Hm. Can you link some of this 'historical accuracy' on TWC? The images of Carthage are quite hilarious (50 foot tall Zeus of Artemision- weird Temples- Gladiatorial Graffiti). Roman screenshots shows structures that Rome did not built for centuries from the game starting date . I will assume good will, so I'm truly curious if they did some work on ancient topography or if they got in touch with archeologists/historians this time.
And I disagree. TW are for the 12 years old interested in History- I got my first Total War game around that age. And I enjoyed the hell out of it.
I found Shogun 2 mightily boring- same units, poor planning, slow battles, abysmal AI (I did not played Empire and Napoleon, so I assume they're similar)- it's cool to see your Ashigaru units doing crazy fatalities on enemies, but that should be the icing on the cake. Not the main selling point.
Currently my Uni IP blocks TWC, which means I need to use proxy and stuff, so I can't give you a good link for the specific threads. Try to lurk the Total war center forums, and in the stickies of Rome 2, you'll find some info (not all).
The complaint about rome is not necessarely valid : the game spans over centuries, from -270 to 0AD and later. Therefore some of the buildings showed make sense. Also, Rome is about rewriting history, so if you are even more succesful than the IRL romans, you will build the colosseum earlier.
As for carthage, Of course they are making up stuff : the entire city was razed, and they've explained the data available is limited. They are still the first in the world to attempt a full scale 3D reconstitution of it.
There are countless threads on TWC comparing the Carthage city with available data on the old settlements. And it seems CA depiction stays pretty authentic. Even the nitpicky members that complaints about the legionary's sandals don't bother whining.
So yes, you are right to assume good will
, and they have been hiring historians, apparently, and they went pretty specific = celtic/germanic architecture.
It won't be perfect, but needless to remind, they have made significant progress in those fields. Rome 1 was a cliche, retarded depiction of antiquity. From the faction description you can already tell that they've abandonned the hollywood stereotypes.
Indeed TW is for the 12 years old enjoying history. Just like it's also for the 20 year old enjoying history. Overall, there are no statistics available.
But considering it's PC exclusive, and it takes a pretty solid computer, I would be inclined to say that the demographic is much older than usual popamole (on a pure logical, proportion standpoint).
Pretty much everyone studying classical history and playing computer games, at my Uni, knows about this franchise. Hell, our ancient warfare teacher uses Rome Total War screenshots and vids in his class.
And they haven't been showing any decline along years. Shogun 2 AI sucked, Rome 1 and Medieval 2 AIs sucked even more. Rome 1 diplomacy was awful, shogun 2 diplomacy was decent.
Battles were slow in shogun 2. That was an error on their part, but in no way an attempt to dumb things down. They also confirmed they would increase the speed of battles in Rome 2, which confirms its no decline trend.
About the boring units, well it was Japan, and SEGA didn't bothered giving them much budget (because they knew ASIAN culture wouldn't sell as much as Europe culture anyway). But they are promising 750 units, which would be the highest number. In that case it's an incline trend.
Not to mention, no more rebel faction : 51 different faction, each with their own diplomacy, captital and culture. Which could potentially add a huge dimension that was missing. Again another incline.
And the whole faction families that you must chose (more depth). And also the improvement of the battle map topography (as seen in PC gamer). And the fact that arrows physics are now fully realistic (except wind), which would allow you to think more logically when it comes to taking them into account. And some combat physics are also improved (better physics = more logical thinking, when it's not eye candy).
Overall, I'm optimistic. And I'm usually always ranting and pessimistic.