total War: Warhammer II and Immortal Empires from Total War: Warhammer III.

Total War: Empire and Total War: Napoleon were originally released as Empire: Total War and Napoleon: Total War. As the title format shifted over the years, legacy releases on Steam and other platforms updated the titles in the name of brand recognition.

What do you think? Are you interested in jumping back to the Total War entries of yesteryear, or are you content with the most recent entries in the series? Let us know in the comments below or head over to our Discord channel to join the conversation.

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