During my visit at the studios of Activision in London, the game that got the most attention was Rome : Total War. It was displayed on an enormous flatscreen in the center of the room. But anyway, let's get down to business. I won't go into the story of the game or explain how the game works, since you should already know that from the other Total War episodes. I'm just going to give you the improvements.

In Rome : Total War you can replay a lot of historical missions dating from the time of the Roman Empire. They actually started making Rome : Total War together with Medieval : Total War. They started building the engine for Rome from scratch. They have implemented an amazing level of modability, you can insert your homemade units, buildings, levels, you name it.

They also put a lot more effort into the details of units, buildings and terrain. A single unit can consist out of more then 2000 polyglons, which is quite a lot, so if you know that there can be thousands of units in a single army... Well, I think you get the picture. This might come as a small surprise, but all this polyglonpower plays fluidly with a Geforce 2 on a PIII 1200.

You can assign a lot of tactics and formations to your soldiers as they existed in that time. Like the formation where soldiers place their shields all around the group, and the middle ones keep them above their head so it's a sort of solid box. Yes indeed, it has a name; some sort of Latin name, but I forgot.

Another new feature is the Pausemode... When you press the Pause button everything instantly stops, so units stay in the air if they were blasted away, units will be standing there with their swords raised, ect. But you can manouver yourself through the battlefield, you have your very own Matrix-moment so to speak.

Last but not least; a new system of 'heroes' is implented. They're not called heroes though. The commanders of a certain group of soldiers, or regiment, provide a bonus to nearby units.