State of the Game?

[kawligia]

What do you guys think of the game in its current state?

Are there a lot of bugs? Imbalances? Missing features?

I have been waiting for the inevitable post-release issues to be resolved before buying Empire. But all the updates seem to be on Steam and I'm having a hard time finding out what the current issues are and what's been fixed.

Is it time to buy the game, or should I wait a while longer? I'm not looking for perfection, but I've heard the game has some major trouble in some areas, particularly sea battles.

[Megas Methuselah]

I'm enjoying it. Why don't you buy it and play judge?

[kawligia]

I'm enjoying it. Why don't you buy it and play judge?

Money is tight and I can only get one game. If E:TW is ready, I will get it now. If it's not, I will get another game and try back later when it is ready and I have more money.

[Dayve]

If money's tight, don't get Empire. CA are letting people apply for some kind of beta testing, just regular people, because the last two patches have been so abysmal and have fixed one problem, but created 5 more.

Having said that i've enjoyed it and am still enjoying it, even though i quit campaigns after 30 turns because i'm invincible and it's clear i will win, but i think i'm able to enjoy it even with the bugs where other people are not because of the way i think... Which is: I bought it knowing that it was going to be full of bugs, so i have no right to complain.

[SpiritFox]

It's really a matter of opinion IMO. I'm enjoying it. Some others aren't.

From where I sit, almost all my issues have been with the AI. It has some pretty glaring weaknesses -

1. It doesn't recognize which side of a defensive wall its on, so if a unit of infantry crouch behind a wall, it's all too easy to simply march your troops around the back and massacre them without any retaliation.

2. Similarly, pathfinding while marching a line of infantry across a wall or fence diagonally is atrocious, resulting in a miserable crawl as troops hop around the obstacle that takes forever to sort out.

3. The game fails to take into account the terrain and deployments when garrisoning buildings, resulting in stupid decisions to garrison structures far away enough that they can be reduced with impunity.

4. Pathfinding during sieges is also iffy with infantry climbing up and down walls for no reason because the stupid AI figured it's better to scamper down the scaling ropes and charge through the door into the waiting arms of the defenders than taking the stairs down onto the defender's flank.

5. Similarly, the AI does NOT know how to garrison structures inside a fort. Stupid.

6. No amphibious assaults on strat map.

7. Major nations often fail to build up sufficient armies worthy of the name "Major". Smaller nations sometimes have larger armies than the big ones.

8. Sometimes, nations stack huge armies in the middle of nowhere, creating a "mosh-pit" without any rhythm or reason.

Apart from these rather glaring faults, there's the overall sense that the AI just isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. It's decent enough on the offensive, knowing how to flank and maneuver for an advantage, but on the defense it's atrociously stupid, camping in the middle of an artillery barrage, and just generally being an utter imbecile. You can take this as an excuse to always attack :P It'll never muster a competent defense. Not in a million years.

Apart from that, there's a really, really, REALLY odd savegame bug that occasionally... well, I play as Poland. Sometimes, when I save, instead of showing my sovereign's portrait together with the nation's flag... I get some weird guy with weird flags - I'd swear it was a PAKISTANI flag. Maybe Armenian. I don't know. But when that happens, none of my old savegames show up, so I can't save over them. I can still save, though, just create a new savegame. No side effects, but it's fucking unnerving the first time it happens.

Also, two CTDs. Both were the results of naval action - one was me moving my ships around on the strat map and the other was during the resolution screen after a naval battle.

That's my experience, anyway. I'll just add a qualifier to say that I still throughly enjoy this game.

[Forward Observer]

For me somewhere between changing out graphic drivers, adding the GPU memory fix, and the various hot fix/updates from CA that have been applied through Steam (4 to be exact) I now have a perfectly stable playable game and have had --- for well over a week.

The guys form CA have stated that their initial fixes were more aimed at stabilizing the game for a bigger number of players. I know there are still some who can't get the game to run, but I believe their numbers are a lot smaller than they were prior to the last couple of updates. I know the game is stable for me now when it wasn't a few weeks ago, so I am in the lucky majority (I think)

There are still nagging bugs and game play issues, but nothing that has stopped me from completing and enjoying both the RTI campaign plus a complete "conquer the world" grand campaign as the British on medium.

I finished my grand campaign by 1780, which means I played 160 turns with at least 150 of those being totally crash free. According to my Steam stats I logged in just over 90 hrs playing Empire in the last two weeks. Somewhere in the last 10 turns I experienced two random crashes which did not repeat on the next try, but I was playing with some of my GPU settings so I may have contributed to them in the first place.

Most of the issues have been listed in every bug thread dozens of times, so I won't bother to try to list or repeat them, but I'm pretty sure CA has to be aware of them all by now and I'm also pretty sure they are working on them as fast as time and resources will allow.

If you've read the bug thread you are probably aware of most of the game play issues, so if you can live with them until they are fixed, get the game an give it a try.

Cheers

[Smellycat]

I am playing M2TW(vanilla) waiting for EB2 or ETW(with AI) whichever comes first

[Dayve]

I am playing M2TW(vanilla)

I think the question on everybody's mind here is... why? Why play M2TW when you could play MTW, which is infinitely more enjoyable and challenging?

[Smellycat]

I think the question on everybody's mind here is... why? Why play M2TW when you could play MTW, which is infinitely more enjoyable and challenging?

its a bit too retro for me

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

E:TW is worth the money. It certainly has flaws, but both the single player campaign and the multiplayer are worth a try.

[Skott]

What do you guys think of the game in its current state? I give it a 7 or 7.5 out of 10. About like M2TW was when it came out.

Are there a lot of bugs? Yes

Imbalances? Yes but it doesnt make the play less fun IMO. I'm expecting the modders to excel in this area over CA.

Missing features? There is always more room for extra features IMO but again it doesnt detract from the over all game. Some people can get pretty nit picky about this area. Especially in the historical accuracy department. Again I think this is where the modders will excel over CA.

CA has yet to get the bugs out like they promised. Its supposedly going to get a patch update soon. My guess is that they wont get it all in one big patch. If you go by their past history its going to take two or three patches to squash most of them. And like all TW games CA makes there will be some that will never disappear completely even after the modders work their magic.

My best advice is do like suggested above and try it and see how well you like it. The modders will take this from an okay good game to an excellent one just like they did with RTW and M2TW. Just my opinion though.

[pevergreen]

Its a great game as vanilla, but even better with some of the great mods out/coming out. Mine will be 'great' eventually. In my mind at least

If you can only buy one game, E:TW is IMO the only one worth buying. I can't find anything else worth the money.

[Khorak]

It seems I got a bit unlucky starting my recent Prussian campaign because I got the old video memory CTD early on, but I've actually played for hours now and had some really big battles without problems. It managed to remain stable even when I threw eight Heavy First Rates at fourty Swedish light ships (that was the height of sadistic pleasure).

So its been happily playable for me now.

[Servius]

I say wait for the next patch to see if that fixes the campaign-killing CTDs. Once you can play through a campaign without some agent, port, or other bug putting up a brick wall that you can't get past without triggering a CTD, I think you'll really like it. Aside from the bugs, I think it's the best TW game so far, and by a significant margin. Many things have been improved and/or better explained, including trade and diplomacy. The way CA has reworked the region building and balance between military and economic buildings is really smart too. They've also consolidated some agents and replaced others with a different mechanic, so no more agent spam.

The AI will never be great. It's still the thing humans are simply better at (except when Big Blue plays chess). I usually find that modders make the best AIs, or at least do the best job at tweaking what devs set down.

[kawligia]

It sounds like the bugs and AI are on par with the previous TW games. I think I will wait until this summer. Hopefully by then the official patches will be out as well as some balance mods.

Thanks for the info guys.

[kawligia]

One more thing,

I am a little surprised to hear that the AI is still poor. I would have though CA would have learned from prior games and gotten it right this time...or at least gotten closer.

Especially since Lusted joined their team. I remember him doing good work with the AI on his M2TW mod.

[Skott]

I'm of the opinion they'll never get the AI anywhere near as good as a human so expecting them to achieve 'human-like' is pretty much a pipe dream. Having said that though I do think the AI is better in ETW than in past TW vanilla games.

On another note today my France Campaign came to a halt. Last two days I been trying France for the first time. The campaign has been plagued with CTD and computer freezes from the start. I ran some stress tests on my pc today and played some other games just to make sure it wasnt my system but everything runs fine. I had three save points in my France campaign but I couldnt get any of them to go farther than 1714. The game would either lock up or CTD. In fustration I deleted all my French save games. Good news is that my first Sweden campaign is still going strong. Yeah, this game has random stability problems.

[Dayve]

I'm of the opinion they'll never get the AI anywhere near as good as a human so expecting them to achieve 'human-like' is pretty much a pipe dream. Having said that though I do think the AI is better in ETW than in past TW vanilla games.

On another note today my France Campaign came to a halt. Last two days I been trying France for the first time. The campaign has been plagued with CTD and computer freezes from the start. I ran some stress tests on my pc today and played some other games just to make sure it wasnt my system but everything runs fine. I had three save points in my France campaign but I couldnt get any of them to go farther than 1714. The game would either lock up or CTD. In fustration I deleted all my French save games. Good news is that my first Sweden campaign is still going strong. Yeah, this game has random stability problems.

I've also never ever been able to play as France past the first few years. When the diplomacy screen opens up saying "This nation has declared war on you" the game crashes to the desktop.

Must be some coding anomaly with France, never had it with any other nations.

[A Very Super Market]

Presumably, its to simulate your entire nation surrendering.

Sorry, I had to make that joke.

[Marquis of Roland]

Since the last patch, I'm down to 3 problems:

1. Naval CTD. Pretty sure everyone knows all the many facets of this issue.

2. "Out of video memory" CTD. My rig is fine, as it can play single battle with no problems. I started a new campaign and it did happen a few times in the beginning, but between 1715-1755 it didn't crash so much. After 1755, 90% of battles were CTD. Sometimes, if I played the battle on another turn or if I approached the enemy stack from a different direction, it won't crash. I am starting to think it has something to do with the weather and time of day graphics; most CTD's for me seem to happen during sunset/sunrise, and when there is snow on the ground (not necessarily snowing). Since I am now at a stage of game where 1 stack is fighting multiple times per turn, 1 game year could take possibly 20 hours of playing time to complete.

3. Sound bugs. I now have 5exp units and every time I hear the cannon firing sound, having just clicked on limber, I just piss myself. I had to redo a couple of rare non-CTD battles because my artillery blew away half of my 5exp line infantry.

It seems like people with older rigs aren't having as many problems with CTD and such as the people with newer, more powerful rigs.