Release
Empire: Total War was released on 3 March 2009 to the North American market, and three days later in Europe. The game has become the fastest selling Total War title to date; Empire topped British video game sales charts for all platforms in the week of release, the first PC exclusive title to do so in a year and a half. The game was reported to have sold nearly double the number of Rome: Total War and Medieval II: Total War. In the United States, Empire: Total War and its Special Forces edition were ranked as first and second respectively in the PC sales charts for the week of release. The game's Australian version debuted as the top PC game; across all platforms Empire: Total War was ranked fourth, behind Halo Wars, Wii Fit and Killzone 2. Sega reported the game sold 810 thousand units worldwide during their last fiscal year period of 2008. However, consumer response was hampered by technical problems arising from incompatibility with certain Nvidia drivers released after the game's development was completed and reports of installation problems with the Steam content delivery system. In an interview with IGN, Studio Communications Manager Kieran Brigden discussed the problems inherent in developing such a huge and ambitious game, saying: "Are there some issues with Empire? Yes there are." As part of its post-release support, he said that The Creative Assembly is planning on addressing issues with stability and performance, as well as adding improvements for gameplay and artificial intelligence.
Mike Simpson, The Creative Assembly's studio director, started a blog in October 2009, in a deliberate attempt to engage with the game's user community and counter some of the negative reaction which the game had received. He explained The Creative Assembly "were not entirely happy with the state of Empire: Total War when it went out", but felt the Metacritic user rating of 67 percent was unfair, stating that his reason for blogging was a concern that the negative ratings could even damage the amount of money available for developing future games. In later posts he described the February 2009 release date as "commercial reality", and explained why they had hit significant problems with the game's AI close to release. Simpson describes the campaign AI as "by far the most complex code edifice I’ve ever seen in a game", and said that they had reached a tipping point where consideration of too many factors led to an AI which "disagrees with itself chronically and often ends up paralysed by indecision". It was only after patch 1.5—six months after the original release—that Simpson felt comfortable sending it to friends of his, having previously been too embarrassed about the flaws. With regard to the battle AI, Simpson said that the lead battle AI programmer had left to return to his family just before the end of the project. The battle AI at that stage struggled to beat good players even with an obvious level of handicapping, and it had taken some time for other programmers to understand three years' worth of code; progress had been "frustratingly slow" as they strived for a game where real world tactics would work.
In September 2009, an expansion titled The Warpath Campaign was announced for release the following month, as was the next game in the series, Napoleon: Total War. The campaign, released as downloadable content, focuses on the battles of the Europeans and Native Americans throughout most of North and Central America. The new campaign expands the North American territories and features 5 new playable factions: Iroquois, Cherokee, Huron, Pueblo and Plains Nations. New researchable technologies were also added, along with the new scout and shaman agents and new faction specific objectives. Napoleon: Total War, released February 2010, focuses on the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, building upon the technology used for Empire: Total War. Napoleon was released as a standalone game rather than an expansion for a number of reasons, mostly to do with technical limitations; according to Mike Simpson "the level of detail required to successfully depict the Napoleonic Wars is an order of magnitude greater than we were working to with Empire: Total War". Empire and Napoleon Total War Collection - Game of the Year was then released on 1 October 2010 joining both games together, including all of the available downloadable content.
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