Empire: total War

[cleaverlch]

Is it me or does Denmark have a high end dry dock near the beginning of the campaign? I took it from the swedes and began to terrorise the British with second and third rates whose best ships were only 5th or 6th rates(lots of sloops and brigs aswell).

[Andy3536]

Loving the game but might have to give up As GB. The Dutch attacked the 13 colonies and with them both being allies i had to side with one, picked the 13 colonies as i wasn't in a position to defend the Cherokee territory or Florida. i attacked a Dutch trade fleet off the coast of Brazil with some ships that were defending my trade fleet in the next slot down. Then when i try to combine them again it all went wrong and now there just there and not trading. Can't seem to do anything with them. And i really need that money. Now making like 400 a turn.

I was doing so well too, cherkee territry was all mine as was Florida which had a school and i'd taken Flanders aswell. And solved the pirate problem by landing troops on Trinidad and the Layman islands.

I had just got Rank fire going for the troops aswell Despite this though it's still just about the most adictive game i've ever played.

[chuckskull]

Yeah apparently there's a bug with some trade fleets. Really annoying, I've just left it well alone for now.

A good way to make money is trade via the diplo screen, selling tech and opening trade agreements with any nation who'll even talk to you. I just finished the mission to get the 13 colonies to join me. Sent my trade income through the roof. Another one is raiding the trade routes, English channel is perfect for this, so are the inter-theatre links to the colonies. I've got a few wars going which for some reason wont agree to peace, but wont make any attempt on the mainland, so it's just free money.

Paid for 5 2nd rate ships of the line which I used to obliterate the entirety of Frances navy(they went from terrifying to weak in 4 turns) Just wish the naval controls were a little less temperamental.

Does anyone know how many ranks deep, fire by rank works? It works brilliantly with Hessian line infantry due to their high reload skill, just trying to figure out the intricacies now.

You're right Andy horridly addictive. Trying to finish off the Cherokee atm, every time I get them down to one city they appear behind me and take one of my lesser defended ones, before I can get back to defend it properly. Think I've got them this time though. Genocide has never been so enthralling

[maxwilson]

Just wanted to check something with this game guys,

I just walked like 4 miles round trip to town to buy this game, i inserted the disc and now i'm downloading it? What's going on? What the point of even having the discs if it has to be downloaded?

Or am I being a complete tool and just doing something wrong? most likely lol.
Thanks

http://help.sega.com/index.php?_m=kn...16&nav=0,6,165 I just found that followed it's exact instructions, it got to about 3/4 preparing install or something similar, then steam busy message popped up followed a huge dowload as before. it never asked for disc 2.

Its currently downloading at around 400kbs and is still on 0% after 5 mins. To fix this (i hope!) i right clicked the download on steam and went to properties, i clicked the update tab and went on do not install updates automatically.

Then i returned to auto-run and reinstalled it, now its installing from disc!
most of you can ignore my monoluge lol.

[Andy3536]

Yeah apparently there's a bug with some trade fleets. Really annoying, I've just left it well alone for now.

A good way to make money is trade via the diplo screen, selling tech and opening trade agreements with any nation who'll even talk to you. I just finished the mission to get the 13 colonies to join me. Sent my trade income through the roof. Another one is raiding the trade routes, English channel is perfect for this, so are the inter-theatre links to the colonies. I've got a few wars going which for some reason wont agree to peace, but wont make any attempt on the mainland, so it's just free money.

Paid for 5 2nd rate ships of the line which I used to obliterate the entirety of Frances navy(they went from terrifying to weak in 4 turns) Just wish the naval controls were a little less temperamental.

Does anyone know how many ranks deep, fire by rank works? It works brilliantly with Hessian line infantry due to their high reload skill, just trying to figure out the intricacies now.

You're right Andy horridly addictive. Trying to finish off the Cherokee atm, every time I get them down to one city they appear behind me and take one of my lesser defended ones, before I can get back to defend it properly. Think I've got them this time though. Genocide has never been so enthralling

Just a question but when you attacked the 'New France' region of the US and Canada did France declair war?
I decided to go for the Cherokee (and Florida) first and then when i moved to take the Frech protectorate they had became French....... Did it the wrong way round i think. Trouble is at the time the French Navy was Huge in the channel so didn't wan't to risk war.
Rank fire i think is 3 ranks deep (although i don't actually know) provides a great edge when taking on tribe's men with tomahawks and taking on townsfolk with firelock muskets

[YorkieBen]

Incredibly addictive but I am having serious ctd problems during battles (C2D, 8800GT, Vista x64). Trying update graphics drivers and a re-install now

[chuckskull]

Just a question but when you attacked the 'New France' region of the US and Canada did France declair war?
I decided to go for the Cherokee (and Florida) first and then when i moved to take the Frech protectorate they had became French....... Did it the wrong way round i think. Trouble is at the time the French Navy was Huge in the channel so didn't wan't to risk war.
Rank fire i think is 3 ranks deep (although i don't actually know) provides a great edge when taking on tribe's men with tomahawks and taking on townsfolk with firelock muskets

Yeah, either way you end up at war with the French. I got lucky France declared war on most of mainland Europe including me because of alliances. Also because because they were aggressor, Spain didn't join in. So I decided that was the time to go for it(been building a large army there anyway).

I went for New France first, as it's a proper city(not sure if it's a population thing or if some cities are just better), you can build cannons, proper barracks etc. Took all their American colonies pretty quickly, most were lightly defended, there was a single large army moving around Canada, that was a tough battle. Their fleet caused havoc in the channel though. Took a couple of my ports, but thankfully one land unit is enough to push the fleet out and retake it. Couldn't take out their fleets til after the 13 colonies joined me and the money started flowing again. Even then still took a while to build up a big enough fleet. Once I had all the colonies and put their fleet down I offered peace and they accepted(they were still very rich, didn't want them building their army back up and exacting revenge).

I came pretty close to going bankrupt because of the blockades, needed a few turns with the taxes right up. Would of been screwed if they'd landed any decent sized force in Britain, but they were busy with other wars thankfully.

My plan before that opportunity presented itself was to get the others first. Then try and take Quebec in a turn or two and pay for peace once I had it.

Went back and looked at the rank fire tech again it recommends 3 ranks too, so I think I'll stick with that. EDIT: Tried it in a few battles and yup 3 ranks works great.

[AledJ]

Just got the game today (been away skiing) I got the spacial forces edition and a bit confused with it. On my desktop now I have the normal icon for empire total war, but also one for the empire total war special forces unit. Now do i start the special forces one??? is it the same game just with the special units in it???

Hope that made some sense.

[Andy3536]

Just got the game today (been away skiing) I got the spacial forces edition and a bit confused with it. On my desktop now I have the normal icon for empire total war, but also one for the empire total war special forces unit. Now do i start the special forces one??? is it the same game just with the special units in it???

Hope that made some sense.

I have the Special forces edition too and i checked the normal start up icon first and the saw a few of the Special Forces in custom battle so assumed there all there anyway.

The best special force was there all along though with the Ferguson riflemen Got to give those a try if you havn't already. 10 rounds a minute with black powder.

[AledJ]

Right ok so I can just start up from the normal icon and get the sf later in the game. Glad thats cleared up lol

[chuckskull]

I have the Special forces edition too and i checked the normal start up icon first and the saw a few of the Special Forces in custom battle so assumed there all there anyway.

The best special force was there all along though with the Ferguson riflemen Got to give those a try if you havn't already. 10 rounds a minute with black powder.

Ferguson's are excellent. Building up an army of them, life guards, 4 inch mortars and 24pounders to go introduce myself to Denmark who've been at war with me for 25 years and done nothing more than annoy my ships. Almost sank my first Heavy First Rate while it was moving to my main fleet. I was not amused. Great ships, shame they turn like an oil tanker.

Has anyone figured out how to tell which is the lead ship when using the line astern tactic? Normally it would just be the one at the front, but if you have more than about 5 ships, you normally end up with them all bunched up in deployment.

Tried switching to 2 groups line astern and hitting them from both sides, starts off well, but if you don't kill everything in the first pass, it all goes horribly wrong.

[chuckskull]

OK, the more I play this, the more bugs I find

At first it was just a couple of niggles, but the more I play the more I find.

Loads of audio bugs, lag and outright missing sounds, fighting in complete silence sometimes. Advisor's often stop talking mid sentence. Which is annoying because the manual amounts to "we made a game with some ships and pretty graphics", previous TW manuals were excellent.

The bigger your empire the slower the campaign map gets. I've taken most of north America and not much else and it's like the whole thing is suddenly covered in treacle.

Selecting some unit stacks instantly CTD's I now I have 4 full stacks I cant use, cant even disband them to stop paying upkeep. Merging units seems to cause a CTD half the time, especially if you're moving units in and out of an army in one go.

If you have an army and agent in the same city, trying to move the agent moves the army instead.

Embarking and disembarking from ships is bugged. You can't disembark in half the places you should be able to and vice versa and the places which you can and cant disembark seem to change every turn.

You can't move across some stretches of water despite the traditional map arrow saying that you can.

Enemy AI goes from outright devious(which I love btw), to completely gormless. Russia asks fro a trade agreement, breaks it every turn and asks again. Spain insists on trading Texas for Gibraltar every turn. I've now traded about 8 times, just trying to figure out which one it actually wants. Even if you refuse it keeps offering.

In battle; Unit path finding is terrible. Getting stuck in cover, buildings and on other units. If you move parallel to a wall, half the troops will constantly jump from one side to the other, meaning they barely move at all. If you try to just jump over a wall, then a few of the units will insist on jumping back and forth a few times, before carrying on. In sea battles marines think the best way to board a ship is to climb to the top of the mast and jump, either missing the ship or going splat on the deck, rather than just jumping from deck to deck. Earlier I lost a 1st rate to an empty 5th rate because the entire crew tried to do this.

Sometimes units will not fire at an enemy directly in front of them, even with fire at will on. Ordering the unit to fire in this position usually makes them run off in a random direction.

Researched techs used in battle like Bayonets, rank and platoon fire only seem to work half the time. Diamond and wedge formation doesn't seem to be applied to most cavalry units.

Cannons will only fire at the edges of an enemy line, I thought it this was just natural inaccuracy at first, but after using cannons more I noticed it was usually only one edge the cannon rounds landed at rather than a spread as you'd expect. Becomes very noticeable with wide and thin units.

Some buildings take ages and ages to destroy. I was taking a pirate colony when the last pirate mob holed up in the town hall, no problem I thought my 5 units of 24 pounder guns(biggest in the game afaik) will tear it apart, especially seeing as I can bring them in pretty close without them taking any fire. Even with the battle at max(4x) speed, it took nearly 45 mins.

Conversely, forts and star forts are completely useless. The cannon's start unmanned, and can only be manned by moving infantry close and selecting fire at will, hoping they will get the idea. They rarely do. Also because of this design choice you can't man them during deployment and by the time you do man them, most of the enemy force is already inside. Not to mention these cannon cant use any of the normal cannon firing modes and you cant direct their fire any any way that I've found, ordering them to attack sometimes works, but more often than not they leave the cannon and try to get down to fight normally. Also men firing from the fort walls, are completely ineffective. They don't use rank or platoon fire at all in cover, meaning you normally only have a quarter of your men firing and even then, their shots seem to constantly miss. Also they make no attempt to stop men climbing the walls with ropes, rather than just cutting the rope, firing down the rope, or just simply stabbing them as they come over the top, they patiently wait until most have reached the top then start fighting. If you order the men on the wall to attack the climbers they try to climb down themselves.

Whether or not you can garrison the larger buildings with more than one unit, despite some saying you can fit 700+ inside seems to be complete chance.

I actually have more, but I think you get the idea. What really annoys me about all this, isn't the fact this kind of behaviour is getting more and more common in PC games, with developers treating the first month of release as free testing. It isn't even the fact I paid £30 for an unfinished product.
It's the fact that when everything is working right in the game it is excellent and by far the best strategy game of the year so far, but it rarely does and it's souring my taste for a series I've bought and followed for years and a game I was really looking forward to.

It also leaves me wondering if I can find this many bugs in a matter of a couple of days play how many more are there and why didn't their QA find any of them?

Unless the first patch is astounding and comes with an apology for this debacle, it might be the last total war game I buy.

</rant>

[billwiddis]

During play I get failures on screen & blue screen of death. My computer is rated 5.7 with Vista 64 bit and video card NVidia GeForce GTX 280. Windows (on restart) says it is an Nvidia problem and there is no solution. Any advice would be welcomed.

[Digerati]

If you have an army and agent in the same city, trying to move the agent moves the army instead.

This has happened far too many times for me. On several occations I have highlighted an agent and clicked to move and my entire army has disembarked the city, leaving it open to attack. With the army move points taken up the city has been snapped up during the turn.

Embarking and disembarking from ships is bugged. You can't disembark in half the places you should be able to and vice versa and the places which you can and cant disembark seem to change every turn.

This is especially worse when landing on a tiny island like the ones off the coast of America. I've had to give up raiding the pirate occupied islands.

In sea battles marines think the best way to board a ship is to climb to the top of the mast and jump, either missing the ship or going splat on the deck, rather than just jumping from deck to deck. Earlier I lost a 1st rate to an empty 5th rate because the entire crew tried to do this.

Because of this I gave up commanding my sea battles. I found the autoresolved worked in my favour.

Dispite these rather annoying issues the bugs don't scrape the surface of what is overall a very indepth and immensly fun experiance. So to anyone reading this thread, don't be put off

[kopite]

I ordered it last night so should have it by tomorrow

[chuckskull]

Dispite these rather annoying issues the bugs don't scrape the surface of what is overall a very indepth and immensly fun experiance. So to anyone reading this thread, don't be put off

Oh yes, it's a great game, which only makes the bugs more annoying. Like I said, if it wasn't for the bugs it would be the strategy game of the year. Makes RA3 look shallow and Endwar boring, no easy feat as they're both excellent games.

Then again both of those are really tactics games, rather than strategy like say the civilisation series. The TW series combines strategy and tactics. Which is what makes it so enthralling and entertaining.

Sadly I'll be leaving it alone til the promised patch lands.