Yeah, having the Ptolemies as a playable faction is both unsurprising and pretty cool. I'm a little concerned that the eastern half of the map will feel very empty though, especially the northern corner.

I bet Scythia will be playable... something that brings chariots to that region to compete with Parthia.

A faction of steppe nomads would be great. I was initially under the impression that the Ptolemies were the last playable faction to be announced, but that 9th slot symbol seems to imply that there'll be another. If there is going to be a nomadic faction I do hope that they won't have chariots (or at least very few), because as far as I know, no one in that area used chariots in battle any more during the time frame of Rome II. But from what I've seen so far, The Creative Assembly is taking actual history a lot more serious than with Rome 1, so I'm quite confident that that'll turn out well.

Yeah... I bet the closest thing we'll see to that region would be Thrace or Dacia maybe? I don't know much about steppe history, though.

Don't worry about that, nobody does.

I hope it won't be the Thracians or Dacians though, there are already enough factions near central and eastern Europe. A (western) Asian nomad faction like the Scythians/Sarmatians would be great. It would fill out the map better, and a faction that revolves primarily around horse archers would add some extra gameplay flavour as well. If there's going to be a tenth playable faction (one can dream, right?) I can still see the Seleucid Empire being added as well. There's a pretty big hole on the map between Macedonia, Egypt and the Parthian territories right now.

Kingdom of Armenia, Pontus or maybe the Seleucid Empire seem like potential factions. The eastern region seems rather empty indeed, so I'll be sad if there won't be any more factions there.

Gah! I'm really curious as to whether or not any other TW veterans have as much trouble with Shogun 2 as me. I've played every TW game from Rome to Napoleon and beaten many campaigns in each. I've conquered the world as everything from the Seleucids in Rome to the Austrians in Napoleon yet I can barely last in Shogun 2. I just get stomped every time by samurai doomstacks the enemy seemingly spawns out of thin air. I'll have 10 regions, barely able to afford a full samurai army and some one-province pissant will spawn two stacks of samurai and overrun me. My most successful game yet was as the Fujiwara in RotS, I ruled most all of northeastern Japan and was primed to invade Taira-controlled central Japan when my own [censored] (For NO reason, Very Friendly relations, allied and trading) relatives betrayed me and overran my primary trade provinces, bankrupting me and forcing me to march the ENORMOUS distance back to Fukushima to slowly crush them while my western borders receded under Taira invasion. I quit at that point, I'm just not allowed to succeed in this game. Does not give me hope for Rome 2.

Really? Ive been playing the series sense Medieval 2, went back and played Rome, and I've found Shogun 2 to be the easiest of the games, especially RotS. What Faction were you playing as in the vanilla campaign?

Edit: I meant FotS

I've tried the Hattori, Hojo, Ikko-Ikki, Otomo, Uesegi and Shimazu. Only ones I've been close to winning as is the Ikko-Ikki but something went wrong, I don't even remember what. I also became Imperial Vanguard as Choshu in FotS but I actually just got bored and stopped playing that one rather than losing.

I haven't played as Otomo or Uesegi, Hattori were hard but I didn't find the other ones that bad. Also had the same problem with FotS, once you get the best artillery the game becomes cake, and I usually just stop playing because it gets so boring. Anyway while some of the factions in Shogun are hard to play as, still got nothing on Alexander or the Kingdoms campaigns, now those were Hard!

The Otomo get special benefits for being friends of the Portuguese like the ability to lease land to them and hire Tercos as well as cheaper Matchlock Ashigaru. They're Christian though so everyone hates them, it's tough. The Uesegi I liked because I prefer Warrior Monks (their specialty) to Samurai but the Takeda stomped me pretty early on. I never had much trouble with the Kingdoms campaigns but I'll agree with Alexander, it's probably the single most challenging campaign CA has ever produced.

I'd like to try another Fujiwara RotS campaign, I guess the best thing to do in RotS is immediately kill your relatives so they can't ruin everything a decade down the line?

I felt the kingdoms campaigns could be either really hard or really easy depending on which civ you were, playing as Lithuania in the Teutonic campaign, or as any of the native American tribes in the Americas was particularly brutal. Also want to point out the Warpath campaign for Empire was pretty hard, up there with Alexander Imo

Mm, yes the Warpath campaign was pretty difficult. You pretty much had to fight out every battle because it took a level of tact to compensate for your technological inferiority that the auto-resolve didn't account for. The Peninsular Campaign for Napoleon as Spain was borderline impossible as well.

Would you recommend Napoleon? I thought Empire was alright but fairly limited in its replayability.

Shimazu are easy. Just spam stack of katana samurai.

One thing to keep in mind in Shogun 2 is that you need a powerful navy so you can control the foreign trade routes. Once you do that you have an unstoppable economy.

Shimazu are pretty easy since they're rather removed from the chaos on the mainland and also have easy access to trade nodes.

Napololeon is all right, I would recommend getting it if it goes on sale again because the campaign is good, it plays pretty much Identical to Empire save the graphics and some game-play tweaks

I would. It's essentially a polished Empire, better AI and graphics as well as more diplomatic options. The campaign is more limited, however. There are three campaigns as France; Italy, Egypt and Europe and then there are 'Campaigns of the Coalition' which is sort of the equivalent of the Grand Campaign. In the Campaigns of the Coalition it's just Europe though, no colonies and only Prussia, Austria, Great Britain and Russia are playable. It's still a lot of fun though, putting Napoleon in his place. One thing to remember is that Rakes are a must because Napoleon is intentionally OP and will win every battle against AI and any auto-resolved battle, the best thing to do is just keep assassinating him. He does however convalesce after a few turns and you have to do it again.

Repeatedly crippling Napoleon sounds amusing. My favourite thing to do is play historical battles at the moment, because they tend to present more challenges than standard skirmishes do. Unfortunately Empire comes with barely any historical battles.

Wut?

https://twitter.com/jameshrussell/status/316980138011136000

I just saw this myself actually. I'm a bit disappointed they are announcing another one so soon. Seems like they should at least wait until Rome 2 is out and released.

Apparently there's speculation it could be a Total War: Warhammer 40k game, since CA acquired the rights to the Warhammer franchise recently.

Interesting. I wonder if they're talking about a TW game in a fictional setting, or maybe 20th century?

This would be amazing!

More then amazing... Imagining having a line of imperial guardsmen holding an advancing Bloodthirster of Khorne and chaos space marines? EXCEPT ON A HUGE SCALE? Imagine TENS OF THOUSANDS OF guardsmens with Titans and space marine allies against a horde of Chaos!!!!

Napoleon has a lot of historical battles, most of them are as Napoleon but I believe there are others too. Waterloo, Trafalgar etc...

As for a WH40k TW, I must say [censored] yes.