Your Empire Reviews

First off, I cannot afford Empire's with my money because my dad stupidly sacrificed it for Halo Wars! how dare he! ~:mecry: Sooooo..... Please vote on this poll as I'm interested to see your responses to the game and how good it is to confirm if its hot on my list for buying....and please only vote if you've played it for at least enough time to make your mind up about the game is all aspects, think about...

-Gameplay - the fun factor, can you play hours on end without being bored?

-Performance - tell us if your PC is good and how well it run, on low settings up to high

-Improvements - What difference our there from the previous total war titles, why is it better or worse?

-multiplayer & Steam - Is multiplayer good? and have steam made it substantially better or not?

-Personal response, anything you may want to add which does fit into an above category


That would be all :bow:

Even though I just realized a thread like this already exists, mine still asks different things and more importantly has a poll, I would be glad if people could still reply to it :bow:

Sell yer dad...how dared he!? :smash:

V.

Better than I expected. The amount of positive changes they made to the campaign map can't be easily recalled. Everything is so streamlined now. Honestly by Medieval 2 the campaign map was getting down right stupid with the 37 different agent types and whatnot.

I've been playing since 4 AM with a few breaks, it's crack. And the performance is excellent except for the weird Native bug.

It's still really early and I haven't played anything except RtI so far, but this is looking like the best TW yet to me.

Biggest positive: NO MORE sugary sweet SIEGE BATTLES EVERY TURN!!!!! Field battles! Finally!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Graphic

Biggest positive: NO MORE sugary sweet SIEGE BATTLES EVERY TURN!!!!! Field battles! Finally!

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Very true, the surrender feature is particularly nice.

I only got 5 years into my campaign and fought one battle, but its been great so far, I like how the campaign map works and its great to see lots of minor nations rather than rebels. A lot of the micromanagement from previous titles is also removed, for example you just click on a faction in the diplomacy screen to speak with them, no more waiting 10 turns for a Diplomat to cross the steppes.

Biggest game in the Total War series so far. A game that (almost) all Total War fans will love, I think.

I doubt it will win many new fans, though. Many of the problems in early games seem to remain.

Bigger, deeper, harder, better, but will less unit and faction variety this time around.

First Impressions:

I played through most of the tutorial last night so I can only remark about that.

The tutorial is lovely

Its more like playing a senario with a great background story and great movies in between the missions.

No doubt everyone will be in love with the tutorial companion whos very proper english accent gives you timely advice and is never unwelcome.

The turorial takes you through in small steps ideal for the beginer, but it never feels like a tutorial. It starts you off in the thick of a battle with indian tribes to wet you appetite.

The tutorial is set as colonizing the new Americas and founding a colony and then stepping out to conflict with indians and other europeans.


Battles: Look great, no performance issues. Wont judge the AI yet as its the tutorial. Although the french have already caught me by surprise a couple of times hiding troops around the map. Terrain has regained its place of importance (as it should). One of the first forts I went u against the enemy had well positioned artillary pieces high off on the flanks. My general decidied we should cross the river en mass in a frontal assalt :oops: whats a few men :shame:

enough to say I took perhaps a few more losses than I mightve liked... then I realised my plan to send the cavalry at full change against his artillary had come unhinged by his cavalry which came from 'them trees' I guess, and intercepeted them. DAMN HIM HE WAS WAITING FOR THAT EXACT MOVE.

The campaign map you can be intercepted on route and ambushed - again :2thumbsup:
The camp map graphics are not much changed from previous titles but .. meh... its the campaign map.

All in all thus far Im really enjoying the game, and getting my fix of napoleonic era action

:2thumbsup:

All in all I give this a 4/5

ETW has met my expectations for a SP game but it did not surpass them. I almost rated it 3/5 due to the AI bugs, however the AI has done just as many amazing things as it has done idiotic. Therefore it deserves a "As good as I expected".

It's fun, and that's all that mattered when concerning if it was worth my money.

Bump

I finished the short campaign with the Dutch yesterday night succesfully on H/VH. I never finished a TW campaign that quick! ETW is highly addictive.

What I like:

- Naval battles and techtree make the game a lot more diversified in comparison with previous TW games :2thumbsup:

- The Battles look very realistic and the grafic rocks

- As mentioned before, you do not have to fight many seiges


What I don't like:

- Diplomacy still doesn't work how it should :no:

- In my campaign, there was nothing going on in America and Western Europe; finally in 1748 (4 rounds before my campaign ended), war broke out between England, Spain and France, but that was a little to late to affect my campaign.
So the A.I. is still a concern.

- Financial Crunch! Conquering a lot of India, I became "overrelaint" on trade (even though I still earned more through taxes) and so the sudden decline of my trade partner Prussia eventually cuts my trade earnings so vastly that I gone broke in the last rounds of my campaign 8but I still managed to win)

- You can not "build" agents any more, you have to wait until they come along (And what the hell to do with all these Rakes?! I want Gentleman and Missionars! :thumbsdown:)

Pros: Rebels replaced by many smaller nations give it a sense of accuracy. Sea crossings take much less time. Sea dominance means something this time around. Pretty accurate, but some wiggle room. Fun battles to fight. Lots of factions, hopefully to be unlocked via modding. Gigantic world map. Although there are less provinces, the world still feels...full.

Cons: A huge chunk of America, Northern Canada (northern canada was pretty empty though), and of course Switzerland, are missing. Indians seem to be really easy to defeat, especially early on. A few china sets and some jewellry seem to make everything peachy. Barbary states refuses to be my friend :shame:

I rated it a 5/5 for being an all around awesome game :2thumbsup:

Note: Rakes are really only good at assination, and even then it is rather iffy. They can spy but this fact is rarely needed. Whether you spawn more rakes or gentlemen depends on what you build. If you turn towns into pleasure centers you get rakes. If you make them schools you get gentlemen. (but schools later on lead to rebellion).


Pros:
Love the campaign map
Battles can be fun.
Trade is so much more in depth, I love it.
Actual navies.
Traits that matter (not 23 traits as soon as they become general)
War of Sucession (I almost leapt out of my chair when I saw it in action)
Rebellion (amusing)

Cons:
Not enough hours in my day to play the game do to sleep.
Garrisoning seems to be a little to powerful, i'm not sure if this is just me but when I garrison the AI dosn't seem to know quite what to do. Sometimes they charge in but if they fail the first charge they just meander outside and get shot.
To big of navies for the finances, I noticed England , France and Sweden had some ridiclously gigantic navies in my game, and I was the wealthiest so no idea how they afford them.
To much pirating on trade routes? (This is only annoying do to fact if another faction is pirating your lane you can't attack them without declaring war.)

Pros
great campaign
lots of field battles
cover system is awesome
I was questioning how well the game would work with mostly ranged combat, worked out well
better AI

Cons
lots of bugs(to be expected in almost all games, so no biggie)
Not too many playable factions
Most engagements end up in melee, sort of disappointing
when units walk past fences or whatever that they need to jump over, many stragglers take a while

The battles are boring, cavalry's useless, there aren't enough provinces, naval battles suck, captured ships don't actually get captured, alliances are a pain in the arse, all factions basically have the same troops, rakes are pathetic, the list goes on...................

..................and on................







.................and on.




In short: It's better than most games out there, but nowhere near as good as it could or should be.

-Gameplay - the fun factor, can you play hours on end without being bored? YES

-Performance - tell us if your PC is good and how well it run, on low settings up to high - ULTRA (9800GX2 +C2Q6700)

-Improvements - What difference our there from the previous total war titles, why is it better or worse? CAMPAIGN DYNAMIC THAT ISN'T RUBBISH (ala RTW and M2TW)

-Personal response, anything you may want to add which does fit into an above category TOTAL WAR IS GREAT AGAIN

Heya ppl,

So far its been excellent, again I find myself sitting at work totally unproductive going trough the forums and waiting to get back home...

I'd hold off judging gameplay aspects as I think its still early on for me and many things in the game are still beyond my understanding; what I did see is that there is lots of information which was not shown (but taken into account) in previous games which I absolutely love.

What I can confirm and am very pleased about is the fact that (as expected) when you do have to play the game at the lower end of the settings it works perfectly well, which is something I've always respected CA for. :yes:

I like it a lot so far of course it could use a patch or 2, The naval aspect seems a bit quirky I realize your slaves to the wind but even when the wind is at my back formations act weird like ships smashing into each other in formation. It just seems buggy.

I haven’t played as all the nations yet but I’ve played a lot of them in custom battles. It looks like that many of the nations units ships and troops look very similar like line infantry is the same everywhere. But in reality the line infantry looked very different from country to country they should at least give them different hats

I think its kind of weird that about 20 turns into the game 95 percent of the nations are unfriendly to me. I’ve only been at war with pirates.

But overall its very fun and unfortunately time just slips away when you’re playing it you sit down for what seems to be 30 minutes and you look at the clock to see 4 hours has passed by.

Well the game relies far more on threats and state gifts then ever before.

It has up and downsides.

On the plus threats get you much further then rome or mtw2 ever did. Now if you beat back a nation, and put up a sweet deal to take some nice benefits, you just push them a little with a threat and bam you get it.

On other hand state gifts are a reliable way for a financially powerful nation to send small to large gifts to get instant friendship boosts. Even the lowest one, pricey plates, will get you a boost up in the friendship chart.

It also goes alot by govt and religion, though not always the case as I kept a relationship up with India for a long time even tho they were hindu

It takes some learning but the diplomatic system offers far more then before.