Trailer on gamespot, not much info, though it's supposed to arrive Q1 2010.

http://gamescom.gamespot.com/video/6215634/

From the comments it sounds like a stand-alone game, not an expansion to empire: TW. dunno. I wasn't all that impressed with Empire, so we'll have to see how this turns out.

*edit*

blah, here's a preview and a lot more info. Teach me to read.
http://gamescom.gamespot.com/story/6215 ... mpressions

I'm not sure. Like you, I found Empire to be a bit lacking in the excitement department. RTW and Medieval 2 were both great games by any measure, but Empire just lacked that greatness. The more static combat won't have helped that.

After playing it a bit when it first came out I pretty much lost sight of Empire, which is a shame. I never had that with MTW2 and RTW.

yea...you can blame market pressure. I work for a company in a very competitive space... if we don't push out new innovative software FAST, someone else will and will steal our customers. So we push out shit that could be more polished, and patch it later. Usually the next version will patch a bunch of stuff...then add new stuff (to stay competitive) that breaks other stuff... etc etc. With time it gets better overall, but can be pretty frustrating for everyone involved.