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Empire Total War is really good!

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Well, I got the game and installed it. I have a three day weekend this weekend to play it and see how bad/good it is. I was hoping too that CA had learn its lesson about obvious bugs but I'll wait and see how things are before I go into any negativities.
 
Well post patch, I couldn't do much of anything in a campaign, turn 1, clicking the Diplomacy window would cause the CTD.

So I did a couple of things in Vista64, this didn't fix my Austrian campaign save, but a new campaign seems ok so far after 20 turns.

I rolled back my NVIDIA drivers to 182.06 from 182.08, disabled UAC and set Empire to run as an Administrator.

So far, so good, but I'm not optimistic about actually completing a campaign.
 
What upgrades would you recommend to make the game run smoother? I'm on Vista 32bit and haven't had many issues at all, but I can not do the ship battles because it is so slow and uncontrollable. I've tried setting the graphics to the lowest setting and it did not seem to help. I know I'm at the minimums, but the strategic map and land forces all seem to be acceptable.

have: Vista32, 2gig PC6400, Intel E6600 (2.4ghz), Evga 8800GTS-320mb, 17"LCD (1280x1024)

I think I could try to overclock my CPU, GPU, and RAM, they're all running stock right now. I've messed with overclocking them in the past, but that just generally has caused me glitches and stops things like "sleep" from working. (I really do like this in Vista over XP and I use it all the time)

If I wanted to replace something, what would be the most impact on the game? Should I try to drop in a E8400 or E8500 or something like that? Or get another 2x1GB sticks of RAM even though the current OS won't use it all? The graphics seems to still be rated decently compared to the cheaper stuff that's out there for the same price as the CPU upgrade. Looking to spend max of around $150 or so, as I'll probably do a complete new system in less than a year.

Thanks,
Scott
 
Since when is it okay to produce a single threaded RTS in 2009? I almost shit my pants when i saw my fps hit 9 on high settings. Fucking Crysis runs tri-fold better on high then this game. It was unplayable at those settings. It wasn't even maxed out!

If there was a such thing as a fail train, this game would be the first passenger. No matter what approach i took to the battlefield i would get nubbed instantly. Then i'd try the same exact strategy and get only a hundred or so casualties. This game has NO strategy. Not worth my $$ at all.
 
why the fuckin fucks can't i install it on a hard drive other than C:? I dont have room on C: but i can't any options to change drives! Who the fuck still does this!

This has been a very frustrating experience. As if uninstalling and reinstalling Medieval II wasn't bad enough, Now i can't even run this game on my desktop...
 
This game is basically unplayable for me due to constant crashes. This is my first Total War game and I was really enjoying it... It's seems incredible otherwise.
 
I haven't really felt inclined to play this due, in part, to the suck-ass load times. It's funny because when all the action gets going, there isn't even a chug, but it takes about 4 minutes to load a battle. In comparison, not even Crysis or Fallout 3 took remotely this long on first load.

I thought about upgrading, but there's nothing on the horizon I really want. The hassle of re-setting everything up is also a downer.

Also, siege battles are very boring. The towns and cities don't feel like cities. Starforts have all of 3 buildings and a nice court yard that kills pathfinding. Naval battles are nice, but I've been pushing over 6th class ships with my 2nd class fleets.
 
Originally posted by: scotth501
What upgrades would you recommend to make the game run smoother? I'm on Vista 32bit and haven't had many issues at all, but I can not do the ship battles because it is so slow and uncontrollable. I've tried setting the graphics to the lowest setting and it did not seem to help. I know I'm at the minimums, but the strategic map and land forces all seem to be acceptable.
Click to expand...
I would guess that the 2 gigs of ram is the primary bottleneck for you, especially if you are noticing slow downs when you have lots of things going on during ship battles.

Originally posted by: Imp
I thought about upgrading, but there's nothing on the horizon I really want. The hassle of re-setting everything up is also a downer.
Click to expand...
I doubt that the diversity of hardware has actually increased, but it sure does seem that PC gamers have very mixed results these days based strictly on their equipment. Using the right driver can be the difference between a flawless experience and one that crashes every 20 minutes. That's definitely an advantage for console games when we're dealing with other genres that are more console-friendly.
 
The latest patches seem to have fixed the majority of my issues. Load times are quicker, and the game runs fine at high settings (4870 and Q6600 here).

In battle, I find that mortars surrounded by infantry + using heavy cavalry to riot those already bombarded = win, especially when you get the explosive/percussion shells. Many times I can kill the enemy general within the first few minutes of the battle. Mortars are the way to go, although I'm not playing it on hard so that opinion might change once I go through the campaign a second time.
 
My game crashes less often since I rolled back to a slightly older driver yesterday. It's playable now and I'm loving this game. Load times are brief, or at least they are in the Road to Independence campaign. Usually they're too quick for me to have time to read the on-screen quote when it's loading the world map. Large battles load in about 35 seconds... Game runs on all Ultra settings, 4xAA at 1600x1200. The only options I have unchecked are SSAO and Vsync. Framerate is great.

I also love the siege battles, watching a 8+ groupings of infantry, many of them consisting of 160 soldiers each, scaling the walls with all the other chaos surrounding them is entirely epic!

Scotti, at lowest settings you do have SSAO turned off, right? That setting is an absolute killer on performance. Also, I have dual monitors and I always monitor my RAM usage and cpu/gpu temps on the second screen (even if I rarely check them, it's nice that they're there!). My RAM usage in Vista 32bit is frequently above 2 Gig's, so I would start there especially considering how dirt cheap 4 Gig's of RAM is. I'd be shocked if a stock E6600 couldn't run this game at medium settings, but OC'ing to 3.0Ghz (333 fsb) should be guaranteed with that chip. If you've got some bucks stashed away, pickup a GTX260 or 4870, they're so cheap now!
 
I like it a lot so far. Had a couple weird crashes though, once on the campaign map when trying to switch the theater, and once last night just randomly in the middle of a battle. Sucks because I'm going to have to replay a couple battles now, I should learn to save before every battle. But it's not just crash to desktop, it's bring down the whole system, which is weird. (I suddenly lose all video and sound completely, and can't get video reestablished without resetting the PC.) It's only happened twice out of the couple weeks I've been playing, so it's not terrible, but still kind of annoying. I wonder if it's the video card (4850) overheating or something? Who knows.

Supposed to be another ETW patch coming out next week.
 
This game is too easy. I was encouraged by the dev AAR on Prussia so I started a campaign on hard. I expected having to use sly diplomacy and shrewdly building up my military might. Instead I got a cake walk. I invaded Breslau early on, no reply from the Austrians. I took Pressburg, still nothing, all their armies just stay in their cities. Nothing is happening at al! I keep on clicking end turn, but to no avail.
 
Hi all, recently just bought Empire and a few other games on Steam and I am enjoying it alot so far but I have a few questions:
1. Is it just the front line of your musketeers that can fire or is there something I can press to get the 2nd line to fire while reloading or something?
2. What does the happiness rating do and where can I find it?
3. Does bombaring the enemy before a fight reduce their troop numbers or is it morale or something?
 
Hi Sylvanas, I only know the answer to #1, which is, you need to research rank firing before you can have multiple ranks of linemen fire their weapons. Good luck.
 
1. Yep, research first line of military techs like fire by rank and later fire and advance enables more troops to fire.
2. Determines whether or not settlement is about to rebel. Can also avoid town watch costs which can be expensive. Double click on a city on campaign map to bring up summary tab.
3. Yes, if your rounds hit, then it will kill enemy troops. Being under bombardment also induces a morale penalty. Being under bombardment + getting shot by musket fire is enough to rattle low end units. A quick charge can often rout them.
 
Waiting for the first deal on steam. I suspect that within two months steam will have a weekend sale for $25 or so.
 
So does anyone know how to go from a monarchy to a republic? I had read somewhere that you just need to make your people upset and let it get to a revolution, but there was no option to join the new faction. I just lost that territory and remained on the monarchy side.
 
From what I remember you need to cause either a peasant or nobility revolution. Then you have to choose sides, and after that I'm not 100% sure, but I think you need to replace your cabinet ministers, I'll have to look it up.
 
I haven't tried it myself, but you need to have a revolution in your home territory to change governments. Revolutions in other territories don't count.
 
Originally posted by: acheron
I haven't tried it myself, but you need to have a revolution in your home territory to change governments. Revolutions in other territories don't count.
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That makes sense, I'll give that a try. Thanks!
 
I do think the video driver you are running probably has a lot to do with how many issues you run into in this game, based on some people having so many and others having almost none.

I've had very few problems with the 182.08 drivers on Vista 64 with a 295.
 
Is this game optimized for a dual core or a quad core?

All I know is that it does a total beatdown on my computer whereas I could run medieval total war 2 fine with no issues. I suspect I need a graphics card upgrade but I have seen reviews where even a single 285 GTX is getting slow frames even with Core i7 Overclocked.
 
Originally posted by: Just learning
Is this game optimized for a dual core or a quad core?

All I know is that it does a total beatdown on my computer whereas I could run medieval total war 2 fine with no issues. I suspect I need a graphics card upgrade but I have seen reviews where even a single 285 GTX is getting slow frames even with Core i7 Overclocked.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's as well optimized or multithreaded as it could be. Also, I think there was a thread somewhere saying Creative Assembly will come out with a patch at a later date to adress this, makes sense theat they should- it is one of the big games of this year.
 
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