Your favorite Total War game?

Shogun 2

Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai. Didn't care for the game prior to that expansion but that expansion was the best total war has ever done.

If that' doesn't count...probably Empire or Napolean. I was a long time fan of Total War and was super skeptical of firearm based combat - it was extremely limited in Medieval 2 and wasn't that good anyway.

Turns out, its the best the game has ever done. Especially given how combat is completely centered around sieges, which are just completely boring after the 1000th time. Cannons fix that.

Only ones I haven't played are Warhammer, Shogun 1 and Medieval 1.

@fallschirmjager: Interesting. I feel entirely different, I thought line combat with rifles was pretty boring, and it did not help that Empire was pretty poorly executed and buggy on launch, almost as bad as Rome II.

Different strokes for different folks I guess.

I loved it. Especially being able to time a proper charge. Getting line fire etc.

Yeah it was buggy but it also did a hell of a lot for the game. Real naval combat for the first time. It got rid of the god-awful agent system. Dilpomacy and trade were so much better (even if the Diplo in TW is horrible, but that's across all games)

Again though. Fall of the Samurai is best. Its a super refined Empire/Napolean and corrected the mistakes they made. Its also the latest date ever for a TW game (not counting WH)...late 1800's.

Honestly, we need A victorian age total war ending in ww1. Like 1820-1920 type deal. Its fully within their power to do so without getting totally out of hand like WW2+ would.

All that being said though, I've mostly outgrown the series. Combat is fun, but you can only slaughter the AI so many times before its repetitive. Gameplay is repitive in general. Build your economy, build a bigger army, take more provinces, build a bigger economy, etc. I transitioned to Paradox games and haven't looked back that much. Replayability is so much higher there. Especially given how TW has been so anti-mod since Rome 2 mean while Paradox embraces it.