So I got Medieval 2: Total War yesterday, and have pretty much spent every waking moment on it since then. It's...it's really slow. But also makes real life fly by weirdly fast. I just finished playing a 'short' game as the English, and 100 turns took about 14 hours to play.

Recommended.

So...is it an RTS, turn-based? Does it follow more of a Civ approach or Advance Wars type of warfare?

C'mon, be a bit more specific

It's quite like Civilisation, with a pretty exhaustive attention to detail. You pick a country and take over Europe, with the battles themselves done RTS on huge fields (though you can have them simulated by the AI if you can't be bothered).

My only gripe is that you can only win one way - getting rid of the factions and holding territory. Other than that it's a very solid, very long game.

*Civilization. Proper noun so no fucking it up with your mangled British English.

I have Shogun 2 but I'm pretty terrible at it. I'm just not cut out for strategy games, I get impatient.

I played Rome: Total War to death. I recently got Shogun 2 and love it, I just don't have the patience to play it recently.

There is something about launching a volly of fire arrows over legions of infantry that appeals to me greatly.

Blurg, already got sick of the slow pace. Then I got Civ 4 and got bored with that too. Alpha Centauri is fucking awesome but the Civ series doesn't really cut it for me. And AoE 3 is still better than both.

too slow for my tastes

Might pick up TW:Rome, played it a bit and liked the whole conquest/economics system. Wish they'd do a modern day/sci-fi version though, not a big fan of ancient/medieval settings for strategy games, Mammoth Tank > War Elephant.

I have TW:Rome....

games are so slow O_O

uninstall/trash discs

The slowness does bother me. The nice thing about Alpha Centauri is that the sci-fi stuff is actually really interesting, and I'm not usually a sci-fan fan. I really like the pace of that game, and seeing the secret projects roll out with their weird little videos and quotes - conversely, playing through Civ4 or Medieval 2 felt like a bit of a chore, because in a way I'd already had all the content before (because it's actually part of the world we live in). Age of Empires remains fun and interesting because of the speed and the mechanics, and the fact that I play on Hard all the time these days and thus don't feel like such a n00b.

I would really love to see a modern or sci-fi setting for AoE, though I heard that irritatingly the next instalment is some bullshit MMO.