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. 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.

Conversely, 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. 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. And in both campaigns, I didn't even get within sniffing distance of India.

Let me expand on that. Empire's Grand Campaign is the grandest of all the Total Wars'. Rather than a single world map, the game is divided into three military theatres: Europe, North and Central America, and the Indian Subcontinent. While the number of actual territories are reduced from the number that would be crammed into the same geographical area in another Total War game, that's a dizzying amount of space to consider. In practice, when you start to play, you don't worry about the world stage. You reduce it to something manageable. In England's case, my colonies. In Prussia's case, the land war. So when I said that I didn't even touch India, I mean that I didn't even send troops to a third of the map. It's an undiscovered country. God knows what it's like.

Elsewhere on the strategic side, there's the introduction of a genuine tech-tree for you to research (one of the "techs" being philosophy, which causes an outbreak of republicanism and you deciding between staying loyal or turning to the old liberty, equality, fraternity); agents spawning by themselves as a by-product of other activities rather than being made, including the lovely Gentleman who can either do some research or challenge other bounders to a duel; recruiting directly to armies rather than in cities; governments and opposing governments with different staff ; a much improved diplomacy model with more abilities to make deals, and... oh, it's bloody endless.

The standard Total War bugbear has also been addressed, with the AI hugely improved on both battlefield and strategic levels. Suicidal generals are a thing of the past, and they even have the capacity to surprise me a bit, especially with the mass strike. Considerably outnumbering me, the Cherokee piled directly for my general in a decapitation strike in the middle a generally overwhelming assault - but the AI us just as capable of playing cagey.

senso-ji asks: Medieval got a (deserved) sequel. Any chance of Rome/Shogun 2?

Kieran Brigden: Let's just say we're looking at all our options...

noobchewer asks: Will nations be able to rebel and make a faction? Like the Irish?

Kieran Brigden: In short, yes. Certain nations when they rebel form their own unique factions, peoples like the Scots, Irish, Hungarians etc. There are loads of these for you to discover... as a result of not running the territory properly!

Schaep asks: In the previous games, alliances were pretty much useless. The campaign AI always had its mind set on certain settlements, even if they had never belonged to them. This always resulted in betrayal of alliances, even if your faction had overwhelming military strength. Sometimes the AI would even attack settlements with only 1 unit! Has this changed at all in Empire?

Kieran Brigden: Alliances are an element of diplomacy and have received much more attention this time around. If anything it may be the player that ends up having to break long-standing alliances in order to push for a certain province! Now countries' opinion of you rises and falls over time - trade helps increase it for example - and eventually if they like you enough you can form a alliance. There is a huge depth to the diplomatic menu, friends of friends, same religion, an enemy of my enemies, trade, etc. All of these things mean a more realistic diplomatic world. No longer does the AI love you for 50 years only to stab you in the head for no reason when you wont hand over a key region. That said, it can indeed betray you if it REALLY REALLY must, or if you've pushed it that far.

Tullaris asks: What games from other companies do CA staff like? Do you prefer strategy games such as Europa Universalis, Civilization or are you playing totally different games?

Kieran Brigden: We play everything. There's a strong belief here that you cant just be a PC-based strategy gamer to design good games. Its like a chef only eating olives. We have to look at everything and we do - console game, PC titles, and lots of board games too. We have some seriously obscure strategy board games here. There's a bit of a Left 4 Dead fetish with the QA department at the moment, and every other title gets a look in too.