By Jim Rossignol on June 22nd, 2009 at 8:51 pm.
Empire’s new 1.3 patch is out, and will update via internet fairy dust when you relaunch Steam. The fairly chunky list of changes and fixes can be read here. The patch includes fourteen new units to replace generic unit types for specific factions in the game. There’s also DLC up on Steam, the details of which are here. The micro-expansion unlocks fourteen elite units, including US Marines and Russian Gardes à cheval, whom, it is noted, “were selected not for their soldiering ability but more for their relative attractiveness to Catherine the Great.”
They’re bringing sexy (horse)back.
22/06/2009 at 20:56 Vinraith says:
I’m more than a little concerned that the whole idea of paid DLC for extra units is 1) the reasoning behind encrypting the normally modable map and unit files and 2) means that said encryption isn’t going to be removed. For me, the strength of the Total War games has always been their modability. I spent more time playing Rome Total Realism and Europa Barborum than I ever did the (somewhat silly) vanilla game. Similarly with Medieval 2 and the Stainless Steel mod. If Empire isn’t modable in this sense, and is never allowed to become so, I can’t see bothering with future Total War games. That’d be a real loss, as the TW engines have allowed for some truly spectacular historical war gaming up until now.
22/06/2009 at 20:58 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
Fewer generics, more faction-specific units might not be strictly historical but certainly helps spice things up.
But while multiplayer could certainly use the variety, I’m not sure that anybody’s actually there.
22/06/2009 at 20:58 Jim Rossignol says:
Yes. I can’t see DLC being particularly popular.
22/06/2009 at 20:59 Viskernus says:
“This update includes the implementation of multi-threading in the game for multi-core processors and many optimizations that will also help increase performance on single core machines. Players will see huge benefits through increased frame rates particularly in land and naval battles.”
If someone could report on how “huge” these performance increases are that would be great, I’ve been holding off on the game due to the demo’s remarkably terrible performance for me, even on the lowest detail levels.
22/06/2009 at 20:59 MWoody says:
So, the game is still largely broken (the AI can’t effectively mount naval invasions, among other things), and they still haven’t released a feature promised to be out a month after release (coop campaign), but they’re already selling DLC? *sigh*
22/06/2009 at 21:00 The Hammer says:
I love that pun.
22/06/2009 at 21:01 Serondal says:
Bring sexy (horse)back now!I demand it!
Bring sexy back? I don’t understand?
Sexy will be gone and he’ll bring it back!
22/06/2009 at 21:08 Mike says:
In related news, there’s a cracking Empire: Total War game diary going on over here right now – http://www.sekritforum.com/storybook/degeen – it’s just finished its first chapter, and it’s coming along really well.
22/06/2009 at 21:14 Hunam says:
For the life of me I just can’t get on with this game. I have up on it first because of bugs and poor performance, but also because of the lack of challenge even on the hardest settings. I found once I had a tactic for both land and sea I could just use them exclusively to win every battle even when I was outnumbered.
Came back to it today and even with the patch for multithreaded processing and instead of just having a terrible frame rate, it swings wildly from decent to terrible frame rate based as far as I can tell, the alignment of the planets. I did just yield and lower the settings to medium, but now it just looks like a giant smudge :(
This is my first Total War game and I’ve really not enjoyed it at all. It’s a shame too as I was really excited by the demo and the strategy map initially, but it just feels too limited and light compared to traditional RTS games and games like Civ.
22/06/2009 at 21:17 Pidesco says:
Those units really aren’t worth the money.
Why aren’t improvements to the AI and troop deployment in battles already here?
22/06/2009 at 21:25 Dominic White says:
So, were all the glowing reviews for Empire (including those by RPS staff) wrong? I’ve seen nothing but searing hatred for this game all over the net. Constant cries of it being utterly unplayable, the worst in the series, broken in a thousand different ways, etc..
Or is this just the Total War fanbase in action? I recall finding out that ‘Creative Assembly fan’ is an insult among the Total War community. Hostile doesn’t begin to cover it.
22/06/2009 at 21:30 ACESandElGHTS says:
From Mark O’Connell
“We’ve worked on implementing the multi-threading in the game for multi-core processors and made many optimisations that will also help increase performance on single core machines.”
Well, to paraphrase Team America: World Police — [Eurasian Gaming Community], Fuck Yeah!
22/06/2009 at 21:31 Plinglebob says:
I didn’t like Empire because, even though the changes to the map were great, I hated the combat. Watching 200 soldiers shoot at each other while sneaking horsemen round the back of the enemy lines is not as much fun as watching 200 sholdiers charging at each other. If they made a Rome II or Medieval III using the new campaign map I’d be a happy bunny.
22/06/2009 at 21:33 Wallace says:
DLC for separate campaigns, like those in Kingdoms, might go down better, but new units just seems like a repeat of Oblivion’s horse armour.
22/06/2009 at 21:34 Nicolas says:
@Plinglebob Learn the location of the melee button!
22/06/2009 at 21:40 Dreamhacker says:
Aces&8′s: Oh, the community is very much inbred and conservative, but they’re good people. Mostly.
RTW is still all the rage to the modders, but there’s a big, huge and silent majority of gamers who recognize ETW as the best entry in the series and who know to appreciate CA’s efforts, but who dont go broadcast their opinions on forums.
Also, M2TW was hated and flamed for a long, long time. Now the former haters are enjoying their LOTR-mods and wondering what they were thinking.
Oh, but don’t tell them I said this, they take their community seriously!
22/06/2009 at 21:47 Pidesco says:
@Dominic White: It’s really kind of flabbergasting how so many reviews managed to ignore the fact that the AI can’t do naval invasions in a game about naval empires. And that’s just one of the many AI issues with Empire.
Also, the battle terrain and units entrance points doesn’t reflect the battle’s and armies’ locations in the campaign map.
22/06/2009 at 21:48 Vinraith says:
@Dreamhacker
In a lot of ways that makes it all the more a shame that there can’t BE any major mods for Empire, don’t you think? Or is it your opinion CA will eventually come to their senses and open up the game once the DLC sales period is over?
22/06/2009 at 21:48 DMcCool says:
Dominic White, what you are experiancing is just the normal internet fanboy outlook on games. 99% of everything you read about anything is hate-fuelled bile; the bitter people that didn’t enjoy a game and want to be sure no-one else will are the ones who do almost all the posting. All those smug people who expect sequels to be made exclusively for them and when they differ in any way from their expectations act like the developers should come up with a public apology. Just don’t let it get to you.
Empire Total War is every bit the game all the critics said it was. Actually, putting aside the console war obsessed so-clearly-bribed mainstream sites, I always find the critical response for games so much more trustworthy and honest than what you get from forums.
/rant
22/06/2009 at 21:51 Clovis says:
I picked this up for $25 on Steam. I immediately ran into a game crashing bug whenever I would hit ctrl-m to merge my troops. I hope this fixes that, because I do that after almost every battle. I know that I should do this “by hand” to get uber-experienced soldiers.
I have a multi-core processor, so I hope I see improvements.
Paying for DLC that is mainly new units seems ludicrous for the PC market. If I want new units I’ll just download them from the crazy people who spend hours creating them for free. Except apparently there had been an effort to stifle this creation? Well, that’s just awful. Anyone paying for DLC like that is bad and they should feel bad.
22/06/2009 at 22:01 catska says:
Oh how the tables have turned. I like how there isn’t much of a fuss in the newspiece about DLC for ETW, but the PC purists on this site have been bitching and moaning about it on the consoles for ages. Guess you’ll have to check off ‘FREE DLC’ from your ‘reasons PC gaming beats everything ever’ list.
Also, Empire is broken as hell and is one of the buggiest pieces of software ever released.
22/06/2009 at 22:03 Pijama says:
I will make an effort to NOT swear the bloody lot of them because I really loved Shogun and Medieval.
Here we go.
So, they slap the whole “Works best on Core Duo” thing at every game, but wasn’t optimized for it. Now they slap several units for it, encrypting modding that could potentially enhance this much further, for the sake of protecting their interests in bloody DLC? And the bugs? Mega pirate navies? The British Empire and their total inability to fight a war in the continent? OR BUILD A NAVY, to begin with? Trade ports being pretty useless?
…
They sold us a beta.
…
*fuck.*
22/06/2009 at 22:06 unclelou says:
DLC for separate campaigns, like those in Kingdoms, might go down better, but new units just seems like a repeat of Oblivion’s horse armour.
It’s something like 20 cents per unit, and they’ve included just as many new ones in the patch for free as they have in the DLC. I really don’t see the drama, I must say.
22/06/2009 at 22:08 A-Scale says:
It’s very difficult for me to resist buying this game for $25, but the sheer number of complaints about bugs and troublesome AI is keeping me from it. Shame.
22/06/2009 at 22:10 Legendary Teeth says:
Just to chime in on the positive side, I thought it E:TW was pure awesome. I didn’t run into any bugs or anything. Seeing my hordes of line infantry backed by artillery stomp anyone who dare oppose me was pretty sweet.
22/06/2009 at 22:17 unclelou says:
Yeah, same here. Never crashed for me, performance is great, and the AI is a lot better than Medieval 2′s ever was before they hired some of the modders many, many months after the release.
I burned out on it a little bit a while after its release, but that was after a long campaign that took me more than 80 hours.
22/06/2009 at 22:20 Rich_P says:
I really see no problem with the DLC in and of itself, but why encrypt so many of the game’s vital files, especially since TW has a wonderful modding community? Like Vinraith, I expect it has something to do with SEGA wanting to be the exclusive provider of new units…
I decided against purchasing this for $25 since I’ve yet to fully play RTW or MTW2. Rather clever of them to release new DLC after a huge sale though.
22/06/2009 at 22:24 Serondal says:
After playing M:TW 2 and seeing how bad the support was for that game I decided not to touch this one. Looks like I turned out to be right :P My calvery STILL don’t charge right in M:TW 2 , unlike in Rome:TW where even the light calvery totally destroy everything in their path when used correclty (running down a hill into enemy flanks, the freaking horses leap and bound into the enemy ranks and totally destroy them. Was even able to destroy phallanxs like this by baiting them with archers and foot soliders that normally could not defeat them then charging them with light calvery from behind)
22/06/2009 at 22:28 Heliocentricity says:
Didn’t get empire on the sale mainly on the piece of crap mod support. Every total war game i ever got into had major issues mods fixed or had major issues mods couldn’t fix due to hard coding things.
Creative Assembly know better than to pull that move so its all on sega. Handy hint, mods add value, leave the dlc to the consoles.
22/06/2009 at 22:43 Tei says:
DLC is modability for consoles. Consoles need DLC’s because don’t support freedom. So you can’t install whatever you want (like new maps and monsters, or whole new gameplay … mods). Since consoles can’t have mods, have DLC’s.
Having DLC in the PC market mean the modding community will be killed, most probably /stabed in the back over the night.
PC games don’t need “DLC” parts. Need a dev SDK, and a editor, to let the users make his own expansions. And since professionals can make better expansions than hobbyist, the professionals can make big EXPANSIONS to games. Something a hobby team will never do. A horse armor? a hobbyist guy can do one in a night, maybe a new island in a week.
Can DLC and modding live togueter? hope so… but It don’t really make much sense. In a world where a hobbyist can enable 2 campaings of L4D to play on VS, why would Valve make that a paid DLC? Even if microsoft try to extort Valve to do so?
And why sould PC games support modding? because is the strong point of the “platform”. Other platforms can’t have modding. So having no-modding on the pc and not a central market mean the worst of the Console livesystem, withouth the best of the PC livesystem.
22/06/2009 at 22:46 jonfitt says:
I missed the 50% off sale, I checked this morning but was too late. Bugger.
Out of bitterness I’m not going to buy it now until it drops to $25. Perhaps by that time it’ll be a Gold pack including all the DLC…
22/06/2009 at 23:06 h4plo says:
I had a good go of Empire at release, completing my first-ever campaign in a TW game (after playing the previous two) as the Prussians. The campaign map performed rather poorly, though, but I did love the hell out of the game, although I’d rather see Medival III or Rome II.
Also: Piss on you, DLC.
22/06/2009 at 23:14 Serondal says:
I’d love to see a Shogun 2 or a Rome 2. Aside for the poor support for Medival 2 I don’t really care for this time peroid war wise. Lining up in rows and popping each other with extremly inaccurate weaponry is boring to me. I was to see people hacked to pieces and arrows sticking out of corpses.
I’m not saying it is a bad game or a bad idea for a game, just saying the concept doesn’t appeal to me. If we’re going to fight with guns I’d rather skip ahead to WW 2 or maybe a modern game but I don’t think TW would do well with that sort of thing.
I would be interested in seeing a total war game based in China set in Romance of the Three Kingdom type setting, the story is just begging for TW treatment after being abused by Keoi for all his years more or less making the same bastard game over and over again (they’re almost as bad as EA with all these sports games hehe)
Or maybe a war game set in the ancient world, but I figure that might get boring unless they made it extremly brutal hackign each other with stone axes and pointy sticks.
22/06/2009 at 23:14 Mad Doc MacRae says:
RTW is crap, MTW is the best.
22/06/2009 at 23:14 Dominic White says:
Just a reminder that the DLC is £2 for 14 new unit types. It’s maybe not amazing value for money, but it’s not Horse Armor either.
22/06/2009 at 23:15 jonfitt says:
To me DLC seems to mean: stuff we’d have given away a few years ago, but not enough to justify an expansion.
It’s especially irksome to hear they’ve locked out mods so that they can charge for the sort of thing modders knock out for free.
Does anyone know if the 14 patched units are new models or just renames and stat tweaks?
22/06/2009 at 23:17 Vinraith says:
@Dominic
I’d agree that the DLC isn’t a terrible deal for that price, but if it’s actually responsible for the encryption on normally modable files then its real costs are insidious indeed.
22/06/2009 at 23:21 Serondal says:
Did they ever fix the AI in M:TW II so and the pathing for the units in cities? The worst enemy in a city battle was the pathing for the AI not the enemy! IT was impossible to get them to go down the right roads in large cities and sometimes they would just LEAVE the city for no reason no matter what I could do and then reenter in another entrance and go to where I told them to go instead of walking 4 feet to get there O.o
22/06/2009 at 23:28 Jimbo says:
I think it’s pretty lazy to dismiss all criticism of Empire as fanboy ranting. That game had plenty of genuine problems at launch.
The AI being incapable of putting an army on a ship is a pretty big deal in a game called Empire. If you played as Britain you could never be attacked at home. Ever.
A significant percentage of players repeatedly ending up with corrupt campaign saves is also a legitimate gripe.
22/06/2009 at 23:30 Oak says:
How disappointing. I’d been hoping the “Special Forces” silliness hadn’t gone over well and we’d see a proper expansion pack sometime this year.
23/06/2009 at 00:08 Scundoo says:
No mention of making the AI any less “Dumber than Dirt” eh?
As for their extra units, they can keep them. Just make the game modable as they’ve been promising (i.e. lying about) for years and you will get all the extra content you can handle from modders.
23/06/2009 at 00:46 Krupo says:
I was all excited to see “new patch” (and still am), and then saw DLC. Grr… DLC bad. But ooh, new units. And source of amusing RPS pun!
Then I look at the units. Only one special unit for Poland and scads for Russia and Prussia. Go to hell then – my Polish army wiped Prussia off the face of the earth (fun bug: seeing one of those historical “news reports” about Prussia after you’ve done this), and now Austria will feel Polish wrath over their attempt to recreate the infamous “partitions”.
Russia’s next to fall, unless the Swedes start getting uppity again.
23/06/2009 at 00:58 Serondal says:
Those dang Swedes! You know when your countries greatest gift to the world is meatballs (tiny ones at that) that you’re not trying hard enough.
23/06/2009 at 01:05 Eschatos says:
Where the fuck is the multiplayer campaign?
23/06/2009 at 01:06 Andrew Dunn says:
Great patch, and very worthwhile DLC.
I definitely hope to see more mod support for Empire in the future but the standard game gets a lot of undeserved flak, and CA are supporting it admirably no matter how shaky it was on release.
23/06/2009 at 01:10 Gap Gen says:
Given that I took the best part of a year to finish a campaign (total map conquest) in both Rome: BI and Medieval 2, I suspect I will be playing this game for a very long time…
23/06/2009 at 01:15 cjlr says:
meatballs, pssh… Sweden’s greatest gift to the world is Paradox.
23/06/2009 at 01:18 Wooko says:
Seriously I really hate it when the community does this, I’ve played total war games from the beginning, Empire has the best AI by far, I mean seriously it’s better than the best of the modded AIs for medieval 2, the AI responds intelligently in battle and it does some really surprising(good) things in pretty much every battle, also in every game I’ve played the AI have coped fine with naval invasions, okay so they dont do it all the time, but when they do they dont just come with 1 trash unit like in medieval 2, although I can understand the frustration with slightly messed up naval invasion in this era.
Cut CA some slack, they put out a fantastic game and it seems all the community can do is complain constantly, and really the DLC pack is what? 2 quid? Seriously people, whats wrong with you?
The only actual real problem I had with Empire total war ever has been low framerate, but it was fine after I disabled depth of field (I think it trebled actually) am I just lucky or something?
I hate to make myself out as a fanboy or something but I’d just like people to be reasonable.
./endrant :D
23/06/2009 at 01:53 aufi says:
needs MP campaign.
23/06/2009 at 02:16 Taillefer says:
@Wooko
Most of those complaints were before the patches. Naval invasions weren’t in at all, originally. And the AI in general was horrendous, I’m not sure how much has been fixed.
Pre-patch had the pre-requisites for an AI declaring war as simply “If I share a border with the player, declare war on them.”. And the real-time battles had either rushes, or barely moving units. I was convinced people were preferring to think they were unbeatable, super-strategists instead of admitting they were simply winning against a terrible opponent. Maybe some didn’t suffer these issues, and that’s great. But many people are saying they did because, you know, they did.
23/06/2009 at 02:21 panik says:
“In related news, there’s a cracking Empire: Total War game diary going on over here right now”
i also started one…its very short tho=
day 1: oh ffs
anyway, i’ll give it another go with the patch…i hope everything that pissed me off has been fixed, but i doubt it has.
must be the buggiest game of all time.
23/06/2009 at 02:23 autogunner says:
I might well get th DLC as the armies are all carbon copy DULL in standard battle mode, the only mode which i play as campagain is far too vast and get on my nerbes
23/06/2009 at 02:32 Legionary says:
So DLC. I think that, after DRM, it’s a really strong signifier that actually most developers or publishers don’t understand PC gamers – either don’t understand or don’t care.
For years we’ve had free updates to games. If it wasn’t a full-blown expansion then we got it for free. There was no need to charge us for it because both the developer/publisher and the gamer understood that the game did not have to be actively supported after release, and that if it gained anything new it was a goodwill gesture or an attempt to fix a problem that the game should never have been released with.
On consoles, though, you can’t do free stuff. The console companies don’t want it, because they slice a fee off the top of all purchases. And that’s ok. Gamers never expected free updates on console – they never expected any updates on console. You can charge for things when you first introduce them.
The difference is that now they’re trying to push that out to the PC, and we’ve had free updates. There’s no reason for them to be selling us horse armour or a handful of in-game units. Save those things up until they’re a large pack of items and sell us that and we’ll accept it. Spread them out and drop them in every now and again as free updates and we’ll be grateful. Concentrate your time on developing an expansion pack and you’ll make more money and make your customers happier.
And actually, it does real damage to the game itself. The Total War games have such a strong community. Think of Rome – that game is receiving content and balance changes YEARS after release, it’s getting fresh content and appealing to players with absolutely zero effort on the part of developers. Creative Assembly haven’t had to lift a finger in the creation of something like the Extended Greek Mod, but I’m damn sure that the Extended Greek Mod and the thousands of fan-made modifications have kept sales of Rome: Total War much higher than if the game had been difficult or impossible to modify significantly.
Empire is all locked up. It’s never going to get the following Rome or Medieval 2 has, because people will play it until the vanilla content has been exhausted and then close it and not return to the game. The sales won’t be inflated by the active fan communities because Creative Assembly and/or SEGA are obsessed about picking up an extra couple of quid right now.
Empire is a buggy game but it’s a good one. It’s a shame that it might end up becoming the first casualty of its own DLC, but perhaps it’s better for gaming in general that its success is tempered by the fiasco over DLC, pre-order exclusivities and the clampdown on modders.
One thing’s for sure, and if the past has taught us anything it’s that you don’t make successful products by mistreating your fans. With The Sims 3 EA have possibly demonstrated they’ve learned a lesson from Spore. Maybe Empire: Total War will be the game that teaches games companies a vital lesson about commercial DLC.
23/06/2009 at 03:17 Jim Prall says:
I read the rave reviews, found the DVD in the store on the weekend, then discovered that the same game was on sale half price online – doh!
Anyway, my 2+ yr old AMD XP-M PC is sooo underpowered for this – though it’s been fine for Civ IV. I bought my GEforce 8400 when the last game I wanted to get into dissed my old card.
Even though I installed from the DVD, it only loaded Steam, then made me sign up for a login then register and download the entire ETW – luckily I have the Extreme option on Rogers cable modem. Still quite a slog.
Now the mode is released the day after I got everything done. I told Steam to keep the product updated automatically. Most of this evening it was hogging my CPU to where the mouse stopped tracking – I *think* it has auto DLed the patch, but the dopey Steam interface has no place to report what version I have installed – YEEESH!
Maybe I have to launch the package, wait five minutes for it to load, then check the version inside the app.
I loved the graphics but with a single-digit framerate, I feel like I’m in some kind of brain-disorder simulator. I tried the tutorial but ow ow ow. I’ll have to see if dialing back the detail level helps. It would be nice it that option came up automatically when the frame rate falls too low…
Clearly I’m fated to buy a new multicore box – this has turned into quite an expensive impulse buy.
Maybe I should have (a) tried a demo, and (b) bought one of the earlier games in the TW series, which all sound pretty appealing.
23/06/2009 at 04:17 Jonathan Strange says:
The Total War community is so predictable; with every new game they loudly denounce it as the worst of the series, an abomination, a terror unleashed upon this world by cruel sadists bent on world domination. Every. Single. Time.
-Medieval: Total War? They hated it. No ‘special units’ like they had in Shogun and no Geisha’s? Heresy.
-Rome: Total War? My god, I still remember the 30 page topics decrying the game as the death of the Total War franchise. Especially the campaign map, man, the community hated that touch for the longest time.
-Medieval 2? No one like it, everyone hated it, called it a cheap cash-in and the like… you know, the usual complaints.
And now Empire. It’s also worth mentioning that every one of those games supposedly, I kid you not, are all somehow a step down from the AI in Shogun if the community is to be believed. Medieval has worse AI, Rome even worse, Medieval 2 the worstest, and now Empire the ultimate worstest evar.
The point is I’m getting really damn sick of it. Seriously, the only other gaming community out there I can think of which bitches half as much is the NMA Fallout fans. No Empire isn’t the best game ever, but it’s an incredible game and easily despite its flaws the best of the Total War series to date. Just like every single Total War game to date it shipped with a fair deal of bugs, and just like every one to date after a few patches and an expansion will likely be viewed with glowing rose-tinted goggles the very *instant* another Total War game is announced, which will, no doubt, then be hailed as the worst to date.
Eug!
23/06/2009 at 06:54 psyk says:
“Save those things up until they’re a large pack of items and sell us that and we’ll accept it.”
So if they “save” them up and sell them for more money its better than if they sell less for cheaper, okay.
23/06/2009 at 08:09 Dominic White says:
@Jonathan: Well, if Valve ever get tired of the Left 4 Dead boycott groups at their gates, they can always look over to Creative Assembly’s fanbase and see that other people have it worse.
I wasn’t joking/exaggerating when I said that ‘CA Fan’ is an insult amongst Total War ‘enthusiasts’. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
23/06/2009 at 08:12 Lack_26 says:
I play with a mod or two for Empires, but they’re small and not very big changes.
I have a smoke mod that I’m proud of, it increases the smoke and for how long it stays around for. It really does make the battles look a lot better in my opinion, just like the old paintings.
23/06/2009 at 08:13 Ashurbanipal says:
Bought Empire at release and I love it. I wasn’t really aware it was anything other than spectacular. Empire is probably my favourite Total War next to Rome; largely because they removed a lot of the fiddly bits (particularly merchants and diplomats, which I’ve always despised).
Small DLCs, I’m no fan of, however. So I’ll pass.
23/06/2009 at 08:20 Subject 706 says:
Hm. Never had any bug problems with Empire, not saying they don’t exist though. Out of the box, I think Empire has better AI than Rome or Medieval 2 had. Which makes about as intelligent as a halfwit, but still.
My real problem with Empire is actually not CAs fault. The new campaign map is great, the way provinces work is great. But GODDAMN how boring 18th century battles are in comparison to medieval or antique ones.
As a whole though, Empire IS a great game. Does anyone know exactly what is encrypted? I have seen several smaller mods for Empire, but if larger mods are prevented, SEGA and CA have really shot themselves in the foot.
And DLC is the devil, but an unfortunate fad amongst publishers right now.
23/06/2009 at 08:58 MrBejeebus says:
I enjoyed it, but ran into a gamebreaking bug 3 years before I was set to win the game, I was so pissed off a deleted all my saves and uninstalled it, I havent reinstalled it since…
The game as a whole was fine, but I think the game was too big for the engine to cope with, whenever I clicked on anything, it took about 5 seconds to load which really destroyed the fluidity of the game
23/06/2009 at 09:41 Tei says:
@psyk “So if they “save” them up and sell them for more money its better than if they sell less for cheaper, okay.”
Hobbyist made horse armor for free. You don’t need a bunch of professionals from the original company that make the game to make a horse armor. Is a travesty.
The time of these professionals is better espent in something hobbyist guys can’t do. Like a expansion pack.
But these days expansion packs are sell as full blow games… :-/
Man, gamming these days is getting rip in pieces :-(
23/06/2009 at 09:47 psyk says:
Agree, but there is no difference in saving them up and selling them than selling them in small parts apart from your paying more money for more rather than less money for less.
23/06/2009 at 09:52 Nallen says:
I’ll have another go if the performance is meant to be better, although load times were the killer for me before.
23/06/2009 at 09:55 Stromko says:
I actually enjoy the setting of E:TW, I don’t see how it could work anywhere near the same if there were rifled barrels or automatic weapons (WWI or II).
There’s a lot of smoke and shooting, not much in the way of actually hitting, and I like that. When you lure the enemy into your carefully prepared killing box and see their neat lines of troops lose 2/3rds of their numbers in one volley … it’s neat.
Encrypting a lot of content to make modding impossible or nearly so in order to ship more DLC or create more interest in expansions is a pretty silly and dickish move, however. Part of the reason I’ve bought up EVERY expansion for things like Neverwinter Nights, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and so on is the potential that new content will be used by modders.
If people could have added in new jobs and shops and the like in, say, that Sims 2 Business expansion, or new types of locations and activities in Sims 2 Vacation, I’d have been tempted to buy those expansions. For 20-30$, a sparse collection of new content that’s going to take maybe 30 minutes to blow through is a really, REALLY bad deal.
New functionality that modders can take advantage of, however, is a gift that keeps on giving. It makes expansions truly worthwhile for the customer. Developers know that few of their original customers will actually pick up expansions, so expansions tend to have very meager budgets.
Cranking out content for a niche audience is something the fanbase is best at. Bits of rather polished content that fits into the original game, and changes to the core code to enhance moddability is something only developers have the know-how and resources to do.
23/06/2009 at 10:20 Hulk Hogan says:
No way I’m spending three-fifty on a bunch of units.
YOU HEAR THAT CA?! THE HULKSTER AIN’T NO RUBE, BROTHER!!!
23/06/2009 at 10:27 TC says:
Just a point, following the patch before this one I have definately being navally invaded by the artifical intelligence. Was quite a shock as I had packed my land army off to the Americas only to have a sizeable French stack appear on the Kent coast!
23/06/2009 at 10:28 theleif says:
@Jonathan Strange: Word
DLC: Generally don’t like it, but 2.49€ for 14 new units, is not that much to bitch about.
Mods:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=243912
It’s probably encrypted to hell, but it already got more mods than most games get in 10 years, if ever.
@Serondal
Don’t mess with the nation that invented dynamite. And smorgasbord.
23/06/2009 at 10:28 Andrew Dunn says:
Amen, brother.
All the people (in this comment thread, no less) complaining that paid downloadable content means the death of free addons from developers are off their heads. The very same day that Empire gets DLC, it also gets 14 new units added to it for free with a patch! That’s fourteen times more free stuff than was ever added to the previous Total War games at any point (and I’m being generous and counting that Peleponnesian Spartan reskin for Rome, that worked for all of one patch, as an ‘add-on’).
23/06/2009 at 10:33 Stromko says:
I’d amend this to my previous post but edit’s broken as we know, and I’ve had a little more time to think. I’m sorry in advance for my long-windedness.
Trouble with developers adding new units, jobs, whatever to a game is that developers are often no better at balancing units than the community, and the customer has to accept the changes regardless. If modded units are actually overpowered, people won’t use them, overpowered or ruin the overall balance just aren’t fun. If people think the new DLC units are broken, too bad, those units can still be used against them by anyone who’s purchased them.
It’s a bit like the expansions for WH40K: Dawn of War. Imperials were gods, then Tau and Necron, while the original sides were gimped again and again. Especially (at least it seemed to me, as I loved the greenskins so) Orks, and not so much Space Marines which were always a joy to play and hard to screw up. If you wanted to play multiplayer you had to have the latest patches which meant downloading all the textures and such for the new sides.
The only match I ever really won online involved me and my teammate as Imperial Guard, vs an Ork and Space Marine player. We slowly took over the whole map and pushed them back to their bases with just tier-1 guardsmen, then mopped up with artillery. It was a cakewalk.
I’m sure it would’ve been a different story if I’d tried online again as IG, up against the new Tau and Necron. But at that point I kept to skirmishes and the new campaign, which I cruised through with ease as the Tau and their amazingly versatile Kroot allies. They were shooty as hell AND had the best melee units, bar-none, in the game. I actually like the Tau a lot but that’s fucked up Relic. :( So I didn’t buy the last expansion at all.
It was still superior to what CA/Sega seem to be doing with E:TW now, however, because at least the new sides kept feeding the mod community. Simple changes like the Half Scale mod that effectively made the battlefields several times larger by reducing speed, range, and size of units while boosting unit and building cap created a whole new, more strategic and epic game out of it. New sides, some of which were silly overpowered as well, made good foils for the new guys in skirmishes.
Similarly game-changing community modifications for Company of Heroes make me mostly forgive them for the invincible slit trenches / easily available flamer units / super-tough Brit tanks / epic German anti-tank stuff dichotomy that meant the only balancing factor vs the new Brit and Panzer sides was eachother.
Modding makes up for a lot and is a massive boost to the value the customer receives. It’s something I take for granted for any major PC release. Unfortunately, making modding impossible seems to be increasingly common. Far Cry 2, from what I’ve heard, is impossible to mod. It would only take a few tweaks to make that whole big world they’ve created an entirely new experience that I could enjoy all over again, and it’s never going to happen. Glad I got it for only 20$. If I’d known E:TW was unmoddable, I wouldn’t have been so foolish as to buy it full-price a few weeks after it came out.
23/06/2009 at 11:18 unclelou says:
I am not contradicting you, just a genuine question, as I haven’t looked into it. What’s with all these mods? Does the encryption only affect the units, while the rest is moddable? Glancing at the descriptions, though, it looks like unit stats etc. were already changed in a lot of them?
23/06/2009 at 11:31 MonkeyMonster says:
To not buy a game because you can’t mod it seems odd to me, but then I have never modded ANY game ever (yet) and still play majority of them – never felt the need to at all, yes true I may be missing out on things. Counter point being, that when I finally get round to playing stalker I will mod it given there has been so many comments regarding the graphical and little quirk fixes that enhance the game to be where it should have been. Do you not think you will enjoy the game if it can’t be modded or some sort of presumption you’ll play the vanilla so fast or it will be boring and so therefore not worth the money?
23/06/2009 at 13:15 Jeremy says:
I’d like to know why on god’s green f*cking earth is it not available in Japan? WTF!?
23/06/2009 at 14:25 autogunner says:
jeremy, email the developers and see if they will send you a copy, or proxy server it through steam
23/06/2009 at 14:29 ACESandElGHTS says:
The optimization is a lie. The optimization is a lie. But seriously now, I’m torn between buying a new computer to play this game (a solution in search of a problem) or just letting this thing gather dust.
23/06/2009 at 14:38 Gap Gen says:
I suppose one thing about the community is that players get better at battles, so every game they already know how to trick the AI or where bugs are likely to be. Rome was particularly bad at the “stand there while arrows pierce your skull” thing. Equally, Rome was just as buggy as, if not more than, Empire on release (including the enemy-will-never-attack-across-water).
Empire is still a staggering achievement, but yeah, the true hardcore are probably better served by Take Command or Hearts of Iron or the like. Empire is probably about as complicated as it can be while still dipping its toe into the mainstream (and the sales that come with it).
As for the DLC, I’m torn. I might get it later when I will use more than one of the units (currently about 20% of the way into a British campaign), but in general they seem to have worked out that anything less than the price of a pint is a reasonable candidate for a throw-away purchase.
23/06/2009 at 14:43 Legionary says:
@psyk: “So if they “save” them up and sell them for more money its better than if they sell less for cheaper, okay.”
Absolutely. A massive pack of items/units is fine. Price it cheaply and there’s no real issue. But when you’re paying £2 for a few units, or worse quite a bit of money for just a couple of exclusive units, there’s a big problem.
23/06/2009 at 15:44 Gorgeras says:
Yes, the optimisation is a lie. I bought it Friday, downloaded it Saturday and waited for the Monday patch because the performance was awful in any slightly-large battle. The patch seems to have changed nothing and I didn’t even know ETW wasn’t supporting multi-core until the patch notes came out.
It’s still not using my multi-core functionality now and I’ve seen no improvement.
23/06/2009 at 16:59 Myros says:
Noticed better performace on the campaign map, a lot less little pauses every time you select units etc
FYI temp warning on the DLC – the Steam client update today (tues) breaks the DLC and makes it vanish from the game (and also any older special forces units you have). Hopefully fixed soon.
23/06/2009 at 17:16 Dominic White says:
@Legionary – so, would you pay £10 for a pack of 70 new unit types? Serious question, because if anyone would be okay with that, but isn’t okay with £2 for 14 (again, on top of the 14 the patch adds for free), then I don’t know what to say.
23/06/2009 at 17:58 unclelou says:
I am surprised that people have performance problems – it’s the first Total War game I can play pretty much maxed out, with AA and whatnot, although I am not owning a better PC than I did (relatively speaking) when M2 or Rome were out, which only ever ran really well a PC-generation later, in my experience.
23/06/2009 at 18:07 Serondal says:
How is this any diffferent than the DLC of sins of a solar empire? People seem to love the idea when they did it but the same idea from CA and people go ape crazy?
Get it through your heads that the game belongs to them, not you. They can do whatever they want with it. The entire point of making a company to make games is to make money, so it only makes sense that they will do things to make more money for their company O.o !
A few units for a few bucks makes perfect sense. you’re only paying for what you’re getting. If it was a few units for 15 bucks or 30 bucks I could see your rage but for such a tiny price there is really no point in going wacko.
To say that the community can create units for the game better than the devs is just brash. These are the people that created the entire game from scratch, each and every unit and ship ect in it are theirs. how could anyone be better at creating the units than they are?
People in the community might make units with a slightly different art style or units that are higher detailed but the devs can make new units that fit in with existing ones the most and do the least to upset the balance of the game, which they made!
All this rage over something so silly s just insane to me as is all the rage of L4D to and so on and so forth. Angry internet man is getting stronger by the day and getting angry over less and less as he does so.
OMFG THEY CHANGED THE RGB VALUES OF THE OCAEN IN THIS LATEST PATCH, DOWN WITH CA THOSE C@#$@#$@# SHEEP @#$@# KID MO@#$@#$ BAS@#$@# ARGH!?!??!
23/06/2009 at 18:15 cliffski says:
@serondal I agree wholeheartedly with your wise words on this topic.
Hurrah!
23/06/2009 at 19:13 TCM says:
I bought the DLC. Mostly because I got the game at half price, thank you steam sales! >_>
The boost in performance is ridiculous. I’m running the game at higher settings than I did before the update, and getting way smoother framerates for everything. I have no idea why it wasn’t this optomized out of the box, but man. Ridiculous. It runs at roughly the same speed M2 does for me, now. (Though I don’t max out the settings on Empire. >_>)
A couple crashes here and there, nothing big.
DLC is pretty fun. But I don’t know if I’d recommend it to anyone who bought the game for full price. (Or worse, the special forces edition. >_>) Basically, it’s 14 more units, bringing it up to a nice 28 total new units. The game still doesn’t have the variety of M2, from what I’ve seen, but it is certainly way better than it was.
23/06/2009 at 19:19 Taillefer says:
Angry Internet Man seeks condescending other.
23/06/2009 at 19:26 Taillefer says:
£2 is nothing, but there’s no way I’ll play enough games to use those units spread amongst everybody. I’d have preferred a country pack for each (with a few more units). But they’d probably market them as something like “A Patriot Pack”, support your country now!
23/06/2009 at 19:28 Andrew Dunn says:
I personally like fighting against varied armies as well as using them myself. For that reason, the spread of units really appeals to me. I probably won’t use all of them myself, but I’ll see them in battle and it’ll add to the game that way.
23/06/2009 at 19:42 Legionary says:
@Serondal: “Get it through your heads that the game belongs to them, not you. They can do whatever they want with it.”
This sort of attitude annoys me and I don’t think it demonstrates much of an understanding of the way things work. They own the game, but we are their customers. Giving your customers what they want is the key principle of business, and if you don’t do it you won’t retain them, and if you don’t retain them you won’t be a business for long.
There’s no reason that gamers should put up with poor quality service or bad products. They’re the designers and they own the copyrights, but we’re the consumers and we own the finances.
23/06/2009 at 20:05 Bhazor says:
For sods sake, it’s two sodding pounds that no one is forcing you to spend. Sure I’d like a Kingdoms mini campaign as a DLC but I don’t expect to get it for £2 and within a five months of release.
Reply to Serondal
Conceited is a swear word?
C @ # $ @ # $ @ #
C o n c e i t e d
23/06/2009 at 20:09 Vinraith says:
@MonkeyMonster: “Do you not think you will enjoy the game if it can’t be modded or some sort of presumption you’ll play the vanilla so fast or it will be boring and so therefore not worth the money?”
In the past, my play time on Total War games has been something like 5% vanilla 95% mods. TW games are a little too fluffy and ahistorical in their base version, but they make a great base for genuinely historical, detailed mods. If it weren’t for Rome Total Realism I’d barely have played Rome: Total War, if it weren’t for Europa Barborum I’d have stopped playing R: TW long, long ago. If it were for Stainless Steel I’d literally never have BOUGHT Medieval 2. I bought Empire when it was released, anticipating some spectacular mods and wanting to support a developer that had been so good to the modding community. For my faith and good will I got a broken game that can’t be modded. Lesson learned.
23/06/2009 at 20:25 Andrew Dunn says:
Rome Total Realism was ironically not much more realistic than Rome: Total War itself. Just a hell of a lot more po-faced.
23/06/2009 at 20:27 Vinraith says:
@Andrew
No flaming pigs, that’s a pretty big realism step up all by itself. :)
23/06/2009 at 21:05 psyk says:
Legionary why do you think a large amount of dlc is going to be cheaper in any way the more they put in the dlc the more there going to charge.
23/06/2009 at 21:07 Serondal says:
@legionary – You assume you’re the customer , but you’re actually not. You’re in the fringe, the hardcore gamer that complains ect. They don’t care about you, they care about the mass of gamers that are going to buy their games, play them quietly and when the DLC comes out, buy it without question.
Yes they should catter to their customers demands but not to their fringe customers demands. They’re obviouly making money as the sales from this game were better than both of their other games by far ! So they must be doing something right with the mass of people in order to improve their sales after the poor support they offered on M:TW 2 as they never patched that game enough IMO.
As far as mods go I had no ideas there were mods for TW games until I did some voice acting for a Lord of the Rings mod for Rome : Total war (Then didn’t finish it which probably pissed the mod makers off but oh well)
You can’t buy a game for the mods. You buy a game for the game, and if there are mods that come out that’s great! If you purchase a game then get angry at it because there aren’t enough MODS you’re getting angry at the wrong group. you should be angry at the modders who are getting lazy these days.
When I was a young gamer modders didn’t need tools released from the devs. They just did what they could with what they had and produced some awesome mods.
23/06/2009 at 21:34 Vinraith says:
@ Serondal: “You can’t buy a game for the mods. You buy a game for the game, and if there are mods that come out that’s great! If you purchase a game then get angry at it because there aren’t enough MODS you’re getting angry at the wrong group. you should be angry at the modders who are getting lazy these days.”
Yeah! Damn modders, failing to crack proprietary encrypted files!
23/06/2009 at 23:50 MaxMcG says:
Can somoene tell me, does the files being encrypted factor into the really irritatingly long load times?
24/06/2009 at 02:43 Scundoo says:
Serondal:To say that the community can create units for the game better than the devs is just brash. These are the people that created the entire game from scratch, each and every unit and ship ect in it are theirs. how could anyone be better at creating the units than they are?
It is obvious you never played a single mod for a total war game. So it is you that is brash in talking about what modders can or can’t do. Here a few recommendations:
Blue Lotus, Europa Barbarorum, Rome Total Realism, Fourth Age Total War, Third Age Total War, Napoleonic Total War, Roma Surectum, Broken Crescent, the upcoming Europa Barbarorum 2.
Each and everyone of them have better units that the original game by CA, something you would know if you ever tried them, though obviously you have more fun posting your uninformed opinion.
Also, not making the game modable would be fine, if it weren’t for the fact that CA had been promising that they would make “the most modable total war game yet”. So it’s a matter of CA consciously deceiving, lying to the public in order to increase their sales.
So no, not wise words from Serondal, and its a shame an indie developer thinks of them as such.
24/06/2009 at 03:01 Psychopomp says:
@legionary
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VocalMinority
Just about every fanbase has this. These are the *last* groups the film/tv producers/game developers should ever listen to.
Why?
*They’ll just complain more*
24/06/2009 at 04:16 TCM says:
Anyhow, to add to my previous comment (ignoring the extremely vocal minority: there’s one for every game ever released), I do get a pretty big crash. Once turn 4 passes in RtI episode 2, the game crashes if I attempt to select general Washington. Which is kind of bad. Yeah.
I’ve restarted, reloaded, and tried various things, but this seems to be the most major bug I’ve encountered thusfar. Doesn’t take away from the Grand Campaign, though.
24/06/2009 at 04:30 Vinraith says:
@Scundoo
That’s a superb list of mods you’ve got there. Those I’ve played are great, those I haven’t I’m making a note to play as soon as I get a gaming rig up and running again (blasted corrupt hard drives…).
24/06/2009 at 04:50 TCM says:
And yeah, mods are fantastic. But there are games that have both DLC and mods, the two are not incompatible.
There are also games that have mod tools supposed to be out at release run into problems, and get put out months, even a year later. So I’m not worried on that end.
24/06/2009 at 06:00 Vinraith says:
@TCM
I’d be less worried if the files weren’t deliberately locked off. Total War games have never required mod tools, they’ve always just been constructed in an open way so that people could readily tweak and add as they pleased. That Empire’s core files are encrypted and packed away doesn’t imply that Sega is neglecting modding (like failing to release mod tools would), it implies that they’re actively trying to prevent it.
I’m still hoping they’ll come to their senses and open up the game, since as you say DLC and mods are perfectly capable of coexisting (look at Oblivion, Fallout 3, Sins of a Solar Empire etc). Still, that it’s been ACTIVELY prevented, rather than passively discouraged, makes me worry a bit.
24/06/2009 at 08:11 Andrew Dunn says:
The encrypted files aren’t preventing modding, though. There’ve been plenty stat changes and new skins and new units entirely so far, all that’s been prevented is (possibly) new models for units, though the game allows you mix and match upper and lower and head parts of units as far as I know so that’s not a major problem at the moment.
24/06/2009 at 16:18 Frye says:
Gathering dust on my shelf this one. All i can think of when i notice the box is the AI getting confused in cities, the AI doing the opposite of my last click and the AI being obsessed with getting back into formation, even if it kills them. They did after all have about 8 years to fix this since the first game. Others seem to be more able to look beyond this flaw and i have forgiven my favorite reviewers by now for not noticing it.
24/06/2009 at 16:44 TCM says:
@Frye:
“AI being obsessed with getting back into formation, even if it kills them”
Welcome to war in the 1700s, enjoy your stay.
24/06/2009 at 19:14 Vinraith says:
@Andrew
Not being able to change the campaign map is a pretty huge inhibition for major modding projects. No custom models is also quite a substantial problem for the kind of historicity mods one looks for from a Total War game. Regardless, this is nowhere close to “the most moddable Total War game ever” as it was advertised.
24/06/2009 at 21:19 Bobsy says:
I went on a prolonged hiatus after the last patch which decided to cause complete economic collapse and half the world to go to war with you (for balance!).
Er. Fixed?
24/06/2009 at 23:13 TCM says:
One of my friends still has the whole world declaring war on him for no good reason, though I can’t say I’ve encountered that. He plays India (and has Austria, who is nowhere near him, declare war on him, followed by most of the world), I play Sweden (and enemies declare war upon my as I encroach upon them, and start making clearly hostile moves…Though, more often, I declare war on them)
24/06/2009 at 23:46 Serondal says:
@ Vinraith – Most of the games where modding began were anything but mod friendly and modders did what they could with what they had. The community has become spoiled by the likes of Bethesda and others that make it extremly easy to mod. I’m not saying that is a bad thing but just because one company does it does not mean they all have to. IF they want to encrypt their files then this is their right. If modders want to make mods then they’re going to have to get around it some how.
Now with them going so far as to promise it will be the most moddable game they’ve ever made then turning around and shutting major parts of it down I can’t comment on and I apologize. I didn’t know about that so I take back any comments I made about them having right to do what they want. If they promised something then went the exact other way then there is no excuse. It isn’t just the fringe gamers they’re offending then but all their customers. So feel free to poke me with a burning pike ;)
@Scundoo I have tried 3 mods over the years for the various total war games. One you mentioned the total realism mod had horrible models and when I tried to uninstall it curropted my game forcing me to reinstall. Not all that bad compared to some things that have happened in the past but still it was extremly poor quality and did not fit in with the units that were already there.
It is true I have not played any of the other mods you mentioned or even heard of them (and I’ve looked for mods for M:TW2 and only found crap) So I can’t say if they’re work is better than the devs work was in those cases.
As far as my comments being brash, I’d so not. Maybe misinformed of a the mods which you claim made better units than those of CA (Which is really an artistic argument ) I still stand by what I said, that you can not buy a game for the mods alone
The reasons should be obvious. Something like this might happen where the mods will be hamstringed by the creators of the game (Which they have a right to do) Ontop of that there may not even be any mods made for the game if there isn’t enough interest or if the modders would rather work with other games they already know. You can never be 100% sure a game is even going to have mods to begin with. Even if there are mods you can’t be sure if they’ll work for you or if they’ll have bugs worse than the game itself ever had since they get even less play testing than the game itself.
The only time I’d say buy a game for the mods is if there are already mods out , say like Half Life which had a ton of mods already out and working perfectly fine. But to buy a brand new game that has just come out just because you want the mods for it is a foolish waste of money. If you know you’re not going to like the game as it is you’re betting there will be a mod that comes along and makes it better. It would be better to wait until that mod is out THEN buy the game. This way you may even be able to get it for a cheeper price. This is what I ended up doing for Battlefield 2, I didn’t buy it until there was a well supported and extreme realism mod for it and ended up only paying 20 bucks for it.
25/06/2009 at 02:23 TCM says:
If you’re looking for non-crap M2 mods…
Third Age Total War is pretty okay (moreso if you’re a lotr fan), Bloods Broads and Bastards is awesome (especially when combined with Retrofit), Stainless Steel is okay if you like realism (you might not). In general, the mods hosted on TWcenter are pretty darn good, though slanted a bit towards realism over fun.
25/06/2009 at 02:57 TCM says:
Also, DarthMod for empire looks pretty good, I think. Compatible with DLC too.
15/07/2009 at 20:43 UK_John says:
While ETW has tons of problems, and CA has done yet another dirty on gamers (do you know that CA does not care a jot that if you have the most owned graphic card, the 8000 series, you cannot play Shogun or the first Medieval War?), what always surprises me is how gamers bitch about other gamers, or should I say calling them fanboys, much more than they bitch about publishers or the media. So while gamers complain about TW ‘fanboys’ complaining, nobody here, that I have seen, is wondering why,with all these ETW problems, that every major media site ignored all that and gave 90%+ reviews. Now isn’t THAT worthy of a debate?!
10/12/2009 at 01:51 G1 says:
it is dull