f13.net

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/40753.html

Anyone else looking forward to this? I hope it is better than Medieval 2.

I liked Medieval 2, but I didn't play Rome very much or Total War at all, so I am sure YMMV. There are definitely some improvements that could be made.

will we see more improvements and new additions to the game with more stuff taken away that we had before.

people say that original Med:TW was more complex and Med2:TW.

While I really enjoyed how smooth Med2:TW was and how smoothly is ran. I gotta agree it seemed to be a little more simple in depth. However all this has been discussed to death on the official boards.

I miss the nearly impossible to kill Swiss halberders from Med:TW. I still do not see Boiling Oil drop in Med2:TW castle sieges.

Empire: Total war will be a day one purchase. I do miss the things they have taken out to change and improve the game each incarnation though.

Best part of the trailer: 3rd February 2009.

Shit, now I'm really going to start counting the days.

As someone who is still playing both, more than just about any other game in the last year, I'm totally psyched about this one. Feb 6th?! The economy better not tank, that's all I'm sayin.

I am dying for Empire: Total War. I'm an absolute fanboi of both Napoleonic and Seven Year's War historical periods, and these games looks so sweet. February can't come soon enough.

Absolutely looking forward to it. I've been playing the crap out of RomeTW lately. Watching the Rome DVD's got me in the mood to kick some barbarian ass.  :drill:

Yep, can't wait.  I still play Medieval II religiously.

The only thing I would put on my "want" list is for them to expand the timeline and let us go all the way to the American Civil War/Franco Prussian War era.  You still have the ranks of infantry, cavalry, and artillery so the game's format wouldn't have to change, but the weaponry's gotten a lot deadlier.

Wary of this.  Loved Rome: TW and disliked Medieval 2: TW.  The latter just didn't click for me in the way that the former did.  The Papal layer and nobility just annoyed the shit out of me.

Still, the time period chosen should make for potentially really interesting gameplay. 

Only thing that makes me a little nervous about this is that noone has ever managed to mix sea and land battles in an interesting way.

That said, people griping about any form of Total War are being silly. They are all wrought from pure awesome, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a fool and a charlatan.

This.  And some unforgivable bugs in M2TW.  And some unforgivable dumb-ing down.  I doubt I'll ever buy another Total War game.  The expansion to M2TW was a joke.

Empire is up for pre-purchase on Steam.

2 months, 1 week, 1 day and 16 hours to unlock. 

I'm not entirely convinced that the inevitable apocalypse won't occur in that timeframe, so I'm holding off.  And I don't see any incentive to pre-purchase, other than the self satisfying knowledge that it will rock you.


Fake edit: wait, you get Rome: Gold for free.  Hmm.  Hmmmmmm.  I never did buy the expansion...

Ohh, that's fucking devious.

It should have been called Rome: Barbarian Rape Party.  It starts off decently with you holding your own, but the hordes of barbarians are just never ending.  As it should be, playing the eastern Empire is slightly easier than the west.  The west is pretty much fucked.  Really tough scenario.   :thumbs_up:

I found the campaign map ridiculously big, just lost track of where everything was and got sick of micro-managing much quicker than any of the other TW games. I think I might need to actually retool my comp some just so I can play this though, first game in a while that has caused my heart to pop many boners.

I'll likely pick this one up later towards the summer next year, or shortly after playing a demo, whichever comes first.

Creative Assembly better not drop the ball here. ALL their 1.0  releases asides from Shogun Total War have been ridiculously bugged out and barely playable (you could bank on stuff like AI generals suicide charging the front lines and range/melee hybrid troops' AI not working properly making an appearance). Even their patches are mediocre and it's up to the modders to fix the game. They've said they re-done the entire AI/Engine so maybe they're serious about restoring their reputation for quality.

Speaking of terrible patches- has anyone tried to patch ME II TW: Kingdoms? I have tried over and over and keep getting errors telling me to reinstall and delete files, then repatch. Have tried reinstalling twice with the same results. WTF? How the fuck can a patch like that go out? If you are unfucking your game, maybe you should make the patching process easy so people can play the new improved version? God it is fucking annoying.

Creative Assembly is incompetent.  I'm embittered with how they hung us out to dry with Medieval 2.

Pika?

OK 2 months later I find this, I've had no problems with ME II TW: Kingdoms. I have played 2 separate campaigns midway/3/4ths thru, Spanish in Americas, and Irish in Brittania. Even started a new Teutonic campaigns. Even stopped for 6 months came back loaded up and played several more turns no crash to desks or load up problems.

The game is too easy.  Even with all the setting son very hard, how can you fail to easily dominate every game?

Sometimes their patch process goes wrong, and you need to surgically remove the software off of your system before you can reinstall it. This is both R:TW and M:TW2, I'm not sure about the earlier versions (in that, I've never had trouble installing or uninstalling them).

Anyway, I wonder whether Empire will exhibit the same gameplay problems that Rome and Medieval 2 did, in that the new strategic map shifted the focus of the game's battles from controlling provinces to small border skirmishes. The computer tended to disperse into multiple small army stacks and was more annoying then challenging to fight.

and I wonder how much simpler the game will be by removing aspects that were present in previous editions. With each release we lose something, albeit we are getting sea battles this time around. Medevial Total War then down to simpler RTW, MTWII, even if they get nicer looking graphics they lose little things that made it seem more complex. Like actually seeing the boiling oil fall down and burn those fools with battering rams and such.

Yeah no kidding.  Not to mention the replay value lost when they removed the feature where you could start at different time periods in M1.  There were different kingdoms, and the kingdoms had different strengths, that was great.  M2 was also very easy in comparison.  I don't think I ever lost a battle on the hardest diffioculty.  Just get strong infantry to hold the line, and a couple calvary to charge the flanks. Works everytime. 

They really fucked cavalry in Mid 2. I'm not sure why they did it, but they did. The early versions die to low level archers for heaven's sake.

I was a massive fan of M:TW and was pretty hesitate about M2:TW.

I wasn't a big fan of the changes in UI, the removal of provinces to individual pieces of a chessboard in R:TW.

Having said that though I'm having a blast in M2:TW and I know exactly what you mean by M2 being bland, but the modding community seems pretty insane and even though I'm haven't installed this yet

You should check out this linkhttp://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=159996 (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=159996).

They've even got quite a few features that I'm looking forward to try out.

Stainless Steel: Is effectively a complete overhaul of the game.
-It has a completely new map with more regions than ever before.
-It includes brand new factions (including playable Mongols).
-There are two campaigns. an early era and a late era. The late era is something alot of people missed from MTW.
-The unit balancing is far superior to Vanilla, allowing longer battles.
-The AI has been overhauled and is much smarter than ever before.
-As you said, Its beautiful. With new skins for almost all existing units as well as brand spankin new units.
-It comes with optional sub-mods that allow you to make the game more difficult (as many find Vanilla too easy).

The fact that you can pick to start at late stage instead of being locked in with peasants wars  :uhrr: is alone, is enough for me to install it.

On a side note I found Cavalry to be actually much stronger than it was previously. Even light Cavalry in the rear of dismounted knights had a massive impact. R:TW had this feature/problem as well though.

I don't see the problem.  Unless they're going against a square of pikemen cavalry should have a massive impact against infantry.  Yep, even light cavalry.

I guess that's the problem with the early game for me and calvary, because EVERYTHING I fought was spearman. The earliest infantry units were "grab a pole and stab at those horsies." It wasn't so much the strength of the calvary unit, it was just the cost v. fighting the simplest unit created. Also, I can't really figure out what to do with them in a siege unless you've already broken into town, which you needed melee for.

As you get more advanced cavalry, it's very strong. So your point there is true.

The trick is to use cavalry as it's been used throughout history; to flank units.  The only time I ever sent out my cavalry on an unsupported attack was against archers.  Otherwise, I use them as the hammer and my infantry as the anvil.  You hit even a pikeman unit from behind while they're occupied with your infantry and their morale will be toast in no time.  Often I'd detach my cavalry from my main force and leave them way, way, way out on the wings where they'd be my sort of quick reaction force.  You can use them to scatter archers, or flank enemy infantry.  One thing you never want to do is use them against other cavalry.  Try to use a spear unit for that.

In cities I'd completely split them off from my main unit and use them for diversionary tactics.  Often if the computer knows you've got cavalry off somewhere else in the city they'll split up their army.  Make use of that by trying to draw them further and further from the main force.  Anything that weakens the enemy and makes your job easier is gravy.  And of course, since cavalry is fast you can still use them to hit the enemy from behind while your infantry is engaged.  It just takes a little bit more work getting them to navigate the streets.

ETA:  For cities, you might have different problems than me.  I tend to go infantry light, and I really spread them out far.  So maybe 4 or 5 infantry units, 3 archers, 4 cavalry and the rest is all artillery.  For cities I don't even bother sieging, I just knock down towers and walls.  The enemy tend to try to defend their walls, but if you pound the shit out of them with artillery they usually scamper back to the city center.  That makes your planning much easier since you can usually just waltz on into the city.  I never actually fight my way in.

This. Even shitty cavalry is decent against archer/crossbow units, or against filler light/lower morale troops like militia and peasants. And if your opponent has artillery pieces, just send out a light cav unit or two to flank around and tear them up. It's worth it to sally forth in sieges for just that reason.

I'm currently playing through my 2nd campaign, this time using the Byzantines. They don't get a lot of upgrades in units in the early periods, but they get shitloads of cheap, missle cavalry. Those things help offset the lack of decent infantry.

I thought very much the same for the longest time. The series has been very much bittersweet ever since Rome when it started sacrificing proper gameplay for feature creep -- the heedless bloatation of the campaign map, the confused nonsensical AI, the unintuitive economy, the retarded 'flavorful' units, and so on.

I've been replaying M2 in anticipation for Empire though, and I must say the mod scene does almost salvage the entire sodden mess. I would not recommend Stainless Steel, too many features (like supply) that the engine is hard pressed to handle, but I've found Lands to Conquer (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=137614) surprisingly good. In the Very Hard/Very Hard campaign I've been playing since, I've fought a number of pitched battles against balanced enemy stacks, navigated a web of alliances to realize my ambitions, and made hard decisions about investing in infrastructure versus strengthening my military capacity.. something the base game never really offered and that most mods fall short of. It's still hit or miss at times, but honestly quite a surprising treat that you might care to sample.

Release date pushed back to Mar 3.  All this Medieval II hatred has me excited.

Apparently, activation will be done through Steam whether or not the game is purchased in store.

I must have been the only person on the planet that wasn't very good at this game. I may have been doing it wrong (as I read this thread), but I seeminly always picked a side where EVERYONE decided they hated me and must immediatley go to war while I have no army and no economy.

Well, except when I played as Turkey.  That wasn't very challenging.

I just found the game somewhat tedius and not fun.  I had fun in Rome:TW.  :|

The reason people seem to have different opinions on M:TW2's cavarly is probably because of the bugs. For some reason, M:TW2 unit stats tie in heavily to animations, creating a whole slew of problems, chief among them being the ease with which cavarly get stuck on either the terrain, or friendly (or enemy) units. This causes cavarly to lose their charge bonus, and they then get easily defeated in melee.

In fact, individual soldiers randomly getting stuck was a big problem. It would screw up the enitire unit, often causing them to become engaged with enemy units that they cannot reach or were retreating from.

Also, units with fast animations (eg, peasants) had a ridiculous ability to hold castle walls. Two-handed units often bugged out and wouldn't attack properly.

Oh, and shields actually apply a negative modifier instead of a positive one (shielded troops take more damage from the front).

The shield thing was (eventually) fixed, but most of the unit animation problems never were.

There was a poopload of bugs in M2. The calvary thing was mainly because, previously, you could just double click to make the dudes "run" and they'd charge.  That's intuitive.  In M2, they would "run" at the enemy and engage, but wouldn't charge, they'd just run with their swords out and engage normally.  Usually, to get a proper charge with lances, you'd have to get them situated so they were lined up perfectly, and then click once, and they'd trot out towards the destination, and when they reached closing distance, they'd lower their lances and start charging.  This was harder to accomplish, but still not too bad once you realized what was going on (I didn't until I read about it).  Basically the whole game was a fucking fiasco.  Nothing worked.  Bugs.  Tons of combat bugs.  Watered down.  Laughably easy.  Same strategy everytime.  Ridiculous micromanagement required for efficacious use of spies, assassins, merchants, etc.  I swore I'd never buy another CA game.

So why am I thinking I'm going to buy Empire now?  I'm pathetic.

It was totally because you saw the horses leaping over fences in their charge. Let's not kid ourselves about how awesome that is.

I mean, the idea they have is flawless.  The execution has been suspect for awhile.  Essentially they are remaking the same goddamn game with different skins over and over again.  I'm fine with this if it yields results that at least maintain a status quo.  It's the backsliding that disgusts me.  But cavalry jumping fences will bring me back every time.  Works every time, 60% of the time.

Supposedly Empire is not just a reskin as Medieval was.

Anyway, pre-ordered.

Hell, I'd be fine with a prettier reskin in the gunpowder era.  My $50 would be completely justified.  Adding in naval combat?  Bitch, I'm there.

Keep in mind how rare game developers that cater to us grognards are beyond the usual RTS bullshit and just shell out the money.  You'll feel good about it, and you'll be encouraging further development.

All I want is my fucking spies to go into another territory and fucking formulate revolt that I can see like Shogun Total War. As well as those damn vids were miles better. I'm also sick of getting dread status on my leaders cuz I make full use of my spies and assassins.

I think the clearest example of backsliding is actually in the decrease in awesome FMV vids, though M2 was ok with this. The bugs and other stupid moves (the cavalry charge was more than a bit :uhrr:) were also crappy. Like everyone else here though I will buy this when it comes out (and I have a computer that can run it).

Will there be flaming pigs? I didn't realize that the ability to set pigs on fire and send them squealing into my enemy's ranks was important to me until I played R:TW, but it is.

Admittedly, I didn't think I'd spend so much of my time obsessing over elephants until I played R:TW (admittedly, I was playing Dwarf Fortress on the side.....).

The trailors look good. If it's as buggy as shit as Medieval 2, fuck that. If it's at least as playable as Rome, I'll get it.

Seriously, WTF is up with that? It's damn near impossible to stay on the good side of the church and be chivilrous without being a total idiot. Release all the troops after every battle? Sure, that won't bite you in the ass. Never sack a city? Sure, who needs money anyway? Spy on other cities who are obviously plotting against you? No, we don't need that, we're nice. Assassinate that Inquistor who's trying to get a righteous kill on your family members? No, murder is wrong.

I mean hell, how are you supposed to play the game at all and NOT be dreaded. The system was horribly stupid. They just need to have Command, Management skill, and Loyalty.

In Dominions 3, one of the races/nations (Arcosephale, mythical knockoff of ancient Greece) has a unit called a "Skeptic" — that basically goes into a enemy provinces and decreases God favor, and incites unrest… …has no military prowess like other "spy" units, but cheap and really was an interesting game piece…

Welcome to the Middle Ages. It was not very hard at all to get on the bad side of the Church and be excommunicated. They banned the use of the crossbow against other Christians at one point - and very few paid any attention. The nobility used or ignored the Church as it suited their interests. As long as you were killing Muslims (or Jews), the Church loved you. Part of the original reason for the Crusades was to stop the nobility of Europe from warring against each other.

It sounds like most people have a problem with Medieval the time period and not Medieval the game.

It was the game.

Why if my assassin completed a mission in killing someone else where he was not caught cause my dread status to raise. I know it sounds obvious. However why did it have to be my king that ordered that assassination if he completed it successfully without being caught. Could it not have just been a mysterious death.

It was taking away the roleplay image, that you were locked into being a Dread Leader.

And yes it was the game because I failed a high amount of 95% attempts either spying or assassin jobs.

Or my favorite Holy Roman Emperor; Frederick II Hohenstaufen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_II_Hohenstaufen).  He promised the pope he'd go on crusade to take back Jerusalem, and then didn't go.  Pope excommunicates him and forbids him from now going on crusade.  Frederick ignores him and goes anyway, but he doesn't go in for the whole "kill the infidel, take the city" route.  Since he also ruled Sicily he was on really good terms with the various Muslim powers, so he just negotiated with them to get Jerusalem back.

So now the pope is in the situation of having excommunicated the guy who retook Jerusalem after 100 years of Muslim control without a drop of Christian blood being shed, and Frederick II is stuck with basically being a semi-heretic who is also one of the most successful crusaders ever.  In any case, the pope eventually drops the excommunication.  That doesn't last, though, and Frederick II is excommunicated one other time and also has a crusade called against him.

The thing was they included chivalry as a stat for your king but made it pretty much impossible to get. It basically acted as a penalty to dread rather than anything else but that wasn't something they really explained too well. I don't think a lot of people liked it being in there and it seems to me due more to the fact that aside from doing things that obviously harmed your own interests there didn't seem to be any way to gain it. I also didn't get the impression that not producing spies and assassins increased your chivalry, meaning it was difficult to gain in but very easy to lose.

Chivalry isn't actually all that hard to gain.  You know how in battles it'll ask you if you want to end the battle or continue it?  If you continue to run down the routing enemy units you stand a chance of gaining dread.  Let them go, and you stand a chance of gaining chivalry.  The same with hostages.  Ransoming them is the middle option, while releasing them grants chivalry, and executing them grants dread.  Founding a lot of churches grants chivalry.  Brothels and things like that the opposite.

Ok, I knew about the prisoners thing but the main problem I found was that the game is a nightmare without using spies and assassins at the very least to counter enemy spies and assassins and the game seems to add on dread for training them or building the necessary buildings for them. At least that's my understanding of it but then I usually pumped out fleets of both along with priests so I may have skewed it somewhat.

I was going to complain that it's so much easier to play with dread rather than chivalry but then I realised that aspect of it is pretty accurate. I doubt the system will be in Empire though because it doesn't really fit the period, governance types for your empire could be interesting though, as will be how they handle the faction leader for the US.

The truth is that it's easy to be chivilrous early. However, the gains of prancing around like a goody-two-shoes once you own 20 regions become meaningless. Hell in my current game I own 6 spots on the college of cardinals, and I still got my ass excommunicated b/c the Pope has a hard-on for the Holy Roman Empire. You know, those dudes who keep attacking me, sending in assassins and spies, and trying to buy off all my merchants. I have all the major cathedrals, all the kickass priests and theological headquarters, and this fucker gets mad when I cut a few throats.

Time period or not, it's stupid game design when the Pope favors your opponents all the time to make things more difficult, even when they are doing the EXACT same shit as you if not worse.

Favour of the church is driven by how much money you spend upgrading churches and generating Bishops.

Just like in real life.


The only influence your behaviour has on the matter is when you attack someone with prettier or uglier churches, the pope take the side of whoever spends the most on the church.

I find so long as I pick one high population territory and dedicate it to enormous churches and churning out bishops, I can do whatever the fuck I want and the pope still loves me.

EDIT : btw, having cardinals does jack shit as far as I can tell, other than letting you pick the pope. And a pope from country x will never let anyone attack that country - that seems to be the exception to the above.

True, but controlling the papacy can be an absolute godsend.  I used to send out my assassins far and wide to kill cardinals.  Eventually I got to the point where the college of cardinals were all Germans with the exception of one Polish cardinal.  Yeah, life was sweet.

I had a cardinal voted in as Pope this weekend.  I immediately started attacking the factions I needed to, only to have my Pope die two turns later.  Sigh.

Controlling the pope and declaring crusades is so OP.

Nerf the Pope.

Seriously.  Who cares how realistic something is if it's not balanced for good gameplay.

Wargamers?

Apparently a small, but very loud subsect of gamers. I don't enjoy being handcuffed by historical accuracy personally. If they coincide politely, that's fine.

Yeah, I guess.  I think a lot of times people SAY they want shit that isn't fun, and THINK they do.  Lots of times when things aren't realistic it's just a sloppy mistake or poor design implementation.  But if there is a feature that fundamentally unbalances a game, the integrity of the game should take precedence.  Anyway, the realism of sending out a squad of assassins to insure one of your clergymen gets elected pope, and then the complete ease with which you can then get him to declare crusades, is suspect.  Not to mention that all crusades are more or less equal as far as effectiveness.   

But what's REALLY important is whether anyone has seen this:  http://store.steampowered.com/app/10600/

That's right, a special edition version of Empire: Total Wars that is TWENTY dollars more than the regular version of the game.  What do you receive for 20 dollars?  Six units.  Six.  That's basically a punch in the dick to all the hardcore Total War fans.

When Steam offered that option to me instead of the vanilla pre-order, I was pretty incredulous.

Perhaps the biggest special edition ripoff I've ever seen.  Could they at least throw in a art book or behind the scenes dvd? 

I was amused, honestly.  You know there are neckbeards out there who lavish in the thought that they have those six shiny units.




You know who you are.

The HMS Victoria does sound pretty useful...

Morons? I'm sorry but the accountant in me screams WAY too loud at paying 33% more for nothing.

Yep.  Besides, the only reason I'll be playing vanilla Empire is because mods won't be out for it yet.  I can't be the only person who only plays Rome with the Total Realism mod enabled, or Medieval II with Stainless Steel enabled.

These mods change the whole game, they don't just add some shiny units.

ETA:  Rome Total Realism really is a must own mod.  I absolutely hated how they divvied up the Roman empire into three "families".  Completely ahistorical and silly.  This gets rid of that.  The only thing sort of bad about it is that you're going to be fighting a shitload of phalanxes.  Basically any civilized state is going to be fighting on the Greek model.  There'll be some differences here and there, like elephants or chariots, but the infantry will primarily be hoplites.

How do they balance it so that Rome isn't a runaway power?  Do they start you off earlier so you're clawing for provinces?

Exactly.  It starts you off in 280 BC before Rome managed to subjugate most of Italy.  Southern Italy is still Magna Graecia (Greater Greece).  Keep in mind that this is before Rome formulated legionary doctrine, so facing the phalanx is a wee bit difficult at this stage of the game.

I've just started a game with Stainless Steel enabled. It's SLOW. I'm not sure if I like the supply lines mechanic or not, but I must admit the battles are much better. My Fatmid Caliphate armies had to watch Kingdom of Jerusalem dismounted knights charge, pull back, then charge again. I managed to win, but the casualties were much higher than they would have been.

Well it already was tough going at the hoplites with velites and principes.  Basically, you had to have numerical advantage plus cavalry to win consistently.  Your forces simply took too much damage and lost too much morale too quickly to hold a decent line without imploding.

Yeah, that's what I love about the game.  I always thought of the European middle ages armies as basically barbarians compared to the Muslims.  They pretty much were but they also managed to come up with a really effective mix of combined arms tactics.  Particularly with heavy infantry and cavalry the Muslims just didn't have anything that could match it until the Ottomans came along.

You're tempted into thinking that playing the Moors or the Fatimid Empire will be a cakewalk since they're so rich, but when you've got waves of heavy infantry/cavalry crusaders washing over your territory you start to rethink that.

Stretch out your lines.  Most common mistake I see people make is to go for defense in depth, which is basically what the phalanx represents.  Stretch those bitches out, and when they attack your center you can wrap around their units with your wings.  Granted, you don't have much staying power, and this also doesn't work great in cities, but for the open field it works like a charm.

Hell no. They may be rich, but I had been playing as the English, whose cavalry is really weak. I was used to relying on static formations of longbow with flanking cavarly attacks and hope for some decent foot troops. Having most of my cavalry be of the brittle variety (or of the missle variety) is a huge shift in thinking, especially when about half my foot troops are likely militia level or worse.

To be honest I used to play really artillery heavy, and I still tend to have a couple of units around just for general mayhem/fun, but I've really taken a shine to cavalry.  Right now I'm playing the Danes, and I'm in love with mounted huscarls (axemen).  I've been going through Novgorod like a hot knife through butter with a light infantry/heavy cavalry strategy.

You're right, though.  Missile cavalry is a huge shift in tactical thinking, and I'm still not great with them.  I'm too used to thinking of my cavalry as shock troops, and missile cavalry just don't fill that role.

I thought the most effective use of missile cavalry is just to wear the enemy down.  I would make huge 20 unit armies of missile cavalry, and that much fire power will lay waste to marching enemies.  Infantry cant catch up, and enemy cavalry will be able to make a charge, but will quickly succumb to the rain of arrows. 

The problem with this strategy is that it's boring.  The battles take forever as you expend your ammo before you engage.  I guess there are other uses for missile cavalry, but I can't see a more effective use.

Flanking skirmishers, taking out artillery if it's been left in the back, or just as a delaying tactic (keep the big heavy cavalry pinned under missle fire away from your squishy milita infantry).

Wasn't missile calvary -- the "Shoot two arrows, ride away, shoot two more" -- tactic what led to the various Mongols beating the shit out of Europe over and over again?

I haven't played Medieval 2 -- it's on my "I should try that" list -- but longbows and mounted archers should fuck with your opponents. I mean, keeping the real cavalary off your archers is the real problem with regular archers, but mounted archers -- ones that don't have to dismount to fire -- should be the bees knees.

Reports are trickling in that the E:TW demo is due out in a few hours on Steam.

Oh shit.  And I'm supposed to start moving today (okay, boxing stuff up, at any rate).  Why must they test my will like this???   :ye_gods:

Priorities. Which is more important: a new house, or birthing the free world with the blood of a thousand redcoats?  :awesome_for_real:

Oh, they're a major problem.  Even with regular cavalry they're hard to run down unless you can get lucky and sandwich them between another unit.  The problem is, like I said, that they're not really shock units.  They can whittle down your forces and be a real pain in the ass, but if you're used to treating your cavalry like a hammer in the western tradition it's hard getting your head around how to properly use mounted archers/javelin tossers.

Also, like Haemish said, the muslim powers have really squishy infantry units.  Think only slightly better than peasants.  You can work with that if you have a really solid core of heavy hitting cavalry, but these guys don't fill that role of supporting weak infantry.

How about uniting Germany 150 years before Bismarck did it under the glorious Prussian banner?  Moving is already something I'm dreading...

According to Shacknews, you have two hours until the demo is released on Steam.

Chop chop, get moving.

I am going away for the weekend and this news has made me not want to see old friends. Hopefully I will overcome this on arriving and not spend a weekend sitting in a corner going, "Damnit I could be massacring the upstart Prussians and decimating English regiments in the name of Imperial France right now!" Which no doubt would lead to some odd looks.

Oh, okay. Yeah, they're hit-and-run sorts. They're supposed to avoid melee engagements, and really should avoid anyone with a longer range than them.

Demo is up on Steam.  Its ~2 gigs.

Demo description says you get to play as the English, first trying to beat up Washington during the American Revolutionary War, and the second trying to roughhouse some Frenchies at some point or another.

Downloading at the positively zippy speed of 50kb/sec.

I'm downloading the demo now, but it looks like it won't finish before lunch time, which means I'll have to redownload it tonight after work.

Well, I was hoping to see the new campaign map, but the demo is only a land battle and a sea battle.

Tell me that when you've played the game.  Weak infantry + squishy, need to keep your distance cavalry = unsupported, vulnerable infantry.  Unsupported infantry tend to die a lot.

I'll happily agree that they're completly not suited for protecting weak infrantry. They're not suited for protection, period.

I don't know if that's the role M2 wants to pigeonhole them in -- seems unlikely -- but they're, by nature, light offensive units. They can be really, really, REALLY nasty if used right, but "protecting infantry" is not a proper use.

I'm speaking historically here, and not game-specific. I can't imagine M2's game mechanics encourage them to protect infantry. I do agree it'd suck monkey nuts if that was ALL you had to keep real cavalry off your infantry.

Dude like I said earlier, you put them in that formation where they ride in circles firing on the enemy.  You just have massive hordes riding in circles and raining death.  It works great.  If they send cavalry in, you focus fire and draw them away, then swarm them.  Infantry will never get close.  Works great.  The problem is, like I said above, that it's BORING.  The battles take forever whittling down troops this way and being elusive. 

It also doesn't work for taking cities, which is the majority of where you do your fighting if you're doing it right.

Well, boring = good. Exciting generally meant you might lose. :) Don't know about taking cities. I can't remember how the Mongols did it. Probably avoided fortified cities -- they don't seem the "lay seige" type.

The Mongols tended to get siege weapons down when they took over the Chinese empire. Plus, they could always just starve your ass out, or even better, bypass your fortified point and leave you following in the trail of their army. No one could move faster on the march than the Mongols and by the time you figured out they'd just slaughtered your reinforcements, you realized that you had to leave the castle eventually.

Fuck, I need a good war game now. I suck at them, but I like playing them.

Anyone else having big problems with the demo?  Like incredibly long load times and screen flicker?

That's part of my problem with these games.  Too many siege battles.  They're ok once in awhile, but I'd like to see more field battles.

I've had to force quit on it 3 times on my work computer. It runs like ass on low settings (but this computer has an 8400GS - a shitty shit shit card). But goddamn is it gorgeous. The naval battles are poetry in motion. It takes the Medieval engine and turns it up a notch.

Runs okay on mine at medium/high settings, after I upgraded my graphics drivers. It CTDed on startup with un-upgraded drivers. I got some flickering during the first tutorial but it went away after about 2 minutes. I proceeded to play the 2 tutorials and 2 standalone battles without problems, although the load times were certainly atrocious.

On land, it's basically M2 with guns, which is cool. The naval battles are more fun, I think, since you can micromanage the shit out of your ships if you want.

It's also funny watching the computer use historically-accurate ship-o-th'-line tactics,  and then get smashed to fucking pieces when you start micromanaging broadsides and doing tricks with maneuverability that would capsize real ships.

I'll probably wait until I either have a moment of weakness or it goes 25%-off or half-off on Steam before picking it up.

Yeah, I finally got it working.  Turns out that it flakes out if you have anti-aliasing turned on through the Catalyst drivers.

I don't think I like the default speed of the game.  I'm too used to Rome/Medieval unit speed, but in this infantry just streaks across the screen like they were cavalry.  And man, the prevalence of cannons really make you pay attention to terrain a lot more than the other games do.  Really nice seeing the cannonballs skip across the ground plowing through multiple units, though.  I can tell I'll be back to my old artillery heavy ways with this game.

Yeah, I opened by taking the high ground on the enemy's flank and letting my artillery rip. Took out their general pretty much right off the bat, at which point the idiot AI made him charge into the right wing of my main battle line. No more general.

As you'd expect with gunpowder-era units, terrain is huge, infantry on a ridge destroy other infantry, and cavalry charging into a hail of gunfire get cut down right quick.

Tweaked the settings a little on my home machine to get it to run better. Found good results by switching the shader to Shader 3 (Low). It still looked absolutely fantastic but ran well. I love the feel of the infantry lines, since the age of muskets is my favorite period of wargaming. The battlefield FEELS much bigger than Medieval 2, probably because of the insane amount of terrain. The load times are still awful and I hope they patch that quick. It locked up on me during the naval battles and seems to hitch going from battles to the menu.

Man I hope someone makes a mod for this so I can do some American Civil War scenarios. It's been way too long since we've had a good ACW wargame.

I think that may be an artifact of the the insane amount of compression they used to get the game down to a somewhat more reasonable download size.  At least I hope so.

And ditto on the civil war.  But if any mod makers are going to do that I hope they could find a way to put in trenches.

Probably the best way for them to attempt that would be for them to copy Sid Meier's Gettysburg  (god I enjoyed that game), and make it so that the longer you leave a regiment standing in place, the more and more it will build up a barricade or entrench itself.  Might be a chore to pull off graphically, but shouldn't be to hard for behind the scenes number crunching.

I also concur in that I'm really missing having a good ACW game.

I'd really like to see these guys attempt a fantasy or sci-fi total war. Basically anything where they have create the combat balance and design the world themselves.

I suspect it might not be as good as the best Total War games, but I'm just interested to see what would happen.

Plus it's not as if anyone else is even attempting to make non-shitty wargames (no, DoW doesn't count).

I don't think I'm going to be playing this without a nice big upgrade. On loading the CGI at the beginning was running slow :ye_gods: The actual game loads, when the progress bar is half full it starts flickering and I get the audio tutorial instructions and my cursor changes to in-game (complete with turning into an X on moving somewhere that's not a valid point) however I'm just left with the loading screen and flickering progress bar. On lowest settings. Drivers and stuff are upgraded so I suspect it's just some hardware problem.

I'm not entirely convinced about the fun aspect of the ground war in this one. The shooting distances are so long that there's no good visual feedback other than the icon's status and/or zooming in real close. I'm probably alone in disliking that, but oh well. Also, I'm finding that its harder to tell when a unit is about to run. I had some random cavalry unit off in a corner somewhere flee because I didn't notice that the enemy, far closer to the bulk of my main forces, was fireing on it for some strategically random reason.

I already preordered, so rethinking my purchase would be a waste of time.  I think before I can make a real judgement about the game I'll need to start up a long campaign, since I never really play the set piece battles by themselves.  One thing I didn't like about the demo was the lack of setting up your formations before the battle begins, but I don't think that'll be an issue with a campaign.

Was anyone else as grossly disappointed with this demo as I was?  This had to be one of the worst, smallest, and woefully inadequate representations of a game that I've ever seen.  Their marketing guy should be shot.... with a black powder musket for that matter, and then keel hauled.

Not only was the demo too short and too easy, but it never touched upon the many varied strategic and tactical intricacies inherent to the game.  It's like they assumed everyone knows Total War and how uber Empire will be, so why waste time and money on a quality demo.  The tutorials were garbage, and largely left it up to the player to realize the game.   Two measly little skirmishes that were stupidly easy?  cmon now.

There was no pre-skirmish strategic placement, no resource spending, very little real depth to the demo play at all before during and after.  Not only that, but they had absolutely no campaign-oriented play in the demo at ALL.... and that's pretty much 75% of the game right there.  Where's the dang turn-based portion?  The coop?  The MP?  Bah..  garbage demo

I'm still gonna play it mind you, 'cause I'm a TW geek... but I've already had to quell naysayers who have never played the genre due to the lackluster demo.  Such a shame for a title that intends on making the perfect marriage between turn-based and RTS play in a MP/coop atmosphere.

<sigh>  I've gotta assume the delay had something to do with this.  They had some problems with the campaign engine specifically in the MP aspect, so likely that didnt make it into the demo or they scrapped it altogether.  For sake of time they released the demo roughshod.  'Cause this steaming pile is worthless imo.

I couldn't stand the load times.  By the time it fired up, I just quit out.  :|

Its been a while, so my memory may be playing up, but I seem to remember this is standard for Total War demos.  They don't bother showing any of the campaign stuff in any of their demos, instead showing just 1-2 set battles.  Sure that was the case in Rome and Medieval 2...

No, you're right... that IS their style.  You're kinda thrown to the wolves both in the demo and in the actual games.  Those that figure it out are successful, those that dont shelf the game.  Problem is, in today's market it's not good business and since they're designing a "paradigm shift" into this game it'd help to be more aware of it in the demo.  It's not like it's a carbon-copy of all the other Total War games; it's totally different really.

The demo was made for TW vets for sure. I had little trouble with it from a gameplay perspective, as it actually improved on the old interface. The technical aspects of it were total shit, though. If you aren't even going to get the damn demo to run worth a damn and you aren't going to target new customers over the old grognards who'd likely buy it anyway, why the fuck even do a demo?

Hmm, my load times were civilized. Not great, mind you, but compared to, for example, Vanguard or Flight Simulator X, it was a snap. Also, the graphics were fine without tweaking. Running a 8800 GT on a C2D 6750, which is 'middle of the road' hardware. One thing that might have made a difference in load times is that I'm running el cheapo intel ICH9R Raid 5 with 4 disks.

I've actually told people to just torrent or disc-copy the game when it comes out if they want a real taste for the reasons you just said. (and that's something I never do) 

Matter of fact... doesnt TW ALLOW copied games as long as it's LAN multiplayer and/or single-player only?  Perhaps that was their thinking in their craptastic demo, I dunno.  I'm still blaming the multiplayer-coop delay though.

update:

in case you all werent aware...  the game isnt going to release with the MP Campaign (coop and vs.)  feature. that's the reason they had to delay the release, and the reason they took that particular feature off the website.  It's written into the game but it's not totally ready and will have to be patched in later in a 2 player beta.  You'll have the usual Total War MP skirmishes with the added features of ranked Steam and upgradeable units, but no turn-based portion.

So, all that groundbreaking design is now out the window until they patch it in... if they ever do   :heartbreak:

But surely nobody's dumb enough to play Total War games before the first patch is out reguardless...?

/raises hand

Shit, I'm jonesing for it. I'm not that concerned about the MP campaign, and the actual playing I did with the demo was awesome. I just hope the goddamn thing doesn't have such horrible load times. I pre-ordered and I never do that anymore. So if it kicks me in the junk, I probably deserve it.

Same here.  People are more of a hassle than they're worth anyway, so I'll be ignoring the MP campaign also.

I really wish they would put a "medium" length into these games. "Short" is too short with only 15 regions, but "Long" is annoying as hell to micromanage with 45 regions.

30 would be just perfect in my book, or do yall enjoy the 45 region games?

I did a 'short' campaign with the intentions of posting it in the radicalthon (sp?) and so far it has blossomed into a pretty long game that has taken two full days. 

I could have ended it relatively quickly, but I have an insatiable desire to make the French suffer for as long as possible.

Just pre ordered finally. Hell, they even got me for the elite units 69.99 deal on steam.

I'm not a massive fan of the colonial days, but TW hasn't done me wrong yet.

Well, I'm anal retentive and enjoy the micro-management aspects in these games, so yeah, I enjoy it.  Even when I've beaten the campaign I usually keep going just to see how much I can conquer before massive unrest/time ends the game for me.

I think I've only played the "short" campaign, and that can take weeks and months depending on playtime.

Long games always get to the point where I'm dealing with 30ish regions, 10 spies, 5-6 assassins, and 4 roaming armies that are moving across the map, not to mention construction updates on 10-15 cities a turn, plus managing troop upkeep for the economy and strangling about 20 merchant nodes. At that point 1 turn is taking 30 minutes just to get everything independently moved around, and I just get horribly bored waiting for the inevitable. I mean at this point, nothing can stop me except the minor annoyances of moving my individual units around.

It gets kinda clunky and slow for me. I think better tools to use your agents would help, or maybe giving all the units a little more movement distance per turn. I mean we're covering 6 month periods per turn, and they can barely move 100 miles on paved roads? That always confused me.

This aspect was probably the biggest learning curve in Total War for me.  As a Civ vet, I was a little shocked that I was not prompted to either take action or ignore each turn per unit.  I've had to learn to survey each city and army for 'hidden' units after I load a game that I played even the day before.  As a new player, unfamiliar with the units, it was very daunting. 

I did read somewhere that there is a new system for managing units.  I think its something like a queue that lists your units and allows you to go to each.  Of course, this functionality already exists in Medieval, but its not easy to find or use, being split among types - it's not really useful to have to open the queue for each unit type.  I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

With the steam launch a mere couple of hours away (and me stuck at work) I'm debating on a starting faction.

England and the U.S. are the popular choices of course, but I think I'm going to start this one with a faction a bit more out of the way. Hmm..

Mother Russia is probably gonna be the winner.

Also, anyone know if unlockable factions will be present in this offering?

Wouldn't call paying $20 for 6 additional units a "deal."

IF I were to buy a game in the next week or two it would be this or SF4.  Decisions... Decisions...

It's been downloading on my computer at home since about 4:45 a.m. I am so ready for work to be over so I can play this thing. My first choice of faction will likely be Austria or Prussia. They were so inept during the Seven Years War, but they are the faction I've got half a miniature army painted up.

Yeah, I'm only getting like 100K a second.  Guess I just won't get to play 'til tomorrow.  Definitely playing Prussia.  The challenge of being small and surrounded is just to great for me to pass up.

1280x720? M2 supported 16:10 but not 16:9 :( Fiancee would love the series.

I'm on the fence with this one for two reasons. One, my computer is older and I'm worried a bit on the performance side in things like naval battles. Two, if it's not much different than Medieval 2, I'm not really interested enough in the time period to worry about upgrading until it goes on sale. Also, from what I can recall the early editions are unbalanced and buggy as hell.

So, for those of you playing it early, give us a heads up on your opinions in that regard please.

Have you played the demo?  Gunpowder alone drastically changes the game.  Every unit has a highlighted "area of effective fire" cone in front of them, so it's not like they're archers you can just place anywhere and can fire in an upward arc; they need to be faced properly.  That's a fairly drastic change.  Naval combat?  Fairly drastic change.

Let us know what sieges are like. The idea of sending a forlorn hope into the mouth of cannon and musket fire greatly appeals to me. Also anyone who isn't excited about the period should consider reading a couple of Sharpe novels (or watching some of the episodes if you like Sean Bean and cannot tolerate 90's British budgets. It's :drill:) A bit of trashy Napoleonic fiction brings the magic alive and I'm definitely getting this, even if it turns out to be almost Medieval 2 with naval combat.

As soon as I get a new PC *sigh*

Tons of problems with the Steam download. Mine reset to 0 at about 50% and restarted. I cannot get more than 450k and was down at 100k this morning. THEN people are reporting that the download size doesn't match the game size so it just won't start on Steam.

Tbh, I play very few of the actual battles that aren't sieges. Mostly because they are rare, but even moreso because I usually drastically outnumber the opposing force. As of yet, I have not played the demo because it was so huge to download, and it didn't have the campaign part (which is 75% of what I enjoy in these games).

The gunpowder aspect does sound better, because I always hated archery in the earlier games. Also, I'm very interested in naval combat if it's going to be a key part of the game. However, we'd have to see the campaign map for that. I will download the demo eventually to check the specs for my machine, but the innovative features are the primary go-or-no-go for me pulling the trigger at $50 instead of $30.

Okay, big differences in how this game plays, in battles and espeically in the campaign map.  Actually, way more than I thought they were going to do.  There's now a tech tree that's divided between military advances, philosophy, and industry/trade.  Each of those have discrete "tracks" available in them.  For instance, under military advances there's naval tech, formations, firearms advances, etc.  Regions are no longer just one city, there's a regional capitol for every region, and as the population grows smaller towns pop up on your map and start to grow.  For instance, the regional capital for Bavaria is Munich.  As Bavaria grows towns like Ansbach start to pop up.  Granted, it's not a huge difference, but for geography geeks like me it's nice.

The campaign map also shows farms, mines, etc on the map itself, and if you want to upgrade, say, a farm, you just click on it from the main map itself.  Taxes are now done for your entire empire on two sliders; one for the lower classes, one for the nobility.  This is the tax policy for your entire empire, and the only change you can make is to exempt one of your regions from taxation to keep 'em happy.  Government types are important, because it makes a difference in how you keep your people happy.  For instance, as Prussia I rely on repression, which means garrisoning troops.  I assume that parliamentary governments like Britain do it a little bit differently.

You no longer have to send out diplomats just to negotiate, diplomacy can be done with anyone, at any time.  You also no longer recruit spies, priests, etc.  These people pop up randomly depending on what buildings you have.  Lots of colleges, and you'll get a lot of scholars/philosophers who can have effects on a region.  Lots of taverns and you'll get rakes (ie, spies) out the yin yang.

Holy fucking shit that sounds like a game I want to play. They've made the campaign map a lot deeper then so it's no longer just the means to getting more and better troops and watching you epeen (empire) grow?

fakeedit: Ok that's being overly harsh on the previous games but it's nice to know they're giving you some real variety in tech advances and empire type.

Yep.  I've been playing all night, (yeah, this is probably a blow off day from work) so I'm only up to the mid-1700's, but the tech advances make a huge difference.  As Prussia I've been going with land warfare/philosophical advances and neglecting my navy entirely.  Just got into a war with Britain (who used to be my ally) and thought I could at least be contender with them in naval warfare.  WRONG.

Even when slightly outnumbering the Brits at sea I get my clock cleaned on a regular basis.  On land it's a different story, but I have to actually get my troops there to do it.  Yeah, Operation Sea Lion was difficult even in the enlightenment era.   :awesome_for_real:

It's completely awesome.

My favorite change? Prestige Victory. You can now get Prestige which is that ephemeral measure of how rad your armies, economy and tech are. It's (ZOMG) pretty much like the system in EU.

Why is this important? Because no fucking country on Earth got to run around conquering the planet on a whim in those times. The balance of power wouldn't allow it. So with Prestige Victory as your option, you conquer 15 historically important territories AND you must have the highest Prestige at the end. There's a cultural hegemony endgame modeled in. That's how it should be.

One day and it's already my favorite of the series.

I might have to buy this. I'll be out for lunch maybe I'll pick it up.

One other great thing about the game?  Interdicting commercial merchant traffic.

There are no more merchants in the game, so thankfully that little bit of micromanagement is gone.  The little dashed green line trading routes still exist, however, and they're great money makers if you're at war with someone.  How, you ask?  Put a fleet on one of those trade routes and put that fleet in piracy mode.  Congrats!  You're hurting your enemy, siphoning off their cash to you, and actually using your navy as it was historically intended; to economically strangulate other nations.   :rock_hard:

ETA:  Oh, and the great thing about this is that you don't really need to put large fleets on those trade routes for this to work.  Put one or two ships there just to harass them.  They'll send out a big fleet to crush you, and you can just run away when the battle begins.  This is the route I've been going since I can't stand toe to toe with Britain, but I can be a giant pain in their ass and siphon off big chunks of money.  Oh, and I might be able to get France as an ally.  Suck it, King George!

I love a good strat game.  The only thing is that I end up buying these games play one or two long sessions and quit.  Maybe since I'm not playing any MMOGs right now I might get a few weeks out of it to justify the purchase price.

I'm to much of an impulse buyer when it comes to video games.

This game is SO WIN.

Big Gulp pretty well surrounded the changes, but fuck's sake, this game is DEEP. DEEP DEEP DEEP. Like Deep One Elder God deep. The campaign map is seriously expanded with the addition of the buildings that are actual settlements (that BTW have to be defended and can be attacked outside of major cities). The tech tree is HUGE. The first thing I went after was plug bayonets (to make my line infantry better at melee - when I plug the bayonets in). It's almost overwhelming how deep the campaign game is. Daunting is a good word. Expect weeks of your time to disappear.

As for Paelos's concerns, there are now 4 types of campaign: Short (1700-1750 conquer 15 territories including some specific to your faction); Long (1700-1799 conquer 30 territories); Prestige (Conquer 30 territories by 1750 and have the highest prestige by 1799); and World Domination (Conquer 45 territories). In addition, it looks like there is a 4-phase campaign called Road to Independence that is just the American theater starting in Jamestown in the 1670's.

For single player single battles, they have random land and naval battles, sieges and scenarios, along with custom battles. You choose your armies and you can choose early or late era armies. The only disappointment there is that there are only 3 scenarios, the two from the demo and another naval battle. I expect more will appear in time.

The load times were better than the demo, but still a bit long. I spent about an hour fucking with the graphics settings to find an acceptable frame rate. I'm on XP with an Nvidia 8600GTS and I can't even use the high and ultra graphics settings (they are grayed out). But using Shader 3 (Low) and some fiddling, I got the land battles to look fucking awesome and still run decently. Even using Shader 2.0, it still looked damn good, just not shiny lighting good. The campaign map, however, is jerky as hell. Animation on it is REALLY jerky. I can live with it, but I do hope they optimize a bit when they patch.

All in all, I spent about 3 hours last night and barely scratched the surface. I am sporting a chubby waiting to get home to play this game.

EDIT: A few things I forgot.

You no longer need to send damaged units back to a city to reinforce. Just click on the unit in the army, click the reinforce button and if they have the opportunity to reinforce, they will as soon as they can. Generals can recruit units while out in the field. The unit, once built, will leave their spawn point and have an arrow set to go to the general that called them autmatically the next turn (or the turn they spawn). You can also take control of that unit and more where it goes to after it spawns so you aren't locked in. When another country declares war, the popup has a list of both sides' allies, and you can choose which of your allies to ask for help. You can also trade technology you've discovered through diplomacy, or use the diplomatic channels to try to get tech other sides have researched that you haven't. You can also send gentlemen out to the schools of other sides and try to steal that tech, just like a rake can sabotage buildings. Finally, when an enemy unit enters your terrain and is about to attack a target, if you have an army in intercept range of that enemy, a dialog box will pop up asking if you want to intercept. If you do, it starts a battle. Just having an army close by helps your defense.

So what are the bad things?  I've heard bad things about the AI out of the box.

1280x720? No thread on the widescreen forum, just curious.

Weird I was just thinking how games should stop supporting that so that you'd have to buy a real monitor and/or a real TV.

Oh you so funny.

Let me tell you about my truck.

I need a friggin new PC.

How is the actual fighting in this game? Is cavalry still cheese?

I haven't done enough land battling to tell you about the AI. My campaign game is only up to 1704 or so. The dastardly Prussians attacked me, and for some reason kept sending armies with 1-3 units in them, so the battles have been pretty easy so far. The single battles I did to tweak my graphics, however, were full-on battles and the AI seemed improved over Medieval 2.

I'd hope cavalry start to become less and less crucial as the game goes on, muskets improve and you develop techniques like forming square. This is the first total war game they've done where I can see cavalry becoming less crucial, though of course I'd imagine successful flanking with them still owns.

The road to independence seems like the tutorial mode for the campaign game, each phase unlocks new capabilities.  Since the only TW I have played was the first Medieval  one it has helped a lot.  With everything set to low it runs on my 3 year old machine fairly well.

The cavalry in the early campaign game is pretty crap, actually. It has no firearms, so relies on the charge. Early armies had pikes and as soon as your opponent researches the plug bayonet, even line infantry and militia will have pike in a pocket. But yes, it can be very effective if you hit from the flank - hit infantry anywhere else and it's a crap shoot.

Honestly I'm getting my ass handed to me a fair amount of the time and it was NEVER like that in the other games. I'd say it's not too shabby though I may just be missing out on some big underlying mechanic.

Installing this now.

Haven't got the game yet, but are there differing types of cavalry? Cuirassiers would be your standard heavy shock cavalry while Dragoons would be more like skirmishers. Charging bayoneted infantry with light cavalry even from a flank would probably get them mowed down (if the game is more or less historically accurate, at any rate).

I installed while I slept off a business trip last night. 

I got to peek at the game this morning and it is gorgeous - even considering that TW always slacks on the graphics due to the sheer volume of units to display.  Fucking gorgeous.

Time to play.

I never played any Total War games and I loaded up a shot campaign and I'm confused.  Seems like I'm getting tossed out there not knowing wtf is going on.

It is confusing at first.

Listen to the chatty tutorial babe for the basics.  Figure out what units do what actions.  See what you can build in cities.  I suggest getting your economy going quickly.

The game is deep enough to allow you to play it in many, many ways.

Don't forget to start researching a technology (press T) on your first turn. 

I did.

This download keeps fucking up and resetting.  Annoying.

Road to Independance apparently is the tutorial.  It's basically running you slowly through the basics and what shit does.  If you're new to everything do that first. 

I did the first chapter tonight.  Awesome stuff.  I still need to get used to the ground assault stuff.  But this game is amazing.  I'm tired though so I need to hit the sack.

Another thing I really like about the game is how important the economy is.  That province in eastern Prussia that doesn't have much population?  Ordinarily it'd be a scrub province that you really wouldn't care about, only now it has a textile mill and is a friggin' cash cow.  It really does wonders for prioritizing what you need to defend.  Money doesn't grow on trees like it did in earlier games (I used to rarely build castles), you really have to think about your tax policies, and keeping a huge army in the field will retard you economically since you can't afford to upgrade your provinces.

I used to never look for peace deals in the old TW games.  In this one I'll take a province or two and then try to sue for peace, even giving back a territory I just conquered, mainly because I want to demobilize some of my army as quickly as possible.  I also love the diplomacy.  Allies used to be pretty useless, now I really think twice before attacking some minor principality when they've got a great power backing them up.

Hmmm.. one of my fans keeps flipping out playing this during the campaign screen. All of the sudden it starts up for a short period of time and then stops.

In the few battles I've done, the game run greats.  Looks to be great fun, but I'll be playing the "Road to Independence" until my chops are back up to being "bad" instead of "ohh god, why are my guys running backwards".

Played this for some hours yesterday, until the GFX suddenly got all screwy. Units/buildings vanished, and all water got fucked up. I did get to play some great battles, though. In one instance I was heavily outnumbered, but achieved victory after digging in with trenches and stuff around a building occupied by one of my infantry-units. Thankfully the oppositing didn't have any artillery. :P

Hiding cavalry in woods and flanking unsuspecting enemy troops is also fun.

So does diplomacy actually work in this game? I have gotten sick in previous TW games of getting into a war and having every attempt at a ceasefire rejected by the AI unless I was willing to hand over 2 or 3 provinces. Also I got annoyed with the certainty that any ally that bordered me would sooner or later turn on me and attack or that if I got attacked none of my allies would lift a finger to help. Maybe I just never leared how it worked but the AI for diplomacy seemed to be pretty much set to just fuck with you.

It works, but I'd call it more like WWI diplomacy; rigid.  Your allies WILL back you up, but that also means that you have to think long and hard about who you declare war on.  And yeah, getting peace treaties seems to be easier.  Case in point, I had to try to link up East and West Prussia at the beginning of my game since they're seperated by Polish territory (Danzig).  I started a war with Saxony, who was allied to Poland, and sure enough they also declared war.  In one turn I had an army take Saxony and another take Danzig.  I then asked Poland for peace, and threw in 2000 gold to sweeten the deal.  They went for it.

I'm playing the Road to Independence right now to get my feet wet. I've found a new appreciation for what went down at Bunker Hill.

Hay guyz thanx 4 the halp.

 :oh_i_see:

After MTW2 failed to get my motor running, I figured I'd just take a pass on this.  But now it sounds like they managed to finally deliver something incredibly awesome. 

Crap.  I need to play this.  And SoaSE:Entrenchment and a billion other things. AUGH GAME OVERLOAD.

Download the demo via Steam first.  It sounded awesome to me as well, but I'd rather spend a few hours finding out before I drop $50 on it.

From my 20 mins of dinking around this morning the ship combat was pretty damn fun (and holy shit they model down to the individual sailors!?)   But I can see it getting really out of hand if I have to manage 5-10 ships in a combat.

Played a bit more with the game last night. Cavalry, at least in the early period, is pretty crap against infantry. Even flanking won't get you much of anywhere against infantry unless that infantry is already a bit demoralized or chewed up. I managed to get a unit of Hussars (Hungarian style skrimishers), a unit of Uhlans (lance wielding fuckers) and Caribineers (carbine shooting missle cavalry). They all died to infantry in one battle. Granted I was outnumbered almost 2:1 in that battle, and most of the infantry I faced was Prussian line infantry, which apparently has good morale. I tried to flank, but unlike Medieval 2, the infantry doesn't just sit there and let itself be flanked. It turns the formation and fires or even charges the cav. And this is before anyone has discovered square formation yet. Cavalry is most definitely NOT the hammer blow it was in past TW games.

Get your economy down first. In fact, I'd suggest researching things to get your farming and your colleges going quickly, then worry about the military. Also, watch your flanks in battle REAL HARD. I've had a number of battles where big ass line infantry units managed to flank around and get to the rear of my artillery.

Sky, were you asking if the game will run in 1280 x 720? I'll check tonight if that's what you needed.

Yeah, I use my cavalry mainly to run down routing units.  Pikemen are surprisingly effective, but I mainly just keep one around to babysit my artillery.

I second going for education/farm production early in the game.  Most of my military stuff I've been able to steal with my gentlemen.

Thanks, Haem. If it won't show up due to your monitor or whatever, I could just get the demo, I guess. I'm curious because the fiancee /really/ wanted me to play M2, but it looked like crap stretched. I won't bitch about UI elements at the edge of the overscan, or schild might smite me.

Well shit, from what yall are saying it sounds like I'll have to check out the demo for my specs now. The campaign map situation sounds like they cleaned up most if not all of my beefs with Medieval 2. Thanks for the update.

It really is almost a completely different (and better) game from Medieval 2 at the campaign level.

Sky the only option I get for 1280 is 1280x1024 which is the only one my monitor allows.  If that helps any.

On my HDMI equipped laptop I see both 1280x800 and 1280x720 as available resolutions. My guess if that if your card supports 1280x720 resolution the game will as well.

I downloaded the demo and turned down the settings. I had no gameplay issues at all, but the load times seemed long. What's your average time per battle starting? I was at about 1m40s on the ship one.

The load times between the demo and the final game were different. The final game was much shorter, even with higher settings. It was still a bit longer than I'd prefer, but better than the demo would lead you to believe.

EDIT: Yes, Sky, if your monitor supports 1280x720, the game will run in that resolution. It was on my list.

Also, if you need an idea of what to tweak to get some better performance, here's a good discussion of what the options do (http://blogs.sega.com/totalwar/2009/03/05/empire-total-war-graphics-work-shop/).

I've not had the bad crash bugs that most people have had but I did lose a save game. I had a great game going as Britain after several starts and stops. Unfortunately, immediate CTD every time I loaded it or the autosave associated with it. I was sad.

Well, I managed to get George Washington killed by the French of all people, trying to take Fort Niagara.

So far, I like this game, despite some problems.

What I like:

The graphics are gorgeous. They make my video card scream for mercy (its an 8800GT), but toning them down some makes the game doable.

The historical detail is wonderful. I don't know how accurate it is, but I don't care. There's a sense of immersion that's really nice.


My pete peves are largely to do with troop movements and commands on the battlefield. Firstly, the 'AI' that makes your troops move to a certain location is borked. The path they take is entirely bizarre. Also, the the command that you make for a group to line up in a certain area by right-clicking and seeing a pattern show up and then releasing doesn't seem to work half the time. Furthermore, commands to attack seem a bit fuzzy too. I asked my two cavalry groups to rush into the woods to take out the cannon teams, and the danged idiots ran to the edge of the woods and just stood there. Only after repeatedly insinting that they run into the wood and attack did they do so. Otherwise they would have just stood there in the line of fire. This sorta problem has always plagued the Total War series, and it seems they didn't improve it much this time around. If anything, its a bit more borked than in the past. I'm hoping some patches will fix this.

Other than that, I'm planning on wasting a good part of the day today playing this :)

Yeah, they never really have fixed borked cavalry pathing.  If a unit is really scattered and I tell my cavalry to chase it they'll go off in bizarre directions.  Best I've come up with is to make them run to a spot that just happens to intersect with the routing unit I want attacked.

Oh, and try to keep at least one of your colleges on the military track working towards ranked firing.  If you get it early before other nations do it's almost like cheating.

Sorry for the double post, but you know what I really, really love about this game?

No "rebels".  I hated how the earlier Total War games just assigned every small, unaligned province to generic rebels.  I love how now they're just small nations who usually ally with bigger ones so you don't have what amounts to a free pass in your expansion early in the game.  You now actually have to piss someone off if you want to expand, it's not like land is just up for grabs by anyone.  Even if one of your provinces rebel those rebels at least now have an allegiance to their former country.  This is small stuff, but it makes a big difference to me.

What's the importance of generals in the game? Are they still simply "buff aura" units like in previous games, or do they have a higher purpose/use?

That's pretty much it, but if you lack a general in one of your armies you can promote someone in a unit to general and then level them up as usual.  I got sick of managing my family tree, so this is a nice little reform.

Anyone else have a revolution on their hands yet?  It would seem that my peasant scum, err humble subjects, have gotten some fancy book learning in their heads about equality, freedom, not being enserfed, etc. and have turned against their glorious Kaiser.  I've been busy for the past 5 or 6 turns showing them the error of their ways.

God, I fucking love this game.   :thumbs_up:

I'm only 14 years into mine. No revolutions yet, but I've been kind of flip-flopping between the three tech tree branches. The more philosophy you give them, the more likely they are to revolt. According to the manual, you can manipulate the revolution situation to either change your form of government or secure your throne more. You appear to be doing the latter - shocked, I am.  :why_so_serious:

I'm finally getting the hang of the troops I have. I just can't seem to get enough traction to counter attack Prussia.

Prussia is a fucking beast. Highly deceptive for a two territory nation.

Anyone else getting random crashes in Vista with an Nvidia card?

I finally downloaded the demo on Steam. Odd thing that demo. Here's a ground assault on a Spanish stronghold with about 80 units and only three types. Then here's the ship tutorial that has you up against two ships (and most of these mechanics you learned in PotBS already).

Oh, you want to have a taste of the game? Sure! Here's 7,240 units, twelve different types, and not a one did you use in the tutorial, up against a slightly smaller force that has no problem kicking your noob ass back to San Salvador.

Last Total War game I played was the first one (Shogun), and I sucked at that. Is the learning curve better in the full version of this game? I've spent $100 on games in the last week but only enjoying $50 of it (man I wish I waited for the Endwar demo). I'd rather not drop another $50 unless someone here can tell me the live game eases you into things better than the tutorial.

If anything the live game leaves you more in the dark than the demo. I've played all 3 versions and this one has the weakest 'tutorial' and advisor stuff of all 4.

The real tutorial in the game is the 'Road to Independence' campaign (play as American colonists/settlers/rebels). It starts off simple with a few units and gradually unlocks more and more game features without throwing you into the deep water right away as the grand campaign does. Plus its a good appetizer for the real game.

Edit: Oh, and a warning. The game is still quite buggy (not as bad as MTW II on realease, but...). For anyone strong enough to resist the 'must play now!!11!' urge (I am not :/), waiting until there is another patch might be a good idea.

There's supposed to be a patch out this coming week. I just had one of the best battles EVER wiped out because I didn't save directly after the battle and it crashed to desktop. It's definitely a little buggy. I'm hoping the patch fixes the CTD's and optimizes the graphics for better performance. That battle was pure awesome. Over 2000 troops a side, with my forces split in 2, one force melts away while the other one comes in to deliver the hammer blow. A HUGE fire fight that turned into a melee fight around a low wall.

Cavalry has a use, BTW. If you've been hammering on an infantry unit with musket fire for a while, or are in combat and it looks like the unit is wavering (flag is blinking) send in the cavalry (preferably from flank or rear). They'll break in an instant.

Yeah, but for me they still take up valuable room that can be filled by artillery.  Have you seen what canister shot at close range can do to a formation?  :awesome_for_real:

I havn't had much time to play but I did manage to finish Chapter 2 of the Road to Independence.  Big battles seem tough to me.  I just end up tossing out infantry all over the place and when I try to use strategy it just takes longer.  It ends up being a zerg rush.

I might be over thinking things for this campaign. 

Edit:
Oh, how do you use rangers in battle?  Or is that just for smaller battles?

Pathing in siege battles SUCK MONKEY ASS. Both sieges I've been in, I've barely won. It's partly my own stupid fault. I'll send cavalry out one of the gates, either to take out artillery that's been left on its own or to provide some punch to units in trouble, but no matter how long the cavalry has to exit, there's always one damn horseman that gets stuck in the gate, and never exits. As a result, the damn doors are open and the enemy gets in before the gates close. Sending in units to charge units half in and half out of the fortress will sometimes send the charging unit out of the fort, compounding the problem. Just something to be aware of.

I haven't gotten to cannister shot yet. Been too busy trying to boost my economy enough to make a serious push into Prussian territory. The more countries you control to start, the harder it is to push out. Prussia almost has it easy... good economic base, decent enough troops and little territory to defend.

I'm playing Prussia, and I've been concentrating on taking provinces that have schools in them, so now I'm up to 5 different research projects going at the same time.  The problem is that I'm strung out from East Prussia to Hannover, and now Austria declared war on me.  I had a bunch of troops on the edges of my empire, mainly to keep down resistance, but the middle was hollow, and I've barely been able to hold Austria back with my flintlock armed citizens.  Thank God they haven't really attacked in force yet.

The problem is that I can't really shift substantial troops to the middle of the empire because then I'll have revolts on the fringes.  And my army is so big that I don't really have the revenue to recruit more.  I needed a breathing space after conquering Hannover, but Austria pretty much put the kibosh on that.  No worries, though, I'll whoop those pathetic wannabe Germans yet.

Almost every review I've read about the game has some comment about Steam's inclusion to run the actual program. Does the inclusion hurt the game itself? Am I going to have any problems due to it? Keep in mind most of it sounded like childish ranting when I read it, and I never resell any game I buy. However, I still play the TW games like Rome that are 5 years old. I'm wondering if I'll be able to play them in the future if Steam stops supporting it.

PS - This is the first time I've used Steam and I know very little about it.

It uses Steam for activation like the original Half-Life 2 did, even on the retail version. I bought mine on Steam, so yes, Steam runs every time I load the program. I've had no problems with it, but others have (and I don't really know the nature of the problem). If I were you, I'd wait until this first patch comes out (supposed to be this week but we'll see).

As for Steam supporting it, I've yet to hear of a game that Steam has dropped support on.

2nd what Haem said.

I did have an issue installing it.  It tried to download it rather than load it from the discs for some reason.

Was that resolved quickly?

I've purchased roughly 20 games from Steam and have had one problem.  My card was charged and the game was not unlocked.  It took three emails in as many days to get a response.  The last email basically said, "refund my money or I am disputing the charges in one hour."  That got a canned response and my game was unceremoniously unlocked, but it really soured me on Steam for a while. 

I've gotten over it, mostly because I actually like the idea of not having my software tied to a CD, which is far more volatile than the company that made HL2. 

If they bother to respond, that is.

Ah ok this is good to know. Thanks.

Most of the problems I've heard about with getting the game to run involve activating the store bought version, I don't think I've heard from anyone who bought it via steam having a problem.

So let me see if i'm making the right conclusion here:

1- Wait for a patch
2- Getting it off Steam rather than on CD is preferrable

Here's the last issue. If I get it off steam and then upgrade computers in the next year (very likely). Will I be able to have control over installing my programs on on the new system, or will Steam fuck me?

I think its still largely up to the individual game, even if installed by Steam. I remember hearing that my copy of Mass Effect has a total of 5 installs, even if its installed by Steam. Other games I suspect have no such restriction.

AFAIK, Empire doesn't have any restriction on the number of installs. Just install Steam on your new machine, and either copy your steamapps folder to the new install location or re-download all your games again.

It worked the 2nd time I attempted it.  Not sure why it did that.

If you can get some cavalry over to the new world they really stomp the natives hard. I had 2 british cavalry rout about 8 native infantry and archers in succession. Not sure why they did so well as the native infantry has good morale.

In a battle vs the Spanish they had about 10 militia cavaly which broke like a mild wave against 4 line regiments in square. Mind you I had to crank down the battle difficulty to normal because I was losing badly up until then. At normal the AI seems to send it's mounted troops rushing ahead of it's infantry giving you the chance to defeat them in detail.

My last thought is that star forts suck to defend unless you have a lot of troops the bad guys will find a way over. I would have been better off forming my troops in a big square in the middle around the objective that I did defending the walls.

FYI, the game was updated last night. I haven't had a chance to play it since then, but some of the issues fixed were crashes and memory leaks.

If anyone notices increased performance / stability, please comment.  My money is waiting.

It hasn't crashed for me since the patch, but I was also running the wrong drivers. Aparently there was a problem with the latest nvidia drivers. The ones to use are the 181.22 ones rather than the latest iteration. That may have changed with the latest patch, however.

It still loads slower than molasses.

To be honest, I think what's gonna happen with this game for me is what happened with Midieval Total War. It was too heavy a game for my rig when I bought it, and only got into playing it after I landed this Core 2 Duo. Then I played the crap out of it. I'm thinking that when I get a new system down the road, with a 200 series Nvidia card, a Core i7 or some such, then it'll be less onerous and not tax my patience as much.

I ordered it today. I figure, what the hell, I have nothing else worth a damn to play.

Played it for a few hours last night after the patch and not one crash. It's still got bugs (and they are planning another patch next week). The sound will just randomly drop out during a battle and come back. Annoying but, but not a game stopper. Didn't notice any performance improvement, though. Managed to get the piss beat out of me in the replay battle with Prussia, but took the main army of Saxony out to the WOODSHED. I currently have them bottled up under siege in their capital, and if Prussia will leave me alone, I'll finish them off.

Under the phrase, "That isn't a bug, that's a feature!", one thing that's bothering me about this version of Total War is that in the deployment stage, you have no real idea where the enemy is going to be coming from. Nothing like setting up a Maginot Line of cannons with their sand-bag protections that keep them permanently facing one way, same with your troops anti-bullet barrier, or your anti cavalry charge barrier, only to find once you hit the End Deployment button that the enemy is in fact coming at you from another angle, or worse, an entirely different orientation! You're basically hosed at that point, unless you have equal or higher numbers.

Fog of war?  :awesome_for_real:

Seriously, though, it would be cool if your army included a certain number of skirmisher/scout types like Hussars, Pandours or Grenzers, that would at least allow you an idea of where in their deployment zone the enemy was setting up. But that may be more than the engine can handle.

Oh, and another thing. The 'hide in the woods' feature some units have...not sure how well it works when you have it, but when the AI has it, you can be in trouble.

One massacre I fought had a single unit of Indian horsemen charging me, then at the last moment turned and ran back the way they came. I though I remembered seeing at least 3 units in the pre-fight window on the map, but I say, what the heck. I lead a full force charge at the fleeing horsemen unit. Suddenly, within 10 yards of my advancing units, 2 more units of Indians spring up. I wasn't paying attention, had the game on 8x speed, so my two units stroll by the two indian units chasing after the horsemen, and the indian units riddle my back with shot. It was a very short battle.

I would say you can safely invest.  There are some bugs, and some odd things that happen, but unless you are super-picky you should be happy.

Except, of course, for one thing.  I wish you could lock your gates so they will not open, no matter what commands you give to your men.  I've had too many battles where an order has the unforeseen result of the gates opening so one or more of my men go through it.  Once that happens the AI just floods through it.

What he said.

The battle AI seems to have had a lobotomy. Units will be left on their own, in the open, to be defeated in detail while the rest of the army waits in the next field over.

The diplomacy, while not quite as horrendous as their previous titles, still boggles the mind from time to time. As Sweden, Prussia offered to trade me the fairly substantial province of East Prussia for... Courland? They threw in 500 ducats to sweeten the deal, despite the fact that Courland is a desolate wasteland and East Prussia is fully one half of their initial empire. I then began the next twenty turns with the Prussian AI trying to make the exact same deal, in the opposite direction.

 

Do empires still nonsensically cancel alliances with you just for the sake of making sure you have someone to fight?

Not that the AI did this on purpose but that's a classic type of ambush.  It was used very effectively by the Tartar's in like 400 AD and on through the centuries.

I haven't had anyone cancel an alliance on me. Usually I cancel on them when they get into a war with someone I can't afford to be at war with. They do make various bizarre offers such as 3 or 4 techs and some cash for two provinces.

There were a lot of land swaps as a result of peace treaties for instance the french got back Louisbourg from the English and the English got some Territories somewhere else that I don't remember. That wasn't an isolated event, but perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to trade away home territories.  :)

Note that the regions they want correspond with the ones in the big mission everyone gets at the beginning or with the ones they need to win a short game victory.

Just to update everyone, the war with Austria is over, and incidentally so is Austria.   :awesome_for_real:

As soon as I find a good pretext for a war with France I can take back Alsace-Lorraine and create the Großdeutsches Reich.  Suck it, Bismarck!

Yeah, I have had way too many diplomatic advances where the AI will offer me a province swap and a bunch of tech. If you remove the province swap and just try to trade tech for tech, they politely tell you to "go fornicate thyself, good sir" after sniffing some snuff and waving their hankcerchiefs. I have yet to have a tech trade go off successfully.

Same here.  They're more willing to swap land than tech, which is mind boggling.

I was hoping there would be a way to narrow down the scope of a campaign to a handful of countries and maybe just one 'zone', because to be honest, the time between turns is just ridiculous, even with CPU moves turned off. Anyone figured out a trick to make this go faster?

Patience is a virtue.   :drill:

How long is it taking you between turns? I'm in the year 1725 and it's no more than a minute waiting for the CPU turns to finish.

Its nearly a minute here too! W hen you're trying to amass a 40 unit army to finally give the Cherokees whatfor, that's 40 freakin minutes of doing NOTHING! GAHNNNHHH!

You lost me there.

Creating a unit takes 1 to 3 turns, normally. Land units anyway. If you need ~ 40 units to seriously attack and definatively wipe out a MINOR nation, such as Milan or the Cherokee, it takes ~40 turns. Assumming you don't have a whole lot else going on at the time, its hitting the 'next turn' button every time. Each time takes ~30-60 seconds. So, in essense, the game goes through periods where all it is is clicking on 'end turn' for 20 to 40 minutes. This is of course, assuming you only have one township in the vecinity to create units, which depending on what you're stuck with, may be the case more often than not.

You are aware that a territory can create multiple units at a time, right?  Hell, West Prussia can put out 4 units in one turn.

I know. I overstated the case to make a point. Why on god's green earth can't the CPU just crunch the other teams moves 'under the table' so to speak, rather than have a graphic hickup per every country's turn!? That's half the delay there.

The other thing that bothers me is that I have to take manual control over every single piddly encounter because the computer's AI for 'my team' is utterly dorky. I can beat pretty bad odds if I take manual control myself, but I only let the AI go into battle if my numbers are really superior.

You have to understand, I'm coming from a devoted player of Midieval Total War. These things were not so onerous in that game.

Granted, I don't play these games for the RTS part of the game much, so I also like to just let the computer handle many battles in the interest of time. However, I think it's the point that if a battle is 50/50 in strength, you should be playing it. I usually do unless I know for a fact that it's a complete loss.

50/50, sure, it would be fine. But I've played any number of battles where I'm supposedly out numbered. If I let the AI play it, I get my arse kicked. On the other hand, if I play the battle, I win handily because for the most part, the enemy AI is daft.

Well if your guys won every battle, even outnumbered, there would be very little point in actually playing the battles at all. I would suppose it's intentional that your AI can't handle things better or equal to a skilled player on purpose to incentivize actually battling.

Also, why are you outnumbered? That rarely happens occasionally to me, but in 80% of my battles i'm 50/50 or better.

Maybe I just picked a bad nation to play. I played Spain, and I start out with Mexico, Cherokees, Milan, Italian States and Holland all after my ass. Its hard to keep a strong presence absolutely everywhere you own without going bankrupt. Spain's starting regions are all over the map. Flanders, Lower Italy, Northern Italy, Cuba, Florida and Spain. They sort of warn you at the start of the campaign that Spain's king is nuts and things are grim for you at the start of the game.

The situations where I'm outnumbered seem to be when suddenly one or more of the above mentioned nations has it in for me. I don't know how the Cherokee managed to keep a full army afloat with their 2 regions, but they do, and they keep coming. I finally had to go into deep red to keep enough troops to both stomp them out of existence and keep my remaining regions alive. Unfortunately it didn't work, and in the time it took me to wipe out the Cherokee, Holland and the Italian states took Flanders and Northern Italy from me, respectively. Now of course, the Pueblo Indians suddenly feel entitled to Lousiana. Oh, and Queen Victoria I will NOT SHUT UP about me giving her Florida! Every single turn its a demand for me to give her Florida. Its been nigh on 5 decades and the bitch just doesn't get the message that the panhandle is MINE damn it!

Spain is in a SHITTY state historically by 1700. Hell, the first big war of the century was fought over who got to succeed to the Spainish throne. Your navy is about a century beyond its peak, and your colonies are far and wide with legal piracy allowed to ravage your shipments to and from the colonies. You are pretty much the bitch of the group orgy between France, Austria, the Holy Roman Empire and Britain over who gets to decide the balance of power in Europe. I'd think Spain would be one of the tougher factions to play.

Well, I already lost the 'game' by not having a bunch of stuff locked down by 1750, but I'm finally making inroads into the Americas, and I'm gonna keep at it.  Flanders is gone, norther Italy is gone, but I still have Corsica and southern italy. Now with the addition of Lousiana and Kentucky, I think I'm gonna survive, but jeeze, its rough.

Keep in mind who your neighbors are, too.  You're facing off against France and Great Britain, two of the most technologically superior nations at that time.  They've got way more schools in their territory than you do, so it'll probably stay that way.  Russia is also backwards as hell, but unlike Spain they've got pissant neighbors to go up against.  Makes a big difference.

My goal is to simply surive right now. I have kept England and France at peace with me, but that may change. The French have been kicked out of the southern US by the Indians, so I will be taking over there as my main base of operations. I will neglect Europe as much as I can financially get away with.

Now, the damned dutch pirates are getting up my nose, but I can't afford an armada to deal with them. I had hoped that once they got Flanders they'd get off my case, but alas...

The game is pretty evil; it forces you to beat up the small fry to grain enough ground to stave off attacks from bigger fish. It really boils down world politics to pure darwinism.

I don't know how the map is layed out in your game, but have you tried an alliance with Prussia or Austria?  I usually follow the old Roman model of expansion; my friend is my neighbor once removed.  At the very least try to surround your immediate neighbors with enemies, I'm thinking your main enemy on the continent would be France, and allying with either German country would also threaten the Dutch.

ETA:  The one near-constant in my Prussia game has been an alliance with Spain.  It's just so convenient having an ally who provides you with endless excuses to attack France or the Netherlands.   :drill:

Currently I'm at peace with france. Austria, on the other hand, declared war on me for no reason whatsoever. I have no territories bordering it, I was entirely removed from them. I think it was just one of those historically necessary conditions that Austria was a war with Spain at the time, or some such.

I'm not sure why, but France isn't doing so well in this particular campaign. They have their country, but they've essentially been cleared from the map by the British. When the British alliance declared war on France, which heretofore had been my ally, I was asked to join either France or the British alliance and I declined both. Prompt bribing of both sides when I was running a surplus seems to have kept both of them in my good graces.

Spain just took over Portugal in my game, but that was 50 turns in and that's as far as they've gotten. I'm playing Britain, and I've already destroyed Sweden and Prussia, who got into foolish wars with my allies that I finished. I also beat the shit out of the Huron Confederacy because they "couldn't tolerate my presence" anymore in Canada. Now, I'm sitting on 12 territories and I'm about to go to war with France so I can pick up the rest of Canada, and get 2/3 territories I need to have the 13 colonies consolidate with me.

I love this game.

Your cousin wanted to be King, welcome to the War of Succession.

inbred morons. I'm starting to understand Cromwell.

The War of Spainish Succession (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Spainish_Succession) For some historical context. Spain buddied up to France against Austria (HRE) and Great Britain. I kind of wish the game had some rights of succession involved in the diplomacy because 2 of the 3 major wars in the early century were about who got to succeed to whose throne.

I think that would hold too much danger of, "play as country X, defeat Country Y in war to succeed them and become the new Great Power very, very quickly". It would hardly be an I win button but it would drastically change how the game plays without the starting geography really giving any indication. Plus it's probably really hard to code with the way the engine's set up :oh_i_see:

That's pretty much exactly how my game is playing out. I've attacked France as Britain, they were allied with Spain, and I'm allied with Austria. Also I've made alliances with the Iriquois to box out France from my lands in the Americas, and keep the 13 Colonies as a buffer b/w me and Spain. Spain really should have cut bait on France though, because the French are extremely rich but extremely weak. Now I'm trying to take just enough away from Spain to make them question the fight in Europe, because they dominate the Southern Americas and will probably rape my islands soon.

Been playing this for the last few days but I think this is going on the shelf until CA puts out a major AI patch. Other than the first few turns of a campaign, the strategic AI is incredibly passive to the point that it has to be bugged. Poland has been at war with Austria, Denmark, et. al and is sitting there with almost no army, nothing happening. As Prussia I marched 2 armies into West Prussia and Warsaw with literally no resistance other than armed citizenry.

The battle AI is in terrible shape. Even on the very rare occasion that the AI decides to attack, it cannot direct an army of any size with any sort of coordination and their units simply form a huge blob in the center.

I know CA games always need patches to get to their full potential but this one seems more rushed than Medieval and Rome.

Same here, along with the problem of them sending out 1 or 2 units for me to destroy in detail.  No real general would do something that stupid.  Split your forces, sure, but never send unsupported units into a meat grinder.

They do that all the time in my game as well. They send out 2 units to blow up my farms and piss me off, then I crush them. It's really quite stupid.

I was wondering if turning up the AI difficulty would affect that, or if it just means that the enemy is just more numerous.

I seem to have no problems wiping out the map with Austria (why does prussia always try a bad trade and then backstab me? You have no allies and no land, I'm just going to roll you in a few minutes..)

Last night I started taking out Persia just to hit the World Domination 40 territory goal, and got a fun bug:

A unit of Cav didn't have a flag on it, and mouseovers of it gave building information and the door icon. Nothing would fire on it, but it could melee me fine. Sigh. First bug I've hit though. And yeah, nobody EVER accepts tech trades. I've offered 8 techs for 1 with an allied friendly country, and was told to fuck myself.

I've gotten a few tech trades to work, but it was damn near impossible to any major nation to accept a trade route when I played a Maratha campaign.  Plus I kept getting spammed with stupid territory deals, like give up Bengal for Genoa and a trade route kind of stupid. I did one turn accidentally trade Bengal to Spain by clicking the wrong button (I was just trying to get the campaign over with) and had to declare war and take it back.  Fortunately the Ai seems clueless about amphibious invasions so the war had no real effect on me.

Speaking of amphibious invasions, has anyone invaded the Barbary pirates yet?  I did yesterday, and this is the first non-European power I've fought.  Jesus, it's like they were still playing M:TW.  They're sending swordsmen at me while I've got mortars that fire explosive incendiary shot.  It was pretty much like beating up a 2 year old.   :drill:

Just try and leave the nose attached to the Sphinx this time pls.

The stupid region trades seem to pop out of nowhere. France wanted me to trade the Huron Territory for Newfoundland and apparently some beads. I'm like, yeah I'm going to give up a huge chunk of land right in the middle of my NA Empire that generates 5k a turn for a crappy island with a dock? Of course if you counter with anything remotely reasonable, they piss on it and set it on fire.

I've beaten up on the Pirates, and their land forces aren't much better.  Just a mob with swords and muskets.

France wanted me to trade the Rhineland for Ceylon and Newfoundland.  I have to admit that I was actually tempted, since those would give me easy footholds into two different theaters where I have no presence.  I turned it down, though.  The Rhineland is just too productive a province.

Spain wanted to buy France from me for a trade agreement and a 550 gold one time payment.  :awesome_for_real:

And next turn it wanted France in exchange for 5 random territories scattered around the ass end of nowhere with no expansion or strategic value.

And they constantly refuse my attempts to just bribe a trade agreement out of them.

Prussia wanted to trade me East Prussia for Courland.

East Prussia is a major city/port with a large population and wealth base. Courland is the shithole fishing strip next door.

Of course, I took it.  :drill:

I mostly get offers that are staight up insulting.  As the Maratha Confederacy, I've just destroyed the Mughal Empire.  So, I pretty much control the entire Indian subcontinent without the portions that I'll have to war Portugal and those other whities that control the island off the southern coast.  And yet, people want payments of all my gold or want to throw in ridculous land deals for a simple trade agreement.   I am very rich, have pretty secure borders, have an amazing tech machine going, and can probably kick anyone's ass without the benefit of a navy.  And yet I get no respect from anyone but England who just sees "TEA! YAH TEA!".

I'm enjoying the game a lot, but have no idea what I'm supposed to do with trade ships.  I don't see what their purpose is as I already see little ships moving around my trade routes.

Also, I've pretty much had mixed results with artillery.  I really don't know how to use it effectively at all.  It did come to the rescue once when I grossly misjudged how pouring through a breach in a wall would go.  Enemy swarmed and I got wiped out due to shear numbers.  Moving two cannons and firing cannister shot into the breach saved the day.  Took some of my surviving men with it in the process, but the siege was a success and I had less upkeep the next turn  :awesome_for_real:

Still, they've made little difference so far on the battle field. Are there ways I should be posititioning and using my artillery to have their presence really shift things in my favor other than trying to find ways to use cannister shot without killing my own men or leaving the cannons open for a charge?

Trade ships are useful in the tiny little "trade zones" like Southeast Asia, Madagascar, and Brazil.  Basically you take over a little trade port and you get access to whatever they've got.  For Africa it tends to be ivory, for SE Asia it's pepper.  Just one of those trade routes grants you around 500 gold per turn, but it also bumps up the already established trade routes you have set up.  My advice would be to create a small but effective combat navy with some 2nd/3rd rate ships of the line and use them to escort some merchant men.  Use your combat navy to chase out any pirates/enemy nations on one of those ports and slap a merchant man on it.  Trust me, the money adds up quickly.


With cannon I usually set them up in the middle of my formation, and I create a "1" and "2" group of infantry.  I position them on either side of the cannons and sort of sweep them forward in a "V" shape depending on how the enemy is coming at me.  I basically think of the center of the V as the killing ground for the artillery.  If the enemy gets real close switch them to canister shot.

As soon as you can pump out mortars, do so.  Mortars have the advantage of tossing their rounds up in a high trajectory so you can place infantry right in front of them, unlike cannon.  Also, as soon as you get carcass shot (basically napalm) switch over to that.  It's great at destroying enemy morale.

Also, if you're going to go with artillery you either have to go big or go home.  One or two artillery pieces don't really amount to much.  Six of them?  Oh my, yes, that's impressive.  Especially if you direct their fire on one specific area/unit (ie, turn off "fire at will") you can channel enemy formations where you want them to go or just royally fuck up huge portions of their formation and cause mass routing, which is when you can use your cavalry to run 'em down.

I'm way behind in the naval arena as Austrai, because I've only just started building up a navy. I've got Denmark on one side fucking with me because those Vikings know how to sail and have ships of the line, and I'm stuck with Brigs and sloops. On the other side, I have the Ottomans, who have a decent navy but apparently don't care to protect their land holdings with anything but militia.

Just read that CA is doing another hotfix patch this week to fix a lot of coding/crashing problems. They are also working on a gameplay update for a few weeks from now that will include AI fixes, and the kind of stuff we're talking about that needs changing (diplomacy, artillery, etc.) They plan on doing a cycle of hotfixes, followed by big gameplay updates followed by little hotfixes etc.

Oh, and just to share, as Prussia I'm now in an alliance with France, Spain, and the Ottoman empire.  France got into a war with England, and like a dutiful ally I sent in the troops.  I'm now in control of England (but not Scotland or Ireland), but I think it's more trouble than it's worth.  The rebellions are constant, and I have to keep feeding my army there additional troops from the continent just to keep the pasty bastards under my Teutonic thumb.

The thing is, it's like having a wolf by the ears.  If I hold on to England I'm at least facing a severely hobbled enemy, but I have to constantly beat the populace down.  If I give up and let the rebels take back their territory I'm facing a still royally pissed off England with a daunting navy and a worldwide empire.  Also there's the Dutch to consider, they're really buddy buddy with England and not too happy about me.  Sooner or later I'll have to deal with them, but I'd rather not have to keep funneling troops to England when they're a closer enemy.

ETA:  What do you guys think about destroying every improvement in England and just abandoning the territory?  At the very least it keeps them hobbled, and frees me up to deal with the Dutch.

Salting the earth is not a very 18th century tactic.  :awesome_for_real:

Steam updated my game today with a patch for some crashing issues. We'll see if the performance improves. I'll admit I haven't logged in much because the game hasn't really engaged me lately after I've worked my way up to God-like might and gold flowing from the heavens. It's the same problem I had with Rome in that I knew exactly when I was going to win the game. This game only bothers me in that the victory conditions have territories at the ass end of the universe for me to grab.

If you can't make them happy in england, raze the school and turn it into a bawdy house. I've occasionally blown up schools because the clamor for reform was too hard to control.

Carcass shot never works for me. Ever. Fucking shit just airbursts, doesn't kill a goddamned thing, and nobody seems to run from it even after a good five minutes of hammering.

Razing is one of the best things to do in this version to restabilize your region. I took over the French region, which had like 8-9 different towns on it. The AI had 5 of them set as Catholic seminaries?!? Considering I'm Protestant I burned them to the ground and put those lazy bastards to work in my mills and taverns.

Okay, here's what I did.  I razed every structure England had on it, and then made a deal with France trading them England for Alsace-Lorraine.  I know France won't be able to hold on to England, but I'll very easily be able to keep control of my new territory.  This works out great since I'm really an "ally" of France in name only.  I'll let them pour their men into the meat grinder and spend all their money rebuilding while my noblemen drink wine and set up their great estates in Alsace-Lorraine.

After that I'm sending the Army I had in England on a tour of the British Isles to repeat the process in Scotland and then Ireland.  If I play my cards right I should be able to get a decent chunk of Canada from the French out of the deal.  And then, of course, I can dismantle those pesky 13 colonies and incorporate them into the Reich.

That's where the "go big or go home" maxim comes into play.  Carcass shot is really unreliable, but when it does hit it does huge amounts of damage.  The problem is that to pull this off you need a lot of artillery, because most of them are going to airburst like you said.  If you concentrate your fire with around 6 mortars on one area at least one of those shots is going to hit.  If you don't want to employ that much artillery I'd say screw mortars and just stick with one or two cannons.

Of course, I'm an artillery whore.  Why send a group of guys a mile across the field when 12 streaking balls of flame can do the job just as well?   :thumbs_up:

I average about 3-4 arty pieces per army, and a large amount of infantry supporting it. I like mortars for the fire over my lines aspect, I just find them better with explosive or standard shot in those numbers. I did try a comedy army that worked relatively well for a while consisting of carbineers/light cav and 6lb horse cannons. It was a shitty army, but did well at taking over the huge amount of walking that is India.

What happens to this army once you get quicklime shot, shrapnel shot and percussion caps? I imagine it turns into the Hellshredder of Mandeath.

Oh, I've definitely razed some key structures in Protestant/Muslim territories and replaced them with Catholic seminaries.

Yep!  One thing these games get really well is just how decisive indirect fire can be, but they mask it really well.  It was the same in actual history.  It was employed, but not really in numbers, and was mainly just used in sieges until Frederick the Great really revolutionized artillery by making it a decisive arm of his army.  There's a reason Napoleon started his career as a captain of artillery, and Clausewitz really goes in depth on the topic.  If you deploy it in numbers and use it well it really makes a huge difference.  If I had to choose between cavalry or artillery there's really no contest, I'll go with the big guns every time.

I just tried a quick battle, Austria vs. Great Britain. Them with line upon line of horse and infantry.

Me with 7x4-inch mortars and some token line infantry, with two sets of light infantry to screen the enemy and harass.

918/950 lost for GB, 270ish/900ish lost for Austria. Hellshredder indeed.

Not sure how well it'd fare on offense - you'd have to kite the enemy into range, then hold them there somehow. And on sieges, I suppose you'd have to replace the fixed mortars (insane ROF) with howitzers.

I got back into this last night after the 2nd mini patch, and I had a grand ole time kicking Mexico out of, well, Mexico. After about 2 hours of game play, the main interface map started to seriously slow down. Its as if there's a big memory leak. I didn't want to alt-tab with the game to see the Task Manager's report, but has anyone else experienced this since the latest round of patches?

My game actually seems to start slow and then speed up as I play more.

Has anyone else had long waits while organizing large fleets?  While playing Great Britian I had two large fleets next to each other, and when I sent ships from one fleet to the other I had wait times of up to a minute.  I thought the game had hung up.  This on a quad-core no less.

Well, I can confirm now that there's a memory leak of some sort on my installation. Windows reported that I was running out of memory about 45 minutes into it. Finally, it just crashed.

Yes, there is something going on with the fleets.  I have yet to get a game past 1760 due to it.  Also seems to be related to the size of the fleet. 

Doesn't help that every AI nation builds GIANT FLEETS which will do nothing except wander back and forth between trade routes to raid.

Yeah, I get this too, and it isn't just large fleets. I've had fleets of 1 ship merging into a fleet with 1 other ship and got the hang. Definitely still some issues to work out.

I finished my short campaign as Austria, winning on the very last turn. Started a new long campaign with Russia uising the Darth Mod AI combat mod. I've only had one battle though, so I can't say if the AI mod has helped or not.

Here you go! (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=empire+total+war+Darth+Mod+AI+combat+mod)

Well, thanks. I did actually look it up, but I couldn't make heads or tails of the information the dude has. What does the mod do, exactly? If you can link me a description, or a list of alterations or so, I'd be greatful :P

It's a combat AI mod. Dude is not a native English speaker, but here's what I've noticed so far playing with it in my Russian campaign (and this is only up to about 1705).

Enemy AI actually tries and succeeds in outflanking you if they can. You really have to watch your flanks.

The range for musketry is expanded, probably by about 25%. Your units will start firing earlier, and they have more ammo so they can fire longer. Of course, at the extended range, it isn't as effective.

Unit formations are tighter.

He's also increased the size of some units (i.e. firelock armed citizens have 150 troops instead of 80).

Morale seems to play a bigger part. The shitty citizen militia is super shitty - it folds when it takes a good pounding.

Campaign AI seems a bit more aggressive.

Interesting.  I'll give that mod a go after completing my long-ass Prussia campaign.  Oh, and after France inevitably lost England as I predicted.  Great Britain somewhat came back and started harassing my trade routes because there wasn't much else they could do.  That was the last straw; people should know when they've been beaten into the dirt.

I ferried my troops over on three different fleets and took all of Britain in one turn, and then recognized the sovereignty of the United States.  I'm keeping these damned islands, I just wish I hadn't salted the earth earlier.   :why_so_serious:

I installed the Darth Mod on my installation of Rome Total War and it does make things more interesting. The AI now, well, actually seems to be a bit intelligent. I no longer simply need to defend my ballistas with a few rows of infantry and watch the enemy be mowed to a pulp. They will use cavalry to actively get behind the lines and chew up the ballista teams if I'm not very careful about defense.

I'm not quite ready to use it on Empire, since I'm having trouble keeping that game stable in the vanilla version.

So after the clusterfuck that  was M2:TW I swore I'd never buy another Creative Assembly game, as their games have gotten progressively worse (albeit shinier!) for almost a decade.  I lied.  Here's my take on the game:


First thing you notice is the game looks pretty good, right down to the shimmery reflective water surfaces.   That's never been a problem for CA though.  The biggest change is how the provinces work.  There are less of them.  This solves a huge problem that has troubled every Total War game thus far:  a glut of siege battles.  Siege battles are fine and dandy, but when you have very small provinces coupled with a lack of any sensible reason to sally forth from your city's fortifications to meet intruding armies on the field, then you're surviving on a very unbalanced diet.  That brings me to the second big change.  No longer are all of a province's economic and industrial improvements located in the provincial capital.  In every province, there is the familiar provincial capital city, but now there are minor cities/mines/farmsteads/etc that dot the landscape as well.  These can all be garrisoned with troops, and need to be, else you risk opposing armies entering your lands and razing your very expensive improvements before you have time to react.  This is the single biggest change to the fundamentals of the game, and is long overdue.  Now the majority of battles take place in the field, but to capture a province, a siege battle is required.  Bravo.


Another big change is that the campaign map has been expanded.  There are now, in addition to the Mediterranean theater,  Indian and American theaters.  This is good in theory.  However, it exposes the most glaring problem that has always plagued the Total War series like a syphilitic blister:  dodgy artificial intelligence.  Expanding the grand campaign map into three regions demands competent AI.  With three theaters of war, naval logistics are required.  The game launched with an admission from CA that the AI was not capable of naval invasions.  After their third patch, they now claim this can happen, though they themselves describe the frequency as "rare."  In two long campaigns, and 50 hours of gameplay, I've never seen it.  Not once.  What this ultimately means is that AI controlled nations are extremely passive.  Western Europe with its foreign colonies and overseas possessions takes the docility to the extreme.  In hundreds of turns, the only change of hands in territory I've seen from a western European nation has been Spain's annexing of Portugal, and the continual gain/loss of Maine to the natives. 

The AI, as a rule, gets embroiled in countless wars, of which it apparently does not understand how to extricate itself.  I've seen countless factions engaged in war with almost every other faction, and these wars persist (at least in name) for usually the entire game.  However, little territory changes hands, with the occasional exception being in eastern Europe.  The AI will generally build a stack and sit idly with it while it bleeds itself into bankruptcy.  The AI doesn't understand how to properly trade for technology or regions.  The AI doesn't understand how to properly make alliances/protectorates.  It doesn't understand how to conduct itself on the battlefield, as its units tend to continuously and impotently reform while my infantry fires volley after volley into their ranks. 

Ultimately, nothing else about the game bears mentioning.  Because with such core, fundamental problems, it doesn't matter particularly much if you can now wage shitty and broken naval battles.  The crippled AI makes the facility with which the game can be beaten on Very hard/Very hard difficulty settings a foregone conclusion.  Unless you've never played a Total War title before, this game is currently a waste of time.

I agree with all of what you said, and I await the "Magic Bullet" patch that fixes this game before I load it back up on my Steam account. I catch periodic updates, but they don't solve anything that's really wrong with the game.

I'd add one thing you didn't mention. Some of the victory conditions are totally insane in terms of which territories they want you to own. The fact that they want to have several territories in all 3 theatres (often owned by 8 different countries) means you wage a ton of ridiculous wars that you would logically never enter. Also, the AI diplomacy is retarded, and they make territory deals that make no sense. They also won't stop offering you these idiotic deals every other turn.

The one big thing I did like is the way they did taxes and government in this game, because it takes the city micromanagement down a notch. Setting tax policies over a whole region makes more logical sense than doing it region by region.

Everything is as you say.  I could have written a few more positive things (like how they reduced micromanagement in many areas), and given it reams of additional negative press, but ultimately, the game didn't deserve it.  The game is fundamentally broken.  I can scarcely imagine anyone having the barest whisper of difficulty thrashing the AI once they understand the basic concepts of the game play.  Total War games have always suffered from AI problems, but the harder difficulties ensured that you'd be facing armies that were larger and more technologically advanced than you, and had higher morale.  Now the AI is so utterly incompetent, it doesn't matter if the AI had nuclear weapons and I had sticks and stones.  I wish I was joking.  I haven't had any trouble meeting the territory goals the game asks of you.  I think they are supposed to be semi-historical (i.e. England needs to have an overseas possession in India). Not only does the AI generally remain at war with other factions for eternity, it also declares war senselessly.  It will declare war and then never move armies into your territory. Often times a country will attack you, then you can sue for peace, the next turn it will attack you, then you cans ue for peace, ad nauseaum. When I have actually been invaded, it is always by a couple single unit armies that attempt to raze terrain improvements.  I've never, not once been invaded by a sizable army.  The game is a complete joke.

The only people that actually ever give me trouble are Native Americans and Pirates. They generally like to form war parties or catch your ships at weak points.

This was a problem in Medieval too; the victory conditions were well outside the range of actual historical possibility in that game.

I find that I usually don't even have to deal with pirates.  The sea lanes are so clogged another country's navy will take care of them.

I felt a bit cheated when I noticed the game only uses one core despite 'runs great on intel i7' splash screens and 'optimised for i7' stickers on the DVD box.  I know it's all just intell marketing but still...

Either Creative Assembly is the biggest bunch of bush-league amateurs I've ever seen in my life, or their publisher has them by the short and curlies.  They've been making the same godamn game for a decade and if anything they've regressed each time.

Well, if I'm not mistaken, they're actually owned by their current publisher (Sega?). It was fairly well known that one of their previous publishers only allowed them to patch the game twice before they'd have to leave it be or some-such -- I think it was Activision.

I'm fairly split on CA, though... I desperately want to enjoy their games but they can't seem to learn from their mistakes and merely focus on "Oooh! Shiny!". Empire wouldn't be bad if it had come on the heels of the first Medieval; it'd have enough extra features to warrant its place. But being the fifth? title in the series its a joke. Yeah, its great we're no longer confined to the areas immediately surrounding the Mediterranean and Baltic, and the naval battles are nice... but between retarded AI, launching with no naval invasions (seriously, how does that even happen in a game largely based around the idea of over-seas empires?), passive AI and certain mechanics that have been carried over from the previous games that remain just as flawed as they were then. Not to mention some of the content that was removed.

Bleh; it just boggles the mind how they manage to do it all. Finances shouldn't have been a problem, I'd think. Maybe one of the (many) people here can correct me, but it just stinks of horrendous mis-management and allocation of resources.

I'm still waiting for a game that does what the Total War series does and what the Europa Universalis series does and taking the best from both and leaving the crud behind.

Keep buying it.

Unfortunately, not buying it would probably just bury the franchise. There's not a lot of incentive to make a franchise better.

Luckily with the Total War series you can pretty much count on third party mods seriously tweaking the game.  The Stainless Steel mod for M2, for instance, completely changes the game and makes it a hell of a lot more difficult.

Yeah, I'm gonna go with the mod the game to get the game you really want to play. I was using the Darth Mod Commander version before I got distracted by soccer and LotRO again. It improved the game visually as well as making the game play better. When I get back to the game, I plan on really diving into some of the mods.

Is that pretty much the only decent mod available at this point?  Hopefully more mods will be finishing up this summer, and they will patch the game so it doesn't crash all the time. Albeit its better then when it was released.

I'm tired of this stupid AI, who like you've already stated just mass ships, they don't seem to go on the offensive ever. The fact i can leave my whole western front wide open to Prussia(at war) as i invade the Spanish just stupid. As for the American Campaign, that had to be one of the worst experiences I've had yet with the game. I liked the fact that you were able to go on the road to independence, but if you didn't kill off the British, or seriously hinder there ability to fight some how it made it impossible to take a city. Mostly due to them creating a zerg force surrounding the whole thing.

Honestly, I'm still hoping the Multiplayer Campaign will come out some time this century. I tried one game of online multiplayer and it was ok, there is just no incentive to really win. In the grand campaign, you think to your self "what do i need to do inorder to save this city being out numbered 3:1"

What is the incentive to push these games out the door before they are honestly ready? It seems that over the past 9 years, as graphics and more features are included the more bugs are in the games. Given that is due to happen, but they should realize this and spend more time in beta. There should have been no reason this game was released in the condition it was, saved files going corrupt, crashes, and bsod.

Going to check out the Stainless Steel mod though, thanks Big Gulp

I was actually wondering what happened to this thread, and when I saw it on page three last week I didn't even reply.


There was a patch on April 29th, and it was a pretty comprehensive patch, that does seem to have fixed many of the extremely broken things. I was only playing in small doses and restarting campaigns over and over, finding more and more reason to wait for the "magic patch" too.

This patch did fix some majorly broken shit, like enemy armies not knowing how to board ships (a bug that was really only known or dispersed on the E:TW forums). That alone removed much of the Easy button stupidity, that kept me from just taking over the entire world and had me starting over. I kind of look forward to my next restart, it might even feel like a new game with the laundry list of changes.

Patch notes:

EDIT TO ADD
Is no one doing battles online through Steam with this? I'd be interested in a scheduled hour or two long Naval battle or Army attack, and a friend and I tried it on his network and it worked vaguely ok.

Dude, my bitching about the game is entirely post-patch(es).  The game is fucked.  The easy-button is still there.  THIS FUCKING GAME IS GARBAGE.  IT HAS THE WORST AI I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY ENTIRE GODAMN LIFE. 

Jesus Christ this shit gets me worked up.  I mean how can anyone take this game seriously? THE AI IS A FUCKING JOKE. I can't take a game called "EMPIRE: TOTAL WAR" seriously  that features AI that never attacks.  Holy shit.  I wish I were exaggerating.  I wish I were just a hardcore Total War fan that was bitter and seething with disappointment.  This game is fundamentally broken and the fact that it has 90% reviews is indicative of how shitty game "journalists" are.  I coudln't even finish the godamn TUTORIAL after 3 patches because of a bug. THE TUTORIAL.  THE FUCKING TUTORIAL.

I'd be willing to schedule a time, maybe we can get a few together to do a 2 vs 2 or something.

On the journalist note, I think they tend to look after them selves, or maybe they get payed based on how many games they review. Honestly I don't know, but the general rating seems to be based off. O-hai this game looks purdy, good job company x. I don't need to go into actual game play as a game that looks this good must preform!

Game reviewers obviously played the first couple chapters of the tutorial on easy difficulty, stuck their fingers up their butts, and called it macaroni.

I agree the AI is still seriously borked, but as some people have mentioned before there are mods that help with this.

As far as the reviews go, I agree that someone paid for the good reviews it's getting, because at launch it was a bug riddled stinking pile, with a rushed "sequel" feel. I like many of the updates, changes to campaign, and also units/technology, but with the AI severely crippled and the amount of bugs and unfinished stuff (Multi-player Campaign?) it definitely received some form of blow job scores.

This was part of the reason I only played it in small doses, trying different nations, and why it now maybe deserves a look from people being disappointed waiting for the needed changes (because of the patch).

I'm actually at the point now where enough is fixed to recommend this, if you were a fan of the series, although waiting for a price drop would also be included.

There's no way in hell you should be recommending this game to anyone.  Do we own the same game?  I mean are we playing the same game?  Because the game I've been playing has AI that declares war on you and then sends an army comprised of one unit into your base, followed by no further action for the rest of the war.  The game I've been playing, I've never seen a godamn naval invasion, in, as someone pointed out, a game largely built around the idea of naval expansion.  This game is a disaster and a joke.  I honestly don't see how this game could be fun for anyone.  Put it this way, if your idea of grand strategy game is one where you're never facing even the barest whisper of losing in any way shape or form, then this game is for you.  I mean this is the type of game where you could let your 5 year old nephew take over for 40-50 years and not have to worry about losing any territory.  Recommend this game?  Give me a fucking break.  I recommend you put this game in the trash can.  It's garbage.

Hmm, probably worth checking out.

The AI never attacks. This is true. They will declare war on you and do nothing except wait for you to crush them. The game is fucked until they patch in some balls for the computer.

YMMV

It's fun for me. I modded it to make the AI better. I didn't have nearly the bugs that most other folks complained about, though there were definitely some stability crashes before the patches.

It's obvious you really really hate this series of games. But that's the funny part about a sequel - you ought to know going in what you're going to get. This series is the Madden NFL of wargames.

Nevermind the AI. I still don't understand how anyone can sit through the endless AI turns. Over a minute for me each time I hit 'end turn'. Often times you're just waiting on army buildup or construction, and there's not much to do during your own turn. You hit end turn, and have to wait a minute. This is/was the game breaker for me, more than anything else.

Campaign AI sucks, is the battle AI just as borked? Will the enemy army just stand at the other side of the battle field and wait for you to pound them with artillery or is there at least scope for awesome battles? I know that campaign AI has never been especially sophisticated in TW games but they've usually done a good enough job on the battlefield (with appropriate difficulty levels) to be entertaining. At least if you enjoy watching hundreds of little animated minions fighting to the death in the name of your cause.

Umm, I grew up with a C64 that had a tape drive.  A one minute wait is fucking nothing.

Also, what Haemish said.  Much like the Elder Scrolls series you're a fool to play the vanilla form of any Total War game.  As soon as mods hit the scene you snatch 'em up.

I grew up with the same. But its not like 1 minute and then I have stuff to do for 5 minutes. Its like 1 minute, I have 15 seconds of stuff to do, then I have to wait another minute, then another 15 seconds, then another minute. Am I missing something here? How is this not driving people batshit?

dusematic is acting like he's been seriously chaffed by this game, and although I had some buyers remorse, it's still a solid game and I've been playing it for many hours longer than many games.

I also am a huge fan of the series, of which none I bought until they were reduced in price because of the massive amount of bugs.


The new patch was why I was posting here.


 

When I decided to buy, I knew full well that it was an unpatched, just released, not heavily tested, version of other games I enjoyed. It's waaay less broken with the new patch (2 months after release) and now at least it's worth spending money on. I bought the game knowing I was beta testing it, and was on the forums and sending bug submissions... plus many many crash reports through windows. Not bitching and cursing into a text box.


The game had a massive bug where the computer couldn't figure out how to get troops to board ships, and believe it or not it was a release bug for the last 3 Total Wars if memory serves me correct. I knew about it from reading the E:TW forums, and in lurking in and out of this thread never saw it mentioned once. For me it was a reason to not play that much and just learn about units, benefits to improvements or buildings, which is probably why I'm not as jaded as you.


I happen to be enjoying the game, and yes the AI is really bad (only on Hard were naval battles even remotely challenging) but that's where the mod helped. What difficulty were you playing on? Were you just stacking troops infinitely? I was doing lots of mismatched battles. Instead of long sieges I was attacking a city with 4 units to their 12 with citizens and winning... or having a blast losing and trying the battle over.

I'd say releasing the closed minded hatred, and maybe trying it again with the new patch and a mod, but then again both of us are trolling a 10 page thread, dusematic.


You can select to turn off auto managing, and micromanage stuff, which does make for more campaign map time, but I also noticed severe differences on some machines. When there's lots of units and you are trying to get the 100 regions conquered Achievement, it takes a full five minutes to load a game or map sometimes on one machine of mine. I also was trading save games of really intense lopsided battles to try and win with friends.

Anyone wanting to maybe arrange a weekend Steam battle or something send me a PM. Maybe I'll start a thread in the Steam forum if there's interest this weekend.

DUDE.  You MODDED the game.  I shouldn't have to MOD the game for it work.  I mean, I'm happy for you that you enjoy playing the MODDED version of the game.  I truly am.  But I don't really feel like delving that deep with the game.  Nor should I have to.  And if I'm talking about the standard edition of the game, and you're talking about the MODDED version, then what you have to say isn't really relevant, save to those also playing MODDED versions of the game. Because we're not playing the same game.  And since you seem like a pretty smart fella most of the time, I'm pretty sure the MOD must be a pretty big fucking overhaul, since I can't imagine anyone with two brain cells to rub together challenged in the slightest by the AI on the hardest difficulty. So no, my mileage won't vary.  The game is garbage. End of story.  I'm sure you can MOD Barbie Island Princess into being a stellar game if you spend enough time on it. 


Edit:  By the way, funny you bring up Madden.  Here are my thoughts on Madden (still relevant): http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10709.0

The problem is for both Madden and Total War, they're pretty much the only game in town of their kind.  So I invariably end up getting them, and invariably end up disappointed.  Not because the games suck, but because THEY GET WORSE. 

The battle AI is fucked as well. 

1.  Once again, my comments on the game reflect the current game client. 

2.  Once again, I don't give a flying fuck about your experiences with a MODDED version of the game.  I don't feel like fucking with MODS to enjoy a game.  Maybe I should, and maybe I will, but I shouldn't have to.

3. I shouldn't have to fight with one hand behind my back, and handicap myself by fighting "mismatched" battles.  That's retarded.  Play2crush.

4. I know I come off as a pretty big dick (I am) but don't take my rants about the game as a personal attack. 

5.  Try not to SirBruce me ever again if you can help it.

Well Duse is off the deep end at this point.

LOL. Par for the course.  But I do think it's madness to have people talking about how great the game is while sweeping under the rug the fact they have downloaded 250 meg mods.  Look, I'm glad they found a way to enjoy the game, but not everyone is up for that.  And I don't think anyone has raised any valid points of contention with anything I've said about the game in its natural state.  So in that sense, I'm the voice of reason here. 

Haemish's Elder Scroll comparison was a good one. This is a game that, for the last couple of iterations, has only really been great with mods. You are effectively (at least if you want a great game) paying for an engine and basic AI set up that you can change around a lot. If you were having to pay for the mods or if we were in the bad old days of 56K where it took you a week to download a single mod then you'd have a very valid point in complaining about it, as it is mods basically act as fan made patches to the game that fix broken shit. You can be pissed off that the devs haven't fixed these problems themselves but I guess I don't understand why it's fundamentall different that you get the 'patch' from fans vs. official developers.

Unless your problem is that you're not paying the fans for the work they contribute but I don't get the feeling you'd be happy with paying less for the game overall and then paying for the mods that fix it. Would you genuinely be this pissed off if you bought a game that was borked and had to wait 2 months for an official patch that fixed it? Bearing in mind in this case, fixed means makes it fun to play not just stops it from crashing every time you click on a navy after you've had a city selected or something.

I enjoyed it on vanilla and the modded version has just made the game better. That's what mods are for. You obviously don't like the game or the series at all in anything other than the concept. I'm finding it hard to imagine why you'd have bought the game KNOWING what you know about the game. I knew the same things yet I enjoyed all the previous games in the series despite their warts. The mods just enhanced my enjoyment.

EDIT: And because Duse brought it up, the last version of Darth Mod that I downloaded was a 56k RAR file download. It required copying 2 files into two different directories. It was harder to FIND the mod than download and install it.

I played a short campaign (the Austrian one til 1750) SANS mods. I didn't mod it until my second campaign game. I STILL ENJOYED IT.

Yes, Total War is the only game of its kind, like Madden is the only football game. And yes, they both have flaws that carry over from version to version. And Duse, YOU KNOW THE PROBLEMS WITH EACH VERSION AND YOU STILL PAID FOR IT. So you either expect when you plunk down your money that you'll be buying a game you know you will need to mod to enjoy, or you don't fucking buy the game. I'm hardly one to tell someone to stop nerdraging, but I think you're nerdraging is bordering on the ridiculous when YOU KNEW WHAT TO EXPECT BEFORE YOU BOUGHT IT.

I also played E:TW both vanilla and modded, on various difficulties and had done so with previous versions as well.

Mods enhance games, and if you play PC games without modding you are missing 30% of the reason to keep playing on a PC. I can't even imagine some games without mods.

It being broken enough to need a mod right now is exactly because it was released March 4th, and is only 2 months + in "early adopter beta". Being informed about the series and previous bugs, this game probably did inherit much of it's audience from fans of the series, and I think everyone is used to release patching being the norm in PC gaming (another rant/thread altogether).

I think dusematic needs a console. LOL ;)

BTW in a serious twist of irony, I was playing since the patch without a single issue up until today.

(http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f27/taolurker/EmpireEXE.jpg)

1.  The AI DOESN'T ATTACK. (Even Paelos backed me up on that point, and we're not exactly bff's).  I don't know what's so hard to understand.  At that point, we can end the discussion.  The game is shit.

2.  The AI was never quite that bad.  Like I said, the game has been getting worse through every iteration. I guess I should have expected that this game would be even worse, but for some reason, ever the optimist, I hoped there would be improvement.

3.  But you're right that I should probably download a mod.

No.  You are.


Edit:  I got the anger out of my system.  I think this is the same sort of thing as Madden.  You'll never read a Madden review (except for mine) that mentions the paralytic menu lag and game chop omnipresent in their game since 2008.  All the fanboys ignore it.  This is the same thing.  This is a game I DESPERATELY want to like.  But for some strange reason, I can't eat shit and exclaim, "mmmm, delicious!"

QFT

Actually, both my '08 and '09 reviews of Madden for the Wii make very pointed criticisms of the shit menus Madden uses. A problem that has infected all the EA Sports titles on the Wii. It's like they took all the shittiness of the Battlefield 2 menus and rolled it into Madden.

As for Empire, the AI does attack, it just happens to do so as piddly raids. But as has been said, it's a holdover from the other versions of Total War.

I guess if we're counting attack as "running 3 units around in a circle pillaging my farms after I took your province center away from you with ease," then yes the AI does attack. Still after 3 turns and the populace stops bitching long enough for me to repair things in town, I just stomp the remnants and enjoy 100 years of prosperity in that province free of reprisal.

The thing Empire's got going for it over Madden is that TW hasn't cockblocked anyone else from developing a tactical game using the Enlightenment era setting through licensing deals. I fully understand why people rage at Madden because it's not improved and it actively prevents other studios from competing but I don't get the same level of anger at TW games. Yes it's frustrating that they haven't fixed that shit in the last 5 games but otoh if you've been buying those games you've got no excuse for being surprised at this.

See, I can't understand you defending this game or enjoying it in the slightest in its natural state after realizing this.  My understanding of the Total War series, after having played every game, is that the AI was never this impotent.  I recall facing stacks, and being pummeled by armies.  Go play Medieval 2 again, you'll face quite the endless stream of Mongols.  Question:  Can you give me a good rundown of the more seminal enhancements to the campaign AI in the mods you use (that you've noticed)? 

To me, the game is inexcusable, and CA should be pilloried.  But I think I'm done ranting about the game for now, it's been 3 pages and I've run out of steam.  But if you can get me excited about this game by talking about the mods (of which I know nothing) that would be cool.


Edit:  BTW, good job on calling EA out on their menu bullshit.  I think you must be the only other person in America to do so besides me at this point.  The lag in their game is inexcusable and it gives me a conniption fit every time I think about it or read a review or talk to someone and it's not mentioned or recognized as a fundamental problem with the game.  How the fuck are you supposed to enjoy a franchise mode when you're knee deep in statistical menus and staring down the barrel of crippling menu lag every time your thumbs strokes the digital pad?

So true.  I think I would have had a stroke if it weren't for you in this thread.  It's so fucking Twilight Zone when people are cool with shit that bugs you.

The only Empire mod I've used so far is Darth Mod. It changes the AI on the battlefield, as well as many of the unit strengths, costs, upkeep costs, etc. While I can't say it helps with the naval invasion bug (since I played Russia with it and there just isn't much naval invasion to do there), it definitely makes the AI a bit more intelligent. It doesn't send the piddling raids that the vanilla AI does. Battle AI is much improved, as the opposition does make a concerted effort to flank your lines at every opportunity. It really makes the cavalry aggressive.

Here is a list of some of the mods for Empire (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1071). You can read more about them there. Frankly, though, I don't think you'll be happy based on what you've said so far. There are some things at the core level (naval invasions) that still require CA's attention to fix.

As for being cool with bugs, I look at it this way. Most people HATED Red Steel for the bugs and gameplay. I loved it. It's still one of my favorite games of all time. There are some games for which your enjoyment outweighs flaws that are obvious to anyone, even to you as you play the game. The Total War series is that way for me as well. I can see some of the flaws but I enjoy the total package enough that they don't bother me. As I said, YMMV.

Dude, quick question:  If I install a mod, is there a separate launch icon?  Like, will it interfere with me loading up the standard game?  And what about the next time Steam has a patch ready?  Will that fuck up the mod?

Dude, do you want us to install it for you too?

It's got really easy instructions and an installation video on the forum page inside the link Haemish gave (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=246153). It uses the same shortcut to launch the game you currently use, and the hardest part of installation is locating the folder you copy two files into.

It might interfere with previous saves, and most mods recommend you starting from a new game to not cause compatibility issues or crashes. Also if you remove the mod, common sense would say that a save using the mod probably will cause problems.

Patches won't normally change the mod files, and I haven't had a patch interfere with a mod already installed, or require any adjustment to either file. Mods do get updates too which are separate, and need to be done manually, but again as an early adopter you shouldn't expect everything to work perfectly. Two and a half months is early in the life cycle of any game (especially a TW sequel) to have everything working bug free.

dusematic I find it hard to imagine you owning the other TW games on release day, because a similar update with Medieval 2 wasn't out until the 3rd or 4th month.


It also makes the ship combat AI work infinitely better than the vanilla version, which alone made it worth it for me.

I've been playing without the mod on my most recent campaign, with the new patch, and the AI now does attempt Naval invasions and moves troops via ships to disputed regions.

I just wanted to know if I installed a mod whether I'd have to uninstall it to play the regular game.  But after looking at the mods they don't seem that great.  Haemish was right in that I don't think it's going to be a silver bullet to automagically make a horrible game palatable.  Also, I never said anything about owning the rest of the TW games on "release day."  Though I do own them. 

So, it is at a good patch level now? And are the Elite units anything but a ripoff (even for 5 dollars)?

Couldn't tell you about the elite units. I'm sure they wouldn't make that huge of a difference. But Steam is selling both special edition and regular versions for 50% off this weekend. $25 for Empire is a good deal even if you have problems with the formula. I haven't played it for at least a month (felt like taking a break until there were some more complete mods and other things took up my attention span) so I can't say what the patches have fixed.

The elite units are a ripoff.  Originally it was $20 more for 5 extra units.  That's such complete bullshit I won't even bother getting angry. Res ipsa loquitur and all that jazz.


It's not at a good patch level.  They are releasing a new patch next week, but if you've read any of my posts in this thread, you can be sure that I find it an extremely dubious proposition that this will render the game suddenly palatable.  I'd wait to buy this game until it's bargain binned and fully patched.  But go back and read everything I wrote to make sure my thoughts on the game jive with you.  Some people are puzzlingly more forgiving than I.  I will say that if you fancy yourself a armchair general and only feel satisfied with victory if it is wrest forcefully from the breast of the enemy, then you will detest the AI in this game and ultimately the game itself.  The AI is a fucking abortion.

It's $25 again on Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/10500/).  Tempted to pick it up, but does anyone know about the Warpath thing?

I saw the Warpath thing but haven't downloaded it. I have been trying it with the "A Proper Empire: Terra Incognita" mod installed. Playing as Savoy (tiny, one province country) and I've enjoyed the mod but not played it enough to give a yea or nay to the mod.

I bought Warpath, but haven't played yet. Money-wise, it sounded like a better deal than MTW: Kingdoms back in the day, so I thought, why not. I just read the non-gunpowder gameplay is a tad tedious and people would rather want gunpowder factions instead.

The vanilla game still sucks cock for a living.

NECRO! RISE RISE RISE!!!!

I've picked this back up the last few nights. They've patched up to 1.5, added some DLC (free and paid campaign) and I'm playing the campaign with a mod called A Proper Empire: Terra Incognita (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1163). It's pretty damn good, and also hard. It lets you play as one of the minor nations (I've tried both Savoy and Bavaria), has supply issues involvedi n just how big an army you can have sitting around, troops cost about twice as much and provinces have different maintenance costs. There are also changes to the combat. I like it and it's kicking my fucking ass.

Fuck, I wish I was hardcore enough to fuck with mods.  I know I could theoretically do it, but I always just end up shrugging my shoulders and going to take a nap or making a sandwich or something instead.   FYI, don't be sucked in by the siren song to the vanilla game.  If your main impteus is to play the vanilla game, it still blows cock.

Yep, I loaded vanilla, and nothing about the AI is good. Nor are the ridiculous victory conditions good. I went back and have been playing more versions of Medieval 2: Kingdoms, which I've enjoyed.

Ummm, you download the installer, hit install, launch the game with the mod's shortcut instead of the main game. This is somehow hard? Granted, it's more difficult than that if you want to upgrade the mod to the latest version, but just to try it out... not that fucking hard.

Yeah but who needs that hassle?  I don't like searching for the fun, I prefer it to find me.

Have you ever read anything about a game before buying it?

Figuring out what mods to try is the exact same thing.

I got a wierd one this morning; a few days ago, the game autoupdated in Steam. This morning, the idle-time virus scan says it detected a virus in the E:TW directory and promptly quarantined it. Probably a false positive. Anyone else got anything wonky that way? Oh, and it was JUST that folder. Rest of the system reportedly clean.

Edit: to be specific, it was the MS C++ runtime library SP1 installer file in the E:TW folder that was 'suspicious'.

I don't really read about games either.  At this point in my life I know what's cool and what I'll enjoy basically.  Also, you're bound to get some info by osmosis if you're digitally connected at all.  Don't begrudge a man his apathy.

I refuse to mod Empire because it was absolutely zero fun to begin with. The only games I've modded were ones that had some redeeming fun qualities on the front end, like Civ IV for example. Was it great fun? No, but it was playable. With the mods it was ridiculously fantastic. The same was true with Mount and Blade, Warcraft games, KOTOR, etc.

Empire didn't really do it for me. I feel like I should go back and have another go at some point but the strategy part of the game has never really been my favourite part of Total War games. I always get really sick of it later on because checking 30 different cities to see if there are any needed upgrades and then starting on agents, etc. was maddening. Especially since Rome where generals and agents age and if I'm not doing something with them I feel like they're being wasted. The battles just haven't really grabbed me in the same way as watching barbarians crashing on Roman legions or knights charging down arab infantry did.

Yea, I think I tried to say this.

That is funny- I read this thread when the game first came out, and then again when I found it on sale a couple of months ago, and everyone was raving about it. I saw that it was updated and was coming to post that I just couldn't get into it, and I find several posts along the same subject. I don't feel like such an outcast any more.

Go re-read the thread.  I was one of the only voices of reason saying the game sat on cock for a living.  I think there's like 2 pages of me ranting about all the bullshit.

That's because we all know you hate the Total War games with a passion and love to complain about them, yet still you buy them and play them just long enough to bitch about how much they suck.

I still like the game. I like it better with the mods.

Do we all know that?  Go dig up the Medieval Total War thread where I raved about the game.

Isn't this the game that promised multi-player for the campaign game after release?  Did that ever happen?

no

Necro post because there's finally a response to this.

http://www.totalwar.com/empire/beta/

Wow that only took a year.

I have to say, after 20 hours the lack of AI got to me too. I have downloaded DarthMod and will try it as soon as I can summon the energy.