They were experiences so divorced from one another they may as well have been different games - different games that would take tens of hours each to complete. The vast majority of my land battles for the first 25 years or so were against the Native Americans, which turned increasingly bloody when they got their hands on gunpowder.Ĭonversely, playing as the Prussians, with a scant two areas of control separated from each other in central Europe, led immediately to a classical European battle of muskets and battle-lines, and a rapid pursuit of ever-more-punishing gunfire drills. When I played as the British (as well as whistling a lot of patriotic jingles in seeming sincerity - I totally went native) my game centred on the sea-lanes, trying to maximise the amount of trade and keep them free of pirates, while alternating between industrialisation, dabbling in proto-Republicanist philosophy, and stomping around fighting the Cherokee in North America. Well, that's one option - more likely you'll choose a short 50-year game to begin, with some more achievable goals which vary from nation to nation. Playing as any of the major nations, you set off to conquer the world. The Grand Campaign is the centrepiece of Empire - when people say Total War, this is what they mean.