Has the ETW horse bolted

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Well, sorta bolted. It's hard to still love ETW, after all the disappointment.
The latest patches actually did a lot to help it on it's way, but it still is a long road to go, and I'm getting kind of jaded. Basically, the longer it takes, the less impressed I'm getting even if it were quite good.

[Grombeard]

Well, sorta bolted. It's hard to still love ETW, after all the disappointment.
The latest patches actually did a lot to help it on it's way, but it still is a long road to go, and I'm getting kind of jaded. Basically, the longer it takes, the less impressed I'm getting even if it were quite good.

Same here.

Actually, after patch 1.4 Empire is playable and some kind of fun. But after waiting for over half a year to get to that point, i just cannot really get up and say "okay, let's forget about the past". I tried and i started a new campaign, but that only showed that there is still much work to do, especially on the AI part. Okay, Rome and Medieval 2 weren't perfect too, but at least they were fun. In Empire, the battles play all the same. You don't get many different units, even the enemy has almost the same units like you most of the time. And then it's just shoot and flank and repeat until you surround the enemy and he routs. I lost more battles in Medieval 2, or at least the battles were more challenging when the enemy outnumbers you. Now i haven't had big problems against enemy armies double the size of my army, and thats on hard difficulty... :(
Then diplomacy still isn't that good as it should be. It weren't in medieval 2 vanilla (with Lusteds CAI it is!), but it didn't matter that much. In Empire diplomacy is more important, still it works the way it did in medieval 2. Because of the town system it greatly hurts my economy if i'm at war with all my neighbors who then come pillaging all over my lands. And with the biiig importance of trade, it makes it even more difficult, since everyone who hates me comes raiding my traderoutes and i simply cannot afford a navy that big to secure all my routes. In M2TW, being at war with half the world just wasn't that much of a problem. :(

It's these points, the "history" of empire after release and some more things that somehow keep me from loving this game, even if it has great potential and isn't all that bad after 1.4.