Lost me somewhere between “it’s like Alexander for Rome” and “here are a big bunch of features we’re going to steal from popular mods, and break”.
This was mentioned in The Dark Mod thread. How complete is it? Might grab it now just to make sure it’s not gone one day.
He was referring to their original review - how are you supposed to review a game and fault it for bugs you don’t experience. “People on the internets say that…”. People on the internet say that Obama is Hitler and that Wash&Go makes my hair fall out.
:|
<:|
It’s a fully featured, very well polished mod. Auto-resolve skews heavily in favour of the forces of darkness as it over-values orcs but that’s about the only flaw I can find. If you fight your battles on the tactical map it’s not an issue.
Granted, but it makes a difference WHERE on the internet people are saying this. If there are a shitload of threads in the official forum and every other mention of the game involves crashing, bugs, and problems, I think it’s safe to say you should probably mention it in your review.
In all fairness, missing the total lack of seaborne invasions by the AI is poor reviewing.
Yeah, even skipping the bugs and the possible crashes, the game has a very lacking AI (lack of seaborn invasion was not even the greatest problem) and a problematic design in another areas.
That has nothing to do with what I commented on, though.
And it’s a discussion we’ve had a lot of times… probably even in this thread.
You were implying that the original review couldn’t comment on bugs the reviewer didn’t experience. I, in turn, implied that if he didn’t experience ‘bug X’ which was universal to all systems then he hadn’t played the game long enough or with a critical enough eye to write a reputable review.
ok, I have another patch issue. Apparently, nobody but me builds anything larger than sloops or brigs. Does anyone else have this issue?
You must have missed an arms control meeting. What a jerk you are.
I’ve seen that a bit in some games, I think the AI is just behind tech / building wise. Eventually they seem catch up and start making 5th / 6th raters and even GASP 4th raters.
Are you playing as England? England starts with such an advantage in maritime tech, it takes a while for everyone to catch up. You can just about build 4th rates from the beginning with england.
Which remembers me the Galactic Union meetings from Gal Civ. And that remembers me the game that ruined my fun in Empire TW, Gal Civ 2.
I missed lots of things from GC2 in my Empire TW game. . Things like an actual AI that thinks and tries to be competitive and win the game. Things like checking the strength of the enemy before declaring war, or building an army when neighbors also build an army, so they don’t fall in the arms race which means i can’t crush them so easily. Things like the factions surrending or joining another factions when they are going to lose, so the pace improves in the final stages of the campaigns.
Things like that.
An first-rate arms control meeting! Brilliant! The diplomacy in E:TW works now!
On an altogether more sober note, I’m playing as France, and I just dominated England with five first rates and two heavy first rates. I believe destroyed about…35?40? sloops and brigs.
Poland-Lithuania, on the other hand, now those guys sometimes build a sixth rate. Christ! My poor navy!
“reminds me of” not “remembers me” :)
I’ve hit my annual “WoW lull”, so I was looking for something to capture my attention this weekend. As such, I decided to give E:TW another try since it’s been patched up. I don’t know if I’ve developed such a distaste for this game or something else, but I just couldn’t get any enjoyment out of it whatsoever.
I first tried a game as Spain, but it just seemed a bit dull. It seemed just like the England, Prussian and French games I played long ago. I played a few turns until my guys had to siege a castle. I had a good plan for the battle and it went off without a hitch. That is, until my guys who scaled the wall decided on their own to scale back down the wall. No amount of frantic clicking, halting or anything could get them to stop. Meanwhile, the Portuguese troops on the wall had a field day picking them off. Then, once all my remaining troops had gone back down, they decided to go back up. That ended that game.
So to spice things up and find troops that aren’t retarded, I downloaded a mod to unlock the lesser nations. I picked the Cherokee because they have a different feel and played a couple of battles. It was actually a bit of fun. Then virtually every nation in the world declared war on me in the same turn (England, Spain, France, US and a host of lesser countries) - I’m not quite sure why since I had avoided attacking anyone but other Indian tribes - and that was that. I didn’t even bother continuing.
So I tried playing as Courtland and had an encouraging start, siding with my Polish allies against the Prussians. I actually managed to expand my territory a bit. Then the same thing happened - I was suddenly attacked by virtually every civ out there. Sweden, Russia, Austria, Spain and who knows who else all declared war on me (but not Poland). Blech. So I chalked it up to a bug in the mod.
I tried one more mod - the American Revolutionary War mod - and started as the US. Two turns in, Cornwallis comes in with an absolutely killer stack of units and proceeds to annihilate me in Boston. The mod sounds and graphics looked great, but I just wonder if anyone tested it because there wasn’t any way to win that battle. I literally lost the entire game in two turns. Meh.
After that I just gave up. Even now that it’s playable (good news - it didn’t crash), it seems that Empire is less than the some of its parts. Diplomacy? It’s there, but it doesn’t do you any good if you don’t have much to trade. A tech tree? It’s there, but it is basic and again doesn’t do you much good early in the game when you don’t have any gentlemen or educational buildings. Different units? Sure, they’re there but they all play basically the same. Tactics? They’re in there, but it doesn’t much matter when your troops stupidly decide to scale up and down the wall.
The AI is there, but still stupid as hell. In every single field battle I fought (with the battle difficulty set at 3 out of 4), the AI rode their cavalry right up to my lines (or tried to circle my lines) far in advance of their main troops. It was pitifully easy for me to have my cavalry engage and flank with my General’s troops (or another cavalry unit if I had two) to hit their cavalry from the rear while engaged. In every single battle, I was able to utterly destroy at least one enemy cavalry unit well before the battle ever started. That’s just plain stupid. In another battle, with me having no artillery and little cavalry (and on offense), the AI decided to position their artillery behind a city and then engage me in the city itself, entirely neutralizing their cavalry and artillery. Anyone with half a brain is going to engage far from the city, making my troops come to them through open fields and a hailstorm of artillery and use their cavalry advantage to harass troops to try to disrupt a cohesive attack. But nope, the AI decided to engage in the city and not even fortify any buildings while doing so. It was a turkey shoot for my troops.
I dunno. Perhaps I’m just looking for things wrong because of the buggy release and CA’s subsequent actions. But I wanted to give it a fair chance this weekend, but I just can’t seem to find any fun with this game. :(
I dunno. Perhaps I’m just looking for things wrong because of the buggy release and CA’s subsequent actions.
IMO it’s not only that. Yes, most people will look at the game with a more critical eye than usual but it’s only logical since the game is over 6 months old and all (most) bugs should have been fixed by now.
On the other hand, it seems the game’s problems are not caused by a couple of oversights that are easy to fix (which is usually the case with, er, better games). I remember reading somewhere some developer saying that at some point in development, they’ve lost track of what is being done to AI, making AI behavior irratic and unpredictable (from the dev’s point of view). IMO it’s a huge fundamental problem that (it looks ike) cannot be fixed without a complete overhaul of AI, something CA is not willing/able to do (with DLC’s, expansions and whatnot).
In addition, there are some other fundamental flaws, for example, the sameness of the troops. All things combined, IMO ETW will never be the game it was supposed to be, I think it’s time for me to delete it from my hard drive.
This was one of my biggest issues. It was so glaringly obvious that I didn’t even know about the bad press until after I saw this.
I remember reading somewhere some developer saying that at some point in development, they’ve lost track of what is being done to AI, making AI behavior irratic and unpredictable (from the dev’s point of view). IMO it’s a huge fundamental problem that (it looks ike) cannot be fixed without a complete overhaul of AI, something CA is not willing/able to do (with DLC’s, expansions and whatnot).
The AI doesn’t need to be fixed, we just need to wait until it becomes self-aware.
The AI doesn’t need to be fixed, we just need to wait until it becomes self-aware.
Lol. One more reason to delete the game before that happens. :)