So Total War

[poocolator]

Oh, and the roman pretenders are the former western european rebels. The Invasio Barborum campaign has a western roman civil war going on in which you can pick sides for the pretender emperor in France or the Rome based one. Both camps are in an utter shit position however. Which is kinda fitting since it's about the end of the roman empire. :wink:

Cool, thanks for the update.

In related news. I've been playing Empire: Total War, and I have to say it's better than I had expected. I'm still disappointed with the battle map/campaign map consistency, but it can be forgiven, somewhat. And with the blood, smoke & sounds mod (+ no tracers mod), things look/sound far batter than the vanilla version. I see now how quirky the AI is and how simplistic it can be... but let me tell you, don't let it take you unawares. I was playing as Britain, and neglecting my colonies somewhat preparing for a European invasion, when out of the blue, the bloody Huron Confederation invades my only NA colony. Bloody fucking bastards have a field day slaughtering the poor sods defending the village :/ Now I'm going to go retake that particular colony with a vengeance, complete with ships laden with diseased blankets and angry British patriots, itching to jab their bayonets into some fine, red meat.

Listen to me, I sound like a CA fanboi :/

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Listen to me, I sound like a CA fanboi :/

Yeah, I catch myself sounding like that at times...

 

[DiverNB]

Call me crazy, but I got a bit bored with Empire. In my Russian campaign I'm dominating the world practically.

I started a British campaign and that is pretty fun so far, but then I installed MTW2 and RTW. I am now leading 4 different campaigns, pretty fun.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Baktria is a tricky one to start. You basically need to combine your army and take one city then upgrade the two cities while waiting for Seleukeia to get tired of attacking you.

Aren't they my allies?

 

[poocolator]

Call me crazy, but I got a bit bored with Empire. In my Russian campaign I'm dominating the world practically.

I started a British campaign and that is pretty fun so far, but then I installed MTW2 and RTW. I am now leading 4 different campaigns, pretty fun.

Play more as British, and be sure to develop universities and philosophy... because what I'm about to describe may happen to you.

So I was playing as the British... got to about 1740 ignoring the dissent and tumult brewing in England (lower classes and all that), as I was busying myself with North America. You know what happens? Civil war breaks out. I chose to play on the side of the rebels, and after that the entirety of the UK turns into an enemy AI player (everything I had access to before). All I am left with is one army of rebels, who even have a different flag from the Union Jack.

Before the UK turned into an AI player, I had a small garrison in Edinborough, so that's where I sent my rebel army. I managed to defeat the army outside of the city, and after I'm returned to the campaign map, and end my turn, the game crashes. Luckily, I think, I have a saved game. I fire it up, end my turn.... crashes. So now I can't fucking go further in my game just as things were getting interesting.

Unless someone knows something I don't, this civil war never happened, historically. I guess the game generated it in response to unwise choices I made managing my plebs :/

 

[DiverNB]

Call me crazy, but I got a bit bored with Empire. In my Russian campaign I'm dominating the world practically.

I started a British campaign and that is pretty fun so far, but then I installed MTW2 and RTW. I am now leading 4 different campaigns, pretty fun.

Play more as British, and be sure to develop universities and philosophy... because what I'm about to describe may happen to you.

So I was playing as the British... got to about 1740 ignoring the dissent and tumult brewing in England (lower classes and all that), as I was busying myself with North America. You know what happens? Civil war breaks out. I chose to play on the side of the rebels, and after that the entirety of the UK turns into an enemy AI player (everything I had access to before). All I am left with is one army of rebels, who even have a different flag from the Union Jack.

Before the UK turned into an AI player, I had a small garrison in Edinborough, so that's where I sent my rebel army. I managed to defeat the army outside of the city, and after I'm returned to the campaign map, and end my turn, the game crashes. Luckily, I think, I have a saved game. I fire it up, end my turn.... crashes. So now I can't fucking go further in my game just as things were getting interesting.

Unless someone knows something I don't, this civil war never happened, historically. I guess the game generated it in response to unwise choices I made managing my plebs :/

Yes, this ca and will happen if you create too much dissent in the lower/middle/upper classes. Pretty cool feature.

I also had that crash at the end of the turn bug in my Russian campaign, had to load a previous save for it to go away.

The game is fucking buggy as all shit.

 

[poocolator]

I have to commend them on doing a really good job. Their written descriptions of pretty much everything are enjoyable to read. I look forward to researching new technology to find out more about it, from the three or four paragraphs they have describing it.

I was also surprised to see that they had made improvements in how sieges are carried out: I had set up a fort to protect my army from the native americans, because I felt I had no chance up against their numbers. They attacked my fort, and I actually managed to whittle their numbers down significantly enough to freely counter on the field of battle, in the following turn. I didn't even have to micromanage the defense, because the troops did a good job of guarding the ramparts, moving to where the enemy was climbing at any one time.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Baktria is a tricky one to start. You basically need to combine your army and take one city then upgrade the two cities while waiting for Seleukeia to get tired of attacking you.

Aren't they my allies?

They are at the start because in 282 BC Baktria is still part of the Suleukeia empire. It's scripted that they go to war with you after a few years to represent Baktria breaking away.

 

[Trash]

That Darth dude on Twcenter has really improved the core game with a really improved campaign AI (or at least one which is better at setting goals) and much better sea and land battles. It's really amazing to see the potential come out in that game.

Only thing that bothers me is that he's already asking for custom loading screens. The ones in RTW for his mod were awful. Picture a Darth Vader copy pasted on a screenshot and you get the idea. He knows how to mod, but he sure as hell has no taste. He even went so far as to replace the advisor with his own Darth Vader avatar.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Unless someone knows something I don't, this civil war never happened, historically. I guess the game generated it in response to unwise choices I made managing my plebs :/

Actually, there was a Jacobite rebellion in the 1700s, but they got absolutely raped.

 

[trojan pony]

Unless someone knows something I don't, this civil war never happened, historically. I guess the game generated it in response to unwise choices I made managing my plebs :/

Actually, there was a Jacobite rebellion in the 1700s, but they got absolutely raped.

The '45 rebellion? Hardly raped, they got within a few miles of London (where the King etc. were readying to abandon the city and flee to the continent) before arguments between the clan chiefs and desertion made them turn home. They got their arses kicked at Culloden and the power of the clans was subsequently destroyed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobite_rising

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Unless someone knows something I don't, this civil war never happened, historically. I guess the game generated it in response to unwise choices I made managing my plebs :/

Actually, there was a Jacobite rebellion in the 1700s, but they got absolutely raped.

The '45 rebellion? Hardly raped, they got within a few miles of London (where the King etc. were readying to abandon the city and flee to the continent) before arguments between the clan chiefs and desertion made them turn home. They got their arses kicked at Culloden and the power of the clans was subsequently destroyed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobite_rising

Indeed, I should have said compared to other rebellions - the Roundheads actually got to kill Charles I and rule the country for a while, and hundreds of years before them the Barons Alliance made Henry II into a puppet King. The Jacobites achieved nothing.

 

[yes plz]

How's Empire: Total War on the technical side? I was thinking of grabbing it, but I keep reading that it runs like absolute crap.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

How's Empire: Total War on the technical side? I was thinking of grabbing it, but I keep reading that it runs like absolute crap.

The demo does, but the game runs fine on my system. Just for reference, my system is an Athlon 64 3700+ (single-core), Geforce 8800GT, 2GB RAM, and I run the game on 1680x1050, most options on max. It slows down during the really really big battles, but for most it runs fine.

 

[DiverNB]

I have similar specs to Matt, the game runs fine when it wants to. Sometimes I get random stutter for 10 seconds or so, but this isn't often.

Also,the game crashes a fair amount. And I just put in the blood and smoke mod and sounds mods, and now the sound is all fucked up...damnit.

 

[JarlFrank]

Got the game now. Works fine. The really huge battles give me quite a significant lag. Not unplayable, but still annoying. Probably because the game doesn't support dual-core processors. It would be twice as fluent if it would. They promised a patch for that, though.

Also, lol, got the pirated version and planning to buy it but apparently the recent patch that was applied automatically by Steam screwed the game up for many people. Steam sucks.

 

[Trash]

They are now releasing daily updates in an effort to placate the community. From the first one it's clear that it's going to take them ages to finish this game. Naval invasions are so broken that they will take at least two patches to work as they should. Talk about a rushed product. Still, nice to hear a bit more and to know that they will keep supporting the game.

But no matter what, that they released the game in this state is unbelievable. It makes the MTW2 release look smooth in comparison.

http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic/53 ... pdate.html

April 8th:


Just thought I would make a post about where things are, where things are going and what we plan on doing.
First off, we are going to support Empire for a long time. The first game play patch with both a lot of fixes and balancing/economic changes as well as more is in testing, and then the cycle of hot fixes then game play patches will begin again. At the moment every programmer is focused on fixing bugs.

What balance/economic/other changes will be in the first game play patch?
Quite a lot really. Unit balancing has seem some general tweaks across the board to improve it. Unit costs have changed for both multiplayer and single player.
For multiplayer there are now separate costs for early and late era so that units better reflect the techs available, and units such as mortars and rocket ships have had big cost increases and light infantry have had their cost increased a bit as well.
For single player, unit costs have increased on normal, even more on hard and even more on very hard so that on very hard units cost 4x their upkeep cost. Bigger ships have had their cost increased and all ships upkeep costs have increased.
There have also been general economic tweaks to prevent the huge sums of money that were possible in the late game, and so to increase the challenge of the game.
As for the other changes, we've added in a delete save game button, a button to allow you to view battle replays from the single player Play Battle menu, improved ship grouping UI and other things.
There are also of course AI improvements and yes naval invasions though they may be rare for now.

What you going to do after that?
Well we are going to carry on fixing and improving the game. The AI (both battle and campaign) will see continuous improvements, multiplayer will see improvements, there will be more balancing improvements, and some nice free stuff you'll be hearing about in due time.
From a personal perspective as someone working on unit balancing, the next game play patch after this one will see some big improvements in terms of diversification of different unit and artillery types. The game play patch after that one will see improvements to naval battle balancing.

So what are you getting at?
We are going to carry on supporting Empire for a long time. We are going to carry on improving Empire. You'll see more as things get done.


Jack.

 

[DiverNB]

It doesn't support dual core? WTF. That's so lame, I was wondering why my performance was so mediocre

 

[Deleted member 7219]

A delete save option and better ship AI are what I'm most looking forward to.

 

[Trash]

I've stopped playing untill they fix naval invasions and work on the campaign AI. As it is I have to put on too many handicaps on myself to have any challenge.

 

[VonVentrue]

The game will be brilliant... in a month or two. With that said, in spite of its current (read: buggy, unpolished) state, I'm enjoying it immensely.

 

[JarlFrank]

The game will be brilliant... in a month or two. With that said, in spite of its current (read: buggy, unpolished) state, I'm enjoying it immensely.

Same here. I like the new approach to battles. They don't become clusterfucks anymore, there is much possibility for tactical maneuvering. And I did notice the AI doing things that it wouldn't have done as competently back in the previous TW games, like attacking my flank or trying to push through the spot where my defense is weakest.

 

[Lingwe]

The game finally installed for me. PC gaming, I wouldn't give it up for anything else.

 

[VonVentrue]

Concerning the upcoming patch:
http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/sreply/7 ... pdate.html

What really makes me happy is that they're working on bringing back the naval invasions, which are conspicuously absent from the game as of now.

April 9th

Hi there everyone, today we thought we would post a follow up to yesterday's daily update as there was a lot of response to it.
How come you are focusing on balancing and not fixing bugs?
We are not. The designers are working on balancing improvements, and the programmers on code fixes. Work on one does not preclude work on the other. It is not a case of we can work on balancing or fixes, it's a case of we can do both, so we are.

You're quadrupling upkeep costs!?!
No, the recruitment cost of units on very hard will be 4x their upkeep cost. Upkeep costs are actually reducing slightly. This confusion was caused by poor wording in yesterdays update.

Why didn't you mention fixes for such and such?
As a designer I do not work with code so I am not aware of all the fixes that have been done. This does not mean there haven't been any. We are fixing the sound issues people have been reporting, crashes and lots of other bugs.
Some examples of fixes in the upcoming patch are:

- Fixed audio volume dropping following advisor
- General sound balance changes
- Campaign map optimisations, and general crash fixes
- General stability improvements and crash fixes
- General optimisation tweaks
- An array of fixes and tweaks to improve AI aggression levels
- Fix Video Stutter
There are a lot more fixes than those coming in the patch.


And what did you mean by rare naval invasions for now?
We've fixed the bugs that were preventing the AI from doing naval invasions, but that did not mean they would suddenly start doing them all the time. The priority for them needs to be balanced against all the other items that have priorities for the AI and this will take a while to get right. We are going to continuously improve the AI so the amount of naval invasions will keep on getting better from the initial fix that is coming in the next patch.

What about multiplayer?
More maps are coming. When is still being discussed but you will see more maps at some point(mostly 4v4s, 3v3s and 2v2s).
The problem with cheaters being able to edit unit stats and costs without problem for multiplayer has been fixed and will be in the next patch.
Other multiplayer improvements are still being discussed.
We will also continue to work to fix bugs with multiplayer.

As this weekend is Easter Bank Holiday weekend in the UK, there will not be anymore Daily Updates until Tuesday. Hope you all have a good weekend.

Jack.

 

[poocolator]

A delete save option and better ship AI are what I'm most looking forward to.

C:\documents and settings\your name\application data\the creative assembly\empire\save_games

should do the trick