Ok, the new Empire: Total War is due out February, and I know we got a couple of TW fans on this forum.
I found Medieval 2 pretty dissapointing, as I think a lot of people did, so I'm pretty goddamn psyched about this one.
Set in the eighteenth century (when most modern powers acquired their empires - obviously the British being the ultimate "winners") and almost seven decades of total war, it looks set to have the entire globe as its map (from India to America) as well as, dun dun dun.... SEA WARFARE!

http://www.sega.co.uk/empire/

- Anyone else peeing themselves??

The whole Rome and Medieval series was very disappointing overall, with diplomacy turned off and the battles becoming pointless click-fest city sieges. I don't think I fought a single field battle in Med2.

Could be neat but I have no expectations. Sea warfare in particular has been promised by like ten various games and it was always better to auto-resolve it than play through the hackneyed implementations.

- Anyone else peeing themselves??


Other than your reference to your ordinary state about the house, what is the level of your anticipation regarding this game, Halo?

I would love to see a good Sea Warfare game. I still recall with some fondness playing SeaWolf (you had the choice of being submarine or task force, and taking out the opposite) on the old Control Data Plato systems, during lunch and after I was done teaching classes for the day.

And that was simple black and white screen and line drawings, lol.

Red Storm Rising and the old silly Pirates! franchises have been about the only things I've seen that made oceans fun. Some of the old 688 style simulators or Harpoon were neat, but nothing addressing the age of sail.

Genuinely excited, Byl.
Of course I say that about every Total War game (and thus far only the original Medieval and Shogun have lived up to expectations, Rome was good, but flawed, while Med2 was a load of sh1t). But this, as well as being based on the period of my life's work (I'm an Imperial historian, so the 18th Century is pretty important for me), holds huge potential. Having a global map is exciting, and anything with India in is going to be a real hoot.
But if you have a look at the clips of sea-warfare, it looks bloody fantastic. They are using the weather unlike most versions before, a well placed broadside is supposed to be devestating (and they were), vulnerabilities are included like a bow explosion if you hit the enemies magazine, as well as masts falling rendering ships immobile - all of this makes me think that they've done their work and, as well as looking gorgeous, have developed something properly fun.

We'll see, I guess. To beable to station gunpowder units in buildings, erect make-shift defences, well goddamn, I could recreate the Battle of Blenheim!!! Shotgun Marlborough or Prince Eugene!!

Anyone want to bet on political overtones for the Egyptian or Russian campaigns? :>

Absolutely, the province of Georgia probably has six cities and takes up half the campaign map. All of a sudden Potsi and Tbilisi will become important objectives.

New release date - 4th March baby!!!

Red Storm Rising


Wow...you are now the only person besides myself that I know who played that.

I can't wait for this!

Playing Spain. Yummy potential.

Gotta go with Prussia or Britain - would be great to colonize India, but the opportunity to dominate central Europe and go either East or West is too good to miss.

I'm planning on getting this and Dawn of War 2. I cant wait for either. For sea warfare I have always liked Empire: Dawn of the Modern World. Love building the quickest and sending my subs against some wooden ships,hehe.

Woot Jerusalem, Palestine according to Empire: Total war... Was watching a video from the campaign map :)

Woot Jerusalem, Palestine according to Empire: Total war... Was watching a video from the campaign map :)

Hah.

DEMO OUT!!!

Get the Demo on Steam!

Mine was very buggy, but I got it to work and played a Naval battle. It is fun, but a bit hard. Can't wait to master it!

Brandywine was damn easy. I messed up on cannon range and lost my entire artillery right off the bat but still routed the Yanks without any trouble.

Looks pretty though.

This. Is. Awsome.

Blimey Jedd, you weren't kidding. The naval campaign is tough. Indeed it seems the more I micro-manage (it's pretty awsome to sneak a first rate in between two french ships and let rip with a broadside from each bow) the harder I fail, whereas if I just kind of let things happen, I seem to be more successful. Not sure how to take that!

I did better with 2 ships left then I did when I had them all :)

FRACK! my pre order which was supposed to ship overnight today from EBgames.com just updated as backordered!!! :(

Make the infidels suffer for this outrage!

THEY SHIPPED IT!!! woohoo!

Downloading it on Steam as we speak... 4 hours left, damn bloody speed of only 400kb/s!!

(yes - I skipped work today, this is the first time I've taken a day off RL since an EQ raid in 2003!)

When will you recieve it Jedd??

I should have my hands on it tonight!

Nice one.

Well I'm still downloading. I stand by what I said a while ago: Steam sucks. Getting d/l speeds of 80kbs mostly now.

Desperate to get on and play as the UK or Maratha Confederation.

Ive had pretty good speeds with Steam. But then again I live in the boonies and my connection is only like 230k max. I am going to be working the next 10 days or so, after that I will probably get this.

Not sure what you did to piss off Steam, I get 2 MB/s from it. Here's hoping they've broken the cycle of buggy releases.

Well, it finally downloaded last night. But then, for some reason, it took me the rest of the night to update it with the release patch, even though I reached 100% several times. Anywho, just left it lapsing and reseting like that and woke up this morning to have found the game automatically launched and, as I turned my monitor on, sitting on the game menu screen! :)

Oddly enough I'm "working" from home today, Muahaha, had a little half hour on it already and I must say, the campaign map is bloody impressive. I despise the loading times that, although I don't have a good system, are still reported to be lengthy on other people's computers. However, there is far more scope for tactical gampelay here than in the previous releases. I started with 2-province Prussia so as to not feel overwhelmed, and already I have spent 15 minutes deciding what to research (it's no Civ tech tree, but it's extensive enough in a game like this to give it far more depth), what government ministers to use to head my government, who to ally with and where my first "push" will be. Hanover stands submissing to my west (there are about 30 'minor' powers which give the game a broader, deeper feel, which is nice, and while not playable, they are otherwise full combatants, with diplomatic assets such as trade agreements, alliances, etc) so I've already made her a full ally and as she is sufficiently weak I may make her a protectorate, as she stands on a vital strategic area between myself and west europe; Poland-Lithuania splits my kingdom into two, I have one province on its west and one, Konigsberg, to its east. The village, Danzig (powers now have very few actual city provinces, most possess large provinces with one city but lots of village/town 'regions' which can be taken and developed as seperate territorial entities, a very nice addition as, when campaigning or defending, there's lots more at stake than just the main city, you can really incapacitate an enemy if you raid and destroy rather than just streamline for a well fortified city, if my own assets in the towns and villages are anything to go by) that seperates my territories is my first target, so I've joined my two armies and stormed the town walls (their army were, anyway, some way from the main town on the battle map and stationed in a farm enclosing, behind walls, was a nice surprise).

That was easy, the town had good farms and a nice college that will help my research while hamstringing poland-lithuania. Unfortunately, I was too quick and didn't notice that the moment I declared war, Poland pulled in Saxony (large 'minor' power with 2 provinces and to my south), Austria (great power, but seperated by a few provinces so should be safe if I can knock Saxony out first), Courland (small minor power but a sizeable navy which has approached me, and I have no idea what it will do to my valuable harbour installations on the baltic) and Denmark (large navy and pretty much commands the Baltic, but on land is no thread to me and seen as I have one merchant ship, I can't see much harm, unless they start landing troops and block my trade. So things have just stepped up. Coalitions appear to be a big part of the game (as they were in the eighteenth century - which is a nice historical reflection) and power diplomacy does make one (unless you're rash, like I just was) stop and think about the actual path to be taken. True to Frederick the Great himself, I garrison Danzig (and now own the region of "west prussia', which belongs to the Warsaw province) and split my army up, one moving down to Saxony to deliver a knock-out blow, the other to besiege Warsaw and contain the Polish behemoth for as long as possible (they have about five sizeable provinces and at least a dozen towns/villages).

So that was 30mins of play and about 4 turns. I think this game is going to be immenesly enjoyable, there are some cons I have spotted from my short play, such as poor AI (most of the enemy hid behind a farm wall, but an entire unit stood idly outside of it, with its back turned to me) and long loading times, but nonetheless these hopefully can be ironed out.

UGH the video card on my new computer sucks and the game is VERY LAGGY! this sucks

It is very, very laggy, and the loading times are running at easily 2 mins for me - which is getting slightly unbearable.

Nonetheless I'm still having a blast with it. Playing Britain and loving naval warfare in the Carribean. Just captured an entire 5 ship pirate fleet and added them to my own fleet. Getting ready to wage a war on Spain and rob her of every colony she owns :)

So this is a turned based game and not an RTS? if thats the case i may have to give it a try. can't find anyone to play Axis and Allies with me anymore.

Performance has been decent for me -- the load times are excessive but CA has apparently never met caching and its friend prediction, so no shock there. Battles are decent enough at 1680x1050 on High but periodically and inexplicably it slows down to a crawl, comically causing all the troop movements to slow down as well (although not their rate of fire). Who even knows.



So this is a turned based game and not an RTS? if thats the case i may have to give it a try. can't find anyone to play Axis and Allies with me anymore.

The campaign map is done on 6-month turns, the battles themselves are RTSy, although they don't follow the normal RTS formula at all.



Started with Poland, swapped East and West Prussia with Prussia and kicked Sweden out of the southern Baltic, then I noticed the Ottoman Empire is a pushover. It's been fun so far but the load times are definitely annoying (I shouldn't, during the course of a game, regularly walk off for five minutes to do something else). The tech tree also seems way too deep for the length of the game, 200 turns will barely be long enough to get to single choice units, much less get them on the field.

Battle AI is much improved, I wish that "demand surrender" option really did anything though. Also, it gets tiring rejecting the same silly land swap from Austria every turn.

Started out as Sweden... Kicked the shit out of some small city that challenged me, and then Prussia decided I would make a good enemy... So I blockaded their port, sacked 2 major cities and I am moving on their capital!!!

No naval battles yet, as Prussia is too afraid of my navy to move theirs out to face my blockade!

My biggest fear is Russia will sneak up behind my advance and declare war! That would be bad

I just realised I am a complete pimp at naval battles. It's the fourth one in a row now where I've not only destroyed an enemy fleet, but captured 2 fourth rates for my own navy in one battle.

Realised the trick of capturing lies in pummelling a ship from both sides with grape shot, so as to leave the ship intact while reducing its manpower, and then boarding it as it begins to waver and route, not too soon otherwise winning a boarding fight is impossible, but not too late that the ship surrenders and you cannot capture it.

Don't be afriad to split your line of ships up into two groups and 'dance' around the enemy, who usually morph into one giant, confusing blob within minutes of the battle. You can get a neat 'crossfire' murder zone going too.

I'm having a blast as Britain. Just took control of the 13 colonies by capturing Indian and French territory by 1714.

I must admit, I like the deep research tree, you definately have to specialise, ie as a sea power with Britain I've concentrated completely on naval techs and industries, but in my Prussian game I went all farm/agriculture techs and obviously infantry and artillery.

Glad you're both enjoying it :P

I was until my savegame started crashing every time I did anything. Way to go CA beta testing, living down to our expectations.

My lag is really clearing up good... Just had an Amazing Naval battle against Denmark after they declared war on me for declaring war on their ally Poland-Lithuania.

It was 8 of my ships against 9 of theirs, and I was able to keep 2 ships afloat, with 1 of theirs which I took over. It was a crazy battle, with the final 20 minutes of it being my 2 ships against 4 of theirs.

God it was an epic battle!

'Way to go CA beta testing, living down to our expectations.'

- I encounter that often. Just use the autosave instead of your own, saved game.
And I agree, this feels very much like beta testing, as I think many people are voicing on the forums, but nonetheless the fun is ever so slightly outweighting the frustration (which in no way excuses CA for releasing such an unfinished product).

Do you find that the more you experience naval battles Jedd, the more you feel in control? I used to think nothing I did affected the outcome, but now I see naval warfare in this game actually has hidden, tricky dimensions. The wind is key, I find. Go against it and you're fubar'd! Also, never use manual firing, it's too much micromanagement and it's usually only half as good as auto, IMO. The most important thing I've found is staying in control of the general battle takes priority over controlling individual ships.

I got this Friday but have not been able to play it yet. Looking forward to checking it out this week.

Let us know what you think.

Currently getting pumelled in a navy war with the Dutch over Indian trade routes. I took their settlement of Ceylon (which dominates the BEST trade routes in the whole eastern theatre, IMO) for about two turns before they destroyed my 8 ship fleet and have pretty much cut off my little force holding the island. It's gonna take at least a good few turns for me to get another fleet with reinforcements out there.

I'm thrashing them in Europe, so it's all good. But I'm a bit nervous as I'm wasting blood and money on the retarded Dutch while the French go unchecked pretty much everywhere. It's only 1735 though, so I got a good few years to get back on track.

this game has an unbelievable amount of bugs, currently stuck on the road to freedom campaign since every time i declare on huron, or they declare on me, the game automatically whitescreens. and the patch that supposedly fixes some of the crashes is only available on steam. incredibly annoying.

This is, without a doubt, a horrendously buggy game. I white screen perhaps every 5 - 6 turns, and clicking on a naval base or squadron usually does it.

They have promised another patch within the next week or so. Let's hope it solves something this time.

motherfucker; now i cant even get past the bunker hill fight without CTDing, god damnit.

Once one of your savegames gets a crash in it, just give it up. I used to wait a while before bothering with their releases, now I remember why.