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[Martok]

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A pretty good article with a decent amount of new info. The two most interesting parts for me were as follows:

What can you say about the role of the Cabinet?

Depending on your governmental system your cabinet are either the elected representatives of the people or appointees of the royalty or head of state.

These individuals take up key posts, influencing bonuses and modifiers applied to your trade, armed forces, diplomacy and overall leadership. You're able to shuffle your ministers, call early elections, hire and fire individuals etc. This is something that those who want to squeeze the extra 5% from their game will take an interest in. For those not so keen, it can be auto-managed without you needing to tend to it.

Hooray! Some political game-y goodness. I look forward to seeing how this turns out.

Since you are dealing with the early industrial age, how does technological research fit into the gameplay?

For the first time in a Total War title we have a research and technology tree. The different branches reflect military, industrial, socio-political, land, naval and artillery advancements. You are able to build universities and academic institutions which give you research points to spend on these technologies.

The tree unlocks different things for every faction—special formations, different artillery munitions, sizes and classes of ships etc. The impact of technology is far and wide and you must choose what kind of a balance you wish to strike for your Empire.

It's also worth noting that as upgrades are researched they are automatically rolled out to your armies and navies in the field (No more returning miles for better weapons etc.)

Interesting. While it takes away from the realism factor, it should also cut down on unit micromanagement as well. Hopefully it'll be a worthwhile trade-off.

[Mailman653]

The political side of things sounds fun. So if a certain person fails me I can just fire him or send him far away, or if I want someones favor I can offer him that new office that just opened up. Or sack everyone with new elections.

[Sheogorath]

Sounds fine to me. I hated having to cycle troops back to the homeland just to give them new weapons/armor all the time. It was such a pain.

[sassbarman]

the part about the cabinet doesn't sound like it's going to be to fleshed out and meaningful to
the game. I would have prefered them to say that managing this properly is critical to the overall success of your empire or something to that effect, as opposed to it's just gonna be there and whether or not you care to be hands on or allow it to be auto-managed is up to you.

I really hope they haven't chosen to dumbed this game down like the last two instalments in the series and just throw a lot of meaningless features into the game that have no real effect on the outcome.

just my 2 cents.

[Megas Methuselah]

@Sassbarman: I don't know about you, kid, but I like to RP my game. It's not fun just mindlessly conquering the world...

The political side of things sounds fun. So if a certain person fails me I can just fire him or send him far away, or if I want someones favor I can offer him that new office that just opened up. Or sack everyone with new elections.

[sassbarman]

@Sassbarman: I don't know about you, kid, but I like to RP my game. It's not fun just mindlessly conquering the world...

Don't get wrong my friend i'm dead set against just mindlessly conquering the world, but nor do i want a bunch of useless, hollow features that appear to add depth. I want to be forced to think and have my decisions good or bad be reflected in the outcome of my games.
Having said that i do understand and appreciate the value of role playing it can add a lot of spice to the game.