GalCiv2 Forums
I know Empire Total War has been well recieved by critics, but what what I've seen on the Total War forums, there is a very different perspective?
What do you guys think of Empire Total War? I heard you have to use Steam even with the retail version. Is this true?
Already got it 
I'll simply second those who've recommended you wait for it to come down in price, have it more fully patched, or both. Empire has a lot of potential....but then, so have all the other Total War games. Thus far, only Shogun and the original Medieval have ever really been up to snuff.
No. No, it is not.
Doesn't sound like it. Besides, I prefer swords, knights and bows to muskets and ridiculous uniforms (why on earth did military forces dress like that?!)
Yeah, the game's period is admittedly part of the reason I'm less than enthused about Empire -- I too prefer either the medieval or classical Greco-Roman era(s) -- but only part of it. There's too many bugs, too many AI problems, and too many balance issues in ETW that still need to be fixed/solved.
I also demos of the game is action, the animations, voices, and the general look and feel of the game looks like crap anyway.
It seems Creative Assembly is declining in quality. Empire Total War turned out to be bad, as did Stormrise.
ETW still has promise they just need to get some moar patches out, Stormrise on the other hand was made of the finest fail.
Stormrise is way, way, way, way worse than ETW could ever be. ETW is a very playable game that suffers from some issues (mostly AI at this point). Stormrise, on the other hand..
When I get my new pc ill pick the game up... hopefully soon they fix most of the problems and then have an expansion come out... I always wait a little bit before picking up total war games...
in short... the game is nice... it pulls the good parts from most of the games in its class..
......there are way worse games you can buy... give 4 out of 5... because they can keep
pacths and etc. up. just have a good computer so you can play with the video all the way
up. and get the special forces upgrade.
off sub but does or did any body play evil genius? I cant stop...
I'm not even gonna get it. I don't like that time period anyway. I'll wait for Rome II or Medieval III.
I would read the official forums carefully.
On YouTube there are some good "Let's Play Empire Total War" videos by JosefVStalin that are quite good. I think he mentions the issues but is overall pleased with the game. Those are good videos.
JosefVStalin, for those who don't know about him, is quite a character (he really is a Stalinist!) and he does very good game videos, at least in my opinion.
Looking at some of that, I found myself liking the overworld, but thinking that the real time battles would get a bit repetitious after a while. Not to mention probably stretching my 4850.
Think I'll wait and see how Hearts of Iron III turns out. The demo might be out next week for HoI III. I think HoI III releases on August 7 still.
I got it for 25$ on the steam sale... ya it needs a patch... hell an expansion... sega really didnt give them enough time on it... I like but ya... 
I bought it on the night of release (Steam Version), and I must say it was one of the worst purchase I have made in years. Not only it has all the bugs people mention so far, there is one particular thing that I consider game killer:
Idiotic AI.
Either the word idiotic was made in the beginning of the time speficially for the day this game is released, or we need to come up with a new definition for the word else it would be an insult to all the idiotic things in the world. That's just how bad it is. I'm a big Seige Battle player, and Seige Battle is next to impossible to play from all respective, doesn't matter whether it's player or the AI, or whether you playing Attack or Defense it does not matter at all. For the AI I don't understand what kind of logic they're using for movement, as for me, I don't understand why my units doesn't seem to do what I ask. A more detail break down that I posted on another forum:
uh, I'm unimpressed. All the AI problem from Rome and Mediaval 2 come back in full force.
The AI army still have this obsessive passion for reforming and nothing else. I pushed an enemy army out of the province capital because through the entire battle they do nothing but reforming their formation.
They try to take my province once, and OMG it's the worst seige battle I fight yet. First, the deployment phase sucks, in previous game although you don't see their army you still know the direction they coming from, and your army by default is already facing them. Here, the AI deployed my army to the north wall and once the battle started it showed their army is on the west.
Redeployment is a mega pain in the ***, I swear I don't know how "MY" unit move at all. The path finding for AI is absolutely horrid. There is even one instance when I order them to switch wall and they some how use the enemy rope to get out side the wall, then run back through the main gate, and of course ******** open it in the process. Oh yeah, and I think my wall unit fire or not to fire not base on my order, but randomly depend on their mood.
The enemy AI is just about as insulting stupid. Once inside, their unit pleasantly match toward the town square and sit there and don't give a damn to the fact that I already put two row of musketeers on two side and making them a cheese sanwich. They just ... sit there, take casualty, then march out back to the gate and replace with another squad. They don't even bother to turn back and face me, so yes, my squad is shooting at their "stand still" back. What more, some squad prefer to run around my outer wall instead of attacking. When their cannon put 2 holes on my wall, instead of get in and attack, their "pike" unit decide to do a Hula dance around my wall, then stop and "stand still" at one of my closed gate and let my unit shoot them at their pleasure. In fact, after my unit out of ammunition I decide to charge them through the gate the enemy is standing in front, it's like the pike unit just wakes up from their eternal slumber or something, instead of go through the now open gate they made a detour back through the two holes they made ealier like they just discover about it now ... in my disbelief.
And improved Campaign AI my "BUTT". They're still as stupid as they ever were. I keep having small province countries declaring war on me despite the fact we're friendly - indifferent toward each others. Not only that, why the hell a country with a "weak" military power want to declare war on a country with "terrifying" military power. And no, it's not like they're exploiting me or something since I squish them in just one or two turn.
So far, except naval battle, I'm very unimpressed. No, I'm pissed.
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