Empire: Total War

[Venkman]

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.

Ah ok this is good to know. Thanks.

[Tmon]

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.

[Paelos]

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?

[Engels]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[Draegan]

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?

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

[Njal]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[ffc]

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.

[Engels]

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.

[Paelos]

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

[HaemishM]

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.

[Engels]

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.

[HaemishM]

Fog of war? 

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.

[Engels]

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.

[Brolan]

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.

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.

[Grand Design]

What he said.

[GenVec]

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.

 

[Samprimary]

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

[Murgos]

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.

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.

[Njal]

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.  :)

[Modern Angel]

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.

[Big Gulp]

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

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!

[HaemishM]

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.

[Big Gulp]

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.

[Engels]

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?

[Big Gulp]

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.   

[HaemishM]

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.

[Engels]

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!

[Rasix]

You lost me there.

[Engels]

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.

[Big Gulp]

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.

[Engels]

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.

[Paelos]

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.

[Engels]

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.