Belated impressions

[econ21]

I wanted to like ETW when it came out, but my GB campaigns never seemed to get past around 1710 due to crashes during Sweden's turn (their armies navigating the landbridge to Denmark seemed to cause an endless loop). I've now gone back to it with a GB campaign and had a blast - much like my first Julii campaign of RTW, it was great fun to follow a roughly historical path and playout the iconic campaigns we have read about in literature and history. At one point, I was trying to counter a French invasion of the colonies and noticed I had an army camped at Albany. I started to feel like the beleaguered English general in Last of the Mohicans: "Webb is at Albany?! By God, that is only two days march from here!".

I think initially I also suffered from having an old computer - this game really needs a decent computer for the land battles to look nice and the sea backs not to churn painfully (4x speed is often necessary if you are not to suffer the tedium of waiting).

A big strength of ETW is the global scope - the integration of America, Europe and India is wonderfully done. I was initially extremely sceptical of whether it would work and be worth it, but it really is - especially for colonial powers like GB (presumably more of a waste for Austria or Prussia). I am now playing NTW, but I really miss those two other zones now. Somehow America and India really feel like America and India, rather than just being duplicates of Europe. Partly this is due to subtle things like zone appropriate background music, but also the terrain and fighting styles differ somewhat.

The other main strength of ETW is the naval battle system. I love it. It is beautiful and feels very immersive, but also utterly different from the land battles. I had worried that naval rebalancing - making smaller ships faster and more accurate - would ruin the game. I still regard it as an unhistorical abomination, but I can live with it as neither I nor the AI are skilled enough to exploit it. (In principle, you should be able to use smaller ships to kill bigger ones from afar, but it never seems to work out like that.) For all the quirks, bigger ships are still better and by a big margin.

The land battles are also much better than I would have expected from switching the melee oriented TW system to a firepower dominated era. I find the balance of arms (cavalry, infantry, artillery) feels just right. The battlefield AI is pretty weak, but not utterly lame. A much stronger AI army will crush me and even winning a battle where I have the numbers can be tricky. (Using artillery and to a lesser extent cavalry is tricky now.) The weakest point is siege battles. I find these awful and will now starve out fortified cities to avoid them. It's a shame as in MTW2, they really had become rather good.

I like the modelling of the economy. Even monopolising the trade routes as GB, I struggled to field three big armies and field a navy capable of dominating France, Spain and other continental factions. Money became particularly tight once the 13 colonies joined - I guess the taxes did not compensate for the loss of their trade. Towards the end of the game, I found myself becoming very aware of which trade routes were being blocked and working to clear them, which was good.

However, on M/M, the AI money may be a little too tight. I landed in Mysore sometime in the 1720s, expecting - based on player reports - to be met by 2 full stacks but encountered only about a half stack. Even Maratha, which holds all India, can only send drips and drabs to fight me. I guess I need to raise the difficulty to H, although I fear the diplomatic penalties. (I tried M/VH but gave up in disgust when the Huron steamrollered me on turn 2. On M/M, they sadly never moved.)

Diplomacy was fun, but I found all my continental allies dragged me into wars - ultimately, with Spain, France, Prussia and Sweden. It seemed a bit much, but certainly made the game lively. As I regard TW campaigns as close to roleplaying games, I did not want to break any alliances but I lacked the finance to intervene on the continent. May be I should try harder. I would have liked some scope to end wars jointly with my allies - I did not want to sue for peace if my ally was still fighting. We should have been able to jointly negotiate terms or at least I should have been able to demand a faction stop attacking my ally.

The campaign AI seemed decent. The AI was more aggressive and competent than in previous post-MTW games. Raiding adds a nice element to the game: in India, my new conquest, Mysore, was promptly devastated by small raids and made me set up a "police force" type defensive army. That felt rather historical (asymmetric warfare). I have not quite got the hang of the naval strategic game - with the massive naval superiority I had built up, I should have been able to dominate the coasts of Europe, but I never pulled it off. It seemed as if AI ships could be built and leave blockaded ports (surely not?). And lone AI ships could cut off much of my trade by blockading Bristol. (I don't quite get interception - I guess you must leave your units some of their move in order to enable to intercept). I was just starting to get to grips with this when I lost interest in my GB campaign - having conquered America, found India no challenge and having an unassailable prestige lead. I've moved on to a French campaign in NTW, but the GB campaign in ETW still seems more replayable to me. (NTW seems destined to be a land battle slugfest whereas ETW provides more possibilities).

[pevergreen]

Good to see you are enjoying it.

Also, yaaay its econ.

[Ignoramus]

Good to see you again, econ!!

[Cecil XIX]

These are good points, and it makes me wonder why I gave up on the game so soon. I take it you're a fan of the period, econ? Perhaps that's the difference.

Also, Huzzah for econ being back! I was reading the Imperial Messenger Service and all of a sudden I was like, "WOAH! Where'd that avatar come from?"

[Ratwar]

Interesting comments.

Honestly, I find your comments on Naval Battles perplexing to an extent. To me they're probably the biggest let down of the game. There's simply no balance. As you yourself say, the big ships always win out. This should happen when it comes down to a broadside to broadside battle, but the end result is that almost every ship type is redundant by the end of the game. The most you'll ever really need is sloops (cheap blockades), 5th rates (running down routers), Indianmen (Trade), and Heavy 1st Rates(Killing things). I also find it highly annoying that some poor sap over at CA spent his time designing the Xebec, and then to see only three of them appear in game. If you're going to introduce Naval Battles to the series, you need to hit the ball out of the park, and I just don't think that happened (or maybe I'm just bitter because in my most recent game one of my admirals committed suicide just as the battle began, you be the judge).

Also, to correct what may be a factual error, I'd say it is virtually impossible for gaining the 13 colonies to result in a loss of income. See, E:TW calculates money from trade based on a Commodities+General Trade+Length of Trade Agreement. Since any commodities you were trading with the colonies are simply redirected to your other trading partners (and you gain the commodities of the 13 colonies, that's actually a net gain), and since commodities are easily the most valuable part of the equation early in the game, I'd be surprised if you didn't actually gain trading money.