Napoleon: Total War

[Vympel]

What a shock.

Of course, I called this ages ago. Anyway, it is standalone, not an expansion, so that's different.

Now, still need to actually get round to playing Empire ....

[atg]

Now taking bets on the amount of bugs on release...

[Thanas]

Good evening ladies and Gentleman.

After producing a half-assed bugfest which we now have about halfway fixed thanks to a public beta test succesful release earlier, we now would like to do the same thing to Napoleon. Expect unhistoric inventions, crappy balance, lots of cloned units because we are to lazy to skin correctly and gamebreaking bugs.

We hope you get suckered again enjoy our products. Always remember that historical accuracy is something that we couldn't care less about is essential to our belief system.

And what is up with the video? What the heck is the burning of the ships representing?

[Vympel]

On Monday CA made sure to emphasise that ETW will continue to be supported with new content, and the 1.4 patch is in development. Who knows, by the time I get around to playing through my huge backlog of games, ETW will be stable!

To CA's credit, they've offered constant updates to the fanbase as to the stuff they're fixing / improving with ETW's next patch on a very regular basis, at least they're trying.

[ray245]

It almost seems like CA is using ETW as a beta-testing game that is released to the general public.

[Thanas]

On Monday CA made sure to emphasise that ETW will continue to be supported with new content, and the 1.4 patch is in development. Who knows, by the time I get around to playing through my huge backlog of games, ETW will be stable!

To CA's credit, they've offered constant updates to the fanbase as to the stuff they're fixing / improving with ETW's next patch on a very regular basis, at least they're trying.

Yeah, but most of the problems can be laid right at their feet. The memory leak and the fleet bug can all be attributed to no betatesting, while the atrocious colour schemes can be attributed to doing little research.

And there is no excuse for laziness, like cloning the line infantry unit 20 times for the factions. It is the same unit, just different colours.

[Vympel]

I don't mind that so much. The 'classic' Medieval II European factions (with the exception of some of the Greek Empire units) were big time cloned in infantry respects as well.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

For the life of me I cannot understand the 'cloning' complaint. Medieval II is arguably worse than Empire because not only did different factions share units, unit models were also shared between different unit types (e.g., Spearmen Militia and Sergeants; Armored Swordsmen and Dismounted Feudal Knights, and so on). Even Rome 'cloned' units - Barbarian Infantry were Barbarian Infantry regardless of whether you were Celts or Gauls or whatever (also, how dare they make the Celts' clothes blue and the Gauls' clothes green! How historically inaccurate!). Rome also had far simpler graphics that would have been much less time-consuming to produce than Empire's.

Empire is a bug-ridden mess, but that doesn't mean every decision the developers made is some horrible crime against nature.

[Thanas]

For the life of me I cannot understand the 'cloning' complaint. Medieval II is arguably worse than Empire because not only did different factions share units, unit models were also shared between different unit types (e.g., Spearmen Militia and Sergeants; Armored Swordsmen and Dismounted Feudal Knights, and so on). Even Rome 'cloned' units - Barbarian Infantry were Barbarian Infantry regardless of whether you were Celts or Gauls or whatever (also, how dare they make the Celts' clothes blue and the Gauls' clothes green! How historically inaccurate!). Rome also had far simpler graphics that would have been much less time-consuming to produce than Empire's.

Yes, all of that was not quite what I did expect from them. And Rome was very ahistorical - thankfully, mods fixed the majority of those mistakes.

Empire is a bug-ridden mess, but that doesn't mean every decision the developers made is some horrible crime against nature.

Yes, by all means, keep erecting that particular strawman.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Yes, all of that was not quite what I did expect from them. And Rome was very ahistorical - thankfully, mods fixed the majority of those mistakes.

Perhaps you should work in game development, then. You seem to have very exacting standards.

Yes, by all means, keep erecting that particular strawman.

It was hyperbole. Every time Empire comes up, it seems people are incapable of focusing on the game's actual flaws and instead blow it up as the worst piece of trash on the market. The fact that the game has so many flaws makes it particularly hilarious.

[Thanas]

Yes, all of that was not quite what I did expect from them. And Rome was very ahistorical - thankfully, mods fixed the majority of those mistakes.

Perhaps you should work in game development, then. You seem to have very exacting standards.

If by exacting standards you mean "not make things up", then yes, they are exacting. It is not as if they are necessary for game balance either way.

Yes, by all means, keep erecting that particular strawman.

It was hyperbole. Every time Empire comes up, it seems people are incapable of focusing on the game's actual flaws and instead blow it up as the worst piece of trash on the market. The fact that the game has so many flaws makes it particularly hilarious.

When going into specifics, I pointed out two specific bugs which ruined many a game for me. And when I created that fake announcement, I first pointed out the bugs. So I do not know who you are debating against in this threads, but it sure as hell isn't me.

[Commander 598]

Faces are so very low on my give a shit meter. ETW gets tongue lashings for it because they hyped up having a shit load of different faces.

[Samuel]

And what is up with the video? What the heck is the burning of the ships representing?

Promise you won't kill me when I explain it?
Spoiler

They are invading England and he is replicating the move made by Cortez.

Yes I know it is retarded and ignores both history and common sense, but I'm pretty sure that is what they were aiming for.

[Thanas]

Hmmmm....alright. It actually does make sense in a kind of "hey, this is what you can do as a player - change history" way. Which makes the victory over Russia comment way more logical as well.

It still ignores common sense, as you said - because burning a ship that cost as much as a division and way more than your entire field artillery is not really that smart, especially if you have hypothetical supply lines to guard....

[frogcurry]

And there is no excuse for laziness, like cloning the line infantry unit 20 times for the factions. It is the same unit, just different colours.

I'm surprised your head didn't explode at the very first Total War (Shogun), in which every unit was exactly the same for all factions, and which gave the world the Kensai Sword Saint unit (an expensive unit consisting of just one man- who was capable of cutting through entire 60-man units of Yuri Ashigaru with ease). And which was also the purest and best of all the Total War games (if only the antiquated sprite soldier graphics didn't make me laugh and cry when I try and play it again today).

Back to the OP topic; this announcement was inevitable when they ended the game at 1800 in the original release, and immensely sucky. They damn well should get the first game sorted and add the promised multi-player strategy game option they promised.

[Thanas]

And there is no excuse for laziness, like cloning the line infantry unit 20 times for the factions. It is the same unit, just different colours.

I'm surprised your head didn't explode at the very first Total War (Shogun), in which every unit was exactly the same for all factions, and which gave the world the Kensai Sword Saint unit (an expensive unit consisting of just one man- who was capable of cutting through entire 60-man units of Yuri Ashigaru with ease). And which was also the purest and best of all the Total War games (if only the antiquated sprite soldier graphics didn't make me laugh and cry when I try and play it again today).

Because there have been no leaps in technology made since then and CA still has the same resources to call on while advertising "unique" units, *I'm a smarmy asshole*?

[GuppyShark]

When I jumped into this thread my response was going to be "LOL first Empire Total War expansion is about Napoleon? I AM SHOCKED AND SURPRISED."

Then I discover they've decided to try passing a mod off as a full game.

Who would even buy it? It's the same damned setting.

Screw. This.

I'm a Creative Assembly fanboy. I'll tolerate bugs and AI stupidity. I'll crank the difficulty up to 11 and still get bored crushing my way across the map.

No other series has filled this niche, but even I have limits.

[Vympel]

If it's priced as a full game, they can fuck off. If it's half-price, then it's virtually an expansion pack anyway, so who cares?

[Raesene]

The theme is not really a big surprise
Three individual campaigns ? That sounds like they are repeating the MII:TW add-od strategy. Not a bad idea, that way more people can find their favorite - but hopefully this time they make the add-on features also usable in the basic game's full campaign -that irked me in Kingdoms.

I'll wait and see, it's still some time left until 02/2010.

[Lord Woodlouse]

This game is what l've wanted since the day the first Total War game came out, so l don't really bloody care how cheap CA are being. l'll buy it.

[Darth Wong]

Even those who buy it probably have to wonder how long they can get away with this shit. They're taking their customers for granted, or so it seems.

[Stark]

To be honest I think everyone who's going to stop already has. Surely the only people buying CA games now are the diehards?

[Thanas]

^Sales are way too high for that.

[Stark]

Well by 'diehards' I include 'genre diehards' who buy every single strategy game ever regardless of quality and 'CA diehards' who are still convinced the Total War formula is fresh.

I mean, Civ 12 sold really well too, and I really doubt they're pulling in new players.

The idea that intelligent people are still buying the game out of some kind of hope they'll improve sees unlikely. I prefer the fat nerd brandslave idiot hypothesis.

[Thanas]

That doesn't work - ETW sold too many units for that.