14 DAY TRIAL // Quietly and in the shadow of the newest patch, dubbed 1.3, Creative Assembly put together and released the first downloadable content pack for Empire: Total War. It is called Elite Units of the West and can be bought via the Steam service from Valve for the equivalent of 3.99 dollars. The DLC offers 14 new units that players can use, totally different from those that are already implemented in the latest patch.
Basically, you get new units, most of them tough, with high morale and bigger than average fighting skills. Players need to be careful that most of them can only be recruited if you meet certain requirements in your campaign game.
The full list of units includes: Hungarian Grenadiers for Austria, Horse Guards for Britain, Swiss Guards for France, Blue Guards and Gardes du Corps for the United Provinces, Guard Grenadiers for Poland-Lithuania, 2nd Hussars, Bosniaks and Frei-Korps for Prussia, Gardes a cheval and Siemenovski Foot Guards for Russia, Walloon Guards for Spain, Legion of the United States and US Marines for the United States.
It's rather disappointing to see that Creative Assembly only put out a handful of units as DLC and most players will probably not buy that, as modders will probably find ways to integrate them in their works. It would have been much more interesting if the developers chose to use Steam to deliver more historical land and naval battles to players, as the initial release of Empire: Total War featured too little of them, or if it shipped mini campaigns, like the ones launched as expansions for Medieval 2: Total War.
Still, it's a nice first step and Empire might receive more support in the coming months, as Creative Assembly is trying to compensate for the initial reviews for Empire, which were rather weak when compared with those garnered by its predecessors.