New Empire: Total War expansion announced.

[GuppyShark]

Who are you referring to?

[Vympel]

Judging from what I've heard, it seems like E:TW might finally be ready for stable play. However, I'm still currently playing Fallout 3 through (now that I have all the expansions, I had to start from the damn beginning since I lost my HD) and I can't believe how unbelievably long the game is now with all this extra content. By the time I finish Operation Anchorage, The Pitt, Mothership Zeta and Point Lookout - and then go back to finishing the main plot (up to Little Lamplight currently) and then play on to Broken Steel, who the fuck knows E:TW might be up to 1.6 or 1.7

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Who are you referring to?

The people who jump on the CA-hate bandwagon every time a TW thread crops up. Just like with Microsoft, there are legitimate reasons to be irritated with them, but none for stupid Micro$$$ith frothing.

EDIT: It's like bitching about the crappiness and general instability of Windows 98 and blaming Microsoft for it... when the latest round of fixes in a Vista service pack are released.

[RogueIce]

I would've bought ETW straight off, except I'm being cheap prudent about updating my 'new in 2003!' computer. So whenever I get around to getting a new graphics card I'll also get ETW.

Good to know it's getting pretty well patched up. I figured it would, as I do have faith in (at least) the big name games to probably be made working...eventually. Although from what I read during early release, I still think RTW archers shooting each other in the back is funnier than any problems Empire had.

[Dartzap]

I would've bought ETW straight off, except I'm being cheap prudent about updating my 'new in 2003!' computer. So whenever I get around to getting a new graphics card I'll also get ETW.

Good to know it's getting pretty well patched up. I figured it would, as I do have faith in (at least) the big name games to probably be made working...eventually. Although from what I read during early release, I still think RTW archers shooting each other in the back is funnier than any problems Empire had.

Oh no, musketeers still continue to do that! Apperently they just cant wait for a clear line of fire!

[Samuel]

Historically that was a real problem. Of course I don't think realism is the reason it exists in the game.

How the hell do archers shoot each other in the back? Don't they fire at an angle?

[RogueIce]

Historically that was a real problem. Of course I don't think realism is the reason it exists in the game.

How the hell do archers shoot each other in the back? Don't they fire at an angle?

As I recall from the readme file, the collision detection was too large, so when the back rank fired it was as if the arrows had hit archers in front of them. I don't really know though, since I had only bought it with the Gold Edition and never played the unpatched version.

[Dartzap]

And to be fair to the line infrantry in ETW- once you research Fire-By-Rank, its much less of an issue.

[CmdrWilkens]

I would've bought ETW straight off, except I'm being cheap prudent about updating my 'new in 2003!' computer. So whenever I get around to getting a new graphics card I'll also get ETW.

Good to know it's getting pretty well patched up. I figured it would, as I do have faith in (at least) the big name games to probably be made working...eventually. Although from what I read during early release, I still think RTW archers shooting each other in the back is funnier than any problems Empire had.

Oh no, musketeers still continue to do that! Apperently they just cant wait for a clear line of fire!

I'm going to quote John Keegan on the early years of musketry:

Gunpowder drill had an altogether different end in view. It undoubtedly originated in a natural concern of musketeers - which must have been felt by archers also (an unexplored subject) - not to wound each other while using their weapons...The musketry drill books - equivalents, in their way, of industrial safety manuals of a later age - which were widely printed from the early 17th century onward, divided the sequence into numerous precise actions - forty-seven in Maurice of Orange's drill book of 1607...

Without elaborating much further there is a reason why even today live fire exercises are held under the strictest possible security protocols and nothing will get your ass kicked faster than being careless with a live weapon. In a day and age where the machine and man were both less tested it would be shocking not to find cases of accidental discharge in to comrades.

[AniThyng]

FUck me, the damn game still crashes. The same old "during the enemies turn, crash!" bullshit.

[Gaidin]

FUck me, the damn game still crashes. The same old "during the enemies turn, crash!" bullshit.

Yea that's started happening to me. About the only way through that that I can find is to have a save game every five turns or so, and if you get one of those crashes revert back to the last save game(as opposed to the auto save) and do things slightly differently this time around.

[CmdrWilkens]

Well no crashes (I haven't had a game crash since 1.3 actually) but I'm getting really weird behavior during siege battles. I know they said there was a re-calc for defenders to be able to use the canon on settlement fortifications as their range however that fix appears to be affecting my troops when the garrison attempts to sally. I've had my Line Infantry attempt to engage at ranges against troops my 24-lb guns are just starting to engage.

[Bluewolf]

Question on ETW:

Do battles tend to end in mop up operations where your chasing around fleeling infantry like in previous games?

Anyway to be on topic: The whole "One whole one with the land" type Natives thing is so overdone it is not funny. AOE3 did it with their Warchief's expansion for example an many lesser games did it as well. It happened to the Guals in RTW as well. It is annoying as hell but nothing new.

[Steel]

Question on ETW:

Do battles tend to end in mop up operations where your chasing around fleeling infantry like in previous games?

You get the option to end the battle as soon as the enemy is routing, or to continue and manually hunt them down. In medieval 1 it was ridiculous that fleeing troops could always outrun your cavalry somehow, but now if you choose to pursue then you'll run them down in no time.

[Bluewolf]

Ah, like before then. Though useful, it was alway a bit broken how mcuh of an army you could totally destroy if you just had enough cavlary. It meant that could tear an enemy apart in no time as he could not "re-group" so to speak. MTW2 did try and add the prisoner mechanic which I liked. It was a step in the right direction.

[Adrian Laguna]

MTW2 did try and add the prisoner mechanic which I liked. It was a step in the right direction.

The prisoner mechanic existed in the first Medieval: Total War, which is why it was in the second. I found it completely useless and always executed prisoners as a matter of course.

[Vympel]

Yeah, from a gameplay perspective it was hard to justify the release of prisoners because they'd go straight back to the enemy and you'd be fighting them again next turn. However, in certain situations it might be warranted because you might need cash on hand for some reason, but that's only in the early game.

[Steel]

Actually that reminds me, RTW had a medical mechanic after battles where about 10% of your casualties would be able to fight again. I've had generals get a retinue character which says it increases the number of casualties that recover after the battle, but I've never seen a single man actually recover. My numbers on the field at the end of the battle are the same as the numbers in the report and those are the same as the numbers on the map. Is the feature actually there?

[Thanas]

^Ancillaries rarely seem to do anything in ETW as far as the battle is concerned.

Note that somehow you cannot transfer them between characters either.

[CmdrWilkens]

Ah, like before then. Though useful, it was alway a bit broken how mcuh of an army you could totally destroy if you just had enough cavalry. It meant that could tear an enemy apart in no time as he could not "re-group" so to speak. MTW2 did try and add the prisoner mechanic which I liked. It was a step in the right direction.

Except that it was historically true. Encounter battles where the armies didn't pursue had relatively low casualty counts in the pre-gunpowder days, using cavalry to pursue feeling enemies and crush them before regrouping was the only way to drive up totals above the 10% level or so. The battles of early Greece where close combat really took off in the form of phalanx warfare seldom exceeded 15% casualties even with pursuit by lightly armed troops attached to the heavy infantry.

[AniThyng]

Diplomacy does seem to make more sense now - I have had two of the smaller german states offer to capitulate and become my protectorate after I crushed their field armies and laid siege to their last territory. And (I'm prussia) Austria and Poland tend to declare war on me when they sense I am occupied in the West [usually one or the other declares on me first, then the other joins in], but agree to a status quo ante bellum peace if I beat off their attack (I lack the resources to actually take the war to their home territories yet). Then they declare war on me again after they've licked their wounds...but it certainly feels reasonable, unlike prior where countries declared war without rhyme or reason. They also tweaked it so that new factions (and old defeated factions) come back from the dead easier, which makes things more dynamic - France fell to wurtemburg and thus spawned quebec, then when I conquered france I gave it to quebec, who then lost it to britain, who then lost it to french rebels, thus bringing france back into play - again very reasonable! Good show!

[Gaidin]

Me I've run into a new problem of being annoyed by single territory nations acting like mosquitoes and declaring war and sending armies at me. So I crush them. Next thing I know everyone around me thinks I need to be held back and I'm at war with like...five nations now.

[AniThyng]

Me I've run into a new problem of being annoyed by single territory nations acting like mosquitoes and declaring war and sending armies at me. So I crush them. Next thing I know everyone around me thinks I need to be held back and I'm at war with like...five nations now.

I'm surprised you never ran into that before - it was a lot worse in 1.3, where they'll NEVER make peace with you come hell or high water. In 1.4 if the others don't really hold you any grudge they'll make peace (especially if they can't really hurt you - say, if spain went to war with me). And so far the only time the german single territory nations delcared war on me was either treaty obligations or because their army had a decent chance of making the landgrab and they were catholic (my army was busy against Austria, and my ally hannover has a large army but hasn't moved against me for no reason...yet.).

[Gaidin]

Might be because it's the first time I'm playing France with a focus on Europe instead of America. America I could always crawl over the colonies at my own pace from top to bottom. So yea while I'd get the war declarations, I'd still have them all coming from one direction I guess. Europe, I sorta bumrushed the two or three single territories to the east of France, which lead to Hannover, Austria, and Prussia not liking me. Still at war with Prussia, mainly defending just because I can't afford to attack them right now(it's depressing how much 3 stacks will dig into your taxes...for a few turns i was getting like...300 gold instead of the few thousand). Austria decided that a peace treaty was good after they left Croatia undefended and I snatched it from them. That last territory led to like...everybody on the Italian peninsula not liking me because it essentially surrounded them and they couldn't get to mainland Europe without going through me.

[PeZook]

Yeah, from a gameplay perspective it was hard to justify the release of prisoners because they'd go straight back to the enemy and you'd be fighting them again next turn. However, in certain situations it might be warranted because you might need cash on hand for some reason, but that's only in the early game.

From a gameplay perspective, releasing prisoners made it actually possible to make peace with an enemy after some years of war. It was actually pretty useful if you wanted your hands free for other purposes, and it's not like winning battles in MTW2 was hard or anything.