FYI ETW demo today 4pm GMT ob steam

[BadKarma]

http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic/42851/t/Empire-Total-War-Demo-release-date.html

Really looking forward to this!

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Demo is up for download at Steam.

I promised myself I wouldn't get excited, but I am. A Total War geared towards musketry opens so many possibilities. Hope the AI is a step forwards. RTW and M2TW AI was a big disappointment. Looking forward to the new Naval addition too, though the early word is that it's too dumbed down to convince. Ship handling is reported to be very unconvincing, including the ability to slowly sail up wind.

Modders to the rescue?

[MeatEtr]

Oh boy, here we go....

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Completely uninformed 1st impression

Land combat: 7/10

Dunno, but they seem to have changed some controls. Didn't do much looking around but I had difficulty even lining up my uniys, as well as rotating them in place. No doubt further investigation is required. No more giving orders when paused. WTF?!? The Unit cards are very hard to read. I set the unit size to the largest possible setting but unit size are smaller then ever before.

Naval Combat: 3/10

The auto resolve naval combat of earlier titles suddenly doesn't look so bad. The French squadron moved at speed up wind while my ships sailing at what should be ideal angle to the wind seemed to be slower. Ships are way, waaay too manoeuvrable. They can more or less turn on the spot and do so VERY quickly. I knew it was going to be arcadish, but this just plain sucks.

I'll try it out some more, fiddle around with the new controls and such, but at this point I'm very much let down. The chase for the dumbed down market has seemingly continued.

[Speedy]

And don't forget to mention the dismasted ships turning on the spot just as quickly.

Naval battles need a lot of work going by the demo.

[MeatEtr]

It's Total War series, it's meant to be arcadish, just like the rest of the Total War games. Did you guys really expect them to change? It's pretty much what I expected, new era, new units, and better graphics with the same cheesy arcade feel. Oh and yeah the new ship-to-ship combat stuff.

Not that I like the arcade feel of the series. But as usual, the slew of modders will scrub off the arcadish feel to this one as well. Now we'll have to wait for that. :confused:

[Scott B]

I'm with MeatEtr - this is pretty much ideal in terms of my expectations. The naval battles look gorgeous, and assuming it can be properly modded, it could be the game we've all been waiting for.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

While it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that ETW is arcadish, the naval aspect is more lightweight then the land battles. Certainly ducked under my expectations. That having been said, it's starting to grow on me.

That's probably partly indicative of the dearth of good Age of Sail games.

[gautrek]

I'm with MeatEtr - this is pretty much ideal in terms of my expectations. The naval battles look gorgeous, and assuming it can be properly modded, it could be the game we've all been waiting for.

ditto mate

[Brian Smith]

This is a lovely demo! Just played the tutorials and the Brandywine fight. Top stuff!

[benpark]

One of the main things that appeals to me about these games is the sheer spectacle of the battles. The animations, the masses of formations and the amazingly rendered landscapes are a pretty good draw. The time period is also something that I'm happy to see done, and when this series goes Napoleonic I think it will be one of the best things to be seen on a computer screen.

In terms of game-play, I certainly have had problems with the fairly weak AI like most people, but that won't stop me from buying this one. My bigger problem in the past was having nearly every battle be a siege-something I hope doesn't happen in this installment. The AI seemed a bit better, bu the map for the Brandywine scenario was such a funnel it's hard to tell what the AI will do in an open field. Here's hoping it's going to be half way decent, because it's a fantastic looking game.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

The word is sieges are much rarer. How battles are initiated is way different. Armies have Zones Of Control now, and if an enemy moves within that ZOC, you get a chance to intercept them. And with you now no longer merely having to defend the captial of a province but all resources, harbours, etc within the province, that should draw you and the AI out to fight in the fields more.

Thank goodness, the sieg-a-thon was getting rather old.

Don't be fooled by my underwhelmed response. TW would have to be royally screwed up for it not to get a sale from me.

[Rob Ross]

You mentioned that issuing orders while paused appears to no longer work - be grateful if that can be confirmed, as that will be a deal breaker for me unless the game can be slowed much more than MTW2.

Clickfests distract from graphics and enjoyment for this old fart.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Nope, sorry, I was hammering the wrong button. 'P' should and does pause the game.

[Rob Ross]

Splendid. Thanks Elmar

[bodkin]

The worrying thing about this long awaited game is that it's integrated with Steam even if you buy the DVD from a store. Meaning Steam activation before play, and the inherent Steam requirements for the game being 100% updated even before you can play offline. And of course you have to have the pc it's installed on connected to a fast internet service for the first update to happen, otherwise forget it, there will be no standalone patch to download from another source. This will be a problem as they are talking about a day 0 patch which means no play until Steam knows you've patched. For someone who can only get dial up net access it's a real problem.

Back to painting figures and rolling dice for me.

[MeatEtr]

The worrying thing about this long awaited game is that it's integrated with Steam even if you buy the DVD from a store. Meaning Steam activation before play, and the inherent Steam requirements for the game being 100% updated even before you can play offline. And of course you have to have the pc it's installed on connected to a fast internet service for the first update to happen, otherwise forget it, there will be no standalone patch to download from another source. This will be a problem as they are talking about a day 0 patch which means no play until Steam knows you've patched. For someone who can only get dial up net access it's a real problem.

Back to painting figures and rolling dice for me.

Correct me if I'm wrong but you certainly don't need broadband for Steam. Sure you'll dl a helluva lot faster with it but Steam tracks the dls so you don't have to restart the dl because of a dropped connection.

Also the patches probably won't be that big. As long you buy the DVD you can quickly install the bulk of the game with that.

More importantly, I'm pretty sure once you login successfully and launch the game it won't matter if you lose your connection. It doesn't disturb your play session.

[DBaron]

I have a few questions regarding the demo. I haven't played any of the total war games before. I am tempted to buy it because I have seen some deals with Rome Total War being included, and have heard generally good things about the series.

1) Does anyone else have problems with the loading times? I takes me a good 10 minutes to get from launching the game to actually get into the battle (after going through the various menu choices), and then once the battle is over I get another long loading screen. My specs are slightly above minumum (3.0 pentium D processer, 2 GB ram, 3850 512 MB AGP graphics card). I can live with long loading times to get in and out of a game (i.e. SH III with GWX 3.0), but if it takes this long to load up every battle then I will pass.

2) Battle of Brandywine Creek seemed kinda easy. I move my troops to the west crossing, and while the AI did try to harrass me with some long range riflemen and several other units, the bulk of his army stayed put. Then I just split my army up and marched down the two valleys between the hill, with the cavalry and cannons in the middle on the hill, and easily defeated the Americans. I really didn't pay any attention to the various strengths of my army, and even managed to get my general killed, but it didn't make any difference. I was expecting a bigger challange. Is this typical for the total war series AI?

Thanks,

DBaron

[Pak_43]

Have to agree with you DBaron, played the demo and did exactly the same thing with the same results. I didn't get my general killed but did lose all of my artillery early on which seemed to make no odds...

[Elmar Bijlsma]

1) It seems many people are having this problem, regardless of their system. Battles play smooth but load times are messed up somehow. Videos and that animation behind the menu screens aren't playing smoothly either, right?

Most likely some kind of bug, though I haven't kept up to date with it. Initially i had some problems with it too but I dropped the in game resolution to 1280x1024 and now it keeps it under a minute on my C2D E6600 system.

2)That battle is part scripted so the AI is limited in how it deals with you. People who modded the demo are reporting much better behaviour when the AI takes to the field without it's hands tied.

But it's AI, so anyone with a decent grasps of units should be able to soundly beat the AI anyway. The litmus test is that the AI should at least look like it knows what it's doing, which has been a bit hit and miss in past titles. Too soon to tell how it's doing now, it seems fairly smart. I suspect a decidedly stupid handling of artillery though.

Also, the difficulty mode in the demo was 'Normal'. You'll get a better challenge on harder modes, though this is achieved by giving the AI stat bonuses, not by making it smarter.

In past games I've typically opted for Normal difficulty for the tactical bit, and Hardest for the strategic part. This will mean you'll beat the tactical AI on a level playing field but they'll bounce back from the defeats on the strategic level.

[DBaron]

1) It seems many people are having this problem, regardless of their system. Battles play smooth but load times are messed up somehow. Videos and that animation behind the menu screens aren't playing smoothly either, right?

Most likely some kind of bug, though I haven't kept up to date with it. Initially i had some problems with it too but I dropped the in game resolution to 1280x1024 and now it keeps it under a minute on my C2D E6600 system.

I hear some skipping in the audio when the video finally manages to launch, but by then I don't have any patience for watching it, and push the usual suspect buttons until it stops and I get to the game menu. I did change some graphics settings, but it still took a long time for them to implement and I had to restart the training scenario. I know I have a pretty marginal system (by the games standard anyway), but it's still the biggest hang up for me.

2)That battle is part scripted so the AI is limited in how it deals with you. People who modded the demo are reporting much better behaviour when the AI takes to the field without it's hands tied.

But it's AI, so anyone with a decent grasps of units should be able to soundly beat the AI anyway. The litmus test is that the AI should at least look like it knows what it's doing, which has been a bit hit and miss in past titles. Too soon to tell how it's doing now, it seems fairly smart. I suspect a decidedly stupid handling of artillery though.

Also, the difficulty mode in the demo was 'Normal'. You'll get a better challenge on harder modes, though this is achieved by giving the AI stat bonuses, not by making it smarter.

In past games I've typically opted for Normal difficulty for the tactical bit, and Hardest for the strategic part. This will mean you'll beat the tactical AI on a level playing field but they'll bounce back from the defeats on the strategic level.

Thats good to know that it was scripted, I was wondering if that was the case. I didn't really see any option to change the difficulty, but with the long loading times, I didn't have much tolerance to go back and look for them either.

I think for now I may pre-order it, and then wait a few to days for the reviews to come in before I actually purchase it outright.

Thanks for the response.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Anyone already bored with the demo, go here for an unpacker and instructions:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=228790

and then check out these threads:

Pre-made land battles

Pre-made naval battles

You too can fight at Trafalgar.

Also nice modding news: At least in the demo doesn't seem to have a limitation as to how many men per unit. I've seen a screenshot of 10.000 men in a single unit!

[gautrek]

1) Does anyone else have problems with the loading times?

Apparently a good defrag does wonders.steam apparently sticks the files all over the place.This is from the total war forums.