Total War News

While developer Creative Assembly continues to work on bug-fixing and post-release support for Empire: Total War, the studio has revealed plans to provide players with several new units, for free, as a "thank you."

The first unit to be revealed was the Russian Grenadiers, with the company noting that the soldiers are "great for assaults and their grenades pack a mighty punch."

While some may worry that the studio is devoting resources to new content instead of fixes, designed Jack Lusted allayed those fears, writing that "the work on the free units is not taking away time for fixes, the free units do not require any work from coders just work by artists and by a designer (me)."

"We will also be using (the new units) to introduce more balance variety between factions as well. Some are new, some are replacement for existing units in some factions roster," Lusted added. "The aim of the free units is to increase the graphical and unit variety of several factions rosters."

In all, there will be a total of 15 "newly accessible" units, spread out among "one brand new unit, ten unique replacement units and four existing units 'unlocked; for other factions." One example, the company noted, is that "the Dutch and Swedish factions can now access the Hussars unit."