Have any of you slapjacks got involved with the 'Total War,' series of PC TBS games? I tried Rome: Total War on a whim and am seriously addicted to them now. I bought all of them and am currently involved in Medieval II. I think they started out with Shogun, then Medieval, then Rome, then Medieval II, then Napoleon/Empire. They are awesome games, intricate and the battle graphics are pretty damn impressive. I've always been a sucker for historical/military games, and this one you fight RTS battles on a map with carefully constructed specific units/armies unique to your culture, and varying weather/terrain advantages/disadvantages, but you also conduct negotiations, strategic intermarrying, assassinations, bribing, sabotage, spying, manipulating the pope...all sorts of nefarious Machiavellian activities.
One cool thing is if you play the medieval games you start out in the 11oo's and go several hundred years...getting to the point where gunpowder is discovered, and eventually you can sail from the 'old country' over to the americas and meet, interact, and trade with the Aztecs and Incas...and then enslave and kill them.
Currently I am playing as the holy roman empire and I'm sending rotten cow carcasses flying into an English city I'm besieging with my catapults to cause disease outbreak and a general lowering of morale. Which is cool, b/c thats exactly what I would do in real life if I had to assault Penn's fortified domicile because I coveted his expensive radio equipment and 300 gallon fish tank.
I thought I was done with time wasting games after I got fed up with WoW and deleted my account. Guess not.
