Empire: Total War

[Rosbjerg]

I don't know why - but I suck at handling the economy in ETW1 compared to MTW2! I have a fairly big navy, though it's not that much bigger than the French. I only have 2 armies, who aren't full (so it's much smaller then the other European armies). The rest of my settlements are guarded by either nothing or a few militamen. Still I'm losing almost 5000 coins a turn now and I had to cheat in order not to go totally bankrupt.

 

If I sold ALL my armies I would have a positive income. I keep updating the income buildings and taxes are set as high as they can.. no avail though. It's hurting my expansion so hard that I've given up on going to india and just focus on North America - and now total war has broken out in Europe and every major power is participating... I'm doomed!

 

Guess I have to learn the quirks of this game..

[Morgoth]

Does anyone else have the problem that the sound level is too low? Marching steps, gunfire, voice are all too quiet. I can barely hear these unless I zoom very close in. I remeber I didn't have that issue with Rome.

[Rosbjerg]

As far as I know it's a rare, but acknowledged, issue - CA talked about fixing it in the next patch, I believe, on the TW center forums.

[Kaftan Barlast]

I don't know why - but I suck at handling the economy in ETW1 compared to MTW2! I have a fairly big navy, though it's not that much bigger than the French. I only have 2 armies, who aren't full (so it's much smaller then the other European armies). The rest of my settlements are guarded by either nothing or a few militamen. Still I'm losing almost 5000 coins a turn now and I had to cheat in order not to go totally bankrupt.

 

If I sold ALL my armies I would have a positive income. I keep updating the income buildings and taxes are set as high as they can.. no avail though. It's hurting my expansion so hard that I've given up on going to india and just focus on North America - and now total war has broken out in Europe and every major power is participating... I'm doomed!

 

Guess I have to learn the quirks of this game..

 

 

I dont know if it works wen everyone is fighting but I captured a lot of trading ports, which allowed me to have like 8 trade routes each bringing in around 600 gold. You can also replace the ministers in goverment to get cheaper upkeep on your troops. And have you sent trade ships to india/south america/africa? Those make alot of cash.

[Rosbjerg]

I could really use the manuel.. I just found out about trade ships and what they do (I thought they were cheaper war ships) - I haven't used them yet.. so I'll try to see if setting up tradeposts helps with my economy.

[Kaftan Barlast]

I have the Steam version so I didnt get the manual either, but its word-of-mouth is that it doesnt actually describe the game in anything close to detail. CA apparently meant the tutorial/helper to be enough

[Tigranes]

Okay, left the patching on while at work and finally got to play a bit now.

 

I started Britain at H/H, because I heard they get a lot of fun units and I generally don't like VH in TW games, because in campaign they just spam you with full stack after full stack making it very weary and the battles get silly too.

 

Diplomacy looks a lot more sensible so far, though I haven't really tested it. Trade agreements, military access and the like. I gave Spain some gifts and set up trade to deter France from trying a 2v1 on me.

 

Prussia attacked Austria, my ally, so I thought I'd be honourable and send a small expeditionary party through Hannover and aid the cause, and thus see some battles. A general, cannon, and four line infantry. Well turns out the Austrians weren't really interested in actually fighting (either that, or they were fighting the Prussians on their own soil - couldn't really see), and I had to fend off a Prussian force of equal size and makeup. Good test for the AI.

 

I got a farmlands-ish area with those low brick walls, so I laid my line infantry along them, and cannons on the right side where there's a gap. The AI decided to come straight at me for the most part; on the left flank their line infantry were soundly beaten as I had the advantage of cover. On the right though, their unit of pikemen rushed over the cover to strike at my riflemen; and when I retaliated in melee there was some pathing confusion due to the number of perpendicular walls, and they all ended up somewhat in the middle of no-man's land slashing at each other. That was bad, because the AI's surviving riflemen had taken up to one of those walls and began shooting at my stranded unit. I swung round my left flank to counter, and eventually won the battle, but lost about half of my army.

 

Subsequently a larger Prussian force popped up and I had to retreat, but then a smaller force attacked me in the same turn and I was forced to fight. Weakened and surrounded I couldn't do much, and the expeditionary force perished.

 

It's hard to judge the AI based on this, but it was nice to see they weren't being completely moronic, yet. It's only 1705, we'll see.

 

On other things - loading times are pretty nice and faster than demo; I like what they've done on the campaign map side with ministers and research and provinces and everything, though I noticed they changed some campaign map hotkeys around for no reason.

 

Edit: The manual is very thin and pretty useless, in the trend of manuals nowadays. The map is your standard brown paper map.

[Zoma]

There goes the old skool days where manuals were 500+ pages long.

 

I feel old already.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Since the game is so friggin' huge, I thought it would be a good idea to start a Wiki Guide http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Empire:_Total_War so if youve got some aspect of the game all figured out, please contribute

[Morgoth]

This game has some serious sound issues. It often fades out, then I hear nothing, the marching steps are delayed...oh well. Why are they using this totally crappy RAD audio engine anyway? It's totally obsolete. I better wait for a patch or two before I start the grand campaign. I also miss Van Dycks superior music tracks.

[Hurlshort]

There is a ton to learn in this game. I had my first naval battle. It seemed to be going well, but two of my ships sank rather quickly even though they were no longer under fire. I guess they had more damage than I realized, I'll have to figure out how to watch for that. I'm playing Britain as well, I'm sending a pretty sizable group over the the America's to tame the wilds of Canada, and I'm sending another army over to help with the vanquishing of the Mughal's.

[Kaftan Barlast]

I captured two Danish ships, but when the battle was over the ships were nowhere to be found, does anyone have an idea where they went?

[Enoch]

Now downloading. Up to 5% at about 770K/sec.

[Rosbjerg]

I captured two Danish ships, but when the battle was over the ships were nowhere to be found, does anyone have an idea where they went?

 

I read something about a small button and the lower right corner after the battle, where you can choose to acquire the ships - after that you need to sail to port and recruit some sailors for them.

[Tigranes]

Woop, just crashed.

 

1715 or so. Stuck with Austria in a war against France but just like with Prussia nobody else except me is doing anything and France is coming after me like a whore. The Dutch are blocking some trade routes, but you'd think the original aggressor and the guys with the land border would do more than me. That's really retarded - we'll see if the AI keeps doing that.

 

Having a hard time because I still don't know how to do naval battles. The ships REALLY chug along except for certain moments when I catch the wind and sprinkle some magic on the sails, they can't turn, the formation screws up completely if they run into a ship and never recover, and I can't tell how much damage each volley is doing. So I just circle round and round, and lose.

 

Going around France occupying farms and towns since Paris comes up with that massive peasant-spawn. The Land AI is pretty decent so far - I keep trying to get them into cul-de-sacs but they would crash into the *side* of that cul-de-sac. The one Indian battle I had was idiotic though, with their units all miles apart from each other doing nothing.

[Gorgon]

'Never mind the tactics, just go straight at them'

 

Lord Nelson.

[Kaftan Barlast]

All I do in sea battles is the old and tried tactic of sailing in a line past the enemy fleet, firing the guns and then turn in a wide circle and do it all over again as descrived here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_of_battle works every time unless heavily outnumbered.

 

 

As Sweden, I captured Norway which caused Denmark, Poland-Lithuania and Russia to declare war on me. This however, proved to be utter silliness on their part as I had two full armies of my brave Caroleans. Army group West marched south over

Edited March 7, 2009 by Kaftan Barlast

[Tigranes]

Kaftan: I try, but even that seems too hard for me with the chuggy slow movement.

 

My British H/H campaign continues... after losing two half-stack fleets I finally achieved superiority with some Ships of the Line and a whole lot of brigs, and just blockaded the French ports. With free reign over the sea I was able to land small forces all over France and capture towns and resource centres, while keeping a half-stack near Paris to deal with any expeditions out of there. With the Hurons trying to pillage in Canada and Prussia still nominally at war with me, though, that was about as far as I could go without bankrupting myself (good to see economy is harder now). So after a year or so of that I offered peace and demanded a low-level tech, which the French accepted - good sign, reasonable offer is okay'd. I had lots of troops left over so I just carted them over to Prussia, probably to do similar and get peace. I hate being at war without actually being at war.

 

The AI seems pretty passive though. Spain's taken Portugal but I haven't seen any full scale wars break out (it's 1717). The diplomacy also seems to be broken on tech trading, it won't give anything. That i can live with though, since the AI actually seems pretty decent so far.

[Rosbjerg]

Guess there are some factors that play into it. The French have tried to invade England, along with it's ally Spain - I managed to repel the attack. I'm hanging on by my finger nails and I only survived by doing some really risky moves - one was talking as many of the French colonies in North America, with too few forces though and that ended up costing me alot of money, which I didn't have - but luckily it got me a peace treaty.

 

Then I invaded Cuba to get the Spanish to back off. The Spanish have totally decimated my fleets, so I sailed an entire force over in one brig.

 

I find the AI attack when I least wants it too and where it hurts the most - maybe I'm just "lucky", but I think its smarter than in the previous games.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Im contemplating invading America with a swedish expeditionary force, but I suspect the game will auto-rape me when the American Revlution breaks out. Or is the united states just another faction with no special scripted benefits?

[mrmud]

The campaign AI is horrendous as usual. I just wish there would be a single release of a TW game that was actually fun on release and that didnt need to be fixed by the players.

 

From what I have heard, the americas is the only way of meeting an aggressive AI as apparently the natives are quite numerous.

[Pidesco]

I buckled and ordered this, for 30

[Kaftan Barlast]

I buckled and ordered this, for 30

[Pidesco]

I have, like, 200

[Monte Carlo]

Am displaying epic self-discipline and cool judgement.

 

Have other games on the go, so am waiting to pick this up when it's patched, cheaper, de-Steamed and modded to fix the AI in the way only the hardcore TW modders can.

 

It's not easy, but (grits teeth) it's the only way to fly.

 

Cheers

MC