Empire:Total War Demo

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA


merchants were key to be rich, you missed it.

a good merchant could make up to 500f/turn, and additionally conquer other merchants worth thousands.

Eh? I never had a merchant make more than around 60 florins or so per turn. They always ended up getting taken out by other factions merchants and never developed any rank at all, even when they didn't get taken out.

A completely useless unit.

Edit - I may have to wait until the first patch to actually fight in the battle map, the TWCenter forums don't seem to have any useful insights as to my lack of UI problem. And there isn't a minimized UI.

 

[Kelvrick]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: postmortemIA


merchants were key to be rich, you missed it.

a good merchant could make up to 500f/turn, and additionally conquer other merchants worth thousands.

Eh? I never had a merchant make more than around 60 florins or so per turn. They always ended up getting taken out by other factions merchants and never developed any rank at all, even when they didn't get taken out.

A completely useless unit.

Edit - I may have to wait until the first patch to actually fight in the battle map, the TWCenter forums don't seem to have any useful insights as to my lack of UI problem. And there isn't a minimized UI.

Yea, it took a lot of time and effort for them to get going. Taking over other merchants and getting to the resources far from your capital (slaves/gold in africa and middle east). Usually by the time my merchants were pulling in noticeable income, I was steamrolling the comp.

On campaigns where I only played 1 turn a day and played as carefully as possible, the merchants still didn't do much. The resources for another unit of archers or spearmen could have made the difference. Maybe I just wasn't as good a merchant player.

 

[Bateluer]

I forgot an agent for M2TW, assassins. Assassins were useful after they got some experience capping crappy agents, merchants, imams/priests, rebel generals, etc.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
I forgot an agent for M2TW, assassins. Assassins were useful after they got some experience capping crappy agents, merchants, imams/priests, rebel generals, etc.

I have an assassin that has killed countless royalty, merchants, captains, and a pope. He's a one-man army.

 

[razor2025]

Originally posted by: Kelvrick


Yea, it took a lot of time and effort for them to get going. Taking over other merchants and getting to the resources far from your capital (slaves/gold in africa and middle east). Usually by the time my merchants were pulling in noticeable income, I was steamrolling the comp.

On campaigns where I only played 1 turn a day and played as carefully as possible, the merchants still didn't do much. The resources for another unit of archers or spearmen could have made the difference. Maybe I just wasn't as good a merchant player.

That's the thing. I can either spend lot of time training agents or just steamroll the comp's faction with an army. By the time I can assassinate their guys, or rape their merchants, my troops were already in their capital. I guess I'm just too battle-orientated player, hence I'm terrible at Civ games.

I know the "fire at will" command. I just wanted them to shoulder their weapons when enemy's in range, but not fire until I give the order. If I turn off "fire at will" and click on an attack order against an enemy marching at the unit, the guys takes 5-10 seconds just to shoulder their arm and fire. It's either fire too soon and watch the balls miss, or fire too late and have the line smashed.

CA really need to fix their naval path-finding though. It's god-awful. My ships goes down by collisions more than enemy fire...

And speaking of fire, they need to place a fire icon on the unit card, if a ship's on fire. It's near impossible to tell which ship's on fire, especially when the fire is in lower deck, and the blaze doesn't poke through to top deck. The explosion's nice though.

 

[razor2025]

Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
In Empire, how do you avoid shooting your own infantry while not putting your musket men on the very front line? Unless I am missing something here.

You can either use terrain height to put the shooters in the back at a higher level, thus shooting above the front guy's head OR you maneuver your troops so you're hitting them from two+ sides. This is why maneuver is very important in land battles. I tend to either a) encircle the enemy with thin lines of muskets with thicker lines of infantry/cavalry as backup melee or b) punch through a weak spot in their line and split their force in two/three, giving me more "surface area" to fire into their lines. 18th century tactics really do work well in this game.

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Seems there are a LOT of people having problems with ETW. Seems like ETW is the most buggy TW game to date. Previous titles were buggy, but not to this extent. Hopefully, we got a patch soon.

Kingdom's was pretty bad as well. The siege battle CTD was most annoying during the Jerusalem campaign though the Britannia campaign worked solid.

 

[Edge1]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: postmortemIA


merchants were key to be rich, you missed it.

a good merchant could make up to 500f/turn, and additionally conquer other merchants worth thousands.

Eh? I never had a merchant make more than around 60 florins or so per turn. They always ended up getting taken out by other factions merchants and never developed any rank at all, even when they didn't get taken out.

A completely useless unit.

Edit - I may have to wait until the first patch to actually fight in the battle map, the TWCenter forums don't seem to have any useful insights as to my lack of UI problem. And there isn't a minimized UI.

In th early game, yes they are useless, but in latter stages they bring in tons of $$$. I've got a Grand campaign going in M2TW and I've got Merchants all over the world pulling in 200-600 florins/turn. I'm making a mint every turn. Have you only played the "short" campaigns? I think they are useless for that.

I'd be happy to send you a savegame so you can check it out.

 

[CPA]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: razor2025


On a different note, I'm digging the new design. Less agents to worry about. I got put off from Rome and Medieval, because managing all the agents was a chore. Now that it's limited to two class, I can focus more on battles.

M2TW only had four agents, merchants, priests, diplomats, and princesses. Merchants were pretty much useless. Priests increased religious %. Diplomats and princesses practiced diplomacy. Not exactly hard to manage.

Using merchants to raid another merchant was nice because you could get some quick coinage.

 

[imported_Imp]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: postmortemIA


merchants were key to be rich, you missed it.

a good merchant could make up to 500f/turn, and additionally conquer other merchants worth thousands.

Eh? I never had a merchant make more than around 60 florins or so per turn. They always ended up getting taken out by other factions merchants and never developed any rank at all, even when they didn't get taken out.

A completely useless unit.

Edit - I may have to wait until the first patch to actually fight in the battle map, the TWCenter forums don't seem to have any useful insights as to my lack of UI problem. And there isn't a minimized UI.

I tried using merchants in Medieval 2, and they were just a pain in the ass. Most of the time, early on, when I really could use the extra money, they would get bought out by everyone and their family. Mines would be incapable of defending or "attacking"; I didn't want to risk the best ones since they made the most money. Also, they died of natural causes frequently, so they just became a chore to replace. By that time, I was already hauling in huge surpluses, despite having 5 full stack armies and a huge navy.

And again, they have to fix the AI for soldiers entrenched behind walls or cover. More often than not, they just don't shoot back.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: ZzZGuy

Originally posted by: ElFenix
did they screw with the camera control in the tactical map or am i just not getting it? my complaints are that the camera used to zoom in and out on a curve, and now just moves straight up and down it seems, and i can't figure out how to rotate around a point in front of the camera.

IIRC there is a option to revert back to M2: TW mouse and camera controls in the keyboard menu somewhere.

i clicked it and the spin control didn't seem to return. and the camera kept going straight up and down.

 

[imported_Imp]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: ZzZGuy

Originally posted by: ElFenix
did they screw with the camera control in the tactical map or am i just not getting it? my complaints are that the camera used to zoom in and out on a curve, and now just moves straight up and down it seems, and i can't figure out how to rotate around a point in front of the camera.

IIRC there is a option to revert back to M2: TW mouse and camera controls in the keyboard menu somewhere.

i clicked it and the spin control didn't seem to return. and the camera kept going straight up and down.

It takes a while to get use to that. I liked the old angled camera using zoom/mouse wheel. Oh well, close enough.

 

[ElFenix]

tested again last night. in M2 (and rome) you could hold the left mouse button and an arrow key and spin around some point in front of the camera. now you rotate regardless of if you've got the mouse button held. which sucks.

then i started getting graphics errors which made the game unplayable. terrain disappeared, everything started flickering. *sigh*