One of the bigger surprises uncovered at E3 is the purchase of Creative Assembly by Sega. The formerly independent developer, best known for creating the incredible Total War games released by EA and Activision, is now wholly owned by Sega. They kicked off the relationship by showing two titles at E3: Spartan: Total Warrior for consoles and the Rome: Total War Barbarian Invasion expansion for PCs.
The latter was a last-minute addition to the show and no screenshots have yet been released. Barbarian Invasion picks up at about 500 AD, just as the Roman Empire was dissolving. Ten new factions are included as well as 83 new units and 21 new buildings, complete with a new tech tree. You can either try to defend or reunite the Roman Empire, or you can step into the furry shoes of the Saxons, the Vandals, the Goths, the Vikings, any of the Germanic tribes, or other European powers who ruled during the period.
The new units alter gameplay with their own quirks. Some units are capable of swimming, allowing you to slip across a river to flank the enemy. New Priest units can stop troops from routing. Berserker units really juice things up: once these guys encounter the enemy, there's a chance they'll go berserk. When they start raging like that, the unit is out of your control, and the individual barbarians will rush blindly from one enemy to the next.
On the strategic map, many barbarian tribes have the "Hording" ability. This allows them to pack up an existing settlement and move the whole thing to another province.
Rome took hundreds of years to collapse, but the expansion pack won't take that long to hit shelves. They're expecting to release it in August of this year.[/b]
