Strategy Informer  

I like how they still pretend the factions are somehow hard to guess. I mean between the Seleucids, Ptolemaic Egypt, Greek City States, Germans, Gauls, Iberians, Parthians, etc there's really not a lot left to speculate about.

...save how they'll handle a faction like the Gauls. One big blob or split them up into the constituent tribes (like they should) Averni, Belgae and the Aedui

I would really like to know how they`ll handle the dacii,my country`s ancestors,they haven`t exactly been represented well in games.

Much as II enjoy the Macedonians as a playable race (modded, though) I'll be interested to see how the Picts will be represented this time round. Out side of the Germanics, they were the hardest of peoples the Romans faced (Hadrian built a wall to keep them out, for goodness sake).
I know that is much later in the Empire stage of Rome, but Britain was invaded long before Augustus by the Republican Romans (Julies Caesar namely).

Caesar didn't like it over there. HE was perfectly happy being the first Roman to get there and make a statement that way. So yeah, I'd love to get some proper Britons/Picts

The Germans and the Picts were the only two peoples who captured Eagles in their massive forest ambushes. Definitely worth re-visiting.

If Empire, Napoleon and Shogun 2 are the norm, expect a ton of major and minor DLC's with stuff that should have been in the game from the launch actually.

Neither Empire/Napoleon OR Shogun had any DLC that unlocked anyhting important (excepting the proper expansions for Shogun, but that's not somehting you expect to get in the stock game). They just did some units with different skins and slightly better stats....oh and Shogun did a ridiculous fantasy faction that wasn't important anyway.

Their actually games that seem to shy away from limiting their launch content in any major way. A couple fancy units isn't good value maybe, but who honestly cares if you're using Line Infantry or the SUPER AWESOME FANCY DRESS Line Infantry? They're fine to sell to silly people with too much money :)

I agree with SirRoderick, we can all do without those small DLC's who add a few new units for 10 bucks each. What I do hope is that this time, there will be far more provinces (or sub-provinces) with abudance of cities, to make the game more intense on the campaign map. And return the internal trade system like in R:TW and M2:TW, so player's cities can trade with each other, not just with foreighners, wich vastly decreases income in times of war (like in Shogun 2, when all factions go against you)

You can easily bypass those silly little DLCs with Mods that add so much more. Really these DLC's are for "completists", who must have everything.
First thing I'll be doing is modding the game before I even really get started. "Blood" is always first on the list:)

So many games the DLC is stupidly bad value. $5 for a minor cosmetic change. $15 for 2 new missions which take whole minutes to play thru. Seems like when they want to sell you worthwhile DLC at a sensible price they just go ahead and call it an expansion pack.

Carthage is in, so I got my elephants. All other teams are just terrain choices for my elephants to trample ;P

One of the more iconic clans the Ikko Ikki (warrior monks) were dlc in Shogun and so were two other factions, so I have to agree with wolf here.

They ARE going down the wrong path when it comes to dlc, that simply can't be denied. Remember the days when all you had to do was to edit a txt file and you could play ALL the factions no matter how minor? Well dream on if you want those days back, they want to milk you for every extra penny they can.
We wanna prevent cheating bla bla, safety bla bla, other fake reasons bla bla. In the case of Total War games the DLC situation is beyond obvious.

Extra units I don't mind, but locking the factions that are present on the map from launch day forward and selling them as DLC gets the finger from me. This is basically on-disc DLC!

I haven't bought any of them, no matter how iconic the Ikko Ikki are :(.

I dont know where I heard it from, but I think that R2:TW will be open for mods just like Skyrim. In that case, I think that players can create factions, not just modify them. RTW was simple to edit, but this will whole new thing to see. And herodotus is right, mods ARE a way to go :)