The only prob I have with Empire is the AI retardation. Napoleon doesn’t seem different enough, and when a game gets released like Empire and sufficient support isn’t given, you better bet I am not going to get the next game.
On that note, are there any good fan AI patches out for Empire yet?
I have been having a great time steamrolling the AI as the British Empire. Shure the AI is stupid. Would be nice if it put up a fight. But it suffices as a workable roadblock to make my empire feel increasingly awesome and mighty.
I agree this game is but a shade of the game it should have been, but its not moo3.
Indeed - Moo3 actually runs on my PC without crashing, but I secretly wish it couldn’t. On the other hand, E:TW can’t run without crashing, but I openly wish it could.
Maybe I’ll try reinstalling sometime in the future when there are hopefully new updates/drivers/whatever to address what’s causing the issue.
maybe its my old school PC gamer heritage, but i have been absolutely bingeing on ETW the last few days/nights and it hasn’t crashed once on me. Either i am lucky or my rig is just well-tuned and stable.
I played Prussia from start to late 1780, not a single crash, only time I got crash was when I added some mod that promised me to be super stable.
In note, princesses and merchants was just not fun, and unnecessary micro. Assassins is cool, but not realistic, there simply wasn’t a serial murdering thing going on back in those days. It happened, but in my games people drop left and right.
On unstable rigs, I’m willing to bet people forget to a) update their gfx drivers and b) run a DX reinstall from time to time, either will cause bad crashes if they aren’t up to scratch.
That or dust in the fans, box sitting next to the heater, bad ram, sloppy old OS installation, crappy, badly installed drivers, spy- and malware, there’s just so many things that can fuck up a pc.
Getting it to run without hiccups is a hobby in and of itself. I liken it to the way some harley riders fix their own bikes. You just dont get greasy hands, thats the entire difference.
Well, the best-of-year lists are coming out, and CA is crowing about their nominations on their forum.
http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic/66064/t/Empire-Total-War-nominated-in-IGN-and-1UP-awards.html
It’s worth pointing out that South Park Tower Defense got a nomination as well. Just sayin’.
You don’t get crashes anymore because the game has been out for a year already. The stability at the release version was gamebreaking. Recently, I reinstalled it to test the multiplayer campaign. As soon as I entered a battle, I was instantly reminded why I hate this game so much. The AI is so dumb, I might as well play with my eyes closed.
Funny how the game is nominated for the best visual, its graphics definitely doesn’t age well.
p.s. Yes, I am still bitter how I spent $70 on this piece of crap.
I’ve been trying to figure out what’s caused the problems for me.
I have it on a PC with:
a freshly reinstalled version of Vista 64-bit (although this also happened before I had to reinstall)
an e6850
4GB RAM
an 8800GTX with updated drivers
a couple terrabytes of disk space spread over two drives
using onboard “high quality” sound
no over-clocking, whatsoever
no heat problems
I can run it just fine, everything turned all the way up - performance isn’t an issue. However, once I get into the Road to Independence campaign, it will crash after about 45 minutes to an hour of play and it’s almost always on the campaign map (not on the battlefield, where it only happened once). It seems like a memory leak, but if that was the case then everyone else should be experiencing it. I’ve followed every forum suggestions and every official suggestion (including all the downloads from M$). It just won’t stay running, so I finally gave up and uninstalled to prevent temptation from leading me back there again.
Oh, can you do that? That sounds like it might work. Auto-resolve any single battles against AI so that your human “ally” doesn’t end up throwing the battle just because (or can you actually fight against the AI when you don’t have an allied army?). Then you can play through the game and gift each other technologies thereby pretty much being one giant empire.
It seems to me like the more rational thing would be to let the other player control over your own forces (e.g. with a secondary army).
The game crashes on me regularly enough that I have to save constantly. When it was released anyone with a 64-bit system may as well not have bothered to play, until one of their CUSTOMERS released a fix for the .exe. It was very unstable.
There have been numerous stealth patches to the MPC beta, and these seem to have eliminated the primary bugs we were experiencing.
The MPC injects some real challenge into the game. Imagine playing a grand campaign, but every battle is hotly contested by a competant opponent… MUCH harder. My friend and I are playing semi-cooperatively, we cooperate on the campaign map and fight each other tooth and nail in the battles. Very very fun. Quite slow though, especially as we are using the Empire Realism mod which slows battles down considerably, and tend rarely to autoresolve.
One defect, if you will, of the multiplayer battles is that there is no option to continue the battle after all of one side’s forces have been routed, so sometimes what would be a decisive victory is less so because you cannot effectively pursue the broken troops and mop them up. This is a problem also with naval battles as sometimes ships will escape that would otherwise certainly have been captured.
So far though, extremely fun. Played last night for 6 hours with only one crash. Remember, save the game religiously!!
Hey Soapyfrog, what about the previous doubts of coop? Can you play with your friend in the same battle, both with their own army? Using the normal reinforcement by allies rules of the game.
Have not experienced that yet, I will see if it can be arranged (I am playing Sweden and my friend Prussia so we should be able to organize a joint attack).
Very curious about this too.
Have a look at the King Arthur demo if you haven’t already. It’s a different take on the the Total War style. They could use some competition :)
So I bought this months back when it was first discounted in Steam. I’ve started playing it today and I’m on the second Road to Independence scenario. I’m told to take Fort Niagara and can optionally take Fort Duquesne on the way, which I do. Halfway through the siege/battle, one of the enemy artillery positions starts shelling its own fort and breaches it. WTF?
Welcome to Empire: Total Crap
This kind of “coop” doesn’t make any sense at all. Of course, there will be some people who enjoy it (I am glad it works for Soapyfrog) but in general this implementation is very stupid. None of my friends even want to try it - “how is it a coop game if I have to fight you in tactical battles?”.
Because it’s NOT COOP. It never was a “new coop mode!”.
It’s “multiplayer campaign”. Something people wanted since Shogun TW. The appeal is to have a very smart (a human!) opponent, instead of the braindead AI.
Empire multiplayer campaign beta features:
* [B]Play on the entire Empire campaign map[/B] (All 3 theatres) [B]against another player.[/B] * Fight against far improved AI nations, overhauled by update 1.5. * Work together or in competition to dominate the entire Empire campaign map. * Play via LAN or the Internet through Steam. * Engage in diplomacy with AI factions and another player. * Betray or cooperate with a friend or enemy, the choice is yours. * Fight real-time battles against the AI together, or have a friend take the AI's place in battle for the ultimate tactical challenge!
Is me or people is obsessed with coop since two or three years ago? Dawn of War 2, Red Alert 3, Arma 2, L4D 1 & 2, CoD 5, Gears of War, Killing Floor, etc.