Empire: Total War review - experience thread

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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by ray245 »

Vympel wrote:
The tactical graphics are shit. M2TW looked much better.
I know! What is up with that? I can't put my finger on what looks different, but IMO it definitely looks worse than M2TW. It's harder to see things. Aside from the obvious, i.e. at long distance units become sprites, which you won't be familiar with in TW before unless you played the original Shogun and Medieval.

Ever since my PC has been repaired (thank God Steam + ETW was on the HDD that didn't die) my stuttering has completely vanished, though. It was purely a symptom of my HDD dying.
Would becoming sprities improve the game performance?

Although did any manage to construct beyond one modern university? I'm not sure if the modern university limitation is a bug or not.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by Darth Wong »

ray245 wrote:Would becoming sprities improve the game performance?
It would cut down on the slowdowns. To be fair, M2TW suffered from slowdowns. But even if you're up close and looking at polygon models, it still looks worse than M2TW.
Although did any manage to construct beyond one modern university? I'm not sure if the modern university limitation is a bug or not.
It's not a bug. You can only build a modern university in your capital region. I have two: one at Cambridge and one at Manchester. It's the same with the really high end capital buildings: you can only build them at your capital. If you want more than one, you'll have to demolish other types of buildings in your capital region and replace them with schools, or make to select a school when a new town becomes available.

The other way to get one is to capture an enemy capital region which already has one in it, but you have to wait a long time for that, and it will have a serious negative impact on public unrest there, especially when you first conquer it.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by Darth Wong »

Thanas wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:Well, I finally got this game.

- I ran into the Morrocan blockade at Gibraltar, just like everyone else. I didn't bother pussy-footing around: I declared war on Morocco, landed a huge army in his territory, conquered his capital, and all of his fleets disappeared. Simple problem, simple solution.
Yeah, but the problem with that is that a few turns later, another fraction will blockade Gibraltar again, so you have to blockade it yourself with a strong fleet.
Or you can conquer every faction which is close to it. I did this after wiping out Spain, France, Savoy, and a few others so that the entire northern coast of the Mediterranean right up to the Italian boot was mine. And after I took Morocco, I immediately marched east, taking the Barbary states in short order (it is 1750 in my game and I am currently at war with no one, having annihilated all of my foes). Mind you, if anyone else blockades the strait, I'll just pulverize them too. If I were in a weaker position I suppose I would just leave a ship there, but nobody has attempted to blockade that region since I took it.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by RogueIce »

So one of the more interesting features I read about was the multiplayer campaign mode. I suppose the first thing to ask is: did that actually make it in the game? And if so, has anyone tried that yet? Thoughts? What are the number of players you can run? That sort of thing, if you please.

It'll be a good little while until I can get this game, I think. I'd need a new video card first (the rest of my specs should be good for at least minimum, haven't checked in awhile though) and then I can probably get it.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by Thanas »

Darth Wong wrote:
Thanas wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:Well, I finally got this game.

- I ran into the Morrocan blockade at Gibraltar, just like everyone else. I didn't bother pussy-footing around: I declared war on Morocco, landed a huge army in his territory, conquered his capital, and all of his fleets disappeared. Simple problem, simple solution.
Yeah, but the problem with that is that a few turns later, another fraction will blockade Gibraltar again, so you have to blockade it yourself with a strong fleet.
Or you can conquer every faction which is close to it. I did this after wiping out Spain, France, Savoy, and a few others so that the entire northern coast of the Mediterranean right up to the Italian boot was mine. And after I took Morocco, I immediately marched east, taking the Barbary states in short order (it is 1750 in my game and I am currently at war with no one, having annihilated all of my foes). Mind you, if anyone else blockades the strait, I'll just pulverize them too. If I were in a weaker position I suppose I would just leave a ship there, but nobody has attempted to blockade that region since I took it.
Well, me playing as Spain has so far led to Marocco, Barbary States, Genua, Venice and the Ottoman Empire blockading the route.

I now simply park a huge fleet there, especially since Venice and the Ottoman Empire are favorite trading partners of mine, each gathering about 20.000 per turn in trade revenue alone, so pulverising them is a bit too much.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by Brother-Captain Gaius »

The MP campaign isn't currently in the game, no. They say they're going to patch it in, although their patch support thus far has been less than ideal.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by Dahak »

I must say, I like it. And I feel dazzled by the shiny looks of the game, but mostly because my old computer would have died just by looking at the requirements, so I didn't have a lot of comparison lately ;)
Though I must admit currently I play it more like a fancier Civ than actually commanding battles, I mostly click on autoresolve (especially in naval battles, the user interface for those is not something I like...).

Annoying are the indian tribes and pirates. Took me ages to get through their masses of units. And they always seem to get more...
Especially annoying is the bug that some fleets seem to get stuck in land and decide to not move again. Cost me a large fleet.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by Nephtys »

I don't understand naval battles AT ALL. Does crossing your opponent's T even do anything? I played a few skirmishes to try out this new and anticipated feature, and watched as my 2nd Rates failed to harm their targets noticibly, missing with most of my shots because of the smaller cross section (I guess my gunlayers can't aim), then sighed as they pounded me to scrap broadside to broadside, knocking down half my spars in the first volley. When they turned away, I fired a whole broadside into their stern, which did nothing until they came around and blew up my magazine.

Pretty lame. And again, massive failure at their 'firepower' stat. Way to go CA.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

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Nephtys wrote:I don't understand naval battles AT ALL. Does crossing your opponent's T even do anything? I played a few skirmishes to try out this new and anticipated feature, and watched as my 2nd Rates failed to harm their targets noticibly, missing with most of my shots because of the smaller cross section (I guess my gunlayers can't aim), then sighed as they pounded me to scrap broadside to broadside, knocking down half my spars in the first volley. When they turned away, I fired a whole broadside into their stern, which did nothing until they came around and blew up my magazine.

Pretty lame. And again, massive failure at their 'firepower' stat. Way to go CA.
The ships are all relatively nimble at turning. I built fleets of 2nd rate ships and they seemed just as fast and maneuverable as much smaller enemy vessels like sloops. Therefore, there's not much point trying to "cross the T" because the enemy can just swerve to the right or left in order to bring their guns to bear.

I've found that the enemy tends to get his ships into a disorganized clump when you pass them, so I simply put my ships in a line and then attempt to pass them on one side, turning as soon as I pass so I can keep my guns trained on the trailing ship. As I make the turn, his trailing ship takes a terrific pounding which usually renders it combat-ineffective, because it comes into the firing arc of 3 or 4 of my ships at once while they make the turn.

Of course, this tactic relies on your ships being able to trade broadsides with their ships on a somewhat even basis, because you're going to be trading shot for shot on that first pass, as your lines pass each other. Once you get done the first pass and the subsequent turn, his trailing ship should be quite heavily damaged, probably having lost so many of its guns that it is no longer a major threat.

I know the heavier ships should suffer a penalty in maneuverability, but let's face it, this is a strategy GAME, and people want a payoff for reaching the highest tech level and building the most expensive ship. They expect it to dominate.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

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Dahak wrote:Especially annoying is the bug that some fleets seem to get stuck in land and decide to not move again. Cost me a large fleet.
This happens if you remove only a part of a fleet that is situated on a trade port.

If you want to remove a ship from a trade port, move the whole fleet out first, then send of the part you want to send elsewhere, then move the rest of the fleet back.

Some other things:

Forts are really stupid - defending the walls is the dumbest thing to do - just garrison your civilians in the buildings, set up most of your troops around the flag, station some troops on the approaches to the flag (inside your fort). Once the enemy scales your walls (whoever thought of that should be fired), they charge toward your flag in a disorganized mass and are easily massacred. Just be careful - if they have lots of troops you will have to charge your flag once or twice in order to reset the capture timer.

Yay, CTD on selecting fleets. Yay, CTD on selecting diplomacy menu. Yay, CTD at random times...

Something is seriously screwed up with naval units - sometimes selecting a fleet takes 20 seconds or so between clicking and finally being able to do something. Also having a fleet selected seriously lowers the framerate.

Does anyone here build fishing harbors? I just have everything except one or two ports (Dockyards) as trade ports, so as to get massive amounts of money.

And the game is WAY too easy. I played my first game (after finishing the Road to Independence thingy) as Prussia on VH/VH. Austria declared war on me in turn 3 or so with me having pretty much no army. I trained half a stack (2 turns) and just curbstomped them. Haven't hit a snag ever. Even when all the major land countries attacked me pretty much at the same time I had no problems - despite having completely undefended borders on some sides. Actually, the smaller countries give me a lot more trouble than the big ones. It was way too easy to reach the phase where you are so much stronger than everyone that it is just a matter of mopping up the rest of the map.

As for troops - I hate the fact that you never get a new "basic trooper" unit - you build line infantry at the beginning, all the way to the end. OK, if you want, you can add 2 units of cavalry, 2 of artillery or something like that, but it isn't needed. The only huge advance is Rank Firing - and that just makes your existing units more effective. I seriously miss the excitement factor of finally being able to build better units in M2TW or RTW. You never have this in ETW. You just get some additional (mostly useless) novelty units.

Naval combat: Your units are so maneuverable, you don't really need lots of tactics. I often just set up my ships in a long line abroad (side by side), turn the broadside towards the enemy and wait for him to come into range (when I bother to fight the battle and not just autoresolve).

Land battles: Frustrating. Not because it is too difficult, but because it is so imbalanced (on VH/VH). Basically, you have to do everything possible (or hope) that the enemy never charges your position with full strength units, because then they massacre you. They are so much stronger in melee combat - it isn't funny. I once experimented a bit - I started killing a unit of line infantry that was ignoring me (yay AI). When I had them at 70 or so out of 120 I charged with my line infantry unit (120/120) and almost lost (same manpower as them at the end, but they broke and ran). On the other hand, if they don't charge I massacre them with massed fire from my infantry units standing next to each other. Hell, if you really want to, you can do a manual "shoot and scoot" thing by ordering your troops to retreat directly after shooting at the enemy - the enemy takes so long to start shooting, that you are out of range again, at which point you stop, wait for them to get in range, etc.

All in all, the game is obviously still in beta and was not ready for release. But then, that isn't new.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by Dahak »

D.Turtle wrote:
Dahak wrote:Especially annoying is the bug that some fleets seem to get stuck in land and decide to not move again. Cost me a large fleet.
This happens if you remove only a part of a fleet that is situated on a trade port.

If you want to remove a ship from a trade port, move the whole fleet out first, then send of the part you want to send elsewhere, then move the rest of the fleet back.
I could have tried that if the fleet had been stuck on a trade port. As it were, it was stuck in one of those stick things connecting islands together. And removing, adding, de-/promoting admirals didn't help...
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

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Dahak wrote: I could have tried that if the fleet had been stuck on a trade port. As it were, it was stuck in one of those stick things connecting islands together. And removing, adding, de-/promoting admirals didn't help...
Hm, never had that happen to me.

Well, the most important thing to remember with this game: save a lot - and not just quick save (And know where the save files are saved so that you can delete them manually later, because you can't delete them in-game ...). Especially later - the longer a game runs, the higher the risk of a CTD. In 1742, I now have somewhere around 3-4 fleets I can't touch anymore, and opening the diplomacy menu has a high chance of a CTD. This combined with the long load times of everything means I'm currently not playing anymore (haven't tried the new patch yet).

Oh, another thing: The income system - it is WAY too easy to become filthy rich. You don't need a standing army, because you can train so many units in one or two turns, which gives you plenty of time to build up in case someone declares war on you. Building a proper navy takes longer, but then a navy is extremely cheap in upkeep so you can easily afford to keep 6 or so 2nd rates or so in every trade theater in order to safeguard the merchantmen you have there (unless you have galleons - then you don't need any safeguarding fleets). Also, always place a full stack of tradeships (14 IIRC) on a trade port.

And while I'm talking about trade: blockading trade routes is ridiculously badly implemented. Lets say I'm in control of the entirety of middle Europe (AKA everything between France and Russia and the Ottoman Empire, including Scandinavia and Italy). Now, France declares war on me and blockades one single port. Well, it just so happens that this port is the one that ALL trade routes go to in the end - the one closest to your capital. This means, I just lost all my income from my trade routes, even though all of my Mediterranean and most of my Atlantic/Baltic Sea are completely left alone. In other words: Always have a strong fleet protecting your main trade port.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by frogcurry »

The sole major gripe I have at present is the poor diplomacy. Its not as piss-poor as before in some regards, in that the AI does try plan A of peaceful expansion before attempting plan B "throw ourselves at our super-powerful neighbour". But you can't build up proper alliances and play a diplomatic game due to the tendency of allies to start wars you can't get out of, plus your protectorates never follow your diplomatic lead. As Russia I had all of Italy as two protectorates, and then my Polish allies declared war on them, causing my diplomacy to fall apart due to the hostility it got me. So I had to conquer Poland early.

Also powerful states are a bit too easy to persuade to make peace by taking one province off them. It allows you to negate enemy alliances without having to destroy all of your enemies. It may make some sense from a historical perspective, but it seems too easy for a human player.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

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frogcurry wrote:The sole major gripe I have at present is the poor diplomacy. Its not as piss-poor as before in some regards, in that the AI does try plan A of peaceful expansion before attempting plan B "throw ourselves at our super-powerful neighbour". But you can't build up proper alliances and play a diplomatic game due to the tendency of allies to start wars you can't get out of, plus your protectorates never follow your diplomatic lead. As Russia I had all of Italy as two protectorates, and then my Polish allies declared war on them, causing my diplomacy to fall apart due to the hostility it got me. So I had to conquer Poland early.

Also powerful states are a bit too easy to persuade to make peace by taking one province off them. It allows you to negate enemy alliances without having to destroy all of your enemies. It may make some sense from a historical perspective, but it seems too easy for a human player.
And to think that so many people complain about passive AI in this game.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by Stark »

Eh? He's talking about how the AI is passive and is easy to manipulate while still being stupid and doing ridiculous things. The inability to control your allies is particularly amusing.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by ray245 »

Stark wrote:Eh? He's talking about how the AI is passive and is easy to manipulate while still being stupid and doing ridiculous things. The inability to control your allies is particularly amusing.
I know, I'm talking about people want the AI to be even less passive, and everyone to be as aggressive towards almost everyone and expand in all direction.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by Stark »

Eh? HE WANTS THE AI TO BE LESS PASSIVE. He's complaining that the system allows you to neutralise threats too easily but it's structure allows allies to drag you into wars for no reason. I'm not seeing how this places him against those who want the AI to be more aggressive.

Frankly, the diplomacy in CA games has become plain embarrassing. It's not THAT hard to make an issue-based dip system or an AI that chooses strategic goals based on more than 'kill the player'.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by Minischoles »

I do sometimes wonder if they even did any beta testing on this game, since i've just had the most glaring annoying bug happen. As the United Provinces, you can't actually declare war on Great Britain and land in the UK. You declare war, but any attempt to land troops gets the dialog box of
Declare War
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come up, even after you've declared war on them. And you can't shut the box down, it just keeps popping back up. So essentially, you can't land on the UK as UP and so you can't take out London.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by wautd »

D.Turtle wrote:
Dahak wrote: I could have tried that if the fleet had been stuck on a trade port. As it were, it was stuck in one of those stick things connecting islands together. And removing, adding, de-/promoting admirals didn't help...
Especially later - the longer a game runs, the higher the risk of a CTD.
Ugh, tell me about it. I have 9 years to go to finish the grand campaign and I'm saving at least every turn now. It's getting so rediculous that I wonder if I get to see the end
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by CmdrWilkens »

wautd wrote:
D.Turtle wrote:
Dahak wrote: I could have tried that if the fleet had been stuck on a trade port. As it were, it was stuck in one of those stick things connecting islands together. And removing, adding, de-/promoting admirals didn't help...
Especially later - the longer a game runs, the higher the risk of a CTD.
Ugh, tell me about it. I have 9 years to go to finish the grand campaign and I'm saving at least every turn now. It's getting so rediculous that I wonder if I get to see the end
I don't know, the stability patches they've put out seem to be helping. I haven't had a CTD since the patch on the 26th although that's only 2 Long Campaigns (well technically one long and one domination). I still get the lag issue when selecting some fleets (Anytime Horatio Nelson pops as an Admiral it seems to cause me issues for the Brits) but no more CTD.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by Thanas »

CmdrWilkens wrote:I don't know, the stability patches they've put out seem to be helping. I haven't had a CTD since the patch on the 26th although that's only 2 Long Campaigns (well technically one long and one domination). I still get the lag issue when selecting some fleets (Anytime Horatio Nelson pops as an Admiral it seems to cause me issues for the Brits) but no more CTD.
You're lucky, I still get CTDs. Less so, but the fleets and first-rates are still bugged.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by ray245 »

Has anyone played against each other online yet?
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by Darth Wong »

The lag issues when selecting units (or even clicking on the "Navy" tab in a port) are so irritating that I'm taking a hiatus from playing the game. It's utterly ridiculous that I can click on a unit and then be forced to sit there while the game locks up for 20 seconds. It's not as if I just asked it to solve for pi or anything; all I'm doing is selecting a unit.
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Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by Thanas »

I think the game really gets laggy when you have more than two capital cities. For example, when I click on Madrid or Paris, instant lag.

Oh, and Hurray for Steam...instead of properly testing one big patch they now release several small patches...which are not properly tested and cause more issues. Great.
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A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
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Nephtys
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 6227
Joined: 2005-04-02 10:54pm
Location: South Cali... where life is cheap!

Re: Empire: Total War review - experience thread

Post by Nephtys »

So I started a campaign. I read through some info that's all Rah-Rah Brittania, center of the universe it seems. So whatever, screw them. Time to be the DUTCH. I click on my fleet, first thing I do as I size up what assets I have to begin with. Game. Dies.

Okay, plan B. Time to be Rrussia! Because there's nothing more fun than being a despotic monarch held hostage by the whims of your court, assassination attempts and peasant unrest, right? (Though I'm fuzzy on if I'm thinking of the right era... perhaps I'm thinking nearer to 1800). Anyway, I start up and click on my army. Awesome? Game. Dies.

I get it, E:TW. I know what you want. I start a game as BRITTANIA, Hurrah, King George and cheerio and all that. I click on my GLORIOUS fleet of two frigates and a sloop, and lo and behold, divine providence smiles upon his Majesty as they are selected properly. Boldly, I send them out to seek battle! One click, and.... the game. DIES.
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