[Professor S]

The game operates on two different engines: turn based and real time.

The city/region/resource management parts are turn based, where you will build farm land, different miltary buildings, city walls, etc. Its like a mix of Risk and Civilization.

The battles are all in real time (but in sngle player you can pause), and there really is no other comparison. The Total War engine is an engine unto itself. The armies are massive and the battle movement and strategy is about as close to reality as you can get. High ground is imperitive, woods and long grasses are good for hiding select troup types, and always try and flank your opponent. I found myself reading The Art of War and researeching different ancient battle strategies for the game.

So far my favorite civilization to play is the Seleucids. They have heavily armored Phalanxes with extra long spears (great for creating a fixed wall of spers on an open battlefield), good archers to hide behind the phalanx and most importantly... Armoured War Elephants. Let your opponent crash into your wall of spears, pepper them with flaming arrows, and then crush them from either side with Elephants.

I'm al little sad that the next title won;t have elephants, but it will have what I missed from Medeival... black powder! I love me some artillery and musketeers.