The oldest RTW player.

[Martok]

Well, this thread makes me feel young at 45.

I do think the TW games generally attract an older-than-normal crowd simply because they're history-based.

I think most of us here would agree with that, even after you factor in the younger players who came out of the woodwork when Rome was released. Even allowing that as a group, PC gamers have aged somewhat, I think TW players tend be a little older still. At 29, I have a feeling I'm probably in the middle of the pack--and I doubt there's that many games where the median age of their players is close to 30.

What I find funny is that my 57-year-old father now has a little bit of the Total War bug (not that he'll admit it!); and this is a man who has long disparaged my hobby of playing PC games. I haven't been able to convince him to actually sit down and play Shogun or Medieval yet, but I've been steadily chipping away at his resolve for the last year or so. I briefly stayed with my dad for a couple months back in 2004, and was playing Medieval a lot of the time. Often when I was playing, he would *ever* so casually stroll over to my desk in the family room and watch over my shoulder while I beat the crap out of the Almohads (I had a Spanish campaign going at the time). He was clearly intrigued, but whenever I asked him him if he wanted to sit down and try it out, he would suddenly step back and say "no thanks", and act like he wasn't really that interested.

I think his real problem, however, is that he doesn't have a computer capable of running the game. (All he has is his crappy laptop from his job, which is even worse than the hunk of junk I have now.) So when I upgrade my PC in a couple months, I think I'll give him this one, so that he can at least play Shogun and Medieval. And after I show him Medieval 2, who knows? Perhaps that will be enough to convince him to get a new computer himself! There may be hope for him yet....