Has anything really changed from CA?

[Dayve]

Whew, I've been waiting a week for my ban to be lifted so i could post this.

No. Nothing from CA has changed. I haven't played Empire for more than 20 minutes per session in about a month now. I see my neighbours declaring war on me simply because we share a border, and i see them sending army after army, despite them being thoroughly destroyed each time. I see enemies accepting peace and trade, only to declare war by occupying one of my towns or farms with a unit of militia the very next turn. I see allies, who my nation has been the best of friends with, has given gifts to, has helped them in their time of need (which is always, because the AI is dumb, and when they're your allies it seems to be even dumber), declare war on me for no apparent reason, and absolutely refuse peace, no matter what.

I see my enemy throwing its cavalry at the front of my line, or sacrificing every single unit of cavalry it has, including its general, trying to take out a single unit of useless Sakers or Demi-Cannons that don't even have canister shot, i see my enemies sending single units of infantry at my line to be ripped to shreds from a volley from 4 units, then sending another single unit when that one runs away decimated, i see it wasting all its money on gigantic navies of trash ships like sloops and building high level shipyards but never having the money to build decent ships because it doesn't know how disband the crap ones now it no longer needs them, good heavens, i could sit here all day and whine.

Honeymoon period with this game has well and truly wore off for me, and I'm 100% dissatisfied. I'm absolutely convinced they have ported the abysmal AI over from Rome and Medieval II and thrown it into this games code, because it's absolutely no improvement whatsoever over those games, and in many cases mimics the AI of those games, as even you die hard fans of this game will have to admit.

I honest to god hope that 6 months, or 10 months, or 1 year from now, this game will be patched and will resemble what we were promised we would be given, but I'm going to say it won't. And now they're trying to buy people off with adding new units. There are more pressing issues than new units. At this point i wouldn't give a damn if each faction had totally identical units wearing the same colour uniforms and speaking in the same accent if CA would just fix the ******* game!

[AussieGiant]

Thanks for sharing Dayve.

[Didz]

I have to agree with Dayve here, as far as I can see very little has improved other than the graphic's and a lot of things have actually got worse such as the 'fire at will' not working, the random declarations of war, and more recently I notice the fog effects are actually less convincing in this game than they were is Shogun.

I'm still playing it and looking for work arounds but it needs a lot of work from CA to bring it up to a decent standard as a stategy game.

[Dayve]

Thanks for sharing Dayve.

I don't hang around your diehard fanboy posts that defend every aspect of the game and make sarcastic comments about them, so i would be grateful if you returned that favour.

I wonder if i would have the right to sue CA for my money back on the grounds of advertisement fraud, and me not receiving the product that was advertised. I'll have to look into this.

[Didz]

I wonder if i would have the right to sue CA for my money back on the grounds of advertisement fraud, and me not receiving the product that was advertised. I'll have to look into this.

You're welcome to try but I attempted something similar against Blizzard over the misrepresentation of the World of Warcraft European Collectors Edition and didn't get very far. Both the UK and European trading standards departments agreed that the product was faulty and that Blizzard had deliberately sold me the product knowing it didn't work and were therefore guilty of fraud. Even HMV who I bought the game from agreed that it was a faulty product and offered me my money back. But nobody would take any action against Blizzard and doing so alone would have cost too much money. In the end I left it with the consumer protection agencies and never heard a thing back.

[Dayve]

Yeah, game companies bank on the fact that the regular player, no matter how disgruntled, don't have the money to take serious legal action against them, and i certainly don't have the money to take any legal action whatsoever, but CA have committed gross advertising fraud with this product, and what i bought was certainly nothing like what was advertised and what was promised i was getting for my money, so I know for a fact that i am entitled at least to my money back.

It's no different to me buying a brand new, never worn T-shirt from eBay, then getting it and it's 2 sizes smaller than the advertisement, has worn fabric and stains all over it and has clearly been worn. False advertising, or advertisement fraud.

[AussieGiant]

I don't hang around your diehard fanboy posts that defend every aspect of the game and make sarcastic comments about them, so i would be grateful if you returned that favour.

I wonder if i would have the right to sue CA for my money back on the grounds of advertisement fraud, and me not receiving the product that was advertised. I'll have to look into this.

Me, a diehard fanboy, defending every aspect of the game??

Get of the grass Dayve.

You went on a rant and I chose to bait you a bit, which you took, so sorry for that.

To sue CA will not do much, I'd recommend simply not purchasing their next product or any of their products. That's the best solution.

They've certainly not delivered on one major point, and that was the AI's ability to fight retreats and correlate the strategic situation with the tactical situation which they said they were going to deliver.

As for the rest, they've given it a fairly good shake and are currently still working on it. I'll wait to deliver final verdict until the last patch is out. Seems only fair to me.

However, I just can't see certain people here ever being satisfied with the game no matter what happens.

[Dayve]

No, i knew you were baiting. If I'd took it and said what i wanted to say, i'd just get banned again, there are mods here who are watching every little thing i say right now and are simply dying to ban me for life.

Of course i went on a rant. CA have committed advertisement fraud and i feel scammed. I want my money back damnit.

[Dayve]

Also, sorry for double posting buy junior members can't edit posts but i know there are people here who will never be satisfied with the game, and seem to bash CA as if it's a hobby of theirs, and I'm not one of those people. If you look back at my posts here from the day ETW was released until present you will see that i have both defended and criticized the game, and even told people who were exaggerating their criticism to tone it down and be realistic, otherwise nobody will take any notice of them.

And I'll continue to do that. There are improvements on this game from Rome and Medieval, such as diplomacy. There are more options, diplomacy is overall much better than Rome and Medieval, the problem is that the AI doesn't know how to use it, so the diplomacy overhaul is entirely pointless. That's just one example.

However, like i said, the honeymoon period for me has well and truly wore off, and my attitude toward this game is becoming more sour by the day, no matter how many things i tell myself have improved from Rome and M2.

[Didz]

My advice would be to do one of two things.

a) Take the game back to the shop and demand your money back. It clearly doesn't perform to specification and the shop doesn't have a leg to stand on. If they give you any hassle demand to know the name of the manager, then write to him explaining why the product doesn't meet spec and ask for a refund.

b) If he doesn't give you your money back, or if you don't want to part with the game report then report the whole thing to Trading Standards. Thats what I did. Remember to contact both your national consumer protection organisation and the European Trading Standards agency. I actually found the EU one more interested, but that might have been because Blizzard were based in France.

Remember to keep copies of all correspondence, just in case it goes to court, and remember to get the names of the people you talk to on the phone or by email and always confirm conversions in writing afterwards.

If it does go to court remember that you are not just entitled to your money back, but you may also be able to claim damages, so don't forget to ask. A judge forced to try one of these cases is going to be pretty annoyed and in my expereince they will award hefty damages against any company that makes them sit through a trial, just to get their own back.

I had a friend who took a shoe shop to court becuase they would not give her a refund for a £50 pair of shoes, and the judge was so annoyed he awarded her £500 pecunary damages, just for wasting his time. You should have seen the shop managers jaw drop.

[AussieGiant]

Well I'm glad you didn't take the bait completely Dayve. Getting banned doesn't help anyone.

And yes I agree with what you say about how you were in the beginning and how you are now. I guess I'm just getting battered down with all the criticism of which some is certainly valid.

I end up sounding more positive and taking a less critical role just to try and balance it out a bit.

I've stopped playing until the next patch, so that says something. It's been two weeks now and I really want to play. But not until they get their next set of improvements out.

I assume you've been set to "Junior Member" for a reason? After 1600 posts it seems a little strange.

[Dayve]

Not sure, although i don't see what the point was... junior member just means you can only post once every 9849853 seconds and you can't edit your posts. The problem they had with me had nothing to do with the amount of posts or editing them, it was alleged racism, so i don't know.

Anyway, i haven't played either. I started a new campaign earlier out of sheer boredom, and now i have another problem. When i right click and drag a unit to set its facing or depth, half way through the line disappears and the unit begins to march to how it was before it disappeared. It's like i've let go of the right mouse button before i was finished setting the unit, even though i haven't let go of the mouse button. Switched on a couple of other games to see if it was actually my mouse playing up, but no, it's fine with the other games.

It's not even once every so often either, it's literally every single time i right click and drag, so i just said bollocks to it and turned it off. When it's got to a point where i'm so demoralized i don't even want to look at the icon on my desktop let alone CLICK IT... you know something's wrong.

[Owen Glyndwr]

The diplomacy can certainly use some improvement, but I still think it's a great deal better than in RTW and M2TW. Contrary to the OP's statements, I tend to be able to get peace treaties from many AI nations. Sure, many of them declare war again a few turns later if they are still adjacent to you, but peace is certainly possible at least for short periods.

I think one of biggest problems isn't that the AI declares war too often, it's that it declares war at the wrong times. I'm currently playing an Austria game, which is very different from my previous post-1.2 games due to a total lack of trade income. At the start I was only able to afford about 1 army stack and I had a devil of a time fending off Poland. If ANY other nation had declared war on me, I would have been in serious trouble. No other nation did however. I was able to finish off Poland and consolidate my position shortly before the Ottomans declared war on me. If the Ottomans had declared war while I was still invovled with Poland, they could have wrecked me. Instead, I am able to beat them by focusing on them alone.

Europa Universalis 3 deals with this situation very well IMO. In that game, the more wars a nation is involved in, the more likely that other nations that dislike them will declare war on them as well. It's a typical human strategy that works well: strike when your enemy is pre-occupied elsewhere. CA needs some kind of coding like this.

Yes definitely. You also see dogpiles like that in the Civ 4 games. Where one nation would be put under by 1 or two civs, and all of a sudden it was a 5 on 1 venture.

What I would love to see is diplomacy AI which works more like Civ 4. It looks like CA made some attempts to make their diplomacy more like this (With the "friend o meter" and the ability to immediately open negotiations). However it sounds to me like the AI in Civ 4 acts more logically. Sure there are certain leaders such as Shaka and Monty who are often perfectly sporadic, but there are other who make perfect sense (Such as Isabella, who can be your best friend if you share religions, and your worst enemy if you don't). The funny thing about Civ 4, actually, is the human player is the one who ends up looking more like the AI from this game (They develop a long standing relationship with someone and then just up and betray them out of the blue with no warning). Also in Civ 4 there are certain signs that a civ is about to go to war (The We Have Enough on Our Hands Right Now note in the diplo screen tells the player right away that that civ is preparing for war, and to start checking the relations screens to see if it might be them).

Sure a lot of people say that the game is more interesting when the AI is "unpredictable", but unpredictability does not equal humanlike. Ever since I started with R: TW, all I've really ever wanted to see is allies who I can feel somewhat emotionally connected to, all I get is factions which I may try to befriend now, but just know that someday they are going to attack me, and I will have to kill them (Kind of like the feeling in all those zombie movies where the protagonist's best friend/girlfriend/mother gets bitten, and they know that they will turn eventually...)

Sorry for the long rant, I hope at least some of it makes sense to someone...


*EDIT* Also in Civ4, I really like the fact that going to war is no laughing matter. Your economy (Military upkeep), and city happiness (War Weariness) take such a big hit from the declaration itself that the player really has to consider the options, and figure out, not just if he can win, but if he'll be able to deal with the implications of winning (higher upkeep, changed political status, science affected) It's really neat actually, I'd love to see things from Civ4 implemented in these games (But with the neato battles, and minus all the complicated micromanaging and math...)

[Didz]

I agree Owen. There are so many games on the market that do the diplomacy thing better, you would have thought CA would have been spoilt for choice on which system to adopt. Instead they seem to have opted for no system at all, which is really 'dumb'.

[Mooks]

I played RTW, MTW, and Shogun for 50+ hours on each indivisual game. I stopped playing RTW because it felt like I beating up a bunch of retards. Until threads like this turn into threads saying how hard the AI is to beat (something that did happen on MTW and Shogun, less so on Rome) im never buying a TW title again. My hope is by 2015 the AI will be competent, then that will make for a kickass game.

[Dayve]

Ah, what i wouldn't give for this game to have the AI quality that MTW had 10 years before it. The AI in MTW may not necessarily have been any better than this game, and I've said this before, but it had the illusion of being smarter due to the way the map was laid out and the emptyness of the map. Each province had one thing in it, a city, and there was only one aim, to conquer it, and damnit the AI knew how many troops you had in any given province, and would NOT move troops in unless it outnumbered you and had a good chance of winning. It also knew to wait and attack on a weak front, and it knew how to use its victories and keep up the momentum.

[GFX707]

Here is a perfect example of one of the big problems, the suicidal AI, from my current game.



They have no allies, they are feeble and destitute, I am terrifying and spectacular. They are already at war with many countries, I am not. So obviously the perfect climate for a fresh campaign!

[AussieGiant]

That's pretty funny commentary GFX707. Made me laugh.

[Didz]

Just reload from the Autosave and it will probably go away. You don't have to accept this sort of crap.

[Owen Glyndwr]

Here is a perfect example of one of the big problems, the suicidal AI, from my current game.



They have no allies, they are feeble and destitute, I am terrifying and spectacular. They are already at war with many countries, I am not. So obviously the perfect climate for a fresh campaign!

lol, my reply? "So be it"

[GFX707]

After playing a little while in 1.3, I have come to the conclusion that ETW is now becoming more like M2TW with every patch, i.e in 1.0 the AI countries were "Passive" but they would at least accept peace. Now in 1.3 everyone you have a border with declares war on you no matter how weak they are compared to you and will never accept a peace deal no matter how badly you are beating them, stubbornly refusing to accept peace even when you are sieging their last province. It looks like we are back to the M2TW cycle of everyone around you taking turns using the player as a means of suicide.

So, in essence, with every patch the game is moving backwards. I wouldn't be surprised to see the troops wearing plate armour and using arquebuses in 1.4.

[Lemur]

Just reload from the Autosave and it will probably go away.

Unfortunately, that rarely works anymore. Trust me, I've tried reloading after a ridiculous DOW, and it only goes away about a third of the time. "The Black Knight always triumphs!"

[Didz]

Yep! looks like they've even screwed that up now.

[GFX707]

In my current campaign as Prussia (which I keep going back to despite having quit in disgust at four or five senseless war declarations by AI nations who already had 4 or 5 wars already on their hands, a couple of which were my allies) I have conquered nearly all of Europe solely on the AI declaring war on me.

At the start of the campaign, I was considering who to squash first - Denmark for their ports or Poland-Lithuania to join my nation together. It turned out I didn't need to make that decision as turn by turn everyone just declared war on me and subsequently put up no challenge whatsoever, and despite that NO ONE WILL ACCEPT PEACE. So I am forced to exterminate everyone until I run out of borders. 1.0 might have been a buggy mess but at least the campaign was varied and the AI at least *seemed* to make reasonable decisions other than "COMMIT SUICIDE".

[Barkhorn1x]

Here is a perfect example of one of the big problems, the suicidal AI, from my current game.

They have no allies, they are feeble and destitute, I am terrifying and spectacular. They are already at war with many countries, I am not. So obviously the perfect climate for a fresh campaign!

Yes, that makes no sense. The strat AI is hopeless on the army assembly level as well. What is with the numerous 1,2 unit captain commanded stacks always milling about, going to and fro' but getting nowhere? Why can't the strat AI be programmed to group units into high count stacks under generals, much like a human playwer would?

I am playing as Prussia and I took West Prussia from Poland, followed by the inevitable DoW from Poland, Saxony and Courland. Then I took Warsaw a few years later. And the Poles just mill about in low count stacks at the periphery waiting for me to crush them. What has saved them - up to now -is my deliberate style of play and the taming of the Polish province, which takes some time. But, guess what? I now have that province well in hand and am almost done absorbing Saxony - and then it is party time in Eastern Europe and I doubt that the Poles can do anything to stop me as spread out as they are.

Finally - what is not debatable is that the game was released half finished. And while the support has been very good to date the AI (pick ANY level) is just not that good. And promises were indeed made that THIS TIME it would be different. Sorry, nope.

[Beskar]

Guys don't be so critical, as they said, they worked a full two years on the AI, to make it the perfect experience for us.

The problem is, the definition of what the customers wanted and what they thought we wanted.

[Didz]

As in we wanted an AI that worked, and they thought we wanted a 'rabid lemming'. I can see how that might cause a problem.

[GFX707]

Yes, clearly what they thought we wanted was an AI with the relentlessness of the terminator coupled with the logic and planning skills of a recently trampled broccoli.

[Yun Dog]

I was sceptical as always about this game when I heard about it at first. I pre-ordered it anyway because there is just nothing else like it. I have been playing since Shogun, and I have witnessed the series's decline after MTW.

The main problems with RTW and M2TW were:

1) Bad AI.
2) Useless diplomacy and suicidal enemies.

So, I have been playing since release and despite the BUGGY MESS that this game has been I have been more or less having a good time. In two months of playing through the campaign (and enjoying it) I have come to the following conclusions.

1) The AI is still just as bad, if not worse.
2) Diplomacy is still largely pointless.

Here's why: The AI on the campaign map always does the same thing. If you border Dagestan or Georgia at some point, they will always declare war on you, no matter how good your relations or whether you are trading. They will always be crushed with minimal effort. Then, you now border Persia. Inevitably, they will declare war next and be wiped out after a few turns. They are coded to be suicidal. To seal their own stupid fate they will absolutely NOT accept peace. Time and time again, there I am, at the "diplomacy" screen, my country terrible/spectacular (or whatever), theirs weak/destitute and they will still NEVER accept peace. This goes on throughout the game. Sometimes you can get a peace but they don't seem to understand that they are in a very bad situation - that by asking for peace you are SAVING them from certain destruction of their handul of 2 stack raiding armies, and even if you offer them twenty thousand to save their lives they won't take it. So, that's our new diplomacy which incidentally should go beyond having some new buttons to click.

The strategic AI is also the usual terrible CA game situation again. When I was playing yesterday I bought Quebec from the French - I hadn't realised it bordered an English settlement and an army was standing right beside my new town as I hit "end turn". There were no troops in my town as I had just bought it, and there wouldn't be until the next turn when I had finished building some. There was a large English army across the river to the south. I think "Woops".

So what does the AI do? It can reach the town in 1 turn. There are no troops to defend it.

It walks its stack PAST the *undefended* enemy town and raids the nearby seminary instead. The AI's strategic approach to war seems to just be chucking tiny two stack armies at you to raid your settlements, even if, combined, all those stacks would crush you. This results in a tedious campaign of chasing piddly two stack armies around which ISN'T FUN.

So since I am now bored of typing, in summary, does this game have exactly the same problems as the past two CA offerings in my opinion? Yes....and more. Did I buy it anyway, pretty sure it would be the same old story? Yes.

Why did I buy it? Why did all of us pessimist CA diehards buy it anyway? Because there is STILL, after almost 10 years, nothing like the Total War series. If this was nature, the Total War series would be the Dodo. It has survived because it has no predators. It can get as fat and as stupid and as useless as it wants because it will still have nothing to fear from any other game because there are no other games of this type to compete. It's in a genre all of its own, and until someone basically does a Blizzard and rips it off, but improves and supports it, it's going to be the same old story.

(same old rant, too)

GFX

I was thinking exactly this then I found your post

quoted for truth

I love your analogy in the last paragraph

Hey if we all beat our heads against the wall long enough - we might make a dent

[Yun Dog]

(Such as Isabella, who can be your best friend if you share religions, and your worst enemy if you don't).

(Kind of like the feeling in all those zombie movies where the protagonist's best friend/girlfriend/mother gets bitten, and they know that they will turn eventually...)

Sorry for the long rant, I hope at least some of it makes sense to someone...

Dont trust Isabella man!!! that stabs you in the back

perfect sense

good post