Empire: Total War on IGN

[Lazarus]

The tediousness of playing the same easily winnable battle over and over again because it ALWAYS default loses using the auto resolve function needs to be fixed. I didn't even get up to the New World bit, which I've only heard about, on MTW2 because it became too boring. The only interesting battles are major ones, I got fed up of having to spend half an hour every turn or so on the same crappy little battle I could always win.

I am really looking forward to the game though, even if it still has flaws like this I'll forgive it because it's BRITASH EMPYRE CONQUERS TEH WORLDZ time folks!

Yeah, I read Hornblower books as a child...

[Stark]

As far as I'm concerned I don't really want to be ruler of the Empire - the fun of Total War for me is still crushing enemy armies in tactical battles - naval combat was long overdue, but the inclusion of naval combat cannot come at the expense of some also long overdue interface improvements. The lack of an idle unit key is completely unacceptable.

Doing a Koei-esque 'hierachy' thing would be cool: it'd allow you to concentrate on fighting or one area, while your king runs everything else. However, CA is probably the only time you can us the phrase 'worse AI than Koei' without lying.

It'd even make 'lost' games fun, because General Lord Pantsman would end up working as a regional general for whoever won, so the player would still be able to play and avoid lame stuff.

There are several UI improvements the game should have: zoom-to-global-map, highlight military/trade/diplo units and display orders, city managements screens as in Civ/GalCiv to reduce city hassle, even simple stuff like 'units with no orders are shiny/glowing/bouncing up and down' would lower the lame. I actually prefer the Koei method, though, where units like diplomats don't exist unless they're doing something, and they always either return or ask for new orders when finished. You can't 'lose' units in the same was as Total War.

[Vympel]

Well to be fair they're clearly trying some new stuff with Empire. Building units directly at a general, province buildings visible on the map (don't have to keep going to the province's city) etc - if they're doing that, surely they can't be so lazy as to not get rid of some of the most persistent complaints.

[Stark]

O rly?

It would seem impossible, but I have exactly zero faith in CA's ability to make anything other than Shogun with knobs on. I'm happy to be pleasantly surprised, however.

It actually strikes me that with Shogun, it being 'like a boardgame' (regarding the management of units etc) was both fine (few provinces) and kinda cool given the age of the game. But with Rome and M2 they seem to still be doing that, even though the scale of the game was well outgrown it, and they need tools to make it not-lame. Hell, in Medieval ONE I was losing units and having hugely long turns! This is a decade-old problem.

So long as they let the generals do 'tactics' like build a pile of gunpowder next to someone's barracks and farms and then blow it up on the strat map, causing a massive fire and destroying their infrastructure, it'll be nearly at ROTK10-level, or 2004.

[Darth Wong]

What they need is some kind of city auto-management system which accepts command macros or script-based rules. Some way to auto-build a garrison of your choosing without you having to micro-manage it, and some way to tell it which buildings to build first. Hell, even if it had the option of a simple rule like "build the cheapest building first" or choices of certain building template patterns, it would be a big improvement over the present system.

After that, a popup screen on the campaign map where you can select idle agents of various types would be handy.

[Wanderer]

Or non cheating AI. It seems like no matter how crushed an opponent is, they somehow ALWAYS find a way to get full stack armies onto the field to meet yours. I got so tired of it i'd always have 3+ full stacks right next to eachother so I could just hit the "auto battle" key and move on.

I solved that by jacking the initial unit cost and upkeep to five times the norm.

The A.I. fought a lot smarter afterwards as it could no longer spam out Armies and was more willing to negotiate.

[RogueIce]

What they need is some kind of city auto-management system which accepts command macros or script-based rules. Some way to auto-build a garrison of your choosing without you having to micro-manage it, and some way to tell it which buildings to build first. Hell, even if it had the option of a simple rule like "build the cheapest building first" or choices of certain building template patterns, it would be a big improvement over the present system.

After that, a popup screen on the campaign map where you can select idle agents of various types would be handy.

You know, the old-ass game "Call to Power 2" had something like that. Where you could basically create a default build order, save it, and then with a few simple clicks load it up, or even have it work as the default for new cities. Same thing for units too, if I remember right. If some Civ-clone from eight years ago could manage that, than there's no (good) reason TW can't.

[Darth Wong]

Oh well, despite all of my grousing, I know that when this thing comes out, I'll run out and beta-test, er ... I mean buy it.

[Stark]

Retail = open beta, especially for CA.

I'm actually not that interested in this one. I'll wait for Mike and Vympel to review it first.

[Adrian Laguna]

While I said a start date of 1700 would be interesting, I think it's better to start in 1600. Firearms were very much a fixture of the battlefield by then, and since the game would basically have to end shortly after the Napoleonic wars, as I doubt the engine can handle breastworks and trenches, it would make a lot of difference in terms of the time you have to play with. Plus, I want to fight the Thirty Years War. Or hell, start in 1500 so the Americas are wide-open to everyone who wants to run there, though obviously Spain would have a head start. If Europa Universalis can get get away with 300+ years of gameplay, I don't see why Empire: Total War couldn't too.

The problem with late game grinding is two fold. First strategy ceases to be a matter when your a 30+ province sized empire. All your enemies are pitiful 3-4 province sized countrys. This is caused by the poor AI that never seem to expand beyond starting provinces.

You know, this didn't seem to be a problem in the first Medieval game. I remember plenty of games where I would be this huge-ass empire, and an AI nation would be another huge-ass empire. My favourite time this happened was when I was the Turks. The French became an honest to god moster, they had the British Isles, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, part of Poland, and the northern Balkans. I actually found myself stalemated halfway up the Balkans. I was scared to advance because moving an army up would leave my flanks open, and that one army exposed. So I went the other way around. My armies fought their way through North Africa and Iberia in a gruelling campaign against the Almoravids, entering France through the Pyrenees. By the time I was knocking on the gates of Paris, the French line of succession had been wiped out and the whole country collapsed into civil war. It was such a beautiful victory.

I think the old province-map was much better strategically than the new 3D maps with provinces and cities. Nothing that epic has ever happened in RTW, usually by the time I'm even a mid-sized Empire the rest of the world is doomed to be my bitch without me having to put any effort or creativity into it. The only thing RTW does better is that the strategic AI puts more advanced units in their armies, and the tactical AI can pretend to be cunning.

[Darth Wong]

The problem with late game grinding is two fold. First strategy ceases to be a matter when your a 30+ province sized empire. All your enemies are pitiful 3-4 province sized countrys. This is caused by the poor AI that never seem to expand beyond starting provinces.

You know, this didn't seem to be a problem in the first Medieval game. I remember plenty of games where I would be this huge-ass empire, and an AI nation would be another huge-ass empire. My favourite time this happened was when I was the Turks. The French became an honest to god moster, they had the British Isles, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, part of Poland, and the northern Balkans. I actually found myself stalemated halfway up the Balkans. I was scared to advance because moving an army up would leave my flanks open, and that one army exposed. So I went the other way around. My armies fought their way through North Africa and Iberia in a gruelling campaign against the Almoravids, entering France through the Pyrenees. By the time I was knocking on the gates of Paris, the French line of succession had been wiped out and the whole country collapsed into civil war. It was such a beautiful victory.

I think the old province-map was much better strategically than the new 3D maps with provinces and cities. Nothing that epic has ever happened in RTW, usually by the time I'm even a mid-sized Empire the rest of the world is doomed to be my bitch without me having to put any effort or creativity into it. The only thing RTW does better is that the strategic AI puts more advanced units in their armies, and the tactical AI can pretend to be cunning.

I dunno about that. I had one M2TW game where I hit "toggle_fow" to see what the rest of the map looked like, and the entire right-hand side of the map was black. Timurid black. And those fucking elephants were everywhere. It was Spain (me), the Timurids, and a bunch of pissant tiny states that were about to get wiped out between the two of us.

Mind you, I never finished that game. Every damned turn, it seemed like another border city would come under siege by a huge Timurid army.

[Adrian Laguna]

I dunno about that. I had one M2TW game where I hit "toggle_fow" to see what the rest of the map looked like, and the entire right-hand side of the map was black. Timurid black. And those fucking elephants were everywhere. It was Spain (me), the Timurids, and a bunch of pissant tiny states that were about to get wiped out between the two of us.

Heh, that's pretty cool. I still like the old province system, though.

Mind you, I never finished that game. Every damned turn, it seemed like another border city would come under siege by a huge Timurid army.

In the original Medieval this could have resulted in a strategic stalemate like I had in the Turkish game. I don't dare attack for fear of exposing my armies, the enemy doesn't dare attack because the stacks on my border are effing huge. Of course, you probably still wouldn't have finished the game. The Pyrenees might have been France's back door, but I still had to endure hour-long battles fighting off wave after wave of Frankish hordes. Though my longest battle was playing Italy, I spent two hours wrestling the Bear on the shores of the Danube.

[ray245]

Well, they better give us a multiplayer campaign map.

I love to play a campaign map as a team if possible...so that I don't have to face stupid AI.

And another thing, I just hope mods can somehow remove the unit limt.

I want a 80,000-100,000 army battles if my computer can somehow support it in the future.


And give us the ability to sabotage the enemy family trees and general, somehow cause a civil war between the enemy family, or cause their good generals to be dismissed if I cannot bribe them.

[Darth Wong]

What would be nice is an advisor that is actually useful. The advisor currently just tells you the same things you'd hear during a game tutorial.

Imagine an advisor who whispered in your ear that the heir to an enemy's throne is foolishly traveling alone from point A to point B. Or an advisor who politely asks you why, in your glorious wisdom as divinely appointed king, you have chosen to leave a large army standing idle for two years. Or an advisor who warns you that there are rumours of an insurrection brewing in a certain city, or that there are rumours that a certain general has been keeping strange visitors and may be about to defect to the enemy. In short, an advisor who actually acts like an advisor. Now wouldn't that be a sight!

[Sarevok]

Imagine an advisor who whispered in your ear that the heir to an enemy's throne is foolishly traveling alone from point A to point B. Or an advisor who politely asks you why, in your glorious wisdom as divinely appointed king, you have chosen to leave a large army standing idle for two years. Or an advisor who warns you that there are rumours of an insurrection brewing in a certain city, or that there are rumours that a certain general has been keeping strange visitors and may be about to defect to the enemy. In short, an advisor who actually acts like an advisor. Now wouldn't that be a sight!

That is a brilliant idea. You could go further by having the advisor as an actual character like diplomats and faction members instead of being a floating icon that periodically delivers text boxes. By using the stats system characters have no two advisors would be same. You would not trust a noobish adviser if he told you the sky is blue while 10 star advisors could tell you what the AI factions will do next 3 turns. Besides the advisor could have his own personality which varies his recommendations. A peacenik would be absolutely against massacring a settlements populations while an advisor with portrait that looks like Condolezza Rice would request you to invade far away nations...

Of course on the downside having the advisor as an actual character opens up nasty possiblities like assasination or worse, bribing him to feed false information.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Peeking through that interview briefly, all I can say is:

Chain shot! Grape shot! Squeee!

I was never a huge fan of Napoleonic era gunpowder stuff, but I'm gleefully anticipating the game nonetheless. The naval combat looks absolutely incredible.