Empire: Total War Gamespot QA

Gamespot posted an interview with Empire: Total War lead designer James Russell. In the QA, he highlighted the fact that Empire: Total War has been streamlined to allow player to focus on strategic aspect of the game rather than micro managing settlements. He said:

First and foremost, by bringing buildings out of the cities and presenting them to the player on the map itself, we've made the management of regions more immediate and accessible. Buildings can be upgraded straight from the map, with slots available for upgrade seen at a glance. This is in contrast to previous Total War games, which forced the player to drive down into city menus in order to build and upgrade. You can also see the level of development of a region on the map itself, rather than inside a city panel.

Secondly, we've made the recruitment of units much more convenient. Armies commanded by generals can now order up units that make their way automatically to that army. This means that players no longer have to build units at each city (although you still can) and then manually move those units to join their armies in the field.

Thirdly, many of the strategic elements such as tax and governors that used to live in each city in previous Total War games have now been centralized. Players can now tweak tax rates across an entire continent. Similarly, the player will have a cabinet of ministers that offer bonuses across their nation's regions, rather than governors which must be moved to each region.

This means we can actually deepen gameplay choices (for example, having different tax rates for the nobility versus the people), but still streamline the game because players don't have to repeat the choices across different regions. Similarly, diplomacy is conducted centrally, not through the old system of individual diplomats all over the map.

Add to this improved advisors, tutorials, and an extensive tooltip system which offers information on almost every button and panel in the game, and we believe that this is the most accessible Total War experience we've created.

It is unclear whether setting tax rates for individual settlements and governor's have been completely removed from the game. Empire: Total War is set to be released on March 3rd and a demo is coming soon.

Read the entire QA here