Support NeoGAF

[traveler]

Is this a hard game to get into for someone new to the series?

My first game in the series and I'm finding the main campaign (The Road to Independence) extremely accommodating. Just turn the advice up to max and play through it first before moving on to the mp and country campaigns and you should be fine. (I have no idea how accessible they are.)

 

[epmode]

Is this a hard game to get into for someone new to the series?

No more than any of the others. It has a rather nice tutorial section.

 

[platypotamus]

Works for me. Try this link: http://cdn.steampowered.com/Manuals/10500/ETW_GFW_MG_UXP_DD.pdf

I just stationed my troops outside an enemy fort for 5 minutes (getting hit pretty hard by the troops inside) while my artillery moved to a better position to blast a hole in the side. ......then I realized that my dudes could just scale the wall. SORRY, BEEN PLAYING TOO MUCH DOW2

That's the one I'm using, it says the file is damaged for me. :\

 

[epmode]

That's the one I'm using, it says the file is damaged for me. :\

Try right-clicking save-as.

 

[AgentOtaku]

Did they final retail copy fix the issue with the ridiculous amount of loading the demo had?

As I said in that prior thread, I would do something like change my resolution and it took like 2 minutes, it was nuts!

Please tell me this has gotten better as I'm still very interested in this!

 

[RoyalSimonBoobs]

Did they final retail copy fix the issue with the ridiculous amount of loading the demo had?

As I said in that prior thread, I would do something like change my resolution and it took like 2 minutes, it was nuts!

Please tell me this has gotten better as I'm still very interested in this!

Load times are a lot better IMO. There was also a "fix" for the demo where you could use a python script to unpack all the compressed files (the reason for the long load times) and they became much better.

I've played about 4 hours so far and I've been loving it. I did run in to a very annoying issue in my last battle that caused me to take a little break though...

Playing the road to independence I was trying to take Quebec in the rain but for some reason all my units moved in slow motion. It was nuts, the animations were something like 10 times slower and the movement speed was decreased by as much as well. Even having everyone run everywhere was slower than walking regularly. What made it even more strange was that the enemy was completely fine and ran around the map at normal speed. Has anyone run in to this? I've played about 10 or so battles so far and I only hit that once but it was very annoying as I was about to capture the friggin' capital.

 

[AgentOtaku]

Awesome, thanks!

 

[Doytch]

Load times are a lot better IMO. There was also a "fix" for the demo where you could use a python script to unpack all the compressed files (the reason for the long load times) and they became much better.

I've played about 4 hours so far and I've been loving it. I did run in to a very annoying issue in my last battle that caused me to take a little break though...

Playing the road to independence I was trying to take Quebec in the rain but for some reason all my units moved in slow motion. It was nuts, the animations were something like 10 times slower and the movement speed was decreased by as much as well. Even having everyone run everywhere was slower than walking regularly. What made it even more strange was that the enemy was completely fine and ran around the map at normal speed. Has anyone run in to this? I've played about 10 or so battles so far and I only hit that once but it was very annoying as I was about to capture the friggin' capital.

You try changing the game speed back and forth?

 

[pizzaguysrevenge]

I love seeing my frame rate go to shit when I close up on a battle of 4000+ soldiers. :lol

 

[ghst]

Just got into a nice battle in the campaign when the whole game crashed at the sight of 2000 soldiers on screen. Wow, this game totally destroys my comp. :lol

Did not expect this after I've played and enjoyed Crysis and the Relic RTSes on High - Ultra High and enjoyed them. (For reference, I've got a C2D 3.2 processor- forgot the model number- 4 GB of RAM, and a 8800 GTX. I'm guessing the processor is my problem?)

Guess I'll just turn it down and deal with the ugly textures. I didn't buy this for eye candy anyways, I suppose.

if it's a battle involving the iroquois indians, then that's a performance bug floating around. one theory is that the sprites aren't in place, so even zoomed out, it's rendering the high detail models. i'm pretty sure they're only really present in the rti campaign.

my e6750 (oc'd to 3.2ghz) handles all other battles admirably. even full 20 vs 20 skirmishes.

This is still in the game? I thought that recruitment and reinforcement had moved to the field in this release, preventing the sort of troop ferrying that was required.

units can be recruited straight from admirals/generals, and will automatically route to them.

the Road to Independence campaign sounds sorta icky-part of the draw of the game for me is to smash America's awful democratic experiment before it even starts.

it's optional - especially for veteran grognards such as yourself - but it is probably the best primer i've ever played for a strategy game.

 

[RoyalSimonBoobs]

You try changing the game speed back and forth?

I didn't besides going in and out of pause/unpaused speeds. I'll try that if I get in the same situation but I'm doubtful that would fix it. Still, thanks for the suggestion.

 

[FlyinJ]

Load times are a lot better IMO. There was also a "fix" for the demo where you could use a python script to unpack all the compressed files (the reason for the long load times) and they became much better.

I've played about 4 hours so far and I've been loving it. I did run in to a very annoying issue in my last battle that caused me to take a little break though...

Playing the road to independence I was trying to take Quebec in the rain but for some reason all my units moved in slow motion. It was nuts, the animations were something like 10 times slower and the movement speed was decreased by as much as well. Even having everyone run everywhere was slower than walking regularly. What made it even more strange was that the enemy was completely fine and ran around the map at normal speed. Has anyone run in to this? I've played about 10 or so battles so far and I only hit that once but it was very annoying as I was about to capture the friggin' capital.

That's because it was raining, and you were in a swamp. Took me a bit to figure this out...

It actually worked to my advantage. I had my entire army in the trees, while the enemy came down the hill into the swamp and couldn't move. I decimated them.

 

[RoyalSimonBoobs]

That's because it was raining, and you were in a swamp. Took me a bit to figure this out...

It actually worked to my advantage. I had my entire army in the trees, while the enemy came down the hill into the swamp and couldn't move. I decimated them.

Just came back to post this. Decided that I'd try to just stay at the start position and see what happened and i ended up kicking the crap out of everyone. I still think it's a bug even though it was a swamp. The animations on the dudes were way off.

 

[Steeven]

Meh the AI is pissing me off big time. Smells like civilisation AI to me. Everyone is totally unreliable, the negotiation process is very unrealistic.

You have to pay out of your ass to get anything. The AI switches back and forth, on every issue it seems.

The AI also seems overly aggressive, with a huge ego. I was occupying ½ of Prussia, I had destroyed his fleet and his biggest army.. he has no allies and is at war with me and 3 others (not counting pirates etc) but as Denmark had declared war on me I wanted to sue for peace.. however the totally defeated AI of Prussia didn't want that. He even denied a White Peace! WTF.

Yeah it seems the grand campaign AI isn't as advanced as I hoped it would be.. far faaar away from Paradox games. Its more like a simple Civilisation AI with simple objectives not based on history at all.

So I am a bit let down by this. The combat is still awesome, even the sea combat rocks.

Wtf? CA promised every time they would fix AI. Your post describes the AI for Rome and M2 perfectly, which is the following in a nutshell: everyone who borders your empire will wage war on you, no matter what. Still hasn't been fixed I guess. They really need to hire some Paradox people, they know how diplomacy is done.

 

[Darkflight]

Does this crash often for anyone else? I haven't got past Chapter 3 of the the first part of the Road to Independence yet as it keeps crashing on the overworld, I may have to resort to booting to my XP partition, maybe its a Vista memory issue with games using a lot of memory, my Fallout 3 always crashed in Vista as well.

 

[CoilShot]

I love seeing my frame rate go to shit when I close up on a battle of 4000+ soldiers. :lol

Well this is going to be my next question :lol How good of a system do you need to run this?

 

[Chairman Yang]

Wtf? CA promised every time they would fix AI. Your post describes the AI for Rome and M2 perfectly, which is the following in a nutshell: everyone who borders your empire will wage war on you, no matter what. Still hasn't been fixed I guess. They really need to hire some Paradox people, they know how diplomacy is done.

Yeah, it kills me to do this, but I think I might be skipping Empire because of this. I was able to overlook the weak strategic AI in previous Total Wars and have fun despite it, but Paradox has upped my standards.

 

[Kabouter]

They really need to hire some Paradox people, they know how diplomacy is done.

Well, even Paradox games have some quirks.
I've seen an unallied Greece declare war on the USSR in Hearts of Iron 2.

 

[gola]

Make sure you have a stable economy (aka research and upgrade your iron mines, timber and fur cabins, expand docks and upgrade farms).. if that goes to hell everything does. Apparently they have not heard of loans in this parallel universe.

If your economy goes to shit you'll have to downsize the military, which will suck.
So make sure you go 1500-2000 plus even before thinking of going to war, just to have some head room.

I had my first war around 1715.
Oh and try to take care of Denmark first. Their navy is a pain in the ass and you wont have to worry about the entire western front (Norway, and Danish landing in Skåne).

Also you should try and have a nice fleet to protect your harbours and trade routes.

Thanks! Will have a go at it.

 

[Chairman Yang]

Well, even Paradox games have some quirks.
I've seen an unallied Greece declare war on the USSR in Hearts of Iron 2.

Certainly, Paradox AI is very flawed in its implementation. But its basic design philosophy is perfect. That is, instead of the AI existing merely to fight the player, like in the TW games, it exists to give life to each of the game's factions. Every country has its own goals, its own interactions with other countries, its own style of play. Conflict with the player's country can rise naturally out of this, but isn't inevitable. This fundamental design style makes diplomacy interesting. The TW games completely drop the ball in this respect.

 

[DevelopmentArrested]

Man.. where should I start? Massive campaign or Road to Independence? The game looks fun but I'm completely lost on what to do and the tutorials are pretty much throwaway.

Also, the game runs horribly on my rig. 3.2 CPU, 2gb RAM, GT9800. I ran DoW2 fine but this game chugs. Any performance tips apart from installing latest NVIDIA drivers? thanks.

 

[ghst]

Man.. where should I start? Massive campaign or Road to Independence? The game looks fun but I'm completely lost on what to do and the tutorials are pretty much throwaway.

Also, the game runs horribly on my rig. 3.2 CPU, 2gb RAM, GT9800. I ran DoW2 fine but this game chugs. Any performance tips apart from installing latest NVIDIA drivers? thanks.

that a c2d 3.2ghz cpu, or single core?

they're very different creatures.

 

[Mkliner]

Man.. where should I start? Massive campaign or Road to Independence? The game looks fun but I'm completely lost on what to do and the tutorials are pretty much throwaway.

Also, the game runs horribly on my rig. 3.2 CPU, 2gb RAM, GT9800. I ran DoW2 fine but this game chugs. Any performance tips apart from installing latest NVIDIA drivers? thanks.

Road to Independence is basically a really long campaign tutorial so start with that.

 

[Forsete]

Denmark annexed.. Now I am building some sweet ass ships. O_O

 

[Mkliner]

Ok so far as the british I own all of the Huron territories, Sweden, Boston, and most of the Caribean. The diplomacy has had its ups and downs Sweden and Spain have both been pretty good with it. I got them both to hand over some tech or land when it was obvious I had won. But Prussia seems to be pretty much retarded. They went to war with one of my allies in the beginning and I've been trying to get a peace treaty for like 20-25 years.

The battle Is the same way; sometimes they'll pull some crazy move out of their hat and do pretty well or they'll move straight foward and get crushed. So hopefully they'll patch the game up soon.

Edit: Funny thing I still haven't declared war on anybody. So far I've just been dragged into my allies wars. (Except the stupid Hurons)

 

[Surfheart]

Runs great here, everything on ultra 1680x1050, 4xaa/8xAf. Core 2 quad @3.2 and 9800gtx

 

[Steeven]

I heard that people with 256MB cards are fucked with Medium settings; they can't change it to high or ultra, even if their card > 512MB or more cards. CA better fix this with a patch because this is lame.

 

[gola]

Need some beginner artillery advice. I find it difficult to know where to place them in relation to an enemy and to know that I am within range etc. Anyone?

 

[Surfheart]

Need some beginner artillery advice. I find it difficult to know where to place them in relation to an enemy and to know that I am within range etc. Anyone?

With the artillery unlimbered, you can see the range of fire cone drawn in white on the terrain. The seem to work well from higher ground, but placing them in hollows makes them harder to hit with counter battery fire. Don't get them too close to the front without protection either, if they are caught by enemy units they tend to die pretty fast :lol

 

[Forsete]

But Prussia seems to be pretty much retarded. They went to war with one of my allies in the beginning and I've been trying to get a peace treaty for like 20-25 years.

:lol Same here, only 30 years has passed since we got into war with eachother.. Once I occupied ½ is land and had destroyed his biggest army, he had no fleet and even refused a WHITE PEACE. Unbelievable.

Also, is anyone finding that the game crashes a lot? I've had maybe 6-7 mysterious crashes so far.

, if they are caught by enemy units they tend to die pretty fast

I usually place of company of infantry men and a squadron of cavalry behind them to defend them.. if the enemies get to close to them and the arty pretty much has played out its roll I let them retreat out of the map (click the white flag).

 

[Mkliner]

I'm gonna have to add United Provinces to my stupid list. I was their ally and they randomly decided to attack the 13 collonies. So far they won't accept a peace treaty.

Also either the naval AI is really good or I just suck horribly on the sea. I'm pretty sure it's the latter though.

Also, is anyone finding that the game crashes a lot? I've had maybe 6-7 mysterious crashes so far.

Did you get it on steam or retail?

 

[zon]

I haven't been attacked a single time by the AI, I've initiated wars with Poland-Lithuania and its protectorate (both gone), Denmark (all gobbled up), and Russia (4 provinces left). Staying friendly and trading with the other big countries actually work for once!

Although Prussia is fucking weird for me too. When I conquered P-Ls protectorate nation, Prussia actually offered me East Prussia, tech and money for that shitty region. They've been trying to bribe me with tech and money to get it back ever since. And somehow Prussia went from a weak nation with two provinces to kicking the crap out of Austria and killing two of the city states in middle Europe. Now they're the second most powerful nation in Europe after me. How they managed that when they went to war against 5 different nations at once is a fucking mystery to me.

The war between GB and France/Spain has sucked all three countries dry and they've basically been standing still or weakening in terms of naval and military power for the last 20 years. They must've lost a ton of naval and military troops (both GB and France had HUGE navies before there). And yet they keep on fighting without stopping, stupid stupid :|

 

[GC|Simon]

I started with Prussia and meanwhile my kingdom is 30 states big. I got big parts of Europe, except France, Spain and Russia. I've some small islands in the caribbean and recent I conquered some parts of India. That boosted my trading revenue.

Love the game so far. I think I'll conquer the rest of Europe now (Denmark first, I haven't attacked them because they are friends of Russia).

btw, lol @ Spain. I conquered Venice and they want it. They offered me different provinces in the caribbean, money and technology. But I said no. Anyway, they're coming in with a new offer every round.

And I hate those pirates. Time to get rid of them!

 

[Merino]

As of now, with both land and sea battles being a mayor lag fest even on the lowest settings (no it's not my hardware) most I did with the game is looking at it lying on my desk being unused.

I did try the campaign map for a bit (though having to autoresolve everything sucks) but despite it's apparent depth and size I feel it's actually a couple steps back from Medieval 2.
Forgetting the clone army aspect for a bit (I can live with that and those times where times of standardization) it just doesn't feel like a proper Total War game. Way too few provinces and incredibly small army's (only 1 recruitment per province) make for very uninteresting wars. It feels way more like a trade/diplomacy game now than a proper strategic campaign map game. There's even hardly any room to strategically place army's on the campaign map.

 

[Forsete]

Did you get it on steam or retail?

Retail buts its running through Steam.

 

[Bust Nak]

As of now, with both land and sea battles being a mayor lag fest even on the lowest settings (no it's not my hardware) most I did with the game is looking at it lying on my desk being unused.

I did try the campaign map for a bit (though having to autoresolve everything sucks) but despite it's apparent depth and size I feel it's actually a couple steps back from Medieval 2.
Forgetting the clone army aspect for a bit (I can live with that and those times where times of standardization) it just doesn't feel like a proper Total War game. Way too few provinces and incredibly small army's (only 1 recruitment per province) make for very uninteresting wars. It feels way more like a trade/diplomacy game now than a proper strategic campaign map game. There's even hardly any room to strategically place army's on the campaign map.

Develope your regions more, you can recuit multipule units at the same time.

 

[Conflict NZ]

It's such a shame that they used Steam, as the hall I'm staying at forces you through a proxy and blocks steam I cannot authenticate it. I was so close to buying it as well, if the cashier hadn't asked me if I knew how to use steam before buying it I would have. Guess it gives me an excuse to wait for a price drop.

 

[Proc]

This is my first game I've tried playing in the series. I'm enjoying it. I have to try the extracting tips to reduce the long load times because they are sort of annoying. It was especially annoying trying to tweak my settings.


I have a feeling I would prefer the Medieval setting much more. I ought to go back and check it out. Sieging castles seems like it would be so bad ass.

 

[Philthy]

I'm on the fence with this. I played the demo, and the tutorial missions were pretty basic, but fun.

I moved on and tried the 1 vs 1 battle that they allow you to play and its frustratingly hard. I tired three times to play it, and I just lose. Is the real game this hard? The enemy canons just obliterate everything, and never miss. I set my canons up and they miss everything. In the tutorial mission my canons weren't this bad. The AI also seems to constantly ambush me and flank me. I'll admit, I'm not the best at strategy games, but this was just brutal.

 

[GC|Simon]

My kingdom:

I'll now restart the game, but with another nation.

 

[Slackbladder]

Unfortunately I've just come up against a pretty fatal bug. Finished my Grand Campaign with Prussia (short) and won so I continued for a while before saving the game. I then try and start a new GC but every time the game crashes to desktop. I can load saves and I could start the American Campaign. But I can't even get the Grand Campaign screen up. I wonder if it's to do with nations I defeated in my Prussia game appearing as playable factions in the GC menu that are crashing the game? Whatever it is unless a re-install works it looks like I'll be dependant on a patch before I can get anymore play out of the game. Not too happy, to be honest.

 

[Waikis]

Now that i'm done with dawn of war II, I finally have the time to play Empire.
Here's a screenshot of me fooling around with the config file.

 

[ghst]

It's such a shame that they used Steam, as the hall I'm staying at forces you through a proxy and blocks steam I cannot authenticate it. I was so close to buying it as well, if the cashier hadn't asked me if I knew how to use steam before buying it I would have. Guess it gives me an excuse to wait for a price drop.

while not an ideal situation, could you not just log in to your steam account on any computer on any other network to register the code, then install the game off the disc at home?

i've never tried this myself.

on the other hand, it's never a bad idea to wait a month or so after the release of a total war game to pick it up. while not quite up to m2tw's game destroying standard, empire still has a fair compliment of pretty major bugs.

but damn, i love it so. i've considered staving off my play time because of these issues, but there's no way in hell i can make that happen.

 

[Fragamemnon]

Yeah I've decided to get the game s few weeks down the road when some of the most glaring stability and gameplay issues are tweaked a bit. I am still hearing that the grand campaign in the game is a stunningly mediocre slog like M2TW's was, but oh well I'll still manage to get tons of play out of it anyway.

 

[DrBo42]

Now that i'm done with dawn of war II, I finally have the time to play Empire.
Here's a screenshot of me fooling around with the config file.

Um..WOW. Are battles in this game really that large? If so, I must have this. :lol

I have a C2D 3.0 Ghz CPU with a GTX 260 and 4GB of RAM, can I run this?

 

[Fragamemnon]

I have a C2D 3.0 Ghz CPU with a GTX 260 and 4GB of RAM, can I run this?

They definitely can get big, but I think for that screenshot the game files were edited a bit to allow for larger regiment sizes.

As for your computer, I was able to run the demo with great results on nearly exactly the same hardware.

 

[DrBo42]

They definitely can get big, but I think for that screenshot the game files were edited a bit to allow for larger regiment sizes.

As for your computer, I was able to run the demo with great results on nearly exactly the same hardware.

Thank you much, sir.

 

[Waikis]

Um..WOW. Are battles in this game really that large? If so, I must have this. :lol

I have a C2D 3.0 Ghz CPU with a GTX 260 and 4GB of RAM, can I run this?

Lol nah,I'm using e8600@4.4ghz with 2x HD4870 and it gets reaaaaaly choppy if i set the unit count that high .

You might get away with such unit count if you turn down the details though.

 

[Action Jackson]

Is Austria a playable faction in the game?

 

[ghst]

Is Austria a playable faction in the game?

yes.

first patch is out today.

CA Staff and Admin

Tags : None
Hi guys,

We will be rolling out the first of a series of updates later today with a variety of fixes for Empire: Total War, including:

* Fixed Alt-Tab issue which prevents players from switching away from a full screen window
* Fixed text rendering for certain resolutions
* Fixed localized font overrun issues.
* Fixed a variety of crash and memory leak issues
* Fixed a variety of multiplayer client lock
* Fixed trade nodes for those nations with resource in home region which caused unprofitable trade theatre routes eg: Sweden and Marathas.

There is a constant support program in process which is using your feedback as well as our own testing. We are currently working on the next update which will be available early next week.

Thanks,

Mark O'Connell