Ah, i just thought of another: Total War Rome 2
They just released this insanely huge and mouthwatering screenshot:
http://tww-data.s3.amazonaws.com/panorama2/index.html
It looks delicious, hope i can get into it. The Total War series always clicked with me on some weird fundamental level, i could spend countless hours building up my empire and launching major invasions, building up my cities, nursing my economy, building temples and then realize with a shock it was 05:00 and i had to get up in 3 hours.
Something weird happened with the last one though, Shogun 2 was incredibly pretty and it had all the elements that made Total War games so much win, but for some reason i couldn't play it for extended periods of time - and when i finished it i was done and never started it up again. Never figured out why exactly, perhaps it focused on Japan too much. I want to invade barbarian nations and make them part of my empire, suck their lands dry of resources, conscript their men as fodder for my armies and sell their women as slaves. It seems you can do all that and more in the next one, so yay for that.
A must purchase for me looks like - though i won't be getting it at launch methinks.
