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PC Geeks only. [Empire: Total War thread]

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I'm looking forward to it immensely, just not sure what to expect. Is it going to set new standards for Total War or be perceived as a rehash?

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Looking at what they're doing with the AI, they've refocussed it from purely a chess based AI to one that does that and prioritises as well. There's a tech tree in there, plus it's looking as though diplomacy will be stronger, which has always been a fairly weak element. We shall see. Cautiously optimistc. :)

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I never really got into the Total War series, though I really respected what they were trying to do. This may have something to do with the fact that I tried Shogun when it was brand new and got bored quickly. Never went back to the series afterwards, just watched from afar and had my interest piqued time and again by the refinements, but never enough to actually play one of the newer ones. If I have some free time over the between-term break, which do you folks recommend I give a try?

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Rome. It's super cheap, and you'll get the barbarian expansion. Get the updates from the site though, or you will suffer from bugs.

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Could someone tell me what separates these games from other RTS games like C&C? I hear so much about how awesome they are, but I haven't yet heard why that is? Do they have some unique features, or are they just good, solid RTSes?

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The main difference is that they are only half RTS. The other half is a turn-based game on the world map, with all kinds of political options as well as military ones. Almost Civ-like maybe.

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Put simply, C&C is to the Total War series is as Duplo is to Meccano. More specifically, the turn based game covers troop, diplomat, spy, assassin, princess, priest (or imam), warship and trade movement; it's represented by a large scale map, and each is represented by a figure. Then there's the city view, where you can upgrade your cities, but have to balance tax, civil unrest, religion, city improvement, troop and food production and governor loyalty - although there is no tech tree like Civ. The 3D battle is down to the unit level, where you basically set up on terrain (which will match the area of the large scale map wher ebattle is joined) and manoevure your troops as you see fit. All sorts of tactics are available, depending on your army makeup (catapults, cannons, light, heavy and missile cavalry, light, heavy and missile infantry, elephants, camels etc. etc.). Facing has a deal of meaning, and morale is crucial, helped by the skill of your general on the ground and his attributes which change over time depending on what you do. There are also sieges.

That's nearly all of it in a nutshell... it's a turn-based strategy game with real-time tactics welded together in a very deep and complex game.

They are bloody brilliant. If you go for one now, get Rome and it's expansion, or wait until Feb and get Empire.

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I am waiting for the demo that was supposed to come out sometime last week. But still hasn't been released yet. According to the people on the official Total War forums it'll be released through steam first.

Although I don't really care for the demo (since I already preordered it), it would still be nice to play some of it now. I want to see how the naval battles work.

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A friend of mine wants me to get Empire because he likes easy competition. I'm terrible at normal dumb RTSes, so I can only imagine I'd be appalling at the Total War series. I've only really tried one battle, I think. I'd like to be good, but the problem is my lack of a mighty tactical intellect, or something. Perhaps I just need practice. Or an attention span.

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Anyone else think this would just be an awesome love in for PC nerds and not about a game they're not massively excited about? No?

:shifty:

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So, there's an early review of Empire: Total War in PCGamer UK. I read in related forums that it got a 94/100. One big disappointment upon reading the review itself, is that the naval battles are not as epic as the land battles. The reviewer didn't like them for their simplicity and apparently ended up clicking "auto-resolve" during naval encounters.

Also, shouldn't this thread be renamed to "Empire: Total War" or something more appropriate?:getmecoat

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The Empire demo is coming out tomorrow 4pm GMT. I personally can't wait, been looking forward to this since it was announced.

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I really really really liked playing Rome, except when the real time battles started. I was awful. I lost nearly every battle I tried in real time, and quickly learned to just hit auto resolve every time. The overworld map stuff was what I enjoyed the most about it, but unfortunately it didn't seem that hitting auto-resolve every time was a viable way to play and have any hope of winning. Because of this, while i WANT to buy Empire, I have a feeling I just wouldn't get much out of it. If they made a version without the real time battles, I'd pick it up in a heartbeat.

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I own Medieval, Rome and Medieval II and despite the awesome epic scale battles have always spent most of my time in the world map. I auto-resolve about 95% of the battles and even if I feel like fighting a real time battle I usually go with a historical battle or skirmish.

It's a bit annoying that there are quite a lot more casualties when using auto-resolve, but it hasn't bothered me too much and I'm happy to pay the full price for these games even if I'm only going to play "the other half".

BTW. The demo should be on Steam now.

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I prefer running the campaign at a notch or two higher difficulty than the battles. I imagine Empire will be a different beast, but in Rome and Medieval, the basic strategy of putting all your infantry in a line and then using cavalry to flank about 15 seconds into engagement works 90% of the time (on Normal Difficulty at least).

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If they made a version without the real time battles, I'd pick it up in a heartbeat.

You might want to try one of the Paradox line of titles such as Hearts of Iron or Europa Universalis, they also do a version set in Roman times - and combat is resolved abstractly and is a lot less random than Total War series.

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I played the demo and it's really great. The demo basically has two tutorials (land and naval) and two battles (land and naval). I have to say, the graphics have improved vastly from previous total war games. The water in naval battles looks totally awesome.

The attention to detail in this game is really something. I mean how guys from a sinking ship would start jumping into the water or how ships and theirs masts take realistic damage. Once the ship's masts are destroyed it becomes immobile and can be thus boarded for melee combat. That aspect was enough to get me excited for the final game.

The land battles are epic as well. Though it took me a while to understand the tactics in controlling units that use guns instead of spears/arrows/swords. The AI has improved drastically, in a manner of speaking. The enemy can take cover in nearby buildings and just stay there taking shots at you, unless you have cannons to bring down the building itself.

There is one technical aspect that bothers me though. The load times are absolutely terrible. Not only does it take a long time to load into a battle but it also takes some time to quit the battle after finishing it. I am pretty sure this has nothing to do with my hardware as I have noticed other users have also reported this issue on the official forums. Not to mention, I have quad core processor which exceeds the recommended requirements. There are minor glitches here and there, but nothing that can't be fixed by a patch.:tup:

One more week to go, 'til the full game.:woohoo:

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STEAM :tdown:

Not only are they charging more than retail but they now expect people to download around 15GB on release day.

I don't want to turn this into a rallying cry against STEAM like most other ETW threads across the internet but when you live in the UK and your bandwidth is not only monitored to the finest degree but also managed with godawful traffic shaping et al... well it just doesn't sit well. Its like being stuck on the motorway during rush hour with just a skateboard, and no legs, or arms...

Maybe it was my imagination but I was under the impression when I made that impulse purchase that there would be pre-loading. Nnannnarrgh, [nerd rage] :(

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Really? I thought UK price was on and sub par of retail, where euro world was sup par. Or that could be because of the seriously crappy value of the pound (and yet, I haven't gone on a spending spree on amazon.co.uk).

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