Shogun Total War is a gorgeous strategy game, heavy on the Samurais theme. You build huge armies that will certainly be necessary, though there is a reasonable diplomacy feature.
Landscapes are beautiful, decorated with rice fields and ancient japanese architecture. You can rotate the scenery, but you can't control the camera's altitude.
Again, Diplomacy is important. The whole Japan island is represented and its provinces are like hotspots to where you can move spies, diplomats... and / or offensive armies.
Such is the hype surrounding next-generation gaming consoles (Nintendo's CUBE, Sony's Playstation 2 [PSX2], Microsoft's X-Box), that even rock solid magazines, like the super superb EDGE, sometimes collapse and write about highly undesirable and worrying scenarios, such as... the death of the PC as a gaming platform.
Yes, some industry folks (hopefully the less influential) reported to EDGE their opinions on the future of gaming, and - because the question was indeed asked - they think the PC is about to lose importance to consoles and, eventually, die as a gaming machine.
Well, I don't believe the PC will ever lose the CROWN for the best gaming gear, let alone, cease to exist for that purpose... and many facts tend to support MHO.
I could remember the huge impact Microsof't X-Box will have on the console world (eventually killing the Playstation 2, as it horribly smashes it on every field), and the EASY portability that there will be between the X-Box... and the PC...
...and I could also state some developers on the relative lack of software for the PSX2, because of "being hard to program it"... meaning that the PSX2 dev costs are higher than first expected, while software availability and quality is far below the promises.
For short, if there are black clouds on any gear's horizon, is for consoles, not for the PC. But the future is yet to happen, and the present is enough to provide us wonderful software, only possible on PC.
If there are gaming genres easily "best played on a PC", Strategy is one of them! On today's Real-Time-Strategy games, there can be *thousands* of individual agents, each computing its own artificial intelligence code, all communicating in a complex environment, summing up to a piece of software that really drains plenty of computer power!
Beware that many "high end PCs" (such as my own :)) technically now qualify as "super computers", and notice that even such machines are having a hard time to drive some strategy games.
For example, go check update 300900, and read about a 5 hours long "Age of Empires 2 - The Conquerors" battle. This battle opposed two human players to two computer players, and there was a time in the game, when there were 4 * 200 = 800 agents at field, doing their own particular farming, chopping, fishing, fighting, etc... Indeed very heavy for the hardware!
But if it is big numbers you are looking for, then the recent Shogun / Total War [STW] is what you are looking for!
STW is NOT a classic RTS. While its core is RTS, much of the time, you'll be doing diplomacy in Japan, looking for allies, avoiding enemies, building structures on provinces, in order to bring up their productivity, etc... This is a novelty!
Still, before you experience STW's superb RTS core, there is one thing that will catch your attention: the beautiful interface! By "beautiful" I do mean "beautiful"! I can't describe it, but it smells ancient Japan all over place... lovely... lets proceed...
STW's RTS core remembers the much underrated Myth and Myth 2 titles: good looking 3D worlds-for-battles, requiring some experience, in order to be used (navigated) effectively. The difference is on the numbers...
...there will be times, when a single army will have over 700 fighters! Now, imagine this army against one other of equal magnitude... What a carnage!
The best thing on battle time is that a small army, if well positioned, can win a fight against a gigantic opponent. For example, if you have plenty of archers, move them to the highest spot in the terrain (usually a high mountain), then use some pike men to call the opponent's attention towards the trap, and let it rain arrows on them...
The world is good looking, in true 3D, but navigation isn't easy and, even for the most experienced player, it will never be perfect, as you can't lift or rise the camera, at your will (camera altitude is automatic).
There are also moments when "deadlocks" can happen... For example, imagine two armies separated by a narrow LONG bridge, over a river: in this situation, if you have many archers, you won't dare be the first crossing the bridge, as your archers will be bulldozered by the enemy's chivalry... so, you wait until the foes decide to take the first step and dare themselves to your arrows... but that won't probably happen, thus the game resulting in a boring wait.
Strategic moves aren't that clear. The only move I ALWAYS find effective, is moving archers to high spots. In alternative, you can oppose pikemen to chivalry and defeat swordsmen by horse, but because of the way you can control groups, the armies tend to mix and invalidate your plans. Not easy.
STW has the rare "just one more try" factor, which is the highest compliment you can give a strategy game. There are flaws (terrain navigation) and some plus notes that aren't that "honest". For example, the impressive armies lose impact the moment you understand that you can't really control individuals, but only the groups they belong to... hence my opinion that STW is technically inferior to AoE2.
Somehow, maybe because of its great looks and scale, despite the mentioned problems, I simply can't resist Shogun! I will try to complete the campaign and learn much about the Japan of the samurais. I already started to learn japanese... (honest!)...
When fighting, the left bottom of the screen shows your troops, like cards. You can chose packs of troops, by clicking on a card, and you can give orders by multi-selecting.
This is a true battlefield, with hundreds of troops moving around, all thinking about how nice it would be if they had been born a few centuries later :). There can be thousands of troops on screen, so you now understand better the need for the cards interface, right?
A Geisha lives in the throne room. Geishas were educated to accompany men as hostesses, in ancient Japan.