Those of you waiting for EA and Creative Assembly's upcoming Japan-based strategy game, Shogun, will have to wait a few months more. Both developer and publisher have decided to push the game back to an early 2000 release date in order to add more features. EA was careful to say that the product did not slip; instead, the date was being moved back to allow time to add new features that came about as a result of feedback given during E3.

　　The game's biggest new feature will be more robust online play that will consist mostly of an EA-hosted free gaming service. For gameplay, the tactical portion of the game will see significant improvement. Creative Assembly will add dynamic weather effects, such as rain, fog, thunder, and wind. There are also plans to make the terrain graphics even more detailed, with more ambient vegetation, buildings, and animals. If time permits, these objects will even be interactive. Units will be enhanced with better graphics and more varied animation. The AI will also be improved to take advantage of some of the new terrain features being added to the game

　　The strategy portion of the game will also be enhanced. There are plans to add a 3D view for cities from the strategic map, and the interface will be getting a traditional task bar menu and an option for completely mouse-driven controls.

　　As the game gets closer to release, we'll try to bring you more information. For now, the developers are hard at work adding the features to Shogun , which will release sometime next year.