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 announced by Creative Assembly and publisher Sega at the Leipzig Games Convention on 22 August 2007. In their press release, Creative Assembly outlined various features in the game, such as the new game engine and the addition of real-time naval combat. However, while the game had been in the planning stages since the release of "", it was still in early development; no gameplay footage was demonstrated at the convention. The game was announced alongside The Creative Assembly's console title "". Media releases over the subsequent months showed screenshots of the game and elaborated more on "Empire: Total War"s game mechanics. The game's trailer, consisting of computer-generated cut scene footage, was released 10 July 2008. A playable demonstration of the game's naval combat was showcased at the E3 convention later in July 2008, where it was estimated that the game would ship in 2009. The land combat was demonstrated at the later 2008 Leipzig Game Convention in August 2008. At the convention, Creative Assembly announced that the game was out of the alpha development phase, and that they were aiming for a release date of 6 February 2009.