The Daily Update at the Com

[Marquis of Roland]

If that is for real, then fighting manual battles with multiple stacks will be fun again!

Hell Yes.

[ArtillerySmoke]

Is this patch out yet?

[Relic]

Free Stuff?!

I like the sound of that!

[TB666]

Is this patch out yet?

With Steam, you don't have to ask that question.

[ArtillerySmoke]

With Steam, you don't have to ask that question.

I'm not at my house and can't play right now.

So..is it out yet?

[Prussian to the Iron]

not unless it came out today

[ArtillerySmoke]

not unless it came out today

Thanks.

[Barkhorn1x]

I guess it has a lot of names. It's the one that, when you click on a particular unit or agent, or try to move it, or embark/disembark it, the game CTDs. You can try to ignore the unit. For example, if it's in an army stack, through trial and error you can eventually isolate the cursed unit. Once you've indentified which one it is, you can move all other units out of the stack and keep playing the game, so long as you just don't touch the cursed unit again.

This bug gets unavoidable when one of the AI nations gets a cursed unit. When that happens, the game will crash when that particular AI nation's flag appears at the top of the screen when all the AI nations are taking their turn.

Hmm...never had that one - yet. Guess I've been lucky.

[NimitsTexan]

We've also corrected the bug whereby reinforcements entered the battlefield from the wrong direction.

If that is for real, then fighting manual battles with multiple stacks will be fun again!

Awesome . . . now if they would just let us bring multiple stacks on the field at the same time, again, as in M2TW.

[TB666]

April 20th

Today we're putting the latest build of the gameplay upgrade patch through internal testing having gotten feedback from the beta group. The mod issue has been fixed, as have a raft of other bugs over the weekend.
We don't want to give a specific date for fear of getting hopes up unnecissarily but the gamplay upgrade patch is almost ready to go, so you should all receive it shortly.

Loading battles from a savegame have been fixed and we're doing another build now to see what there is left on the chcecklist for this upgrade.
As a note, please do remember that this is only our first planned upgrade, more will follow.

Thank you all for your continued support and patience.

Kind regards,
Kieran

I'm really interested in seeing the patch notes for this patch.
By the sound of things it seems like they fixed alot of bugs(hopefully).

[Lemur]

Me so excited.

[Grumfoss]

Me so excited.

me too me too

[Servius]

I have to say that, while I'd love it if I had clear info on whether the cursed unit (my name for it) bug is fixed and a fixed release date, I still find comfort in these daily updates.

It's odd for me to say, but I almost don't even remember M2TW. I remember playing it for a while, being bummed that England's billmen couldn't take cavalry anymore, and getting a bit tired with castle vs. city decisions, I just stopped playing. I can't even remember when I stopped playing, so I don't think I ever got mad at what I understand was very poor post-release support on CA's side.

What CA is doing with ETW does seem to be markedly different though. While we can all bemoan the fact that the game had any bugs on release, my heart is lightened by what appears to be significant dedication to post-release support. We'll see how useful it is once the patches come out and we know for sure if bugs have been squashed and if any new issues have been introduced by the patches, but I'm still okay giving CA the benefit of the doubt for now.

[Veresov]

I've been a total war series hardcore fan since the days of Shogun and my inability to run Empire without crashing has left a bitter taste in my mouth. My interest in getting this patch is more an obsession with just being able to run Empire without a consistent crash. Once that is done, this game is likely going to find itself back on the shelf.

This is one fan that has learned his lession and will only buy new CA products when they end up in the bargain bin.

[johnhughthom]

No update yet today, they would usually be released by now wouldn't they? Could it mean the patch is imminent????

[Fisherking]

No update yet today, they would usually be released by now wouldn't they? Could it mean the patch is imminent????

It is hard to tell. They could be working late. Check back in about an hour or so. If there is none then they may have passed on it for the day.

I wouldn’t read anything else into it…

Soon or very soon don’t mean a lot. It could still be a couple of weeks.

[TB666]

Well they said they would provide us with the patch notes before it was released didn't they ??
Maybe they are preparing that ??

[Tarquinius]

Seems like there won't be an update today :(

[TB666]

Seems like there won't be an update today :(

Looks like it, either that or they are working late today.

And they were working late

April 21st

Apologies for the delayed daily update today, there's been a lot going on!

Firstly the multiplayer campaign beta is shaping up well, I'm told that we'll have our first internal candidate within the next few days, meaning it might get rolled out to our public BETA group sooner than expected, but more on that as it develops.
We solved a couple of pathfinding issues today for the upcoming gameplay update and I also met with the designers and battle AI teams to add some more robust behaviour from the battle AI for certain situations. Big thanks to Jamie F and Richard Bull on these fronts.

There are some cool discussions and feature lists being put together for some announcements in the near future, naturally I can't discuss but we'll let you know as soon as we're able.

A fix went in for a trade route problem today too, and more will follow for stability. The graphics guys are working really hard on nailing the shadows issue and we've also had another contrast pass done by the art team on the campaign map with hardware effects on. It looks even richer.

Thanks agin for your patience, and apologies for the late update, it's been a busy week!

Kind regards,
Kieran

[Prussian to the Iron]

oh hrey, i jusdt realized my birthdays in exactly 1 week!!!!!

/spam

:P

[TB666]

Today's update is fairly short as we're getting down to the wire on the upgrade patch. We're looking to give the final build version of the patch to the beta testers tomorrow morning, and let them absoloutly hammer it, and then, well hopefully it'll be yours shortly after.

There will be a changelist released with the gameplay upgrade so you'll see most of what we've corrected or fixed. If I may I wanted to talk a bit about what we're looking into with gameplay upgrade 2. Which is due after the next round of hotfixes.

There was some interesting work being done today by the graphics team on the weather effects and particle systems, which look awesome. These will have a different interplay with battles too.
There's also some intresting UI stuff being tossed around at the early stage, some of which may make it into gameplay upgrade four.

I'm told we got through a couple of turns of multiplayer campaign today, meaning it's going well. Please give a big cheer for Alex at CA who's working on this one constantly.

We realise you're all waiting on the gameplay upgrade and the raft of fixes it introduces. We've just fixed a campaign map pathfinding issue which we hope will solve some boundary problems, thats the big fix thats gone in tonihgt for the beta testers.

Again thank you all for your patience, and it's not too long a wait now, hopefully you'll feel we've made a big improvement.

Kind regards,
Kieran

[nafod]

I must say that my opinion of the ETW release is improving considerably with all this talk of continued support and improvements. I like what I'm hearing. If that indeed was the plan (and it seems more and more that it was) then I can survive with the limited crashes I've experienced and lack of worthwhile AI.

[Barkhorn1x]

I must say that my opinion of the ETW release is improving considerably with all this talk of continued support and improvements. I like what I'm hearing. If that indeed was the plan (and it seems more and more that it was) then I can survive with the limited crashes I've experienced and lack of worthwhile AI.

Word!

[Devastatin Dave]

There was some interesting work being done today by the graphics team on the weather effects and particle systems, which look awesome. These will have a different interplay with battles too.
There's also some intresting UI stuff being tossed around at the early stage, some of which may make it into gameplay upgrade four.

Why do I have this deep fear that there is a good chance that this will cause even more stability issues?

[Sheogorath]

Are they going to fix the corruption issue?

[Daveybaby]

some of which may make it into gameplay upgrade four

Wow. Nice to see this level of ongoing support. Good stuff.

[Barkhorn1x]

Latest update.

April 23rd

Final version of the gameplay upgrade patch is being distributed to the beta testers shortly, the complete executable build has just been finished here at CA and is going live to them in the next few hours, all being well.

The new naval group behaviour and collision avoidance logic is all in, and the new naval combat group UI is also up and running. The dreaded 'Indian pathfinding campaign save' corrupt bug was isolated and fixed, removing one of the big save game corruption issues.
We've removed the zone of control for navies blockaded inside ports and also changed the shader model 2 fixes for shadows on the campaign map. This is in addition to the raft of crash and stability fixes which have been added.

A fuller changelist will be available in the actual release, naturally.

Thank you all for your patience, we're almost there with this one.

Kind regards,
Kieran

Looks like the patch will be released next week then.

[Barkhorn1x]

Are they going to fix the corruption issue?

What is the specific issue ?

[TinCow]

I have to say, it's remarkable how far these small daily updates go towards appeasing the fanbase. Knowing what's going on and that work is being done daily makes it a lot easier to be patient.

[Sheogorath]

What is the specific issue ?

The savegame corruption. Y'know, savegames vanishing. It's really quite annoying.