The Total War Blog says March 4 is the release date for Empire: Total War, confirming the most recent release date for the next installment in Creative Assembly's large-scale real-time strategy series. They also announce that all copies of the game must be activated using Steam, even if they are purchased at retail or another digital delivery service. They also offer some system specifications, saying the following represents the minimum, rather than the recommended specs:

Operating System: Windows XP 32(service pack 2), Windows Vista 32 OS.
Processor: 2.4 GHz Single Core Intel or AMD equivalent processor.
System Memory: 1GB RAM (XP) 2GB RAM (Vista).
Graphics Card: 256MB DirectX 9.0c compatible video card (shader 2.0 or higher).
Sound Card: Directx9.0c compatible sound card.
Windows compatible mouse & keyboard.
15 GB free uncompressed hard drive space.