Empire: Total War is ready for pre-purchase on Steam right now. For those of you who chose to pre-purchase you will receive a copy of Rome: Total War Gold for absolutely nothing.

It costs $54.99 here in the UK which is a bargain considering you get Rome thrown in too. Well maybe not a bargain, but it isn’t a bad offer.

The Steam and retail versions of Empire will also come fully loaded with Steamworks which will provide owners of the game with updates, downloadable content and achievements. Steamworks will also act as the multiplayer backend of the game, more details will emerge on this soon.

For those of you who are now worrying about offline gaming, don’t worry, you only need to connect to the internet once via Steam to play single-player.

It is released February 3rd in North America and February 6th in Europe and other territories.

I love the Total War series’, though interestingly enough I don’t love the actual battles in the games. Maybe I lack the tactical forsight to engage in battle and win, regardless for me the Total War games area all about the campaign map. Building up your various towns and cities and moving about the little model armies and diplomats. Great fun, accordingly I am pretty pleased with what the new video for Empire: Total War has to show off regarding the campaign map. Check it out.