The success of the Total War series owes a lot to the BBC. This strange occurrence came about with the TV series Time Commanders, where teams of four people would lead the armies of Rome in the godly Rome: Total War against such dastardly foes as the British warrior princess Boudica. Rome: Total War was revolutionary, replacing single men in real-time strategy combat with entire armies and tanks with huge, lifelike elephants, enshrouding the whole affair with a streamlined, turn-based, empire management simulator. However, the time of the Romans has past long gone, leaving the gates open for the Eighteenth Century world of muskets, gunpowder and vast, ocean-going fleets. The question is, can Empire: Total War conquer a world that was too big for the Romans? The answer is yet, although while improvements have been made and revolutionary changes abound, the game is not quite the perfect specimen that I expected.

The story is more evolutionary than revolutionary; past Total War games have all dealt with a specific period of history, such as the rise of the Roman Empire and the endless skirmishes in the Medieval period. It's no surprise then that Empire continues the advancement of time into the Eighteenth Century, a pretty important period of history that witnessed the beginnings of the industrial age, where the rulebook for combat, industry and trade changed forever. The main campaign - the one where you try and take over the world - actually starts in 1701, a few decades before metal madness broke out, although beginnings of the revolution could be seen even then. The most notable upstart was the introduction of guns, artillery and other things that go boom, mechanical monstrosities that changed warfare dramatically. In earlier days it was sweaty men charging into each other with sharpened sticks but, while some good fisticuffs are a mandatory part of battle, the majority of fighting had become lines of men armed with muskets and devastating long-range artillery, ready to throw hot lead into the faces of their enemies. It wasn't even close to the wars of today, where you can guide a missile onto someone's big toe with pinpoint accuracy from fifty miles away, but it was the first step towards rapid-fire death. Apart from war (what else is there?), there was a humongous boom in trade during this time period, especially over the big blue sea, seeing massive wooden hulks gliding across the ocean, powered solely by wind.

On the surface of it though, that short history lesson is basically the entire story: assuming command of a nation such as the British, French or Austrians and trying to survive this turbulent period. This minimal story that ends at the Nineteenth Century is somewhat disappointing, as it lingers dangerously close to the mediocre Europa Universalis III Complete. Surely events could have been spiced up, with different nations requiring different actions, such as Britain requiring supremacy of the waters around Europe with vast fleets or the French requiring an alliance with Spain? Sadly however, we are left with the only requirements for each nation to capture and hold a certain set of territories by the end of the game.

There is however a saving grace that helps Empire stay afloat in terms of its story (something that has never been Total War's strong suit) - the truly brilliant four episode mini-campaign entitled The Road to Independence. This campaign starts a bit before the main game in the 1600s, in the English formed Jamestown, their first successful colony in America. Focusing on the past of the New World as it's often known, this episodic campaign goes on to show the leadership of General Washington and the rebellion of the Americans against the tyrannical English to form the United States of America that we know today and ensure their right to get all the good games days or even weeks before they appear in the UK (the swines!). For now though, you are tasked with ridding the US of those troublesome Indian folk with the skimpy clothes, limited technology, a complete lack of computer games (how could they survive?) and names like Night Wolf and Bear Tamer. These puny natives are not much of a match for your musket equipped troops, thus offering a great introduction for the main event that teaches you the basics of small scale empire management and combat whilst not being overly tedious with "do this, do that" instructions. For a tutorial, it does take a long time to complete and many experienced Total War veterans will be itching to jump straight into the main global domination style game that is the series flagship, skipping this necessary pretext.

Global domination is not strictly accurate though, as the stylised 2D campaign map showing your entire civilization, only spans the three main areas of the world - America, India and Europe. That's still a major proportion of the globe and a lot more than any previous Total War game though, so viewing everything on it can take a while. Fortunately, all the action in this Grand Campaign game mode takes place in turns of unlimited length, so you have as much time as you need to accomplish everything that you want. Another technique employed to make things simpler is splitting the areas of land into territories. Each territory has a single, large city, such as London or Paris, and whoever owns this city owns the entire territory, including the land surrounding the city and nearby villages, farms, cotton plantations and ports. These external hotspots can be built upon to increase their output of resources or, in the case of ports, upgraded to naval shipyards, allowing wooden mammoths of the sea to be created, bristling with guns. However, being treated as individual structures does not make resource management a nightmare, as any wealth produced in that entire territory is grouped together into one huge money pot. With that said, things do become somewhat more complicated when you add in public happiness and the tax levied upon city-dwellers, but basically, the more territories you control, the wealthier you become.

This rise in complexity is a serious problem too, as by the time the game takes place, most of the world has been colonised, multiplying the burden upon you from the off and ramping up the challenge before you have mastered the basics, making everything very confusing early on. This sudden confusion is made even worse with your first glimpse of the world; armies - represented by single, towering men - stand motionless on the cluttered landscape, awaiting their next order, while ships bob up and down with the tide, trading vessels busily hurry back and forth on dotted lines, caravans criss-cross the land and odd floating symbols spin around and round atop sprawling cities. Being faced with this many objects all waiting for me to do something and hit the "end turn" button is, to me, about as scary as an approaching zombie horde and could quickly put someone off the game altogether if they were hoping for something to just drop into and enjoy on a Sunday afternoon. It's immediately obvious that to get the maximum enjoyment from Empire, you'll have to study the manual and plan your moves wisely.

Once you do understand what you're doing though, there are thousands of ways to occupy your time. Firstly there is Research, handled in a more innovative and convincing way than most strategy games. Usually you click upon the research you want and irrespective of how many researching structures you have possession of, a clock slowly ticks down until you can start researching a new technology. In Empire, you are not limited to focusing the collective mind of your empire to one subject alone; instead you can select a different research technology in each of your academically focused schools. This means that up to four technologies can be on the go at once and you can even order "Gentlemen" - a type of non-combat unit - into schools to speed up research, allowing you to progress the three areas of Military, Industry and Philosophy at different rates. In addition to this "more the merrier" approach to research, the new technologies have very substantial benefits; upgrade to fenced farms to avoid disputes over land and farm production increases dramatically; bestow your troops with razor-sharp bayonets for their rifles and they become much more deadly in close quarters; or simply change the way your people go about harvesting crops to maximise efficiency and rake in the money. These upgrades aren't the ones that are applied and then magically disappear either; they are physical scrolls with detailed plans and sketches of how things can be improved, stored at schools to educate the next generation. However, they can also fall into enemy hands remarkably easily if left unguarded - the very ungentlemenly gentlemen units mentioned earlier will snatch whatever plans they can lay their black, animal-skin gloved hands upon when ordered into an enemy school.

Enough about research and espionage though; the only way to stand a chance of survival to the end of the game is war, war and more war! True to form, war is very easy to start but difficult to finish. Starting simply requires the moving of your bands of merry men around the campaign map until they stumble upon an enemy settlement, fort or army. The size of this army or the size of the army protecting a town is identified by the number of small yellow bars beside the giant flag held aloft by the giant representing that army. This means that you can see which armies are weakest and which towns are less well defended, allowing you to attack foes with the minimum of risk before going after the big boys, a tactic that always goes down well in the first turns of a campaign. However, even very small armies can triumph over sizeable armadas of doom, due to warfare and battles being the most staggeringly tactical procedures I have ever witnessed.

The battles in Total War games have always been heralded for their tactical nature, and masters of the series who think that they know all the tactics in the book may decide to just skip straight on to the next paragraph. I urge you not to though, as the addition of gunpowder, artillery and shooty things in general has changed everything. The most fundamental change is that since guns were all fairly slow to reload in those days, lines and arcs of fire are critical; getting your units into formation so that as many can fire in one go is of the utmost importance. Another noticeable difference from previous games is that war is far less forgiving; send a cavalry charge at musket-wielding infantry head on and the normally very good at killing infantry horseman will be gunned down before they even get within stabbing distance. In addition, there is a very, very small chance of any unit surviving a barrage from cannons, no matter how well organised they are, and while cannons cannot be moved once deployed, this limitation does not matter at all if they are well positioned. Even if troops do survive the salvo from these fixed gun emplacements, the sight of their comrades exploding into the air as a thousand pound, steel ball crashes to the ground sends them scurrying to the hills in fear. Getting enemy troops shell-shocked liked this is the most effective way to achieve victory on the battlefield, as troops flee out of harm's way whenever they get too frightened, removing all the control that the dastardly AI has over them. This scare tactic can be used on your armies too however, and you will immediately lose the battle when all troops under your command rout - so be warned, the AI is no pushover!

The new rules of engagement are not the only difference to the standard Total War formula, as for the first time ever, naval combat has been introduced - and what a sight it is! This ocean-bound warfare is entered when two large warships collide on the campaign map, a regular occurrence as sea exploration and protecting sea trade routes plays a major part of the game. However, ship-to-ship tomfoolery is not the simple hovering rectangular blocks of death moving around the blue parts of a battlefield, as with Red Alert; Empire's naval combat is full of realism and is as close to a proper seafaring simulator as you can get without including mind-numbing complexities. With in-depth ship control and the knowledge that, in the early Eighteenth Century, all ships were powered by the wind, with huge billowing sails attached to dangerously fragile masts (which can be destroyed by enemy fire), wind direction plays a major part in the proceedings, luckily displayed at the top-right of the screen as a spinning compass.

The direction of the invisible gusts is vitally important, because it affects the way the whole ship moves; sail into a head-wind and you'll be going nowhere fast but get the wind behind you and you'll glide across the water like a rocket. Roaring across the waves towards enemy vessels means that you can get alongside them earlier, unleashing a deadly bombardment of cannon fire before the enemy crew has even loaded their guns to retaliate. For extra damage, you can even stop your guns on one side of the ship from firing and manually order a simultaneous thirty-five-barrel, ship-destroying broadside when they are all fully loaded, forcing the scallywag crew to dive from their burning hulk into the freezing water! This destructive, blazing carnage is tremendous fun but sometimes destroying a huge behemoth of the waves can seem wasteful; after all, think of the uses you could put it to if only it was in your control. Well, you don't have to settle for imagination - issuing an order to board forces the two ships side-by-side, allowing the brave crew to jump ship and stick it to the enemy on deck, granting you command if your attack is successful.

Boarding enemy vessels and seeing individual soldiers engaging in close-quarters combat means that the sea combat is just as realistic and tactical as its land-based counterpart. However, there is still a complexity that is hard for inexperienced players to master and this stems from the raft of options that you are given, such as unit facing, unit formation, manually firing broadsides and so on. This all equates to some very long and drawn-out battles, especially large scale ones involving many combatants. For example, consider an army of twelve different fighting units like line infantry or musket-wielding peasants. Upon entering a battle, each unit needs to be given orders; you can't simply draw a selection box around five units and right-click somewhere to move them. To be successful, you need to select one, move it to the front and hold the right mouse button until a big green arrow points in the direction that you want them to face (something that takes a bit of getting used to, as the centre of the arrow does not seem to correspond to where you clicked). You then have to repeat the same set of actions for the next unit, and the next one, and the next one and so on, which can become a little tedious.

This impossibility of moving units quickly while achieving the carefully planned strategy necessary to win is not helped by the dismal controls. Everything is hunky dory on the turn-based campaign map as this is a flat, 2D area that you can zoom across using the W, A, S and D keys. The problems begin on the fully 3D battlefield locations (including the water-based ones) where you are required to scroll backwards and forwards, as well as adjusting the height and tilt of the camera just so that you can get an adequate view of your forces. All of this camera movement should take a backseat, being there if you need it but never being required, freeing you up to concentrate upon pummelling the enemy. However, while the difficult-to-perfect camera placing is not a diabolical problem that spoils the entire game, I would definitely prefer a default camera position that you could snap back to at any time.

This unfortunate camera problem is compensated for by the graphics though, as Empire: Total War looks absolutely stunning on maximum settings; point the camera anywhere and you are greeted with something awe-inspiring to look at. These stunning vistas include majestic cities and flowing grasslands, all of which can be populated by individual soldiers who are stuffed to the brim with detail and quality animations. Larger objects like cannons and horses also look like their real-life equivalents - and that's just the ground battles; as soon as you see the water when naval combat starts, your mouth will hit the floor, guaranteed! The easiest way to describe the water is photo realistic; the faint reflection from the sun (or the moon, if you are playing at night), the ebb and flow of the tide, the spray from ships and the crashing waves make this easily the very best water I've ever seen in a game! Gliding across the truly historic waters are ships so detailed that you can hardly believe it; men scurry across the deck and climb masts, lowering sails that blow violently in the ocean winds, cannons stick out of the side windows like rows of drawing pins and admirals stand on deck, scanning the horizon for enemies. Going up a level to the campaign map doesn't spoil any of this graphical splendour either, with trees blowing in the wind and a landscape that visibly changes with the passing seasons. If you have a beast of a PC then the graphics are simply phenomenal and you are in for a real treat; if you don't have such a machine then the shine starts to drop a bit, but even with minimum settings the game looks pretty fantastic.

These brilliant graphics go hand-in-hand with quality sound. The best of the audio experience is the music, which is always suited to the period, with string instruments and drums to beat out the march of soldiers but also quiet so as never to muddle your domination thought processes. Being more of a background murmur than an ear-bashing, the music is also special as it allows other sounds to take centre stage, such as the occasional twitter from birds or the slow build up of musket fire when in heated battle. Coupling this with unit voices spoken in appropriate accents for the nation that they represent and shadowy assassins that have wonderfully gruff, sinister voices, ensures a memorable audio experience. One sound I do not enjoy though is the sharp thwack effect when selecting armies, ships and cities on the empire-spanning campaign map, a sound that is often repeated and impossible to get away from. It's even repeated more times than the po-faced advisor who reads out instructions to guide your path through the game - he or she gets very annoying sometimes, as they say the same basic thing over and over again. There is also a strange problem that occurs randomly where the advisor stops speaking mid-sentence, leaving you to read the rest of the text that they are spouting.

So Empire is short of perfection then but none of the problems are significant and if you enjoy long, involved games where you have to plan out attack strategies and tend to the needs of a rapidly growing empire then you will get endless enjoyment out of this game for the foreseeable future. The main reason for this is the sheer longevity of campaigns; each turn moves the clock forward six months but opting for the full length "World Domination" campaign gives you just short of two-hundred turns of play! Mercifully, you can opt for a shorter fifty-year campaign, although even this still eats up a colossal amount of time. In addition to this, there is a huge list of achievements, courtesy of Steam, Valve's Internet-housed distributor of games - unfortunately you do require access to the Internet to install the game. Ensuring your access to the Internet just ensures that you can engage in the multiplayer though, which only allows ground and naval battles against up to eight friends - a slight disappointment. Never fear though, as developers Creative Assembly are apparently working their socks off to get the full-length campaign into the multiplayer - if this works out then things will really get exciting! In the meantime though, the AI-controlled nations provide more than enough challenge for even the greatest wartime commanders.

Experienced wartime commanders are fairly hard to find in the gaming world but if you wish to succeed at Empire: Total War then you will need the patience and dedication to become one. This time requirement is not a feature that I rate highly in games but the sublime graphics, the very strategic warfare and the superbly realistic naval battles definitely make up for some of the initial panic as the main game unfolds and you find yourself feeling overwhelmed. If you have no desire to climb a steep learning curve and just want some quick enjoyment then Empire: Total War is not for you, but those who do succumb to its compelling and complex gameplay will stay enthralled for months (if not years), making this one of the very best and most realistic Eighteenth Century empire management games I've played.

Reviewed by Tom Clark for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).