I also voted for a Napoleonic era game, mainly as I feel that the World War’s have been already done to death plus would be very difficult to pull off in the Total War format without ending up looking and playing very much like AoE but with a better campaign map.

Not to say that a Napoleonic game wouldn’t have its problems, certainly I’d think that CA would have to completely revamp their “rock-paper-scissors” combat system due to the higher rate of gunpowder units and their far better real effectiveness when compared to the Medieval hand-cannons.

Other than that, I can’t think of a better company (despite my bitter disappointment about many features of M2) to pull it off.

I think that for a really decent World War game you have to look at Company of Hero’s as something that pulls it off as well as you possibly can (such 20th Century combat is just TOO fast paced and destructive to units for you to have the sort of control or numbers you have in Rome or M2 in one battle).

With Nepoleonic forces you sill have set formations for infantry, cavalry that we all recognise and large scale “set” battles. Potentially the last era where two armies would decided on a battle ground, set up within view of each other and THEN attack each other.

I personally feel that such a “set” battle is the core of Total War. Loose that and I don’t think we have Total War franchise games but rather more traditional (and not as fun) RTS’s.