Pros and Cons: Purchasing Empire in Steam or Box form.

[Ignoramus]

I have been thinking about purchasing Empire for a long while, but due to not having a machine tough enough to handle have been unable to do so.

Now that I finally have a machine to play it on, I was wondering whether there were any inherent advantages or disadvantages to buying the game in a box form, or downloading via Steam.

Basically, is the box form compatible with Steam? I don't really want to drain my entire month's download downloading Empire from Steam.

Thanks.

[Yoyoma1910]

I purchased the box form, and it still uses steam.

[pevergreen]

I have been thinking about purchasing Empire for a long while, but due to not having a machine tough enough to handle have been unable to do so.

Now that I finally have a machine to play it on, I was wondering whether there were any inherent advantages or disadvantages to buying the game in a box form, or downloading via Steam.

Basically, is the box form compatible with Steam? I don't really want to drain my entire month's download downloading Empire from Steam.

Thanks.

Only difference is: Box form you get physical stuff.

Discs may not be recognised. You'll install ETW off the discs, then it will have to download hundreds of megs of patches.

Buy whichever is cheaper.

[Ignoramus]

I've had a look on the Steam site, but it doesn't actually tell me how big the file is if I download the game from Steam. I'm guessing it's over 10 gig?

[pevergreen]

The discs install 14gb.

I downloaded the full thing via steam a few days ago.

Says its taking 15091mb of disc space.

[Silver]

I think the Disc installs 80% of the data and the other 20% are downloaded from steam. If you buy the game from steam, you obviously install 100% data from steam, so if your connection is slow, that'll take a couple of hours. But honestly, the only advantage other than decreased installation time you get from the disc is a nice looking dvd case cover and the manual in material form instead of a pdf.

[pevergreen]

The disc installs the full game, as it was on the day the discs were RTM.

Steam then downloads the updates.