Awesome. Just watched it over on blip. I agree with pretty much everything you said.

This is completely irrelevant, but I’ve been wondering, how is Antwiler pronounced?

Who’s first…

Bob’s first…

Who’s bob…

Actually, Bob’s on second.

Hey Spoony. I loved your review. I’ve got Empire Total War too, and I absolutely love it. It’s such an improvement in the Total War series. I play it online all the time. I love that each of the factions’ units speak in their own native tongue. That must have taken some time. I just have a blast with the game. It’s probably my favorite RTS to date.
I heard that there’s a guy named Emperor who does shoutcasts of it on wcradio.com
If you’ve never listened to a shoutcast, it can be really entertaining if you have a good shoutcaster.

I’m on third btw

I’m surprised you liked the review, then, because I mostly slagged it to hell and back here.

If you enjoyed Civ4, I’d highly recommend Galactic Civilization 2 and its 2 expansions. Kinda like Civ in space, but a lot more gameplay, a lot more customization (especially with the ships, its nuts)…only thing its missing is online. Worth every cent though.

Maybe he agrees with your reviews yet loves it despite the flaws? But the AI in Total War has always been bad before the patch. Look at Medieval Total War 2, I can’t count the times when some of the men in my units just did not attack. I’m not kidding either, they would be fighting head to head with some huge army, and many of them would not even try to swing their sword. I guess many of them were pacifists?

Man spoony, the ads are almost MST3king you.

“the AI just doesn’t listen”
::Need a divorce lawyer in [notascam's town]?”

Man spoony, the ads are almost MST3king you.

“the AI just doesn’t listen”
::Need a divorce lawyer in [notascam's town]?”

Let me address some of your frustrations, spoony.
When you right click on something, the command you give is “move into range of a unit so that your entire line can fire at it” Not “shoot”
Units shoot on their own with “fire at will”
Pathfinding is actually fine. You click on the left side with your right mouse button and drag to the left in order to set your troops up. It was like this in every previous Total War game. This little command will solve all of your movement programs. What you were really doing wasn’t a bug or anything. That’s how it should logically work based on terrain. I don’t know if what happened to your guys was pre-patch or what.
If your units don’t react, it’s because you might have them in melee mode or they might be out of range. Look at the cones of fire.
The house thing used to be a problem, but it’s patched.

You were also likely playing the game on normal or easy. Try on hard or very hard, and things will be much smarter.

Atilla16 on youtube in his Chronicles doesn’t really have any of these problems at all. I wonder what the issue might be.
His load times are like 3 seconds
My load times are at most 30 seconds
The only problem we have in common seems to be the crashes.

Spacebar toggles movement speeds of units on the campaign map. I can’t imagine playing without it.

Great review, as usual. Congrats on winning the golf game, BTW!

I’m not meaning to bite your head off or anything, Mecahawk, but I’m not an idiot. I’ve been playing the Total War series for a while and I’ve never had this much trouble with the unit pathfinding or setting up formations. I used to be able to click-drag decent formations out of the guys, but now it’s just chaos.

As for the “frozen” units, there’s not any issues with them moving into range or being within their cone of fire. They’re in range, they’re usually pointed in the right direction, and they’re not engaged in melee (and in most cases, not even taking fire of any kind). I click an attack order, and none of them even flinch. They don’t move, they don’t do anything. It’s weird. Other times, if I issue an attack order simultaneously to several units, they’ll run around in confusion trying to set up new lines and firing angles instead of simply pivoting.

Maybe Atilla is editing down his load times, I don’t know. But I’m not exaggerating mine; they’re absolutely brutal.

I’m partly disagreeing with your review.
The AI is indeed very strange. But not to the point that it becomes more than just an annoyance. I tend to avoid siege battles, since that’s the only scenarios that has pathing issues for me.
Some units do stupid things sometimes. Dragoons can become stuck when mounting up and cannons have a tendency to blow your own army to pieces if you ever tell them to “halt” while they fire.
Other than that I have nothing to complain about. I don’t get any crashes or hitches and I have a pretty average computer.
I also miss the whole royal family thing previous games had. But I understand why it is pointless for this era. Very few armies were lead by members of the royal family at that time. Some still did, like Sweden for example. But it was pretty rare in general (no pun intended).

Sounds like you hated this game alot. I can now understand how your having frustrations with this game, and how much it makes the game more unenjoyable.

P.S. I can probably bet your gonna get your ear chewed off by AngryJoe for this.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this to ya spoony, but your comment on having to watch the computer take its turns can be solved in the game option screen and also hitting space will speed up the computer movements on the campaign map.

This is all good & well, but I want to see more SWAT 4. I would also like to see some more “lets play [insert game]“

I will say what i twitt, the AI really is bad, i don’t have the game, but seeing Attila16 battles i just see units sent without any support… sent to you to smash them easily… i agree also with friendly AI, it’s a problem i have even in R:TW (Not the way Spoony have here), and i see the only way they can become smarter is training, high ranks obey better…

Try this, or say what you have after doing this Spoony… i don’t have this game, and i even wanted to buy a entire pc to play it! I love the 18 century strategy and mechanics of war… i just can’t believe they kill the feeling…

Excellent review. All very true. Interestingly, everything you said has been repeated constantly all over the official forums since the game was released. It’s all well known. Especially the part with the seemingly random crashing, allthough I myself have so far not experienced any – yet.

I can, however, completely relate to the part with the broken AI and absolutely abysmal pathfinding. I think a visit to the forums will show you many who can’t believe the game could even be released in its current state. It’s sad, really. It left me and many others very dissapointed.

If I recall correctly, you said that you wouldn’t be able to draw humor from a review or playthrough of a good game. Maybe I have a suggestion. Contrast a good game with a poor game within the same vein and poke light fun at the good game as well. Look at the Nostalgia Critic’s review of the two cartoons of Sonic the Hedgehog. He does his usual schtick with the comedic cartoon. Even with the adventure cartoon, he still draws some nice gags.

More SWAT 4? Yes please.

I, too, love Civilization IV. The only problem with the game is that it FULLSCREENS. I know a lot of people like games to fullscreen… I don’t. I like to tweak stuff in the background sometimes, or refer to charts online, or even just chat with friends between turns.

I haven’t found a way to window the game yet. Also, haven’t seen any expansions for it.

As for RTS games… Honestly, I love Starcraft. It’s one of the most fun RTS games I ever played. And the hardest computer is incredibly competant and annoying to fight. And when they’ve got more numbers than you (like three computers against just you) they KNOW it, and they’ll all come bash you at close to the same times so you can’t do much to defend against it.

I assume you haven’t played sonic the hedgehog for the 360….. I feel that every second the game had to load! And the loading screens were so long!!!!

For the AI retardness on Rome: Total War, just see what happens when you order archers to attack, they kill themselves too! Can you imagine throw a bow in the guy two steps in front of you? And happens also with javelins units! Is horrible!!!

I only manage to save men training the troops to bronze experience… and i witness this hoping i’m not the only one…

There is another game that you should try if Empire total war is that bad. Age of Empire III ive heard is good. Especilly if you like the colonization.

Finally, you get to play this game.
I’m not even done with the video,but I can already agree on several points.

-The “cavalry attacking musketmen in a building” thing is ridiculously retarded. I got a 120 “line infantry” unit rout 250 camel/horse riders who just stood idle, IN FUCKIN FIRING RANGE of the 2-stories CIVILIAN building my guys fired from.

-I won several battles in the colonies with outnumbered, leaderless MILITIANS against REAL LINE INFANTRYMEN, just because I happened to place them behind COVER. And the other “professionnal soldiers” just stood in the open, getting 5 casualties for every MILITIAN they HIT. Fuck that.

-Finally, the GODDAMN STAR FORTS BATTLES.
Now THAT is awful. My worst memory is a victory with, once again, outnumbered “civilian mobs”, just because the AI stood on the walls, and NEVER tried to take the “flag” in the center. And I mean I spent 15 to 20 minutes reading a book with the game at full “fast-forward” speed, just to get the CLOCK victory. Bleh.

But you know what? Despite all that, I’m actually have a good time playing this game.
Not as much as the old ones, but still.

THree words: Age of Empires. Whether it’s AOE 1, 2, or 3, or any of the four (count ‘em!) expansions, that’s an awesome series to play through. and the hard AI – especially on AOE 3 – is extremely intelligent and can tear down your forts faster than you can say “Parley?” Total War series is pretty cool, but RTS never really appealed to me, and AOE is definitely one of the coolest civilization simulation games out there. Wow, do I sound like a spokesman for Microsoft or what?

I’m glad that you liked Sins of a Solar Empire. Maybe we could have a reivew of that? Also, what did you think of Entrenchment?

It seems to be the same deal over and over again with the Total War serie; Tons of details, great graphics, requires top of the line PC, and a really shitty, game breaking AI.

Creative Assembly doesn’t seem to care at all. Stop releasing a new title or expansion every 6 months, stop adding eye candiy and fix the fucking AI already. Give the players a fair challenge.

I think Empire draws a lot more on Medieval 2 than it does on Rome, and Medieval 2 had a lot of the same problems (long load times, pathfinding issues…) but as someone who played Medieval 2 obsessively, the quirks of that game prepared me for Empire. Though, there is a lot of unforgivable problems, the worst being the utter breakdown during a siege. No matter how many times these problems pop up, I still have a blast playing this game. That might say less about the quality of the game and more about my own insanity, though.

Spoony, I love your work, but this one is off the mark.
First of all, the unit path finding is actually one of the best I’ve ever seen in an RTS. The problem you may be facing often happens when you jumble up the units that you put into groups using the ctrl-1-0 process. To fix that, hit the de-group button in the interface box, and you can then click-drag a straight line again, and reform your groups afterward.

As for the enemies not shooting, i must admit, i have seen this before, especially during a pitched battle with the Russians on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. I don’t know what this is in particular, but it only happened once, maybe twice so far.

Another question, did you try the grand campaign with anyone but the Americans? I ask because the Road to Independence Campaign is actually littered with bugs, whereas the grand campaign suffers from far less frustrations.

Otherwise, the only complaints i personally have with the game is the naval combat. It’s way too hectic, cpu heavy, and perhaps TOO slow to actually jump into the heavy fighting.

I don’t really have any of the problems you are having with this game Spoony, and I have about 50 hours on this game since I got it a few weeks ago. But it seems that a lot of people on here have already addressed some criticisms or your review but no one i think has talked about this. You can speed up the moves of both your units and enemy units during their turn by pushing the space bar one during your play session. This will make the enemy turns go by very quickly.

Hmm, considering the comments on the AI inability to attack…I’m immediately reminded of the Dynasty Warriors: Empires game for the PS2. It was actually a blast to play – you played a general in one of a whole mess of Chinese empires, and your goal is to conquer China. But getting on track here, the AI on both sides was horrendously pointless. I’ve played through Empires numerous times, and I’ve noticed one thing that seems to come back time after time: enemies and allies do NOT attack!

Well, not all of them. The enemy archers, sorceresses, generals and commanders will all attack. But the footsoldiers – the bulk of every army in the game – will do nothing. They will clump together with your units, get into a big massive cluster-fuck, and stare at each other menacingly. Once every few minutes, one man might attack, but still! They don’t do anything! The only reason you *need* the footsoldiers is because you automatically lose a battle if you run down to 0 reinforcements. Every single battle must be won on your own, by slaughtering hundreds (And sometimes thousands) of enemies over the course of 15-20 minutes.

Keep up the good work, Spoony! Can’t wait for another SWAT mission!

That was kinda awkward (sp?) to watch. I believe that you have these problems but I know I don’t and so I can’t agree with you. Maybe if you didn’t care so much about load times, and if you used better tactics than move your entire army at once, and generally had a better computer, then you wouldn’t feel so negative about it.

There are problems with the game (curse the internet and it’s patching) but not enough to turn you someone off from it. But like I said if you really have all these problems and you really can’t fix them no matter how you play than that blows and I’m sorry.

I totally have like all of the RTS games he recomended. Red Alert 3, Rome TW, Civ 4, Civ 4 Colonization, and Cesear.

Thanks man I was going to go out and buy it, but now i’ll wait until they come out with patches.

It’s actually not as easy as you’d think to beat up a retarded kid, they’ve got that retard strength.

I’m with Togala on this one – I’m sure they’re all legitimate gripes, but I had no problems with it. My machine runs it smoothly.

There was a fair loading time between battles, and there is a rather daunting wait while the AI factions have their turns, but I have book beside my PC that I can pick up and flicked through a few pages of. It’s not a perfect solution, no, but I think on the balance of pros and cons, I’m enjoying the Napoleonic battles and the new strategic map far too much for these little issues to bug me down.

I enjoy the combat FAR more than Sins of a Solar Empire, which was about as strategic as Age of Empires – once you put the units in battle, there really isn’t much more than watching how things pan out.

ALL new games are designed for the masses I.E. “people who suck at gaming”. That explains why they are so easy.

Hey Spoony.

First time commenting on your videos… great videos, I might add.

Listening to your review of Empire Total War I couldn’t help but notice that you mention the AI and the game’s performance as two separate entities. Now, I don’t play any of the Total War games so I won’t pretend to know anything about them… however, when it comes to AI in most RTSs, the golden rule is that if performance is crap, the AI will be the first thing out of the window to ensure smooth gameplay. Any type of AI will require a fair amount of processing power. What I’m saying is that if you can’t get smooth gameplay, you can’t expect great AI.

I wouldn’t try to INCREASE the difficulty of the game, in fact, I’d REDUCE it and see if you get better performance. Increasing the performance will also allow the AI script to run properly… meaning that with an easier AI, the game might actually be harder.

No point in playing against a tough AI if the AI script can’t run efficiently. Hope this helps… I also hope I’ve explained my point correctly.

Love your work and reviews spoony, but i feel that youre completely wrong on this one. First off, i think ive had 2 crashes in the 6 hours ive played this game and my pc is pretty mediocre. That also eliminates the load problem you had. You can actually turn off seeing the NPC’s turns, so that argument is invalid. I dont remember units not firing or moving, so i dont know about that either. And when i played against the opponent, they used cover and defended their important units. All in all, it sounds like we played 2 different games….

Thanks for the review; I wasn’t sure about getting the game, but now I’m definitely not getting it.

I’m probably right in saying that this game has sacrificed good gameplay for realism, right? Developers need to get a clue.

Seeing as I can’t even start this game all I can say is that this game is WHORE!! I have a computer with almost DOUBLE the minimum requirements for this game but it still won’t work. Every time I’ve tried to start either campaign, the game has either crashed or lagged so badly it just wasn’t worth playing. Also if the AI is as bad as you say it is (and judging by my experiences with the allied AI in Medieval 2 I certainly have a reason to believe it is) I have to say that I think Creative assembly may well have peaked with Rome Total War. The crashing though has always been a problem for me in any total war game. Barbarian is the worst. I took a city with a 20 unit army using 3 units of cavalry and a brilliant strategy and guess what happened? It crashes. So I did it again. I took the city, and then it crashed. After about the fourth try I gave up and screamed for about an hour. I’ve had this experience with every total war game so at least the crashing isn’t new (not that that makes it better) However what I really didn’t like about what you call a review of Empire tw completely ignored what was so hyped about it, the revamped campaign map, NAVAL BATTLES, and the more realistic provinces were all ignored. Basically all you did was bitch about issues that have existed in all recent total war games

This game went of to a flying start, but swiftly fell on it’s face.
The gameplay, style and everything is awesome, but yeah, it’s pretty broken. I don’t have that long loading times, but I got a kick ass PC.
Some serious patching and tweaks are in order, and maybe some extra content to say that they are sorry…

Hey Spoony, first time actually making a comment on your videos. Anyway, back on ETW; I haven’t played the game yet, but it is really convenient is how I bought the game over Steam seeing that it had received good reviews over X-Play and Metacritic (I know not to trust them too much). But when I saw your video review of ETW I decided to watch it since I was curious about your opinion, and honestly I was surprised that you bashed it to pieces about how sudden the bugs are, it often crashed, and I was shaking my head in disbelief.

Honestly I am not disregarding your review, I just wondered if I spent almost $50 on a piece of crap game now, or if it will be different for me then how it was for you. But still though, nice review, I am still pretty anxious to play the game myself since I have played the other TW series like Rome: Total War and even the past TW games.

And aside from the TW comment, I cannot wait to see more of SWAT 4, I wish you luck with the videos!

I would reccomend trying out Resident Evil 5, but do so on coop, not single player. The AI for the partner is RETARDED.

the best recommendation i can give you for new games is to go back and check games you missed around 2000-2006 (i discovered Warhammer Dark Omen and Overlord looking for oldies a few months ago, pretty nice deal if you ask me), they are cheaper and even if you pick up an average game it will be better than what is being released right now (and as long as you are not a bloom junkie they look nice enough)

and as for the ctds, the main problem is that NO “professional” review ever mentions port problems / bugs or ctds as long as they can run the game for the 30 mins they use to review it (they also sometimes dont even play the build that we play, like what happened with GTA4PC, the review copies had a different DRM), only bloggers ever bitch about these EXTREMELY important things, and the goddamn publishers keep releasing half baked crap. For example, i just tried Dark Sector for pc:
the good : it hasnt ctded so far and it works nice on my old gpu
The bad: try changing resolutions = crash (i had to manually edit the config file), and if i keep my sound hardware acceleration above “basic” (meaning, no 5.1 -_-) i dont get any sounds other than what the player character makes (wth?!, i suppose its a problem with the sound postprocessing or something), and the few forums i checked are filled with screams of pain (the official support page doesn’t even list the game yet and it came out a week ago) and even better, the devs said they wont patch it, “publisher wont put the money on the table” they said, sigh….

I know what he’s talkin bout. I have an Alienware and it’s one of the more advanced ones. Even then my copy of empire crashes like a piolt who went to a frat party before take off. I can do all the chores in my house in the time it takes to load. And the A.I. is a fuckin joke, I cant count how many times i got frustrated that i am literally 3 feet away from an enemy and my men will not fire! Not to mention my computer continually crashed at one point whenever I tried to play as Germany (Prussia). And it’s a fucking Alienware, the computer that the game says it plays best on!!!! My god I thought i was goin crazy when fallout 3 refused to play on my computer, but now i have proof that game designers are not even tryin anymore when it comes to P.C. Gaming. It’s shit like this that is contributing to the death of the P.C. as a gaming platform!

OH NOES !
It takes 60 seconds to load the game and 30 seconds to load a save ! Clearly its the largest loading times anyone has ever seen !
Pfft. Does he really believe that ? I can give names for dozens of games in which you have to wait like 2-3 minutes just to load a save. Apparently Spoony has always been a rich boy, playing games on extremely powerful machines, if pathetic 60 second loading can rattle his cage so.

That seems reminscent of GRAW 2; if you’re shot; you should shoot back because obviously they know where you are!

Spoony i love your reviews and rants but i have to disagree on this one, sure there are some bugs in Empire and the AI is pretty bad most of the time. But for each patch it gets much better. So no i am sorry but you are wrong xD

They tried to do some more advanced terrain features without really improving their AI (at least that’s what it seems like). It’s still better than Medieval 2 in general, but I won’t play it for a while until there’s been plenty of patches and fan fixes…

Yet they are so addictive, I wonder why that is.

Yeah i recognize a lot of those bugs. the audio bug really sucked ass. it would give me a high pitched burst of audio that sounded like feedback. not easy on the ears to say the least. the bugs and crashes seemed to vary from what type of computer you had too. a friend of mine plays this on a high end computer and he only has a fraction of bugs compared to me. so yeah. but it crashes regardless of what computer you have. it’s just different bugs depending on what type of computer you have. i enjoyed it tough. i guess it’s because i was lucky enough to have a laptop who runs the game pretty good without a lot of crashes and bugs even tough i have vista. my condolences on your gaming experience. some people just have really bad luck with this game and end up with a lot of bugs and crashes. a lot of people are frustrated as hell with this game. so i guess you’re not alone.

Call me what you want, but whenever I played Rome: Total War, I just rammed my whole army headfirst into the other army, and I usually won.

It might be because I’ve only played the Grand Campaign but I have never experienced any of the AI problems you described. The enemy AI is still to easy but it’s not that stupid, and I’ve haven’t tried anything harder than Normal.

I don’t know if you still consider it to slow but if you hit spacebar all campaign movements are increased (at least in the Grand Campaign) .

I’ve been playing Empire for two week ow and I’ve only had 3 crashes, all before the release of the first patch so I do think that most of the problems were solved there.

I have a good but hardly great machine but I’ve never experienced any slow downs during combat or anywhere else and the load times are horrible they aren’t as bad as the ones you’ve described.

So yeah, I like the game even though it isn’t as good as it could have been.

You should try Darth Mod, and the skin mods etc. Darth Mod makes the game a lot better. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=240571

Oh, and space makes the enemy and your units in the campaign map go quicker.

This review is pretty much true. Since Rome: Total War, CA has promised to improve the AI with patches. Has this ever happened? No.

The other problems are probably going to be fixed with the patches, but the AI, most likely they’re going to leave it to modmakers.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=238484
A fix for crashes.

Well i don’t know… I don’t have a “too” good computer, and i met some serious lag (along with a few minute load time: around 3 min main load in and 1 min battle/other screen load in) but i never met the A.I.’s stupidity and the crashes. Maybe its just me, always trying to be nice to people i meet and somehow i worked my way to God’s heart… But that is unlikely.

I believe that this game have a problem that pretty much all PC games have: It can’t work together with one or two video cards/other system parts because of their program. For example from my own memory:

I always loved Battlefield. I’mWell i don’t know… I don’t have a “too” good computer, and i met some serius lag (along with a few minute load time: around 3 min main load in and 1 min battle/other screen load in) but i never met the A.I.’s stupidity and the crashes. Maybe its just me, always trying to be nice to people i meet and somehow i worked my way to God’s heart… But thatis unlikely.

I belive that this game have a problem that pretty much all PC games have: It can’t work together with one or two videocards/other system parts becouse of their program. For exemple from my own memory:

I always loved Battlefield. Im not the big FPS fan who goes on all nigth killing sprees, but these games are just damn fun to play. Still, at my first try (around two years ago) it just didn’t obey me. Sometimes it didn’t react, some times it crashed… It even got me a blue screen once.

But not too long after, when i redesigned my room, i acidentaly broke the VGA card in it. I wanted to replace it with the smae model since it worked pretty well for me before, but i didn’t find it. So i buyed one with the most simular not the big FPS fan who goes on all night killing sprees, but these games are just damn fun to play. Still, at my first try (around two years ago) it just didn’t obey me. Sometimes it didn’t react, some times it crashed… It even got me a blue screen once.

But not too long after, when i redesigned my room, i accidentally broke the VGA card in it. I wanted to replace it with the same model since it worked pretty well for me before, but i didn’t find it. So i bought one with the most similar abilities.

Like one month later, looking trough my games i came across Battlefield 2142 (the same game that gave me hell less than a half year ago) and decided i give it one last shot. I installed it, started it up… And only after a good four hours of game time did i realize: “Hey this works!”

Once again: The new video card, was almost exactly as like the old one, except it was made by and other company. I’m not a computer scientist but i believe it was something with the different coding styles. So even if you have a High End computer, you may come across problems like this with a few games.

If I’m wrong: My excuses.

With best of wishes:
Ictiv

Gah, I’m just ganna keep playing Medieval 2 total war :P.

Swat 4 takes about 20 minutes to load on my computer then the loading times in the game take about 5 minutes to load. Those are the longest load times I have seen.

I play Total War games for the strategy rather than the combat… is that bad?

I absolutely agree about the load times in Empire, and the various bugs. However, the mod community has been working on fixing these issues almost as soon as the game launched. For instance, Darth Vader of TWCenter released his famous darthmod for Empire ( you may recall the darthmod for Rome and Medieval, which fixed pathfinding issues and formations among other things) , which is now in the 0.5 version, and it fixes many issues about the combat AI and campaign AI, as well as completely re-balancing the combat. For instance, in the 0.4 version and onwards, he fixed the problem you spoke of about artillery, encouraging the AI to cover it with troops. Several other mods also exist to fix problems and give Empire a more historical and enjoyable experience.

In other words, Empire perhaps should not be seen as a game to be played Vanilla, but rather with the mods of the community. Which of course, shows how much CA leaves it’s games in a rather… unfinished state.

Agreed on your review, actually… I’ve only played demo and I noticed the same flaws in RTS battles. I’m sure I would love the campaign map though but not really worth it having that unpolished… or even unfinished game…
very VERY disappointing game for a total war fans.

spoony
Thanks for a honest good review :)

PS.
nice shirt spoony :D

Koskela
Chairman of The Ministry of Silly walks

I have to say that I haven’t noticed any performance hitches in battle at all.

Also, to speed up walking and sailing speed press the spacebar.

Also, I’ve never experienced a single CTD, my load times are the exact same as they were in Medieval II. The combat works perfectly fine for me, though I do agree that the AI is quite idiotic and makes combat a breeze.

You talk a lot about Rome Total war, but what about Medieval 2? I think it was superior to Rome, so if you haven’t played it, you should check it out.

Empire is pretty flawed. I’ve had the same experience, with troops not reacting to orders, getting caught up on objects, and the enemy not reacting to fire. I’ve put in around 60 hours, in an attempt to see if I can take Prussia to global conquest, and the fighting really does get tedious as you steamroll over everyone. The diplomacy model is still broken, with a central power being unable to threaten a minor nation, much less offer a sweet trade deal, to do anything, even with high prestige. Medieval 2 is worse, I found, with the AI still unable to reconcile themselves with the idea that a single stack of archers cannot storm a citadel and missiles hurt and should be stopped.

Again, it’s up to the mod community to build on the base to deliver the promised experience – Europa Barborum for Rome and Stainless Steel for Medieval 2.

You forgot to mention the AI bug where foreign powers cannot invade from the sea. What great design…

All of these problems you have with the game seem more like issues with your computer because I’ve noticed that the lower the graphics
quality, the faster the loading time. (Plus it has a lot of shit to load and a lot of shit to do which explains the crashes you get when you do
certain things) Do you have an older computer? Or an older graphics card? Either way try lowering the graphics, resolution, as we as anti-aliasing.
This should help a bit. Plus crashes are unavoidable! I get them ALL the time on such simple games like Halo 2, Thief, Experiment, Deus Ex,
Elder scrolls: Oblivion, Fallout, ex… And I think the reason why your men wont do anything a few minutes after a command could be your computer lagging too. (And trust me. It may seem like its running smooth) Don’t blame the game because your computer can’t run it all that well.
But the AI issues I can trust you with because that’s a game flaw. But are you sure this issues stays with all difficulties?

Spooney, it seems you’ve been missing out ón some good fun with Medieval Total War 2 :) Which was based on the Rome engine.
Also for strategy game that is almost in the same era as E:TW, Cossacks 2.
You forgot mentioning naval combat its weird path finding.

I’ve been helping The Creative Assembly with testing fixes.
They are on track.
There are actually some that place a flawless copy.

There is actually way to speed up the enemy movement in the map, just press SPACEBAR and they start moving faster. This also worked in T:Medieval 2.

Nothing like staying up ALL night playing games to then have a full day of work…..

“Plus crashes are unavoidable! I get them ALL the time on such simple games like Halo 2, Thief, Experiment, Deus Ex,
Elder scrolls: Oblivion, Fallout, ex… And I think the reason why your men wont do anything a few minutes after a command could be your computer lagging too. (And trust me. It may seem like its running smooth) Don’t blame the game because your computer can’t run it all that well.”

Wow, I can’t imagine why people think PC gaming is dying! (Disclaimer: Been a proud PC gamer for 10 years, and is depressed to see the decline in release quality)

I don’t want to sound like I’m ragging on something which could be blameless, but could it be that the crashes are due to the game being run off of Steam?

I’ve not spent all that long playing it but the solitary crash to desktop I’ve had with it was supposedly due to an interruption to my internet service causing Steam to boot me off. It has done this a couple of times on Dawn of War 2 as well.

To be honest the difficulty I had installing both DoW2 and ETW soured the experience a bit. I’m beginning to feel a bit resentful of PC developers as it’s almost as if they are giving me a hard time because I bought a legitimate copy of their product.

I’m surprised you didn’t have a pop at the naval combat, which quickly turns into a horrific mess. I gave the battle of Trafalgar a go and despite managing to replicate history I don’t think the real battle went even slightly like the one I played out.
Actually, the naval combat in my opinion was worse than in Imperial Glory (a game which was mediocre, even by the standards of the time).

Spoony,have you tried any of the realtime strat games from PARADOX?

They are a sort of hybrid,pausable realtime,but VERY deep……….

Your mention of likeing the character driven aspects of Rome Total War brings to mind ‘Crusader Kings” which has a focus radically different from most real time strats in that its ALL about the characters….

Hearts of Iron II,BTW,might be the best realtime strat game ever made………………check em out,you might find yourself hooked =D

The 1st and 2nd assaults on Bunker Hill were repulsed by the Massachusetts Militia and the 3rd was a strategic loss for Great Britain.

Just FYI.

1. Performance is great on my midrange pc, loading times between map and battles takes about 20secs max.
2. Turn OFF “show cpu moves” Come on spoony, any TW fan knows that gem
3. AI is flawed and has been since release, next patch is fixing all of it :D
4. I have never CTD.

Nice vlog Spoony, you spoke everything that happened to me. And I thought I was doing something wrong…

Spoony obviously didnt try to hurry through the enmy moves, HIT THE SPACE BAR MAN IT FASTWORWADSA EVERYTHING

http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic/52468/master/1/
This was my post, I agree with you….

I think i know the prob with the crashes it started when i got rome total war and every time i broght up the family tree or diplomacy and such it would crash and my computer suckd then and maby they releasd empiers a few months ahed of its time because i incounterd a lot of crashes in rome when my computer could not run it vary good

Hearing you talk about how long the enemy turns took reminded me of Civilization 2 on the PS1 was THE WORST in that regard..

I swear to god, allah, buddah, your mother, my mother, that the enemy turns in that game took 20-40 minutes. It was absolutely ridiculous. The first few years of play were good enough, taking only 30 seconds to 1 minute.. but by about year 200, I swear, I was playing it with a friend, and we watched full episodes of south park between each turn.

I’ve seen worse load times. Now, I have a pretty crappy PC. 1.81 GHz AMD Athlon 64 3000+ and a GeForce 6200. I do however, have 2 GB of RA. Anyway, I managed to get my hands on a copy of Stranglehold. It took me TWENTY MINUTES to load a level. It takes nowhere near this long to load anything for any other Unreal Engine 3 game I’ve ever played. At worst it takes about two minutes to load a level in UT3.

Hey Spoony. Ive posted a bit before, but mostly codos. I have to dissagree about almost all of what you said about your review. I never had any problems with AI (i always have to defend my artiliery from cavalry), load times were bad, but nothing outside of the next gen gaming sort of thing (maybe 45 secs). The only problems i got with pathfinding was in siege battles, a problem that has been pretty bad since Medieval 2 (the TW i played the most) and one ive learned to live with.

I have an E8400 3ghz processor and duel 8800′s and 4 gigs of ram. I do not consider this a high end computer, but a good one, and i didnt have any problems with combat slow downs and unattentive units. Most command problems i found with units could be remedied by clicking melee on and off, sort of a reset for the units i guess, i dont know.

I think its important to point out that i downloaded my copy of empire from steam.com, so it was all patched up and ready to go. I did have a few CTD, but this is par for the course with windows vista it seems. Not saying you dont know what your doing, im just saying im not used to dissagreeing with EVERYTHING you say in a review.

Also, you say that they threw out alot of the old stuff, but what about the new stuff. You didnt mention the navy battles, the general recruitment option, the neccesity for diplomacy in securing trade partners, the decentralized towns, and the new tech tree (though limited, does offer some neat enhancement options).

My one big complaint about the game is the lack of units. It seems your only real combat options are guys with guns, or horses with guns, and guys with guns and maybe some gernades. I realize there wasnt much sword in board back in the 1700, but just for funsies, it would have cool to have some armored infantry options.

PS. Come on? the navy battles, you had to have fun with that. I loved raping the trade fleets with my rediculously huge army of first rates

Couldn’t agree with you more. I was looking so much forward to this title, and it turns out unplayable. My pc is a really good gamer pc, and loading times were not a problem to me. CTD and embarrisingly lack of AI though, destroys the game. Huge letdown. Played it for a couple of weeks before I had to see it as what it is; a huge failure. A patch now to fix AI and tech probs – too much too late! Next time; test game before release.

I played alot of stratagey games and some other mix style stratagey games like ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS IV and even RTS games like WARCRAFT 3 and the COMMAND AND CONQUER games and I always have mix bag of emotions. I am not really into super complicated startagey/sim type games like POPULOUS or ROMANCE OF THE THEE KINGDOMS because they seem to be big learning tools for me to figure out and I wind up spending almost a whole day trying to figure a game out but in the long run do find some enjoyment like I had with the underrated POWERMONGER. But in games from what your talking about I do see ai idiocy happen 100% of the time and most of the time I do capitolize while at times I make idiotic mistakes. But if you really want a horrible game where you have to ‘wait’ on things, try WARSONG (DIR LANGRISER) for the Genesis. When you end your turn, you could be waiting 5 to 20 minutes for your tunr to come up (even with combat animantion off. I think there was a option). I found it non problamatic cuz it’s like I make my move, then grab some chips, food, a drink and eat while I watch what’s going on or watch something else. Yeah i do tend to make idiotic mistakes in the long run but if I am not sure about a move, I always choose QUICK SAVE so if I make a blunder on this turn, i’ll be like “nah, I’ll do thi instead” which pays off later.

Q: how complicated was this game? I feel like there wasn’t enough mentioned about the game because I never played any of the TOTAL WAR games….other then SPARTAN: TOTAL WARRIOR which I belive is done by the TOTAL WAR company or whatever their called.

Ha, I have that exact same ‘Silly Walks’ shirt!! By the way, thanks for the review, I was going to give it a try, but now I think I’ll try Age of Empires 3

The AI is horribly retarded in that game. Playing LAN battles with someone is really fun, but the AI ruins the campaign.

Well….I cant say that i ever got any bigger problems with the game than a crash when going from monarchy to republic, but that only occurred maybe 1 or 2 times. Dont forget the latest updates and dont forget that you can speed up movement on the campaign map with spacebar.

I think I know why the rifle units don’t directly fire. It’s because if one guy isn’t in formation and is lagging behind, the entire unit will wait for that guy, and if he is stuck in a wall because of some bug, then that unit is screwed. Please excuse my fifteen year old grammar but I’ve had a complete lack of sleep lately.

I kinda agree with all this. Although you can turn off enemy moves so turns go faster…the obvious problem with this is that you now do not know what moves the enemy has made, wish you could change it to the medieval total war type map where just different dots would slide around rather than animate.
Also the loading screens can suck my nuts. My computer is quite a power horse too so I have no idea why I have to wait about 4minutes to play a small scale battle.

Heh not to mention how only about 15% of the rifle men ever fire.

I’ve had all of the exact same issues as you.. I just didn’t tolerate them as long. I quit playing after only one hour. :P

You should try Knights of Honor. It is Total War clone, but better. :D
The battles are more interesting, it is real time, there are hundred different ways to win and best your opponents. You can always kick them in the soft bits, but you can also start a diplomatic ralationship, marry your sons or dauters for money and land, send spy who will steal the throne of your adversary. You can conquere Europe, or be choosen for ruler of Europe by the other rulers, or develope the strongest market and crush the others economy.
The only downsite of the game is that it is 2D, but even then the objects and troops are drawn with much care for details so it is OK. Oh and you need the official patch, it makes the game more difficult and far more interesting.

I gotta say having done game programming, hearing stuff like this makes me sad. I mean I know from having done it how hard it is to make a non buggy game that works on multiple platforms. But seriously some of this crap is just inexcusable. Especially the crashing! Sounds to me like someone left some massive memory leaks in there, Spoony you might wanna try watching your system info while playing and see if there’s a time your memory pages spike.

Also open letter to game designers. For the love of christ ether spend more time play testing or just set your dev times longer! For fucks sake I’m so sick of seeing such buggy as hell games make it to the counter. I mean it’s one thing when it’s like, say morrowind which is horrendously complex internally and hard to bug test everything of. But an RTS?!? There’s really no excuse for such a tried and true game type as this to be this frigging buggy unless the playtesters dropped the ball or weren’t given enough time.

Sorry for the rant >.< bad game programming makes me angry.

I so agree with skipping battles.

OMG I worked on this game and was astounded to see a Spoony take on this. Just to let you know I had nothing to do coding wise so I cannot really give a good/any answer to Spoony’s questions as to the gameplay. I was an animator on the project and we really pulled out the stops to get some great mocap fighting so I hoped you enjoyed that at least :)

If I can download the video and show the guys at the studio, I think they would like your honesty (I think…)

picked up this game on a whim when i got angry at empire total war for the same reasons you did. its called “supreme ruler 2020″

just the storyline in the book for the pre-game aspects and how the world got to such a shit state is just awesome. the controls take a little getting used to, but by the time yer off and invading a neighboring country while trying not to anger the rest of the world and the U.N. or cause yer own people to revolt, yer having a blast. give it a shot. its a deffinite booster shot after the shit storm that is empire total war.

which is just sad… i loved the total war series.

Hmm well I certainly won’t pick that game up. Lately I have been looking for a new RTS game to get into, been playing Age of Empires 3 (gold edition) on and off. Fun game by the way, highly suggest it.

Any suggestions for a good RTS game would be appreciated

Try this:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=816283

Thinking of buying the game? Don’t be a fool.

I still say that the first dawn of war is the best RTS ever, as long as you have all of the expansions

Have you tried Shadow Hearts Covenant? It drove me crazy part way through- its on par with ff considering the random encounters (only increased) and the back tracking was aweful. But i still enjoyed playing it; anyway, if you find time, give it a shot and tell everyone how good/bad it was. (it will probably be mostly bad in your oppinion)

I had forgotten about auto resolve feature in some games. Haven’t really seen it since Lords of Magic and another game from Sierra (not sure about the spelling) but I can see how those aspects could be really frustrating but I can’t remember a game that had historical battles that you had to lose all the time. I mean I could see making it really challenging if you were on the losing side but not impossible. Saw in the latest issue of GameInformer that they gave it a 9.5 but don’t know if they mention the glitches and kinda stupid AI.

Sheesh, my copy of Leisure Suit Larry Box Office Bust runs 10x better than this game. That’s pretty bad.

Hey, wasnt it spacebar to speed up the enemy turn movement on the main campaign map? someones probably already posted that 1 but i really cba to scroll through the 100 posts :p

I have not had any of the problems he is talking about at all. The AI protects their cannons, and they seek cover behind walls all the time, they actually go and seek out buildings to go into and set up killing zones of their own. I bought and played the game first day and i have not had any AI problems. You can skip watching the enemies turns so it goes much faster. If it is an old type of computer that would affect the performance. With patches things are better.

The probelem with the units jumping all over the place are caused by the unit grouping. If you want to sort them or group them so that you can deploy them in straight line this is how you do it.
You group the units and then ungroup them, now you can deploy them in straight line formations.

Cheers

Red Alert 3 is fantastic, and I’m also *trying* to play Sins of a Solar Empire and Starcraft. It’s hard enough for me to complete action games or RPG’s when I start them, but god, starting multiple RTS’s at the same time was just not a good idea. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to finish them all and try out Civ 4.

I think that your units not obeying your orders is intentional, it’s supposed to represent your troops being an undisciplined group of retards who couldn’t find their ass with a map. Nice review though.

“You were also likely playing the game on normal or easy. Try on hard or very hard, and things will be much smarter.”-Mechahawk. WRANG. These only pad the AI’s stats. However, E:TW has gotten much better, although the AI still leaves… well… it’s Total War AI. Still, they could have done a hell of a lot of a better job with it.

Jeez. Try do do The Grand CAmpaign. The American campaign Stinks in the thing i agree that the load times are not the best and i eventualy had to upgrade my computer to get it running again. Everything else is just fine in the game except the story mode. Another thing is that when the units do not shoot at enimies you can TURN THEM! Also the AI Is only challenging on the higer difficulties, you are also right about that. But it is still fun.
This propblably the only thing you have revewied that i disagree what you think about it but anyway…. YOU ROCK!

Warcraft 3, with Frozen Throne expansion, is my favorite RTS. Absolutely epic campaign with a great story, almost perfectly balanced gameplay, and it has the best world map editor system on any game I have ever seen. The custom games are incredibly varied and will last years.

Yeah, it's okay. But Blizzard's RTS games have been kinda meh most of the time. I'd much rather play a real RTS, like Total Annihilation which despite being released before Starcraft is still more advanced and fun than WCIII, Dawn of War and its sequel, Homeworld and its sequel, or Supreme Commander and, soon to come, its sequel. Or maybe Battle Realms and its expansions, the Warlords: Battlecry series, the Total War series (Though that is a mix of X3 and RTS), the Earth 21X0 series, the MechCommander series, Netstorm, the Dark Reign series…

Any time I play Starcraft, it makes me wish I was playing something other than Starcraft. It's just mediocre. And so all the rabid starcrap fanboys annoy the hell out of me, no, no it is not the best game ever made, it's not even in the top ten in the RTS genre. It wasn't the best before it came out, it wasn't the best when it came out, and it's never been the best since.

Nah, you mong, CIV II (DUHH!!! ;p)

First of all, yeah ur totally right, the performance in this game is shitty. On my (resaonably) decent laptop it struggled through on lowest possible settings which look terrible. In terms of pathfinding difficulties the only time this would happen it if I grouped units or didnt hold down RMB when giving orders. Overall this really wasnt a problem for me. In fairness unit facing is alot more important than in previous TW games, and it can be damned frustrating when your men fail to turn like and inch to the left if engaged. However on that note it would be an extreme pain in the ass if this happened every time you get flanked, unintentially fucking up meticulously planned killzones etc.
Unit grouping is, as ever, pointless in true TW tradition. The fact that you cant change formation, facing width or rank depth; or even form a straight line of 2+ units is just retarded. Speaking of retarded I agree with your comments on the AI, it is a few cannons short of a battery and at times feels utterly pathetic. The only challenge is when horribly outnumbered and true enough, even this is too easy.

Overall the performance (or lack of performance), the crashes and the INSANE load times on my PC (5+ mins per battle) caused me to uninstall and give up. Seriously, only use with a BEAST of a computer.

Oh and invisible bowmen who can outshoot, in terms of range and effectiveness, TRAINED MUSKETMENT WITH GUNS!
WTH man??????????

(oh yeah… and spacebar during AI turns makes it WAAAAAY faster)