Quote Originally Posted by Lord Angelus
The best setting is the best your graphics card/system can run.
Personally i would rather use a higher Res than something like 4xAA but that again would depend on your system/monitor.
If the features were present in the game options i would set all the settings for my graphic card to 'Application pref' or 'Performance' and tailor your graphics settings via the game menu.

I dont have the game yet (UK) but i plan to run the game in 1600x1200 though if the text is too small i might reduce it ot 1280x and mess around with my quality settings to find the look i'am happy with though i have a feeling that AA will be unecessary on a game which from the demo appears to be viewed from a distance most of the time.
I totally agree. On a game like totalr war where you have the potential to see many, small units on screen at once I find it better to play at the highest res your card/monitor combination can handle and forget the FSAA. Anisotropic filtering is very important for image quiality as it ensures that distant textures remain sharp. With the demo I played at 2048 x 1538 res with no FSAA and 16x AF and got roughly the same performance as the kind of res I would use on a FPS game (1280x1024 4xFSAA 16XAF). For me, detail is more important and at anything higher than 1600x1200 you're not gonna see jaggies anyway - unless you're sat ten inches from a 21" monitor