Empire Total War!! - Armchair General and HistoryNet >> The Best Forums in History

Mr Mac · #1 08 Jun 08, 21:36

I'm pretty psyched for Empire Total War, even though the period is a bit off for me, it looks very well done, and absolutely amazing.

The game follows the same sort of style of play as Medieval 2 and the other ones.

Right now, Creative Assembly has only released shots of sea battles and land battles, but they're probably going to release shots of the campaign map this summer.

Either way, I'm really excited.

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Empire: Total War is about exploration, conquest, founding of colonies and fighting wars away from home. The games timeline spans from the years 1700 to the early 1800s[2], in which you direct your nation to dominate Europe, North Africa, the Americas, the Indies, and the Indian subcontinent.[3] The player will use both complex strategies on the campaign map as well as command battalions on the battlefield—both on land and sea. The game will feature gameplay correlating with that of the previous games in the Total War series, but with major additions to the campaign map and battlefield.

There will be around 50 factions in the game, with around 10 playable. The known factions so far are listed below.

* Kingdom of Great Britain
* Kingdom of Prussia
* Kingdom of France
* Spanish Empire
* Ottoman Empire
* Thirteen Colonies
* Swedish Empire
* Russian Empire
* Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
* Republic of Venice
* Dutch Republic

It is also confirmed that changes in government may occur during the campaign as the rise of democracy becomes an issue in this time period. For instance, the United States may only come into existence if the rulers of that area are unable to maintain social order. Another example is the French Revolution that may occur if the people of France are no longer satisfied with their sovereign. Factions will also have a varying number of objectives such as establishing successful colonies, trade routes and dominance in certain regions as victory conditions.

Psyched yet?

.sergio. · #2 12 Jun 08, 11:28

when they will release it?

Mr Mac · #3 16 Jun 08, 01:05

They plan on releasing around the first quarter of 2009

ace · #4 16 Jun 08, 09:18

looks really good

Stuka Rudel · #5 16 Jun 08, 12:46

2008 is the best year for PC-games ever.
Empire-Total War and Fallout 3... possibly two of the best games ever.

Thus far the strategic map of the Total War-games was the main problem.
Micromanagement destroyed the games.
For Empire though they revamped the system and simplified it, combine that with the most exciting era of warfare and a brand new graphics engine and you get greatness.

mirrorshades · #6 16 Jun 08, 13:00

I have a hard time getting into RTS, but those land battle screenies look good.

Imperial Glory is a similar game. Had some fun with it for a bit; there are some nice battle videos on YouTube.

Stuka Rudel · #7 16 Jun 08, 13:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by mirrorshades

I have a hard time getting into RTS, but those land battle screenies look good.

Imperial Glory is a similar game. Had some fun with it for a bit; there are some nice battle videos on YouTube.

Imperial Glory was awful.
Have you ever played a Total War game? The tactical battles are the best ever in a computer game.

Imperial Glory:
You can't issue orders while paused (which makes the 3d battles uncoordinated and hectical).
The interface is horrible, why not copy the proven Total War-system?
The a.i. is borderline retarded.
No "morale" factor makes for unrealistic, arcady results with tremendous casualties in each battle.

Trust me, if you have never played a Total War game, you missed a lot.

mirrorshades · #8 16 Jun 08, 14:14

Yeah... the lack of morale was what finally sealed the deal for me. I had some sort of elite infantry unit entrenched in a tower, and had decimated the AI down to his last single horse of his last unit.

Sure enough... the single horseman wheeled around, and made a desperate charge at my entrenched infantry.

Yeah, right.

I did also enjoy the Napoleonic: Total War mod for Rome: Total War... but after playing for a while the keyboard controls went bonkers and I couldn't do what I wanted to do. I'm more of a turn-based guy anyway, so it wasn't a real loss... but it was fun while it lasted. :)

Stuka Rudel · #9 16 Jun 08, 14:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by mirrorshades

I did also enjoy the Napoleonic: Total War mod for Rome: Total War... but after playing for a while the keyboard controls went bonkers and I couldn't do what I wanted to do. I'm more of a turn-based guy anyway, so it wasn't a real loss... but it was fun while it lasted.

Me too, but what about "Hearts of Iron", "Victoria" and the other Paradox games?
Real-time, yet kind of turn based. That is what Total war is to me. I pause every 5 seconds and got my turn-based stress free game.

Mr Mac · #10 16 Jun 08, 21:25

By the way guys, the game was delayed. It comes out Q1 2009. So that means Jan-March. This is good because it means instead of rushing the thing, they're actually going to try to smooth it out before just shoving it out on the shells.

Mr Mac · #11 21 Jun 08, 20:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by mirrorshades

I have a hard time getting into RTS, but those land battle screenies look good.

Imperial Glory is a similar game. Had some fun with it for a bit; there are some nice battle videos on YouTube.

Imperial Glory was made to sort compete with Total War, but not in the similar universes.

Empire Total War one ups them by a long shot by including all sorts of political factors to take into account, managing colonies, and so on and so forth.

Not to mention the disparity in graphics, which is partly due to the disparity in age of these two games, but also the brilliant graphic programmers for CA.

Surrey · #12 22 Jun 08, 17:50

I hope they have improved the battles from Medieval. In Medieval the graphics were jerky and extremely slow. Playing a siege could be almost impossible. I do unfortuneatley have Vista on my PC though which presumably slows things down a lot.

Mr Mac · #13 26 Jun 08, 20:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Surrey

I hope they have improved the battles from Medieval. In Medieval the graphics were jerky and extremely slow. Playing a siege could be almost impossible. I do unfortuneatley have Vista on my PC though which presumably slows things down a lot.

I could recommend some new hardware for you:

ATi has recently released the 4850 and 4870 which are priced at $199 and $299 respectively, which is a tremendous bang for buck. Any hardware site worth its salt is raving about them, and even if you're not an ATi fan, nVidia has had to scrape up some sort of comeback, in the form of the 9800GTX+, which is meant to compete with the 4850.

The 4870 hangs on to the coattails of the Mighty GTX 280, for around 1/3 of the price, and the 4870x2, come out later in July will destroy the GTX280, because the 4870x2 uses a shared memory device that lets the two GPUs on one PCB act as one united GPU and so crossfire does not need to be enabled.

So save up some money. Empire Total War will take advantage of DX10.1 and DX10 (DX10.1 is basically a minor revision, so DX10 will work fine for you as well).

As for the battles and sieges: We know that Creative Assembly UK is working on the game this time and so we can expect higher quality all around.
Some buildings will be located outside of the city, which means your enemy will have to sally forth to defend his buildings, unless he wants to lose significant infrastructure.

Open battles will be more developed affairs, with buildings be fought over, such as little towns, or hermitages. Troops can shelter from cannon behind hillocks, hedges can protect (relatively speaking) troops, and so on and so forth. So the battles in Empire Total War are meant to make the player more aware of his surroundings and use them to his advantage, while constantly maneuvering his troops.

***Torien*** · #14 27 Jun 08, 01:00

This art is incredible! I have never seen a game that looked this good!

I skipped all of the Total War games after the first Medieval. My favorite was Shogun and I wish they would re-do that one. However, I am now eagerly awaiting this game.

Thanks for the post.

Mr Mac · #15 27 Jun 08, 12:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Torien

This art is incredible! I have never seen a game that looked this good!

I skipped all of the Total War games after the first Medieval. My favorite was Shogun and I wish they would re-do that one. However, I am now eagerly awaiting this game.

Thanks for the post.

Yeah it looks great doesn't it? I'm not sure what you mean by art (if you mean art of making games, I agree :P) but all these images I have posted are real images. They were all in game real time renderings.

If you feel your PC can't run it, see if you can upgrade it. AMD and Intel are developing new processors as well coming up in the Fall. This game isn't coming til Q1 2009, so I'd wait if you want to save all your money up for upgrading.

I also want a sequel to Shogun: Total War. That'd be cool as well.