"Total War - Empire" Topic

Moves the total war series into the 18th century.

link

OK, I know Wikipedia may not be the best source, but I am limited as to what I can access at work.
Apparently this is about to be released, and a playable demo is available.

Has anyone given it a go?

Nope, but looking forward to it. I noted that it is supposed to be released next week.

I have the demo, the demo it self is not very good, you have one naval battle, that is super easy, and the same with the land batte, BUT thanks to moders the demo is quite good, the have unlocked lots of stuff, they ai still isn't very good.

I love the Total War franchise. I have them all and replay them often. They continue to get better and I am looking forward to this one. My only concern is that in the movies the emphasis appears to be on melee and not on forming firing lines. Hopefully a firing line will be more important the Hollywood mad dash to cross bayonets.

Even if it is setup for total cold steel. I am sure modders will have that fixed in a few months.

From playing the demo, a few well placrd volly's will take out a charging cavalry units

I tried to charge a battery, but got to close to the infantry and 3 units opend fire my 45 cavalty troopers all died.

A well placed charge by grenadiers or dragoons can do some damige, but guns deffanertly kills more, a 4 gun batteri fireing canister can often take out a whole unit with just one volley.

The reason the franchise is good is because of the mods. Rome Total Realism and Europa Barbarorum really made Rome : Total War enjoyable. I haven't seen anything comparable for Medieval2; some of the ones with promise are really buggy. The base game has become pretty blah otherwise.

That's all good news. I was frankly worried that volley fire wouldn't be effective.

Thanks!
D~

A single unit dosn't do that much damige, but if you mass a few, then vollys will take out whole units easy.

Cannon fireing canister can take out 200+ soldiers during a battle, So they to do play a big role in the game,
Solid shot alone dosn't do that much, so I useualy mass 3-4 batteries if you get them to fire on the same unit, they will cut down the unit in just a few ahots.
Flank fire with solid shot is a big killer

I got the whole game last night, and it was a PAIN to get.
First you have to download 15gig from steam, the problem was that EVERYBODY was trying to download it at the same time, so it took 3 hours just to get the download going, then it took 12 hours to download the game.

BUT it didn't work, and after reading and asking on the net for most of yesterday I found out that I was actualy missing a gig of the game, something had gotten ed during the download. So now I had to download the game all over again, and finnaly at 2300 last night I got to test the game, and finnaly it worked

got it on DVD, only took 15 mins to load…

very pretty, played a couple of one off battles, detail very nice.

just wished it went to Napoleonic period, but in the naval part you can have steam powered ships as well, very strange.

This weekend is a gonner then!! :o)

Steam is a right pain in the arse, isn't it? I honestly cannot see the point in it, other than just to dick with us.

Be warned, the game currently has some serious bugs. There's a particularly nasty one that eats your save games. The first patch is out already, and addresses some issues, but the save game one isn't fixed yet, so you could lose hours and hours of progress if you're unlucky.

Aren't PC games wonderful?

Other than that, I'm loving it. The AI isn't brilliant, but it so far for me hasn't been quite as crazy as in some of the old games. Besides, I need all the help I can get. I like the changes to how research works, with a Civilization-style tech tree and choice of research projects (rather than tech appearing merely as a process of buildings constructed, as in the old games). One cool thing is that the more progress you make in the "enlightenment" field, the more "Clamour for reform" rears its ugly head, making keeping order more difficult and revolution more likely.

You can stay safely out of the Age of Reason by not building universities and avoiding the 'Enlightenment' techs like the plague, but if you do that you won't get to play with all the modern snazzy toys they bring. I quite like that.

Been playing as the Brits and have surprisingly managed 50 or so years without a war with France! Woot! John Churchill in my universe is famous for clearing out the Caribbean pirate havens and capturing Georgia and Florida, he never got to go to Blenheim.

Those pesky "Thirteen Colonies" fellas wanted me to nick the Cherokee lands for them (and I thought I'd better go for it, as the Frogs were casting their hungry gaze in that direction too), but the Cherokee proved uncomfortably difficult to subdue (and there seemed to be an almost endless supply of them). After a long and bloody war in which Savannah changed hands five times, we finally gave them what for, and they now toil on our tobacco plantations. That'll learn 'em.

Now I've begun the long process of turning the Indian sub-continent into a cricket-playing nation. Started at the bottom and worked up, pinching Ceylon from the Dutch. The Marathas took care of Mysore and my Portugee allies in Goa, and now I'm squaring up with them for control of central India. It's going well so far, fingers crossed.

Great fun. Lost the weekend to it, unfortunately. I'm going to have to watch that. A bit addictive, to say the least.

Oh, and Donald, in my experience of a few days playing the game, I don't think you need to worry too much about the melee. Enemy units with ranged weapons tend to march into range and then halt to exchange fire with you. It's only troops without ranged attacks such as some Indian and Native American infantry, and cavalry units that insist on settling it with cold steel all the time.

And with a well-placed line of infantry they often never get to make contact anyway (especially when you have developed the more advanced musketry drills).

I'm not a huge fan of the naval battles yet, probably because I keep getting beat.

bit miffed that when the 13 decided to come back to the fold, all of their armies decided to evaporate.

I've pretty much given up on it, actually. The game is so bugged and half-finished as to be hardly worth playing.

Two patches in and it is still randomly crashing and eating saved games. Not to mention the million and one gameplay issues. Shame on Creative Assembly for releasing an unfinished game like this. Shame on them!

I think I shall put it up and try it again later. See how it runs after six months worth of weekly patches have been installed.

(I actually like the naval battles, and have won more than I've lost.)

After the second patch, I can't play it any more, I get a bluse screen on start up and the pc restarts it self

Hmm, I bought it 3 weeks ago and Ive not seen any of the bugs described (at least so far).

Been playing the Maharatas in the Grand Campaign and thats fun. Have subdued all of India except Sri Lanka – oh and I've just invaded Portugal which seems to have made me very popular with most of Europe! THe Mughals were problematic.