Wormy played Empire: Total War

After trying to play Stronghold (and crashing), I decided to dip back into a more recent title, the good ole Empire. I continued the 'Road to Independence' campaign, and had a good couple of chapters completed.

Two great battles unfolded for me, one was the battle to take Fort Duquesne, and the second was to take Fort Niagra. It is clear that in the campaign mode, since some battles are pre-ordained to happen, they put more effort into those maps. Both of the fort battles were awesome to behold.

Fort Duqense was a wooden fort perched on a tiered hill in the crook of two rivers. The surrounding countryside had some hills from which I could fire my cannon to weakend the defenses, and take potshots at the defending forces.
In this fight, I was laying siege, so it was up to the fort's forces to repel me, and thus when the battle was fought, it was actually me on the defensive. This made their fort pretty much useless as they had to leave it to fight me.

The map had these wonderful chokepoints of bridges, and a river fording area, and I was able to setup my troops along them to maximize my firepower. I was even up on tiered hilltops so that when their armies came to get me, I was able to shoot from a main line AND from tiered cliffs above them. It was a slaughter :)

After I took fort D, I was sending small skirmish forces out to harass the countryside and basically piss off the French at Fort Niagra. This ploy worked, as I was able to lure the main French force out into the countryside, and slip my forces right past them and into the Fort itself!

Since I couldn't afford a siege, I went straight for the jugular of the fort. The map was equally as awesome as the last one. The fort itself was stone, and situated on a large hill across from the hill that I was invading from. In the valley between us lay a small town with some defensible buildings.

I was able to position my cannon on the hilltop and begin pounding away right from the beginning. I destroyed a building the town that was garrisoned, killing the units inside, and then I turned my cannon to the fort itself. In short order I had blown away a wall of the fort, all without my main troops firing a shot.

When i marched my overwhelming force up to the fort, the battle was all but over. I did have one surprise, in a hidden native american force that was French allied popping out from nowhere on my flank, but they were quickly dealt with using my overwhelming numbers.

When it was over, we had taken very few losses, and now the entire ohio valley was mine.

The game has now expanded to encompass all of the eastern and central 'US', and southern 'Canada', and now the real fight is going to commence.