Best Game to Start Total War Series

1. Never played any of the games in the series.
2. Donot have a high end system (amd athlon x2 4000+, nvidia 8600gt, 2 gb ram, wxp)
3. More interested in middle ages than empire of rome. 18th century would be fun too.
4. The price of the games in my region:

• Rome Total War + Exp. (20 units)
• Medieval II (30 units)
• Empire Total War (90 units) (Can be bought online for 65 units)
  
• Shogun + Exp. (10 units)
• Medieval + Exp. (20 units)
  

Haven't got Empire yet. Rome is pretty easy to get into, though Medieval 2 stomps on it in pretty much every way except for polish and innovation.

rome imo

the most polished with all the patches and the biggest faction diversity, fighting against greece actauly feels difrent compared to fighthing the germanic tribes, compared to M2:TW where basicly all of europe got the same units with a few special ones and again strong similarities among the muslim factions regarding units

Imho Empire is the better game, but but given your machine specs your probably better off with either Medieval 2 or Rome. Between those two I prefered Medieval but at the end of the day they are very similar. If you prefer the middle ages that's what I'd go for.

Empire is the best game, though not the easiest to get in to, even with the RTI campaign. I'd go for Rome or Medieval 2.

1. Never played any of the games in the series.
2. Donot have a high end system (amd athlon x2 4000+, nvidia 8600gt, 2 gb ram, wxp)
3. More interested in middle ages than empire of rome. 18th century would be fun too.
4. The price of the games in my region:

• Rome Total War + Exp. (20 units)
• Medieval II (30 units)
• Empire Total War (90 units) (Can be bought online for 65 units)
  
• Shogun + Exp. (10 units)
• Medieval + Exp. (20 units)
  

i havent played the new one but i used to own shogun total war and that game was frigging sweet.

Start with Medieval 2 plus the Kingdoms expansion. It is very similar to Rome but with better graphics and better gameplay. None of the totalwar games are as comlex as Empire so its not great to start with it.

Rome would be a perfect start.

Empire is the place to start. It may be the biggest, but it is much more streamlined than any of the others. The Road to Independence is also the best tutorial you could have in a game like this. Just know that there are still some bugs in it, it will be fixed though.

I'd say Rome is the best to start with at this point but really I'd start with Shogun. You can really see the progression of the series that way. Besides you get to command armies of samurai, what's not to like about that?

Empire Total War is the newest and thus, have the more exciting new features.mirgamer

mah not realy, the only realy new thing is the whole deal with towns and tech tree

but they took out so many things from M2:TW that I have to wonder if the game wasn't released too soon.

all units again look the same, which was in Rome, in M2 the units looked difrent but now they look the same again, I understand that they would have the same uniforms, but the faces could be a little difrent liek in M2...

no controling of reinforcements anymore, you can't even have the AI take over so you could have 2 full stacks on the battlefield, a feature which was in both Rome and M2

the family tree is gone, why? aperantly there is the code for it in the game files, there is also the code to apoint new heirs but all this is missing from the actual game

naval invasion from the side of the Ai are gone agian, they were in M2 kingdoms, althrough the AI was kinda stupid with using it (egypt atacking ireland, realy? -.-) but still it was there, now when you play as britain you can basicly leave the entire island unprotected since there is no way anyone would get to you

I won't even mention all the bugs

I still love playing the game but it kinda feels rushed, I hope the patches will fix things, the game could be a 10/10, but in this state it sadly realy is only a 8.5/10, (for which Kevin has earned a lot of respect from me since he is one of the few reviews out there to even mention all the bugs)

take Rome or M2:TW over it and wait some 6 months for CA to fix E:TW (I could say or wait for the mods for E:TW, but I have no idea how this will work with the coding Empire uses since it is aperantly a lot harder to mod even simple things, while anything harder like seen in previous TW mods will requite CA to release the SDK)

Rome: Total War is probably the best in the series.GodLovesDead