Empire: Total War announced…

…featuring the 18th century, muskets, redcoats, field artillery, and real-time 3D naval battles. See Eurogamer for more. With any luck, what with the more recent and less romantic epoch, this will have better fleshed out and less unbalanced and unrealistic units than Medieval II with its camel gunners…

Move over, Napoleon. I can't wait. :-)

Did they ever get around to fixing MTW2? I know the fans have been trying to get the shield situation worked out - along with a few other combat tweaks that really screw up what should be intuitive but I lost patience and haven't checked in a while.

Heh, I wonder how slow those naval battles will be. I've always been more interested in the strategic aspect of their games though even if they aren't quite as complex as Paradox's efforts.

They've fixed a lot of things, some of which actually make a lot of difference to the gameplay. Cavalry charges work better, about-face works like it does in real life, lots of units have been rebalanced (including those camel gunners), and so on. It never was really broken to start with, and it only got better; however, if you're a stickler for realism and detail, it's a bit lacking in some ways. Off the top of my head: lobbing half-cows with trebuchets, horse archer AI/tactics, many Eastern/Southern units are not historically correct and/or very sketchily implemented or poorly balanced, and so on. I probably wouldn't even notice, except that the Total Realism mod for R:TW was on a whole different level in this respect.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
It never was really broken to start with

Shield units were worse than their non-shielded counterparts with the same stats. It was tested and verified. I don't know if anyone ever figured out the exact reason, but it was definitely there.

The problems weren't just an issue of tweaking balance - there was more than one instance of the text indicating one thing should happen and the opposite or nothing happened.

I think they've done a pretty good job at patching and working but there were parts that were broken.

I wonder how much they're going to rework the diplomacy system - the princesses and diplomats system was horrible IMO. If I'm thinking right then this time period lends itself to alliances and alliance wars. Wonder if they'll keep the same dicatator control of building or if they'll try to abstract it with the shift of power from monarchies to parliamentary systems and free enterprises.

I'd suspect a new sea battle system, and the same crappy strategic AI and ahistorical all against all conquer the world campaign as in earlier total war. The strategic AI has suffered from the same limitations throughout the series. It seems like CA wont learn that it doesnt add difficulty to have weak neighbours attack you with low level units turn after turn…

It's still an enjoyable and light hearted game though, but one has to remember that the tactical battles are the heart of the game, and the campaign sort of an afterthought….

Hey, it can't be worse than Imperial Glory, can it now?

(TBH, I enjoyed IG for a time too, but some of the game mechanics were simply bad ideas)

Originally Posted by Zaleukos
I'd suspect a new sea battle system, and the same crappy strategic AI and ahistorical all against all conquer the world campaign as in earlier total war. The strategic AI has suffered from the same limitations throughout the series. It seems like CA wont learn that it doesnt add difficulty to have weak neighbours attack you with low level units turn after turn…

Ain't that the truth. The strategic AI does need a major overhaul. Some things I'd like to see changed:

(1) Intelligent alliance-building. Have countries band up against each other, instead of just changing, proposing, and breaking alliances pretty much completely at random. In my last game as the HRE I had exactly three contacts with Byzantium -- once they made a naval landing and attacked Bologna, then they sent a diplomat to propose trade rights, and then another one to propose an alliance. I had no common borders with them, and only one common enemy. Hello?

(2) Intelligent decisions on war and peace. As you say, it makes no sense for an enemy reduced to one or two cities to keep sending poor stacks against a neighboring empire; they should sue for peace, then try to build an alliance big enough to take on the bigger enemy. Similarly, it makes no sense for the AI not to accept a ceasefire and trade rights if there's no invasion imminent.

(3) Simple decisions on strategic posture. Hell, just have three different types of postures: take and hold, raid and pillage, defend. For take and hold, build up a strong stack or three, send them to take a limited number of neighboring settlements, then sue for peace. For raid and pillage, send the stacks on deep raids of enemy territory, sacking and then abandoning every city they take. For defense, keep them on home territory but aggressively attack anyone crossing the border. Shouldn't be too hard.

It's still an enjoyable and light hearted game though, but one has to remember that the tactical battles are the heart of the game, and the campaign sort of an afterthought….

That it is. I think of the campaign as a reasonably interesting excuse for the battles. :-)

Originally Posted by mactbone
Shield units were worse than their non-shielded counterparts with the same stats. It was tested and verified. I don't know if anyone ever figured out the exact reason, but it was definitely there.

Oh, there were a whole bunch of details like that that were broken; I meant the game overall. It was enjoyable and "felt right" from the first release version, even if there were some bugs.

PJ: If you havent looked at the xml files for the AI (part of it can be edited) then do so, its interesting. It seems like the AI does have different postures (called deep defense and whatnot), but there are some rather fundamental flaws that cant be modded. First one would wonder why the AI wont garrison its settlements at all, and second it bases its decision mainly on relative frontline strength, meaning that if you have a short border (say Denmark has Hamburg as its only border against a surrounding Germany) the AI is more likely to think that it can attack you as you are likely to have a smaller garrison. This means that one in my experience can make the AI more interested in peace by a) shortening the AIs border against you, b) build a few forts if you have a short border and fill them up with extra defenders.

The second reason for the stupid wars would be random missions that the AI gets, that's apparently why one get occasional blockades and whatnot.

What I would like to see would be an AI that plans for invasion, builds up an adequate field army and garrisons its border, and THEN attack. But the AI is unable to build proper armies. The only problematic enemies are the Italians (with their relatively strong low level units) and the Mongols/Timurids who are scripted to appear with ultra strong armies…

Unfortunately (though probably necessarily as they need the money) CA focus on eye candy and the like first in order to appeal to the casual gamers. Under the hood mechanisms and flunky AIs take a while to discover and wont hurt sales that much, particularly as reviewers either are too superficial or dont play a game long enough to discover such faults…

Originally Posted by Zaleukos
What I would like to see would be an AI that plans for invasion, builds up an adequate field army and garrisons its border, and THEN attack. But the AI is unable to build proper armies.

That's exactly what I had in mind, only slightly more elaborated with the two different invasion modes. Having a neighbor who likes to launch deep raids and devastate your cities would give a whole different feel to the game.

The only problematic enemies are the Italians (with their relatively strong low level units) and the Mongols/Timurids who are scripted to appear with ultra strong armies…

I'd even discount the Italians, since they're so vulnerable to cavalry (few spear units).

Unfortunately (though probably necessarily as they need the money) CA focus on eye candy and the like first in order to appeal to the casual gamers. Under the hood mechanisms and flunky AIs take a while to discover and wont hurt sales that much, particularly as reviewers either are too superficial or dont play a game long enough to discover such faults…

That's quite true, although I have a feeling that they genuinely like making this type of game -- and they have a pretty solid basis to build on. Also, AI and graphics programming are rather different skill sets, which means you can't just reassign people from one to the other. IOW, there is at least *hope* that they'll revamp the strategic AI at the same time as tweaking the graphics.

True. AI is much more difficult to code, while visuals and sound essentially amount to craftsmanship. But to me that speaks even more against AI development once you have something that isnt outright broken, as the eye candy has a much more reliable return/investment ratio…

And I dont doubt that CA would like to code a better AI, but it's not obvious how to do it and they need sales to feed themselves. And to me it seems like the strategic AI has been more or less the same since MTW1, so they probably consider it adequate when coupled with modding… To me it isnt really, something like the border strength calculation is a leftover from the risk style map of previous installments, instead I'd like to make the AI consider how many days away potential reinforcements are, rather than in which provinces they are.

About that deep raid idea it would be a nice touch for the AI ruler attributes to affect the playing style, like in Master of Orion (2?). That would make the game a bit more unpredictable and also be something that sounds good while marketing the game

Originally Posted by Zaleukos
True. AI is much more difficult to code, while visuals and sound essentially amount to craftsmanship. But to me that speaks even more against AI development once you have something that isnt outright broken, as the eye candy has a much more reliable return/investment ratio…

However, you still need the AI programmers, if only to maintain the code. Moreover, for a company like CA, AI is one of their core competencies. IOW, I don't think they fired their AI guys once R:TW was out.

About that deep raid idea it would be a nice touch for the AI ruler attributes to affect the playing style, like in Master of Orion (2?). That would make the game a bit more unpredictable and also be something that sounds good while marketing the game

Yup, and it would be historically correct too. I was pretty disappointed by the way the Mongol and Timurid invasions unrolled in M2TW. Having an intelligent raid AI would totally change the experience. I beat Carthage in my first R:TR campaign with this strategy (they're a lot tougher in TR than TW): I sent two big stacks with top generals into North Africa and devastated their cities; this bankrupted them and stopped production of their top units. It would be very interesting and pretty challenging to defend against that kind of attack, and I don't think the AI would be too difficult to program.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
However, you still need the AI programmers, if only to maintain the code. Moreover, for a company like CA, AI is one of their core competencies. IOW, I don't think they fired their AI guys once R:TW was out.

Thats not what I meant. I just suspect they stick with the same basic algorithmic framework and extend it to cater for additions, rather than coming up with a totally new system, making the AI a patchwork more than anything else.

Setting up different packages for different personalities should be doable within the current framework though…

Speaking of the AI this little snippet from www.totalwar.org says something about the history of the series:

Originally Posted by totalwar.org forums
- The AI system will be reworked and improved. An example given is that the AI will be unified, meaning that no longer the military AI will try to conquer a territory, while the diplomatic AI is working towards an alliance with the owner of said territory.

That would explain a lot if true

Originally Posted by Zaleukos
That would explain a lot if true

Come to think of it, it doesn't seem to be that different from the way many real countries operate…

Looking forward to this one. My favorite period in history which unfortunatedly is repeatedly dismissed for WW2, Ancient or medieval times.

The demo for Empire Total War was released on Steam. Go get it. It's pretty nice.

Shan't. This is a (relatively rare) must-buy already; getting into a demo would just make the wait worse. Besides, there's always Civilization…

Unless I get reports of radically improved campaign AI (extremely doubtful given CAs track record) I'll wait for this one to drop in price

EDIT: I also get discouraging reports of performance in the demo, so I might have to wait until I can upgrade my PC anyway…

Originally Posted by Zaleukos
Unless I get reports of radically improved campaign AI (extremely doubtful given CAs track record) I'll wait for this one to drop in price

They did say they rewrote it, based on a unified and goal-based model, instead of a divided and state-based one. So it ought to be different at least.