Total Annihilation
"Total Annihilation" was one of the first RTS games to feature radar that showed enemy units within its radius on the minimap. This added an additional element of electronic warfare to the game: players could construct radar jammers that prevented units in a small radius around them from appearing on radar. Mobile radar jammers could be used to create surprise attacks, necessitating the deployment of scout units on a regular basis to reveal said units visually. In addition, radar jammers could disguise the presence of visually cloaked units, such as the commander or land mines. Radar fields rendered cloaked units detectable; a radar jammer could make said units undetectable until the radar jammer was destroyed. "Total Annihilation" was also one of the first RTS games to point the way towards battlefields with hundreds and thousands of units. Previous games could field a hundred units or so. However, Total Annihilation initially permitted 250 units per side which was later patched to 500. A third party patch allowed up to 5,000 units per side.
Empire: Total War
"Empire: Total War" was released on 3 March 2009 to the North American market, on 4 March in Europe, on 5 March in Australia, and on Christmas Day in Japan. 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 "" and "". 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 810,000 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 Creative Assembly is planning on addressing issues with stability and performance, as well as adding improvements for gameplay and artificial intelligence.