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[KaelGotDwarves]

For Discussion on Empire: Total War

If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask here too.

Reviews have given it a 94/100 rating average on metacritic.

Kael's verdict:
I love this game. It's not perfect, many things are buggy, and the full potential of the game will need to be realized with mods, but holy crap it's freaking awesome. Currently playing as the Dutch - storming Russia and India.

Those heroes of antiquity ne'er saw a cannon ball, Or knew the force of powder to slay their foes withal. But our brave boys do know it, and banish all their fears, Sing tow, row, row, row, row, row, for the British Grenadiers. Whene'er we are commanded to storm the palisades, Our leaders march with fusees, and we with hand grenades. We throw them from the glacis, about the enemies' ears. Sing tow, row, row, row, row, row, the British Grenadiers!

Thoughts:
I FUCKING LOVE NAVAL BATTLES. Galleons and Fluyts will wreck your sixth rates if you're unprepared. A good Galley could sink 5 lesser ships with a bit of trouble. Capturing enemy ships is brilliantly fun.

Rank fire is a must. It allows a succession of volleys to devastate your opponents from your line infantry. Research it ASAP.

Spam schools/colleges in all towns for research. Then make your masses happy before they revolt.

Native Americans run in ranks and file, duel with axes, looks silly as hell. But don't underestimate them for they will burst through your lines and crack skulls with tomahawks.

Pirates operate like an independent country with professional armies.

Your general is no longer an unstoppable killing machine. A well placed cannon shot (or misplaced from your side) will end years you've put into him.

Grenadiers are my favourite unit ever in any game. Two well-placed barrages of grenades thrown into a full 120 man line infantry unit will make the line infantry rout. Grenadiers are my elite forces, flanking the enemies line as they are engaged or charging in close through the bullets and cannonade to hurl their grenades while taking losses. It's thrilling to watch your men charge into oncoming fire to hurl their grenades, and seconds later half the enemy formation explodes and the survivors run away while you skewer them with bayonets.

Bugs: Don't have an army in a country where you have military access with and have that country remove your military access. That unit will be stuck in that province.

AI is retarded around forts. Took awhile to get some men to storm the walls, after I shot it with my bloody cannons they tried to storm it, only to get stuck, then mill around while the enemy was failing to defend their walls as well. To break the stalemate of units not moving/not doing anything, I had to blow up a bunch of their units and mine milling around with grenades - and then had my general charge in.

Ship AI can get stupid if there's a lot of them. Empire's Ship AI is much like people, the more you get together the stupider they act, and it's hard to micromanage every single one.

The new reinforcement changes are retarded. Don't get me started. Reinforces trickle onto the map, maxing out your army - but they trickle in from a random edge of the battlefield - meaning it can be totally behind enemy lines and as they trickle in they can be slaughtered, or they can help you flank the enemy and crush them. Either way it's fucking broken. I hope it gets fixed.

Long load times are LOOOOOOOOOOOONG. I can't imagine what they'd be like if I weren't on a semi-new machine. Also, AA KILLS my framerate, but with all settings on ULTRA and no AA, my framerate is smooth. (ATI HD 4870)

Historically, CA screwed up in quite a few places. Do more research hurrrr. Also, only 12 playable factions, while there are easily 30+ in game.

There aren't enough units. Some nations feel like copies of the others. Mods/expansions will fix this.

You can garrison units inside of certain buildings - which is cool, but you can't SHOOT anyone inside, you have to storm the place with superior numbers, or blow it up with cannons. Computer AI will sit back and let you blow up the building (and almost all the units inside) with cannons and not run.

First patch will be out next week.

Damn, I've always been interested in military history, but this game has renewed a healthy respect for the men who charged into the smoke or lined up across their fellow man with guns pointed at them.

PS - fuck Prussia.

[Asehujiko]

My observations:

Game:
-UI takes some time getting used to. Still having trouble finding several features.
-Bol.com apparently refuses to send me my preorder unit(amazons).

Gameplay:
-Line infantry sucks when you don't have Fire By Rank. Stick with unis that can skirmish untill you got it.
-Chest high walls>cannons, cavalry and vastly superior numbers.
-Ships get exponentialy more retarded when their number increases.
-A third rate can take out 2 sixth rates and 4 brigs by itself.
-Rocket ships are useless.
-So are puckle guns.
-Putting somebody's sails on fire doesn't slow them in the slightest, it just makes them look more badass.
-Sloops blow up alot more often then other ships.
-Forts are fun when howitzers are involved.
-Canister shot can completely eradicate multiple units of line infantry in a single volley if fired from the side.

Other:
-Dutch voice actors suck as usual.
-Very glitch prone, RtoI in particular.
-Community spends more time raging on Steam(which works perfectly in my experience) then playing.

Something that deserves a category on it's own:
-LOADING TIMES!!!

[Soulwynd]

Loading times is the main thing that turns me off in any game. Whenever I see a game that is 12gb I feel like killing the developer. We seriously don't have mass storage that's fast (and cheap) enough to handle that crap. If you want a good hdd ^{1 & 2} you better be ready to fork the price of another video card and even so, it wont do wonders for your loading time.

[Asehujiko]

I've revised my opinion of the game from "potential but needs alot of work" to "money wasted". After i capture 2-3 regions i get spammed by loose cavalry units that wreck every single building in my country every single turn. after turn 5 i spend more time cycling through all my towns repairing crap and evicting the invaders then i do managing my empire and with more then 5 different units on the battlefield the playing time/loading time ratio gets awfully close to 1:1 and the buggyness greatly increases as well.

[Mephisto]

Loading times is the main thing that turns me off in any game. Whenever I see a game that is 12gb I feel like killing the developer. We seriously don't have mass storage that's fast (and cheap) enough to handle that crap. If you want a good hdd ^{1 & 2} you better be ready to fork the price of another video card and even so, it wont do wonders for your loading time.

You're no gamer! If you were, you would know that size is the only thing that matters! Games with small footprints are terrible.

Kidding. Just today, I took around an hour and a half to install a Diablo clone. Six CDs and it looks exactly the same as Sacred, which has one disk.

[KaelGotDwarves]

I've revised my opinion of the game from "potential but needs alot of work" to "money wasted". After i capture 2-3 regions i get spammed by loose cavalry units that wreck every single building in my country every single turn. after turn 5 i spend more time cycling through all my towns repairing crap and evicting the invaders then i do managing my empire and with more then 5 different units on the battlefield the playing time/loading time ratio gets awfully close to 1:1 and the buggyness greatly increases as well.

Build forts at major choke points (such as roads or narrow entries) and man them. When enemy armies try to pass you by and head into your territories, you hace the option to "intercept them" now and start a battle, where you can crush them. This actually makes forts useful as it forces enemies to attack you.

And yeah, walls are pretty nice. I was able to defeat a combined Prussian and Polish force three times my Dutch forces by holding a square section of wall while artillery was raining all around me and they tried to storm the walls. My Line infantry held them off in melee and firing upon them from the walls while my grenadiers let loose the grenades and repelled them, then leapt over the walls and flanked them and decimated them with grenades. That battle ended when I had my infantry storm across the field to attack the Prussian artillery to a few loses while my general flanked and hit the cannons from the side as my infantry ran right through the withering to wail on them with bayonets.

Battle won with half losses, only 3 of my units routed and I didn't lose any of them.

[mainiac]

Naval combat is pathetic.  Apparently, your captains have never heard of tacking and think you are supposed to stop and  drop anchor in the middle of battle unless they are explicitly are told to sail forward.  Combine these with poor pathfinding (on a featureless sea!) and you have me screaming at the screen when I try naval combat.  Even trying to pull off basic maneuvers (like staying to wind of someone!) is impossible.

Land combat is pretty much as meh as in prior versions.  The game era is much better suited to their game engine then in previous games.  But the same dumb ai/poor pathfinding/ahistoricality, leave me with as dim as impression as previous games.  Kinda fun to try around with but too shallow and too focused on pretty unit models.

On the other hand... I capture London with war elephants.  Fuck historical accuracy.  War Elephants!

-Ships get exponentialy more retarded when their number increases.

God yes.

-A third rate can take out 2 sixth rates and 4 brigs by itself.
-Rocket ships are useless.

IIRC, rocket ships should only be used for attacking land forces or enemy ships in port.  Which makes it puzzling to include them in a game where ships can perform neither action.

A third rate taking out 2 sixth raters and 4 brigs by itself would actually be possible if the wind and the captain let  the third rate keep from getting out maneuvered.  A third rate is the primary ship of the line, it carries about 70 guns and it carries pretty big guns.  Those small ships aren't built for broadside to broadside engagement. 
All together, the small ships probably have about 95 guns, compared to the 70some on the 3rd rater.  But the guns on the small ships are lighter.  In terms of firepower, the 3rd rater probably carries more.
Now, the small ships should almost certainly be able to use their numbers and mobility to trash the 3rd rater.  But if some foolish commodore were to try to get into a broadside engagement...

[woose1]

Wait what? Rocket ships?

[mainiac]

I believe it refers to ships which fired explosive projectiles on a ballistic trajectory.  This allowed for long range attack, but at a slow pace and not accurate against a quickly moving target.

[umiman]

My computer actually has no problems with loading times, believe it or not.

I found that as usual, Creative Assembly never actually makes the game AI smarter when you choose a different difficulty. It just makes it cheat like mad. The AI is moronic in all aspects. Don't believe the bullcrap they feed you about a better diplomacy AI because it's impossible to deal with and the battle AI is currently so repetitive and predictable that it is boring after 30 battles or so. For example, choose a skirmish battle. The enemy formations are always the same! Always start in the same positions, same strategy, it's quite dull.

I think the IGN review is quite accurate. The AI will actually resent you for doing well and no one is willing to maintain a treaty with you. It's imposible to get any fair deal in any technology trades.

I wish there were more unit variety too but overall it's a great game. Battles can get boring after awhile considering how limited your choices are in units and tactics buttt.... yeah, it's fun. Also, there's a hell of a lot of attention to detail.

[Asehujiko]

A third rate taking out 2 sixth raters and 4 brigs by itself would actually be possible if the wind and the captain let  the third rate keep from getting out maneuvered.  A third rate is the primary ship of the line, it carries about 70 guns and it carries pretty big guns.  Those small ships aren't built for broadside to broadside engagement. 
All together, the small ships probably have about 95 guns, compared to the 70some on the 3rd rater.  But the guns on the small ships are lighter.  In terms of firepower, the 3rd rater probably carries more.
Now, the small ships should almost certainly be able to use their numbers and mobility to trash the 3rd rater.  But if some foolish commodore were to try to get into a broadside engagement...

I sent my 2 6th rates to zigzag infront of the enemy ship, planning to use 2 of my broadsides to take out it's forward facing guns while sailing arround with my brigs at a long enough distance to make broadsides ineffective. One of the 2 frontal ships thought it was a good idea to drop anchor right in the path of the ship that was supposed to sail behind it after firing it's broadside so the two of them collided and refused to move anywhere beyond that despite being at 95%> hull strenght. The enemy fired a broadside at a brig more then half a mile away and somehow managed to explode it with one of the 3-4 cannonballs that hit - talk about aimbots - before turning leisurely to face the prow of my siamese 6th rates and casualy pumping lead into their defenseless cojoined prows while the remaining 3 brigs approached hoping to get some shots into it's stern while it was busy. Then it's frontal cannons shot at one of the brigs, killing my admiral and setting it on fire, routing it soon after. The last 2 ships approached it's stern and lacking any forward facing guns, had to turn sideways in order to attack. In response, the enemy ship turned 90 degrees as well and launched a full broadside into one of the smaller ships before it could react, routing it as well. At this point i witnessed another glaring pathing error as the fleeing brig promptly rammed into the derelict frigates. From then on it was a simple cat&mouse game with the final brig unable to get behind it's attacker without risking a broadside and instead relying on it's rear guns(why can't other ships have those?) guns in a long, boring standoff against the enemy frontal guns(which it obviously lost)

The things that lost me the battle, in order of appearance:
-Stupid pathfinding
-Stupid pathfinding
-Bad luck/aimbot AI
-Stupid pathfinding
-Bad luck/aimbot AI
-Stupid pathfinding

I'm also having trouble not getting mobbed in the grand campaign as the dutch, i can't expand in europe without being zerged from all directions from spain, france, westphalia, hannover, those guys from stuttgard, austria, prussia, denmark, bavaria and saxony. Every territory i conquer puts me at war with 2 others and then france or spain rolls in with multiple stacks. India puts me on a tiny island with hardly any resources with the rest having full stacks on the mainland and i don't even get unit producing cities in america.

@woose1: Rocket ships are tiny boats with 2 tiny cannons(muskets in terms of gameplay) and a ramp on the main deck that occasionaly launches an oversized piece of fireworks, which lands in the water somewhere in the enemy deployment zone. Upon hitting, it kills maybe one or 2 guys and starts a tiny fire which is put out in seconds. It can also "burn" the enemy sails which creates some very cool fire effects arround them for about 30 seconds but after that the only effect is painting them black for the remainder of the battle.

[mainiac]

Why does a 3rd rate have frontal guns?  We talking 9 pounders or something big?

[Ivefan]

Diplomacy is as pointless as allways.
Naval combat looks good but makes me think of the game Cutthroats(1999), and in comparison E:TW sucks hard.
Defending walls is even worse than the previous games and made me feel that it would have been better to just build some trenches.
World map has become more interessting but now it's even easier to get ahead in development, though it does not matter when you only have one kind of infantery anyways.

And is it just me that did not figure it out/bothered to invest, but the new trade scenes is useless?

[umiman]

New trade scenes?

[Neonivek]

Diplomacy is as pointless as allways

actually apperantly they improved it in certain ways.

For example they are more willing to stop a war if it has gone on for a particularly long time.