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PC Geeks only. [Empire: Total War thread]

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Yeh man, I'm glad I held off on the impulse the other day. I got home to find out the intertubez up in arms about it. Will get it at a shop.

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Ugh, I wish my laptop could play this well. From what I've played of the demo the combat is superb, but it chugged on low settings and crashed whenever I tried to lower the resolution.

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I wasn't aware that steam is charging more than retail. That seems very un-steam-like. In any case, I preordered through retail so no problems here.

Oh and downloading 15gb on launch day does sound crazy. It does become problem when your ISP has set a monthly download cap.

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According to http://steamrepowered.eu/ steam is 45% more expensive than retail (in EU). Not sure how accurate it is (it probably paints a worse picture than the reality is).

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The thing is, steam is still a great way for developpers to get their catalog on track and selling without much of an effort, and on the professional side, they're not charging that much for the service, so if they're more expansive, it's not practically for them, there should be a reasonable amount for the editors or developers.

Though I find it a bit easy to go "yep, it's fucking expansive compared to sites where you can find them really cheap... But no I won't tell you what these sites are..."

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Steam: £39.99

Game.co.uk - £29.99

Gamestation.co.uk - £29.99

Amazon.co.uk - £23.96

play.com - £29.99

Those sites aren't hard to find really are they.

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I got my preorder late, so I'm just installing this right now. There is one thing that is kinda weird. I figured since this was a retail disc, it would install from disc as opposed to downloading the files off steam. The steam install dialog box says it's installing from disc but the estimated completion time is like 2hrs. I can even hear the disc spinning, but what the hell is going on? Is steam downloading parts of the 15gb files and installling some from disc?I don't understand why installing from disc would take 2hrs.

If it really is installing from disc, then this for me would be the longest install time to date.

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I don't really know why, but I bought this today. £27 from Asda, and the Steam activation proved more troublesome than I would have liked. At first it denied the install entirely, then it tried to download the bloody thing, and on the third or fourth attempt it finally decided to spin the disc. So it's on there, but I decided to watch some Red Riding and Skins, so I haven't actually played it yet.

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Overall very happy with the game, not so happy with the way STEAM handled the purchase and faltered with 'ticket expired' crap, but that's a distant memory now. It's still the same Total War game but there's a lot of subtle changes to the way it works both in battles and on the campaign map that it feels fresh to play.

I like the little trenches your defenders can build, and creating ambushes that decimate forces and shock your enemy to the core is so much easier thanks to the little guns they carry. Whilst naval combat itself is pretty forgettable it's nice that the naval units themselves serve a greater purpose. The trade route stuff in particular should be interesting - but I'm too early in my game to see whether the AI is aggressive enough. There's a lot of money in it though.

On multiplayer I've played a few land battles so far and it handles itself quite well. It's a little sparse in terms of maps, options and statistics but at least it works. Still I'm mostly looking forward to the multiplayer patch they plan on bringing out, as an online campaign style game is the holy grail for Total War.

On the negative side there's a lot of little niggles and at some point they need to make handling units more natural and less glitchy. I don't want to have to micromanage in the heat of battle and re-group men because they decided to crap their pants and run away - and when I select two units of cavalry and try to position them together I don't want them split up into completely different continents - I want them positioned besides one another. It's infuriating! :hah:

I also have to reset my options for displaying the huge banners everytime the battle starts. This consists of going into the options screen, switching them back on, hitting ok and then returning back into options in order to switch them back off. Easy to fix, but not something you expect to see on release.

Not to mention I lost the ability to move my 'spy' after clicking a mysterious (and unlabelled) button whilst he was inside a port. He was still there as far as the game was concerned but I couldn't see him, or do anything with him... The game can be a little confusing, especially in the beginning*, and the 'advisor' from the previous games isn't much help.

*pfft, it's positively daunting in the beginning. I can't remember how long I spent on that first turn as the British.

But whatever, the game is ace :tup:

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If you do the road to independance, it eases you in gently to the game and the new features. Even as a TW veteran, I'd've still had a few problems jumping straight in without that.

As you say - many subtle, but welcome improvements, such as the way the diplomacy screens contain so much more useful information (their standing with other factions etc.), how the mini map in battle mode shows the unit type with an outline on mid zoom level, all the reloading animations, the way the AI is clearly better at dealing with immediate threats.

The g/f is away, that's my weekend sorted :P

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Tried the demo yesterday* and I was positively surprised at how well the battle gameplay works in this setting. The units were more easier to control and keep organized now that most of them can keep distance to the enemy and you could actually do something useful even after the initial encounter. I also noticed that some of my former tactics didn't necessarily work anymore when I sent some of my cavalry to destroy weakly defended enemy artillery and they were basically executed by the riflemen while crossing the river.

I also like the new minimal battle UI better than that in previous titles.

*had some issues at first, so if you got a hundred Steam notifications about me launching and leaving the game like Gigol did, then that was me leaving the game to launch and going to the bathroom only to notice the Steam launcher had managed to get stuck on some kind of endless loop of "Preparing to launch the game" dialogs.

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I also noticed that some of my former tactics didn't necessarily work anymore when I sent some of my cavalry to destroy weakly defended enemy artillery and they were basically executed by the riflemen while crossing the river.

Nice example of teaching history through game mechanics - ie why we no longer have mounted cavalry on battlefields today :tup:

A lot of soldiers were slaughtered, even right up to the early stages of the First World War, because generals insisted on sending cavalry against riflemen, maybe out of a sense of tradition.

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A lot of soldiers were slaughtered, even right up to the early stages of the First World War, because generals insisted on sending cavalry against riflemen, maybe out of a sense of tradition.

Heh. Then, once they'd learned that lesson, it took them a while longer to realise that sending men in waves against a bunch of machine guns wasn't the way either.

Captured brilliantly, like so much else of that war, in the scene in "Blackadder Goes Forth", when Bladder is speaking to Melchett, and they're looking at what initially seems to be a scale model of the amount of ground captured but turns out to be 1:1.

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"But how was I supposed to know?"

I was actually just surprised by how effective those 15 or so riflemen were at dealing with my cavalry.

I also missed the introduction (I think there was a bug or something) and therefore wasn't sure whether I was attacking or defending. By the time I noticed I was, in fact, defending I had already sent half of my troops a mile away to perform a sort of sneak attack on my enemy. So the slaughtered cavalry was actually the least of my worries anyway.

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The dawning realisation of horror that you are going to get mutilated.

I think I did this the other night - it was my second battle, and I sat around for ages, waiting for the enemy. I don't have an excuse though, as I was attacking a French fort. :shifty:

I quickly rallied, and pounded the French into submission in the 20 minutes remaining of the battle time.

Lesson learned - not played a TW game properly since Rome (MW II sucked I though and I got bored within a week) - so it took me a while to get back into it.

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"But how was I supposed to know?"

That's OK, I imagine the real-life historical generals were quite surprised by it as well. To say nothing of the cavalrymen :hah:

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I've only had time to play through the first episode and then some of RTI.

I got to the part where you're supposed to send naval units around to attack louisville. I engaged some frenchies and was about to board one of their ships when my game crashed :(

Haven't had a chance to go back and see where my save game left me, but so far the game is fun. As long as I don't crash every time I board some dude this game should turn out to be quite epic.

Also really looking forward to multiplayer campaign.

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I'm not impressed with artillery, particularly mortar emplacements. Those things can control a battle and to my mind there's nothing you can do to counter it unless you have long range artillery yourself. Attempting to launch a successful attack on an enemy whilst his mortars are raining death from above is not fun. You can't charge them with cavalry as we've already established, and whilst coming better prepared is sound advice it's still not much consolation after such a miserable defeat. :hmph:

I also had a shock defending my fort. I assumed it'd be fun shooting them from a fortified position but no sooner did the fight start they had already scaled the walls, surprised my enclosed general, and the whole plan was to kaput.

:frusty:

Does the Road to Independence campaign offer any advice on how to use units, which units, the different ammo types and such? That's the kind of information I want but there's nothing shouting out and the tooltips describe the actions without really telling me how to use them. The manual is no good either.

By the time I noticed I was, in fact, defending I had already sent half of my troops a mile away to perform a sort of sneak attack on my enemy.
Inspired by Russell Crowe in the film Gladiator no doubt?
As long as I don't crash every time
I'm hearing a lot about crashes actually, but I guess I've been lucky so far.

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Has anyone successfully boarded an opposing ship? The game stopped responding again when I froze up. Either that or it's taking fucking ages to change to a different screen or something? Halp!

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Not only did this game remind me of exactly why I despise Imperialism, but fuck me it plays well. I saw myself become a horrible, selfish destroyer of all things good very quickly. I'm doing The Road To Independence first, and I gave up sieging towns in favour of simply amassing a huge army and destroying the settlers.

I feel filthy.

Yeah, awesome game.

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How does the campaign work btw? Is there three different campaign maps for Europe, America and India? Does the "big" campaign differ in map size?

If they are separate, how are the colonies and the mother country connected? For example, if you are playing the Indian campaign are you affected by things that might happen (historically or by some kind of randomization) in the mother country?

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