Empire Total War is really good!

[JoshGuru7]

I wasn't expecting to like Empire: Total War as much as I do, but it's the most fun I've had with a PC game in several years at least.

FUN additions:

- They've tweaked the overall campaign mode significantly to where it is easily as fun as Civ ever was. Each region now has a bunch of towns and areas that can be upgraded separately (and needed protected separately). Trade routes need protected and enemy trade routes can be raided.

- Combat is now completely different with the focus on colonial era rifles and bayonets. As you train your armies up into abilities such as a square formation (defense against cavalry), or a continuous firing pattern you'll be less inclined to simply send everybody charging in.

- The map sprawls over three major theaters (america/europe/india) and a bunch of minor trade areas. Between the size and the ability to play from one of 12 different factions there is a LOT of replayability. I've finished two full games, one as the Brits and one as the Maratha Confederacy and they felt like completely different experiences, albeit both fun.

- Diplomacy actually matters a lot now. Rivals that are very friendly with you will actually help you out, and won't be stabbing you in the back at the first sign of an opportunity. Similarly, countries that despise you may attack you even though it's not in their best interest.

- The realism is fantastic. Putting a significant effort into training my heavy cavalry into being able to use a wedge formation is awesome when you use the option in a battle and see it make a real improvement. The attention to detail is very good.

- Naval combat is GREAT. A lot of reviewers listed this as a negative, but they must be crazy because I have yet to auto-resolve a naval battle. What could be more fun then using chain shot to take down your enemy's masts and then boarding and capturing their ships?

A couple of minor complaints:
- I get a video memory error every 4-5 hours with vista 64, a GTX 295(182.08) and 12 GB of ram. I've never lost more than a single turn, but it's still irritating.

- Technology trading is hard, almost to the point of infeasibility. Portugal wants 4 of my best techs in exchange for one of their low level ones? Ouch.

Overall this game gets a 10/10 from me despite the occasional bug and my only regret is getting the $50 version instead of the $70 version with additional units.

 

[Bateluer]

The bugs in ETW take away a large part of the game for me. Currently, I can't actually play on the battle map and and have to auto resolve every battle in order to stay in the game.

If ETW takes home any award, it will be that of the buggiest TW game to date.

 

[ayabe]

Tech trading doesn't work, even with allies.

Campaign AI is crap and the map itself is bugged so it'll crash at some point, corrupt your saves and generally play with your emotions.

Game is shelved for me until a patch as both of my campaigns are toast currently.

Edit - There's a patch coming out today to address the memory leak issues, hopefully this will help those of us who can't finish a campaign.

There's also a larger patch coming out next week to fix some of the larger issues, hopefully AI fixes and the like.

 

[Stoneburner]

Thanks for the warnings. I bought the game a few days ago, installed it on my lappy but havent had time to play. HOpefully I'll clear up some space on my desktop...damn 14gb installations.

I don't like the game using steam either, except you don't have to keep the cd in. HOw are the graphics on high settings? I think this game may warrant me upgrading my comp and getting a 24-27 inch screen.

 

[ibex333]

Originally posted by: JoshGuru7


- The realism is fantastic. Putting a significant effort into training my heavy cavalry into being able to use a wedge formation is awesome when you use the option in a battle and see it make a real improvement. The attention to detail is very good.

Really?! Then how come it makes no difference in accuracy how close your soldiers are to the enemy when shooting? Apparently, distance, elevation, and weather have ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on rifles and bullets. My soldiers were missing like crazy even when standing literally face to face with the enemy. My guys got to shoot 1st, but only a few enemy soldiers fell, when most of them should have died... I did it again, and again, with no result!!

In another scenario, my army was on the hill and the enemy was on the bottom... Well, guess what... My soldiers were getting slaughtered, and the enemy was doing just fine. (No they were NOT better units than mine, and they were at a great disadvantage)


This is ridiculous. If this was realistic, such things would not happen. The devs were promising that in Empire, weather distance and elevation would have a great effect on ALL projectiles, but apparently this doesn't include bullets.

I have no doubt that Empire, is still overall a very good game. I like all TW games, and I will keep playing this one, but it's clearly missing some fundamental features.

 

[Chriscross3234]

I completely agree with the OP. The scale and epicness of the Total War series has greatly increased with ETW in terms of everything Josh talked about.

So far I haven't come across a single bug while playing the game. I have ETW installed on both my main rig playing at high settings and on my laptop at the lowest settings possible and neither has crashed. I guess I am very lucky. I didn't even know you could trade technologies, afaik I thought that you would eventually obtain technologies if other nations have greatly surpassed you, I'll have to look into it.

I haven't run into any problems concerning the Campaign AI, infact I am very impressed by it. I'm currently playing Prussia and I'm in the process of invading Sweden, I captured Stockholm and moved my troops across the Baltic unaware of a Swedish army approaching from the north. My troops already landed and weren't able to make it back to defend Stockholm but lo-and-behold Denmark, my ally, moved troops around Stockholm and helped me defeat that army!

Even though this game may be buggy, just like most games when they release, CA will sure enough release appropriate patches. What I can't wait for is for the modding community to get rolling on making some awesome mods for this game. Stainless Steel did so much for MTWII, I can only imagine what they will do with ETW.

 

[Regs]

If they can solve some of the AI bugs, campaign map glitches, and even some of the graphic/memory leak problems - I'll be happy.

Wait until you go 40 turns and then have your game crash and your saved game unplayable. It kills whatever exeprience you had with the game.

 

[Scouzer]

I find the bugs pretty frustrating... and scrolling on the map screen is frustrating as hell. I despise the delay between mousing to the edge of the screen and actually scrolling!

 

[SergeC]

Originally posted by: Scouzer
I find the bugs pretty frustrating... and scrolling on the map screen is frustrating as hell. I despise the delay between mousing to the edge of the screen and actually scrolling!

Use WASD to scroll till they get that sorted out. No delay for keypress scrolling on the campaign map.

 

[tigersty1e]

Are there 11 or 12 starting factions you could play? I thought 11?

And how many more are unlockable through the grand campaign?

 

[ayabe]

Don't think any factions unlock after winning the campaign.

But since I can't finish one I don't have firsthand knowledge, that's just what I was able to gather from the forums.

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

The best turn-based strategy is Civilization, most recently, Civilization 4.

Just addressing the Topic Summary.

 

[ayabe]

Patch is out and doesn't do anything for the campaign CTD's.

Such is life, maybe next week.

 

[Homerboy]

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer
The best turn-based strategy is Civilization, most recently, Civilization 4.

Just addressing the Topic Summary.

Unquestionably.

 

[JoshGuru7]

I've almost through my third grand campaign and I have yet to experience a campaign breaking bug. I've certainly had a few crashes which I imagine are related to a memory leak, but it's always been resumable after the crash from the auto-save with little lost. I've had a couple of armies get stuck also, but because the upkeep cost is the main cost of sustaining an army they are actually pretty easy to just disband and re-recruit without a major setback.

I use WASD to pan the camera, so I can't comment on that aspect of it.

The graphics are great at 1920x1200 on a 24" monitor on the highest quality settings. It's nothing mind blowing if you've been playing other recent games but being able to zoom in and watch the individual soldiers fight hand to hand is really nifty.

The military techs make a very noticeable effect on your units, especially researching up your bayonet techs. Read the tooltips carefully and they give a lot of good advice about how to take advantage of your each tech, and I've found that advice to translate really well into success on the battlefield.

The best turn-based strategy is Civilization, most recently, Civilization 4.

Civilization is easily one of my favorite series but I am enjoying ETW more than Civ 4. The campaign mode is comparable to civ 4 - slightly worse diplomacy and tech researching but slightly better variety. Being able to fight out your battles and having everything you've done in the campaign mode influence the result (starting position in battle, reinforcements, unit assortment, techs researched, defensive emplacements) adds another dimension to the game that pushes ETW over the top for me.

I don't know that I'll log more hours in ETW then I did in Civ II, but so far the "fun per game" quotient in ETW is higher.

 

[thecrecarc]

Once they get multiplayer campaign working, then ETW might stand a chance against civilization IMO. But until then...

 

[Zenoth]

I "like it" so far, it's just... alright, I guess, it's really nothing special. I actually was absolutely shocked in awe at how good Rome: Total War was, and even Medieval II: Total War is quite better in many aspects, except the graphics, of course. To be honest I think I bought Empire: Total War simply out of impulsion and hype for it. If I would have known in advance that I wouldn't play it anymore only after three days of purchase because it's just not as good as previous Total War games then I wouldn't have bought it.

I really do prefer the older TW games over Empire any time of the day, BUT... because there is a but indeed, it does have some good potential, and the time period it covers offer a great deal of opportunities, one of them named Napoleon, which let's not hide it has been asked by the community for some time already as a full fledged Creative Assembly release and not just some modification however good that mod could turn out. If the expansion pack for Empire: Total War ends up being the Napoleonic Wars or something else equally interesting then I might come back to it and play it again. But despite my preferences for previous TW games I must say that the Empire's naval battles are certainly good.

 

[JoshGuru7]

Originally posted by: thecrecarc
Once they get multiplayer campaign working, then ETW might stand a chance against civilization IMO. But until then...

Right, I'm strictly talking about single player in my comparison. I just don't enjoy playing turn based games in multiplayer 1v1 as much as I do FPS or RTS games with a much larger group.

Civ feels more automatic to me for any given turn because my plans are being executed over several dozen rounds. I make sure all of my units are doing something productive then end turn without thinking about it much further than that. In ETW, your actions over a single turn feel a lot more weighty (and could last an hour if you're fighting multiple battles) and I really take my time thinking before hitting that end turn button. Then again, if you prefer to auto-resolve the battles in ETW then you might indeed be better off playing Civ 4.

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: Scouzer
I find the bugs pretty frustrating... and scrolling on the map screen is frustrating as hell. I despise the delay between mousing to the edge of the screen and actually scrolling!

Glad to read it's not just me. Unfortunately I'm forced to play on Vista atm, due to work needs, and the game is a little glitchy and hitchy on it. Not necessarily a problem with the game, I know, but frustrating.

 

[imported_Imp]

The major pisser "bug" for me right now is the crappy AI and how they'll just stand there and do nothing much of the time. This is for both friendly and enemy units, and is especially noticable when infantry are standing behind walls. I completely stopped hunkering my troops behind walls because I wasted almost 2 hours yesterday replaying a battle after losing half my army because no one wanted to get up and shoot. That and the load times are atrocious, but that may be my system.

 

[Liet]

I'm disappointed to hear there are so many bugs... I had been hoping that the devs had learned their lesson with R:TW - there were several silly bugs and general gameplay concerns that drove me crazy after a while. Eventually I had to visit some forums and manually change segments of huge config files just to fix these bugs, like Naval commanders NEVER gaining experience after a battle. Things that could have been addressed easily in a minor patch.

I also despised the negative trait system. The better I do, the more I'm penalized by worthless family members and commanders? I like the general idea of negative traits, but it was guaranteed after a few years that every single family member would be detrimental to your Empire, so you'd have to do silly things like park them one square outside of your major metropolis.

Come on.

Not to mention the horrible farming system, where the more farms you built, the unhappier your people became as a side effect of population growth. Why the hell should I even upgrade my farms if the level 5 farm will cause a revolt every other turn? It was just silly.

 

[imported_Imp]

Oh, this is good. I want to launch Empire, but "the Steam servers are too busy to handle your request".

 

[JoshGuru7]

Originally posted by: Imp
The major pisser "bug" for me right now is the crappy AI and how they'll just stand there and do nothing much of the time. This is for both friendly and enemy units, and is especially noticable when infantry are standing behind walls. I completely stopped hunkering my troops behind walls because I wasted almost 2 hours yesterday replaying a battle after losing half my army because no one wanted to get up and shoot. That and the load times are atrocious, but that may be my system.

Out of curiosity, what difficulty are you playing on? Fire and Advance really helps the issue for your troops, and prior to that I recommend making your lines no more than 3 men deep. I've found the enemy AI to be respectable (cavalry trying to sneak around to my cannons, enemy trying to break through my lines at weak points, good use of stealth units). My main complaint has been the largely ineffective way the AI treats garrisoning buildings and the fact that they don't seem to train nearly enough cannons or mortars.

There are still negative (and positive) traits, but they aren't a detriment. There are also ancillaries which are mostly positive, such as barbers or mistresses. Leaving a commander in a town for 5-6 turns usually means they'll end up with Trencherman (-1% movement range) but that goes away as you get them back into action. Generally as your army meets success your commander will pick up command and morale bonuses.

I also like the attention to detail they've put into the historical commanders. Sending Newton to steal tech from France was a great perk to starting as a brit, while losing Washington was a bummer in the road to independence.

 

[imported_Imp]

I'm on the second hardest difficulty for both campaign and battle. Rarely are any of my units more than 3 units deep. The 'not do anything' bug usually happens around cover. In the open, they'll do fine.

I've gotta change my battle tactics more than anything. Medieval 2 made it too easy to sit still and have archers do all the work with infantry acting as meat shields. The crap performance of muskets from afar, and the difficulty in having more than 1 row of units work effectively is killing me in large scale engagements.

Also, the AI likes to hunt my cavalry now. I send them across the map, and they'll chase them down once I forget to move them. My heavy cavalry itself has become pretty only mildly useful against enemy units. Charge no longer wipes out half a regiment, even if they aren't in box formation.

 

[JoshGuru7]

Originally posted by: Imp
Also, the AI likes to hunt my cavalry now. I send them across the map, and they'll chase them down once I forget to move them. My heavy cavalry itself has become pretty only mildly useful against enemy units. Charge no longer wipes out half a regiment, even if they aren't in box formation.

I started out trying to sweep my cavalry around the enemy lines, but lately i've preferred to leave 4-5 spaces between my line infantry groups and charge life guards through the gaps in diamond formation. It takes a lot of pauses for issuing commands but I definitely take less damage across my cavalry when they're being directly supported by melee infantry.