For those who havent checked it out
www.totalwar.org is a superb resource on everything Total War-related
Jorath: One more amusing detail is that your characters age at a rate of six months per turn, while each turn sees the passing of two years according to the in-game calendar:p The years/turn ratio can be change by modding some file which also gives you more time to finish the game.
Could it temporarily have needed 11GB for swapping during installation? You also need some extra free disk space for windows to run properly.
I think the ever increasing bloatedness of games stems from a combination of more in-game audio, higher resolution graphics taking up more space (compare the nubmers 1600x1200x16000000 and 800x600x256), and devs being lazier due to having more space to play with after the introduction of DVDs. Game mechanics and Artificial Intelligence are given an ever decreasing share of the resources:p