The map switches to the tactical level and you get the opportunity to place your forces. Once both armies stay to fight, battle is joined. Unfortunately you as a player have no influence over when your own forces fight or withdraw, as this is also decided by the computer. If the enemy feels he has a chance, he’ll stay and fight. If the enemy feels your forces are superior, it withdraws into a neighbouring province. These are initiated on the campaign map by moving an army into a province with an enemy force. If you concentrate your forces in one place, they’Il melt away quickly as you cannot support them, and this capacity changes with the seasons. This limits the size of armies that can stay in that province without suffering attrition. The most important is the supply limit of each province. There are some nice factors in place here. The objective is to take all provinces on the map. Each province belongs to a player, and by occupying it you have a chance to conquer it (though most of the time you need to stay in a province for a longer period of time to complete a siege). This is a section of Europe, with the map area further divided into provinces. Within minutes I was involved in my first battle. Almost everything can be done with simple mouseclicks, or drag and drop actions.

The game is very intuitive, because I didn’t need the manual to get started. I chose to begin a campaign with the Swedes against the Imperialists. After receiving the game I immediately installed it, looked for updates to get to the most recent version of the game, and began my first game. This looked very appealing and the description seemed like what I was looking for. I bought this game after having seen the screenshots and demo video online. I’m playing this game for a few weeks now, and thought it would be a good idea to share my impressions with you so you know what you get when you buy this game.

Total war pike and shot