Empire : Total War

[Rhodite 3]

Well technicaly sitting in a trench and occasionaly walking into machine gun fire is not exactly a good video game experience. Besides, playing Haig's warfare is a bit like musical chairs but with trenches as the seats and artillery and machine gun fire as the instrumentals.

I suppose Ferdinand: Total War would have to be shipped with a rat, diarrhoea and an instruction manual on the legality of diging up the garden.

Agree with you on the WW1 thing.

The total war engine lends itself to the large groups of units control. eg how wars used to be fought before WW1.

If you wanted a more modern squad based combat system Relic have already nailed it with the amazing game Opposing fronts.

I hope the Total War series looks at other eras that have not been done. Lets face it comanding 1000's of troops in large groups beautifully rendered by a game engine is a really hard thing to beat!

[Prydain 1]

It would be my wish for one day CA make a modern Total War. However, it is extremely far off and AI would have to be extremely clever. A modern era game would mean that you are commanding battalions, regiments, divisions with logistics, artillery, aircraft, infantry, light vehicles and armoured vehicles helped by modern intelligence equipment that allows you to 'see' enemy formations. It would require the battle AI to be self sufficient and contain more human techniques of movement like taking cover and asking for orders after they complete tasks and would have some way of simulating initiative which I have not yet seen in any game.

I have not mentioned aircraft carriers, submarines and landing ships. The use of modern science, CBRN weapons and modern diplomacy that includes the UN and pacts that act like NATO. Representation, atheism and science would be optional unlike the forced religions and overlordship of princes in previous games.

The cheque would be massive but it would be ground-breaking and completely amazing to say the least.

Other eras are hard to get right due to the fact citys and states are still rather young and the complexitys of anything involving machine guns and vehicles. We could always have a Warhammer 40K Total War, 20th Century Total War or Cold War Total War if ideas are limited but it would take the series in another direction.

[BLSmith2112 0]

Considering how long its taken to create/promote this game, I think we're looking at 2042.

[Spetz 0]

anyone started moding the demo?, i got the americans playable and increased the unit sized for the line infantry to like 120 units.

In the demo the AI is scripted to stay still till you cross the river, i took out that script and now the AI did pretty good in defending, I also enabled the deployment phase, enabled the spikes and fortifications,

[Colossus 2]

I finally got the game running, but not before I've been swearing at Steam for 2 hours after release. Apparently Steam wanted me to download the damn game instead of installing it from the CDs.

I haven't played it as much as I wanted, mostly because the whole game was running at 15-20 FPS in the battle arena/mode. This kinda makes me want to download a 18th century mod for Medieval 2 just to use the old Total War engine, a engine that actually could run without doing massive FPS drop when ever there was more then 200 soldiers on the battlefield.

Ah well.. I need to play a bit more to figure out the good sides of Empire: Total War.

[Rhodite 3]

Your FPS drop does not sound good, anyone else had any performance issues?

[Wolfrug 0]

So, it's been out a day or so already - what's the verdict? I'm most curious about computer specs personally, if it can be run or not on my computer. M2TW works perfectly on my specs (bla bla AMD Athlon 3800+ X2, 512 MB 8600 GT, 2 GB crappy RAM, XP), never any slowdowns or anything - if Empire has even close to that performance on any level of detail I'd be sold.

The demo had no end of problems for me - huge loading times, the naval battle didn't actually want to load, the infantry one bogged down into unplayable lag about halfway through...the tutorial missions went fine though and were fun. I'm hoping the whole game doesn't have these problems.

Anyone got it yet?

Regards,

Wolfrug

[Spetz 0]

you guys should unpack the '.pack' files to speed up the loading times, The entire game is packed away in like 5 files, it takes forever for it to unpack and load the game. (you can even do some modding if you like)

[BLSmith2112 0]

This game is taking all my time away! I work at 8:00am on the weekdays and when I got the game Saturday night, instead of going to sleep @ 12am when I usually do - I stayed awake until 7:00am.. so yea, I've screwed up my sleep schedule and I'm an addictive drug addict. So come Monday, I'm going to be a complete mess. Then again, I've always loved total war games.. I shoulda known this was going to happen.  

The naval war aspect makes this that much more exciting. Not just the battles but it emphasizes on how much you need them to protect trade routes and possible points of insertion from enemy troop landing parties. As for the (extremely awesome) ship battles, I just can't get a grip on how the hell it works. I know how wind/sails/cannot shot ammo work... but I can never really seem to get a hold on wtf is going on. You can select a unit and simply tell it to attack another vessel but I always disagree with the tactics the game uses heh! Maybe thats my problem - I might learn something. I loveee this game.

The performance requirements are notibly higher than previous titles. Running "recommended" settings with a 8800gtx/4gbRam/q6660 drops to 9 fps when putting the camera eye level with a 70% maxed out army (IE: 700vs700). Otherwise the performance at that point is solid. I haven't done anything with lower graphic settings for optimization however.

[the_shadow 0]

for me it always crashes when selecting a fleet in 1791....

(i play as sweden btw)

anyone know if thats something that is a known bug?

[the_shadow 0]

you guys should unpack the '.pack' files to speed up the loading times, The entire game is packed away in like 5 files, it takes forever for it to unpack and load the game. (you can even do some modding if you like)

could you explain how to do that?

[VictorTroska 0]

you guys should unpack the '.pack' files to speed up the loading times, The entire game is packed away in like 5 files, it takes forever for it to unpack and load the game. (you can even do some modding if you like)

could you explain how to do that?

Here you go:  Pack File Manager 1.3 or ETW Unpacker

[Spetz 0]

yea on those forums you can also see how to unlock factions in the Demo, i think you can play as most European countries(Norway Sweden, United Provinces etc) in the land battle

[MehMan 0]

Sucky trade bug. I'm playing as sweden and since this game is pretty bugged I can't open any trade routes with the ivory coast. Pretty sucky. A huge ammount of money just out of my reach! So I have to resort to pretty much trade with everybody and those that don't want to I conquer. As such I control huge portions of Europe. The battle AI seems way too easy even on hard. But I've yet to meet a good army that isn't composed out of milita. I might try and jump france, they seem to have a big army that's expirenced. My brother had a few very awsome moments invading poland on very hard. He was attacked in a city I believe and you get the option of fortifications, or it's a prussian special ability. Well he did what the usually did on mostly flat land. Arranged most of the army in a single line, keeping a few units in the back for reserve, mostly dragoons, along with cavalry that flanked most of the enemy AI. The canons were put in between line infantry units, spread out between them and then set to cannister shot. Pretty much wins the battle, those cannister shots really decimate units. Well, the AI seems to know how to fend here, they rushed the defences faster than the cannons could reload, thus rendering them useless. then it was pretty much melee battling along the line. In the end those few reserve units made a huge difference, saving half of his units from doom. Still, pretty clever move by the AI.

Does anybody else feel that the game has a wierd way of dealing with reinforcements? They spawn them on the other side of the map, way too near enemy units, so usually I get three line units and a bit of cavalry fighting the enemy while the rest of my army sits way too far to help a lot. By the time they manage to get to the new battlefield I've either taken care of the enemy or they took care of me.

I heard the patch should be out today so I'll keep my eyes open and then fall into the pit of total war addiction again. Eh, time just flies.

[VictorTroska 0]

Quote[/b] ]We will be rolling out the first of a series of updates later today with a variety of fixes for Empire: Total War, including:

* Fixed Alt-Tab issue which prevents players from switching away from a full screen window

* Fixed text rendering for certain resolutions

* Fixed localized font overrun issues.

* Fixed a variety of crash and memory leak issues

* Fixed a variety of multiplayer client lock

* Fixed trade nodes for those nations with resource in home region which caused unprofitable trade theatre routes eg: Sweden and Marathas.

[Colossus 2]

It's a start..

[VictorTroska 0]

It's a start..

Yeah, but second patch will be out early next week, so..

[Spetz 0]

the new patch disabled any unlocking of the SF units for those who didn't buy them, it was more important then fixing AI bugs

[KingN 249]

Bought the game via Steam a couple of days ago and I'm hooked already, hours pass by within minutes.

I like all the new features and changes compared to the earlier TW games. Maybe the most important new feature is the long waited naval battles.. about time, I love them! The other new important feature is the technology tree, similar to that in civilization series. Also I like how the citys grow by spawning villages in the region which you can then specialize in stuff like industry, schooling, religion and entertainment, though religion is not that important in this game, primarly you just have to bring one priest with you when you attack a territory with different religion but that's not a big deal so church schools are not that important what i've found so far. Also the villages can be raided and damaged by enemy armies so more tactics can be used during attacking enemy territoy.

At this point the game is quite buggy.. crashes, lag peaks at some points at the strategical map when I select units and cities, also combining units is hell because of the odd lag. I would have wished more from the AI but it has not improved much, still way too AI-like and that annoying random scattered army swarming in the strategical map every time you press end turn is time consuming to look at, why can't they just stay put garrisoned in forts or cities or whatever... sheesh. But in the battle map the enemy tends to flank your troops more often which is new and wise of them but that's about that.

Anyway, this game is definitely worth buying if you have enjoyed the TW series! I think I'm off to play some more..

[Wolfrug 0]

Lag up to unplayable levels, easily. Loading times terrible. Even at graphics that look like shit compared to M2TW (horses turning to billboards waaay too soon) the game runs sluggishly. Campaign map a chore - everything lags for no particular reason (combining units, selecting units, ordering units to move places, zooming in and out...). And don't get me started on the time between turns - rolling through a million nations, takes forever.

My philosophy when it comes to graphically improving games is that if the way the previous version looked like when everything was at its highest settings = the lowest settings for the new game...well! I don't expect it to run any better, really. But when the lowest settings of the new game look completely shite and RUN completely shite, you start getting a little iffy

Anyway, it's actually all a matter of performance - once they roll out a ton of patches that improves performance everywhere, one might be able to start appreciating the game underneath it all - which seems to be more of the fun ol' TW stuff, except with muskets. The units do behave much better though, jumping over fences and the like, and aside from where the sound fails, the sounds that can be heard are nice - and my favourite part has always been to zoom in and look at the soldiers up close (=total lag fest currently), and I can report that their animations and such are very nice.

So, to all prospective buyers: wait for a month or 6 until the game is past its Beta stage, then it'll be worth it (a bit like ArmA, eh? Gets better as it ages..?)

Oh, and before anyone comments: I am aware my system is not the best, and on better systems the game probably runs much MUCH better, but I have everything on low with nothing checked in the boxes and the performance is STILL shite.

(AMD Athlon 64 X2 +3800, 8600 GT 512 MB, 2 GB RAM (old RAM, admittedly), Win XP)

Regards,

Wolfrug

[Supernova 0]

Is Empire Total War Special Forces Edition available only VIA steam ?. I've been hoping to try it out but if it's bug ridden and available only VIA steam then I won't bother.

[Pathy 0]

It's a Steam unlock, ie you get an extra code with your full copy, and type it into Steam to get you access.

[Spetz 0]

or u can wait till the modders unlock it for the latest version for free, before the first patch people just changed their configs to get the units, they are already part of the basic version. the new patch blocked the unlocking, eventually people will find out again.