Empire: Total War

[Tigranes]

...only on steam, so I was finally forced to download that crap.

 

I wasn't disappointed, it lags everywhere and takes 30 minutes to START downloading the demo. Then I clicked on the name while downloading and it tried to run the demo that was still downloading so I turned it off but it froze so I had to kill it then I ran it again and nwo it's "updating" and I don't know if that's downloading or screwing up so I'm trying to delete it all and start again but it's frozen again and I had yoghurt for breakfast.

 

Guh.

 

Impressions? I'm sure I read somewhere some of us already had it.

[Laozi]

Do you get to play as a girl?

[Niten_Ryu]

Great demo.

 

2 Tutorials - One for land battle and one for sea. Fun and easy to learn.

 

2 Scenarios - Land battle is Battle of Brandywine September 11 1777. You play as British against American.

For my few year old rig the battle was smooth. There's plenty of options to get performance just right. I managed to keep most options high quality and still get good framerate. Battle is set on normal difficulty so depending on your Total war experience, it might be bit too easy. My total losses were 312 men on first try and it inclused me not knowing about enemy locations of abilities. Still won the battle but got only ranked "close vicory". I didn't think it was that close but I guess Empire ranks battles differently then previous games. overall fun little fight and I'm not a fan of that perioid combat, uniforms, strategies or tactics. Game is still fun enough for me to ignore all those negatives

 

2nd scenatio is probably just random sea battle. Your 6 ships (iirc) against 2 french fleets of 4 ships. None of my ship sank but lost about 120 men. 1 enemy ship surrendered and rest were buring or sinking. I think I got "victory" for that. Sea battle was bit more sluggish (dunno if it's water shader or just too many ships with full crews) but still playable.

 

I wasn't sure if I'd get full game right away but after demo I'll buy it as soon as it's released.

[Kaftan Barlast]

It took me three attempts before I beat the Brandywine scenario, it was tricky to get the hang of how to get your troops to align properly. The first two times they did stuff like line up with their backs to the enemy and other random stupidity. But the enemy AI did some surpising moves, it split its forces and encircled me while I was encircling them in order to avoid their heavy artillery.

 

 

Ive got the game pre-ordered and ready to go on Steam.

[Gorgon]

DRM nonsense level is how high..

 

I might pick it up when it's out in stores, but only if I get to install it as many times as I want.

Edited February 24, 2009 by Gorgon

[Monte Carlo]

overall fun little fight and I'm not a fan of that perioid combat, uniforms, strategies or tactics. Game is still fun enough for me to ignore all those negatives

 

I hope I feel the same, as this historical period holds little or no interest for me whatsoever and naval combat? Meh.

 

My love of the TW gaming experience, however, is epic. So I'm in a difficult spot, I'd rather they'd have remade Shogun using a new engine.

 

Cheers

MC

[Kaftan Barlast]

You Japanified heathens, I think TW has finally hit home with this time period.

 

 

 

But unfortunantly, Steam is mandatory and with that comes a limited number of installs.

[Gorgon]

Surely they will make an over the counter version.

[Zoma]

Great demo. 'Cept one problem:

 

The load times is ridiculously LONG.

[Tigranes]

Yeah, an over the counter version that will require Steam, though.

 

I think.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Yup, the retail version comes bundled with steam. So, the only way to avoid it is to use a cracked/hacked version which allows you to circumvent steam. All the major steam games like L4D are available with no steam cracks.

[ryan@seganerds]

(Demo Spoilers)

 

I had allot of fun with the Demo, I beat the brandy wine battle on the second attempt as the first attempt I tried to cross the river and the wrong point, realised I couldnt but their cannons had already ruined me.

 

Second go I rallied at the correct point, charged my horse across and took out some small groups hiding in the trees, some came forward, i pulled my horses back across the river and lined up ALL my foot soldiers and took the enemy out easy enough... Marched all the way up to where a small settlement area was... had an epic battle, really fun stuff... The enemy AI is much better in this game then the previous games I think.

 

The ship battles were also really great, again won on my second go... just due to bad tactics in the first go. I love watching the enemies ships getting blown to bits by my cannons, the chunks of ship falling off, men juming over board and ships singing and rolling is fantastic.

 

My biggest problem was the loading times, man they took ages... Even after changing my settings it took a good while to load.

 

Overall enjoyed the demo, will buy!

[Rosbjerg]

Yeah loading times were horrible .. I have a rather annoying problem with flickering graphics as well, it stops whenever I change my resolution, but combined with the time it takes to change anything, it's like 25 minutes for me, from the time I double click the exe files, to the time I'm actually playing.

 

I'm not a big fan of this era either, I would prefer to play Shogun in an updated engine.. but I have to say that the ship battles were really fun, which I didn't think .. they are much harder to do, because the ships are so slow and big, but once you shred and gut a ship-of-the-line with 4 full volleys from both sides - you feel really good.

[Musopticon?]

I'll wait for a more interesting era personally. Truth to be told, I haven't even played Kingdoms yet, so I'm not making the jump anytime soon, heh.

 

Honestly though, I think this age is a bit more interesting than some of the scenarios in Kingdoms(England, meh), but the ship combat focus hasnt sold itself to me just yet and I'm still a bit angry over how much of a Rome remodeling job the previous game was. A useless one, since we have Crusader:Total War anyway.

[Kaftan Barlast]

I dont get it. How in the bleedin hell can you NOT consider the 1700s an interesting era?! I would rate the different settings:

 

 

Samurais: seriously not cool, didnt even play it.

Medieval: quite uncool, that period of time is an utterly worn out setting

Rome: Bloody awesome, doesnt get much better (my fav of the tw games)

Medival 2: a polished up RTW in a boring, overused setting (great game though)

Empire: The era that spawned wargames as we know it and the most important period in european history. AWESOME. ..and theyd better make an expansion about the 30 years war and the 1600s in general

[Rosbjerg]

Yeah the Medieval setting is overused - so is WW2 and Veitnam.. Still some of the best games I've played were placed in those time periods (except Vietnam).

 

My biggest grief with the 17th-18th century is that the combat is fairly straight forward ..

 

While in the medieval periods you had wild experimentation with combat techniques and technologies, it was like warfare was evolving - in the imperial age it had reached it's peak efficiency (before armoured vehicles entered the fray). As such I think it's a very uninteresting age, combat wise..

 

But I'll still love it, I'm sure - because I haven't been dissapointed by a TW game yet.

[Gorgon]

Do all gun units still have auto face enabled so they end up facing a million different directions after the first engagement.

[Gorgon]

I agree that on the combat mechanics level, everything depends on line of sight. Aside from the cavalry theres one infantry type of different variations. I enjoyed having archers that can shoot over my heavy cavalry shock troop's heads, dual purpose heavy infantry equipped with bows, Pikemen you have to be quick to outmaneuver etc.

 

On the other hand, historically, politically, it's a lot more interesting, and a 68 gun 3 sail ship of the line is about a million times cooler than a tireme or a schooner.

Edited February 24, 2009 by Gorgon

[Kaftan Barlast]

The finished game will have grenadiers, mortars and howitzers; all units that lob shells over your own troops and down on the enemy

 

 

Do all gun units still have auto face enabled so they end up facing a million different directions after the first engagement.

 

 

Yes, they do and its quite annoying. The game should have the old RTS fucntion that you can decide which direction your troops will face by clicking, holding the button and moving your mouse to set their direction.

Edited February 24, 2009 by Kaftan Barlast

[Gorgon]

Especially bad if you are, say, defending a small hill and have crammed every foot of it with gun infantry. The old Total war had a hold position command that somehow disappeared. Even if all my gunners couldn't shoot, it was still better than having them pull themselves out of position, greatly decreasing their overall effectiveness. In Medieval it was too much hassle to have more than a few gun units to manage at the same time, you would get too annoyed at your own AI cramping your style.

Edited February 24, 2009 by Gorgon

[Purkake]

The demo is pretty cool, sure the load times are a bit long, but it's not too bad.

 

I really like the sea combat, it has a lot of depth, but it's pretty simple to control. It's really cool that ships get dynamically damaged, people die and sails get ripped.

 

I don't really like the gun/cannon combat, I also didn't like it in Medieval. I liked Rome: Total War the most, because it had all the cool obscure units and archery is much more fun than firefights. I also don't like gigantic battles, it feels like I'm not in control when there are thousands of people on the battlefield.

[Kaftan Barlast]

I love cannons so much I made my own

 

 

the texturing/shading is a bit dodgy, I ran out of time

 

 

 

Seriously, my Grandpa was an engineer at Bofors, dad used to work for FOI, so Im geneticly inclined to love things that go BOOM!

[Tigranes]

Finally finished downloading the demo today, I wasn't impressed.

 

I read a lot of impressions on various forums, and while some lauded the 'improved' AI others were skeptical that it was much different. Well, in the land battle, you are separated by a creek that you cross on the WEST side, while the American army is on the EAST. So:

 

---------------enemy----

--crossing---------------

-----------you------------

 

Well, you cross, and you find ONE unit of light infantry hiding in the woods and coming out to get ya. Yeah, outnumbered twenty to one. I didn't even notice until my hussars just walked through them. It happens AGAIN a little later. The enemy hardly moves, or just turns to face you.

 

 

---------------enemy----

---------------------------

-----you------------ec---

---------------------------

--crossing----------------

 

And then, you are moving slowly in an eastward arc, and you notice 'ec' (enemy cannons) separated from the enemy and CLOSER TO YOU. Except the enemy doesn't seem to care. I send some hussars down to get rid of them. The enemy responds pretty slow (i.e. AFTER you start hitting the cannons, not when they see the hussars emerge from the woods), and then only sends a tiny unit of dragoons - i.e. blatantly insufficient. so, cannons gone.

 

I eventually have to walk right up to the enemy to engage battle. They keep formation reasonably (as they did in MTW2), but I notice the general unit is STILL by the creek facing the other way, never having moved the whole battle. So he's basically a screen away from the battle smoking a pipe looking out the countryside while his army dies behind him. Cool.

 

I fail to see how the AI has improved in any way, but I will give it another go later and see if that one was just borked up.

 

The sea battle I lost, because I didn't have a clue what was happening, but sea battles have always confused me, so that's probably my fault. The graphics are nice. The ships are hard to maneuvre, but I guess that is realistic.

 

edit: oh, you wanted to know something OTHER than AI? Graphics are very nice. I played on high-ish settings and the 'persistent grass' makes the ground look very nice, units are good, smoke, etc. Didn't look too closely at the much vaunted ragdolls and such. Basic mechanics like movement, formations and whatnot haven't really changed, which is both good and bad.

[Gorgon]

The sea battle I lost, because I didn't have a clue what was happening, but sea battles have always confused me, so that's probably my fault. The graphics are nice. The ships are hard to maneuvre, but I guess that is realistic.

 

Sea battles with wind powered ships have always been messy due to the unpredictable environment. In a 1v1 ship battle, the ship with the wind in her favor can engage and break off faster than the opponent, that is a huge advantage. Disable the enemy's rudder or mast and you can strafe it to pieces from where the broadsides can't hit you.

 

Lines of battle were the order of the day for the largest warships, basically a gunnery contest to see who could cause the most damage in the shortest amount of time.

 

 

Imperial Glory, an otherwise rather buggy dame of the same type handled naval combat excellently up to about 5-6 or more ships total were engaged, then it all became too much up to chance, as you couldn't hope to order them all around at the same time.

Edited February 27, 2009 by Gorgon

[Purkake]

The sea battle I lost, because I didn't have a clue what was happening, but sea battles have always confused me, so that's probably my fault. The graphics are nice. The ships are hard to maneuvre, but I guess that is realistic.

 

Sea battles with wind powered ships have always been messy due to the unpredictable environment. In a 1v1 ship battle, the ship with the wind in her favor can engage and break off faster than the opponent, that is a huge advantage. Disable the enemy's rudder or mast and you can strafe it to pieces from where the broadsides can't hit you.

 

Lines of battle were the order of the day for the largest warships, basically a gunnery contest to see who could cause the most damage in the shortest amount of time.

 

 

Imperial Glory, an otherwise rather buggy dame of the same type handled naval combat excellently up to about 5-6 or more ships total were engaged, then it all became too much up to chance, as you couldn't hope to order them all around at the same time.

 

 

It's funny that so many people lost the sea battle. I have played some TW before, but I have never been all that good. I did the sea tutorial and then beat the sea battle 2 times without too much trouble. Weird.