Empire Total War, Again

[Faeelin]

Having played a bit since the old board crashed, I withdraw my opinion and reccommend not buying this steaming pile.

[Weatherman]

What don't you like about it?

[Faeelin]

The AI is retarded. You'll see enemy units that route by running through your fortress, for instance.

In campaign mode, things are truly awful. The AI never launches amphibious assaults overseas; the major nations never attack you, leaving France to be crushed by...  Bavaria.

etc.

[Vince]

So it's pretty much the Total War standard AI?   

[Fate]

The AI will never perform a naval invasion. Even MTW2 could do that. Hello, Paradox. :'(

VH/VH still makes the game interesting. Native Americans become genetically engineered super soldiers capable of decimating legions with a mere army of 600 bowmen.

Now I can't find  my Palin avatar...  >

[Josephus]

I will say this: I've got new respect for the Paradox forum.

I'm kind of lost in this game. I've never played previous TW incarnations; and the manual for this game was sparse, to say the least.

I found a forum (twcenter.net) for this game and...oi. The moderator wants all questions in one thread! So theres this huge 8 page thread already, mostly filled with unanswered questions. It's insane.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=233257

[Evil Spock]

I was right in staying clear of this one. The platinum edition in a year or two plus mods will make this thing playable.

[Cecil]

The AI will never perform a naval invasion. Even MTW2 could do that. Hello, Paradox. :'(

VH/VH still makes the game interesting. Native Americans become genetically engineered super soldiers capable of decimating legions with a mere army of 600 bowmen.

Now I can't find  my Palin avatar...  >

I think that has something to do with the fact that the bows that are used in the game arent exactly the american native version but rather something better than the longbow. They have amazing range and power.

[BVN]

I think that has something to do with the fact that the bows that are used in the game arent exactly the american native version but rather something better than the longbow. They have amazing range and power.

Yes. I was struggling against American natives, while my difficulty settings for battles are on 'easy'.

Hey don't give me that look, I'm still learning the game...

[Tamas]

Been playing as the Dutch, decided to attack India so Spain and other european majors have some time to prepare. 1900 hindus defeated my 700 colonial soldiers. Was a nice battle.

I think our problems (because my enthusiasm is also much less then pre-release and initially) are from the fact that we are now used to heavily patched and modded MTW2 and RTW. I mean, this 1.00 ETW is eons better than the 1.00 of those previous two, especially AI wise. Yet, it feels something is missing. Namely challening European wars.

[Kleves]

Has anyone else noticed that Austrian line infantry units are bigger than other nations'? Everyone else seems to have 80 men to a line unit on the default unit-size settings, while the Austrians seem to have 100.

[Fate]

The AI is not better than vanilla MTW2. THERE ARE NO NAVAL INVASIONS.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Been playing as the Dutch, decided to attack India so Spain and other european majors have some time to prepare. 1900 hindus defeated my 700 colonial soldiers. Was a nice battle.

I think our problems (because my enthusiasm is also much less then pre-release and initially) are from the fact that we are now used to heavily patched and modded MTW2 and RTW. I mean, this 1.00 ETW is eons better than the 1.00 of those previous two, especially AI wise. Yet, it feels something is missing. Namely challening European wars.

I don't know man....I don't recall having the stability problems with RTW and M2TW v1.0 like I do with this one.  I can live with shitty AI, superhuman Indians (feather versions, not dot versions  ), and the engine or whatever badly needing to be optimized.  What I don't like is the random freezing and crashing that happens combined with the corrupted save file issue.  I was going to whine about something else, but now I've forgotten.

Edit:  Oh more things:  The fact that this game, for the moment, is almost completely unmoddable by someone who doesn't know what to do with a hex editor, etc, unless they start using these homemade tools (so much for this being the most mod friendly game yet, at least at this point).  The musket fire from line troops sounds like shitty fireworks.  The dumbfuck "Special Forces" gimmick, and now CA "requesting" that the TWC mods remove the instructions for unlocking them (it's a matter of deleting one file in one of the packs.  I saved the info if anyone is interested...the TWC mods have always been little bitches* like that, I assure you, so I saved that post immediately).

*Probably too harsh, but damn, they'll roll over for anything CA wants and they tend to be really lame about warnings and such.  When I was one there, someone in their stupid little government they have set up wanted to have minimum numbers of infractions for the moderators (I only gave out 1 in like 6 months or something, which was incredibly low, so I assume this was directed toward me).

[Tamas]

I haven't had any crash so far with the game. And yes, true, no naval invasion.
However, no kamikaze siege towers, or passive AI who never attacks so you can cannon it to oblivion (remember that from vanilla MTW2? )


Somebody  (maybe on Languish?) told he is introducing the house rule of no attack on capital until province buildings are on enemy hands. The AI looks like using that rule. I wonder how much chance of that actually being a design element, and being left in as an AI routine?

[MadBurgerMaker]

Oh yeah, there's passive AI too.     It's apparently one of the things they're addressing in this first patch that's supposedly coming out very soon.  I've only experienced this once so far.  They all crowded into the corner of their little fort after I breached the walls with artillery on one side, and roped the line infantry up on two others.  They just stood there and soaked up volleys until they all died (it took abnormally long, and my guys kept going into "non firing" mode, where they'd just kneel by ranks unless I moved their formation a little).

I think that was someone on Languish, but I don't know now.