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Thread: Imperial Glory (PC)

  1. #41
    Denny Crane!'s Avatar Comes Rei Militaris
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    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    Quote Originally Posted by Forlornhope. View Post
    Hey I'm glad to see this forum here! I've been a writer for quite a while and written for Gamespot and Gamfaqs tho i left when i relized you lose rights to your own work basicly. Here is a review I wrote about 2 years ago for imperial glory. I had high hopes for that game but its laughable compared top Total War.Please if you have a read dont hesitate to say what you think i am always trying to improve. Enjoy.

    Imperial Glory is truly one of the most disappointing strategy games of all time. A severe lack of understanding by the dev team and a glaring lack of talent, as well as some awful design decisions seal the fate of this truly wretched total war clone.

    Imperial Glory is a 4x style game, vaguely like Total War, set in the Napoleonic era. The object much like the total war games is to conquer the world or gain the most “honor points” in the time allotted.

    The problem with Imperial Glory is it’s not realistic in even the least bit. The dev team simply doesn’t understand the basic concepts of the battlefield. Take cavalry. Cavalry is used as a shock force. The shock and mass of cavalry and the terrifying appearance of a unit of horsemen charging towards you made them physiological weapon as well as an effective battering ram, especially when equipped with lances as they could skewer ranks of men.

    The weakness of cavalry is that it is of limited use in melee. Because a horseman is sitting on a horse he can’t dodge and move quickly or fight effectively in a melee, as opposed to infantry, who can move and dodge as normal and have a huge target, the horse to attack. This means that cavalry, if caught up in a melee will be slaughtered by trained infantry.

    Musket armed infantry at the time were also equipped with bayonets that fitted either in or under the barrels of their muskets making a makeshift spear. A unit of cavalry charging against a wall of bayonets just like a unit of spears will be cut to pieces and most horses, even if trained would not charge home against a wall of sharp points. This made cavalry largely useless against prepared infantry.

    Imperial glory ignores these facts of the battlefield and cavalry will massacre any unit in melee. Even elite infantry such as the British Black Watch will be crushed. This is not even close to being historically accurate. There is a square formation that counters cavalry but it shouldn’t have to be used.

    Even lace armed cavalry will win. A lance is about 20 feet long and made of wood tipped with iron or steel. Obviously using this weapon in melee would be impossible. This is ignored however and mounted lancers still beat infantry in melee even though you can see them using the weapon. Brilliant.

    Buildings are also completely dumb. The musket is a mass weapon. Single troops firing muskets would be lucky to hit anything and if they did wouldn’t make much of an impression which is why musketeers line up and fire as one to send debilitating waves of musket balls at the enemies, firing at an area rather than picking individual men. This means that buildings with few windows etc would be virtually useless because of how troops are bunched up instead and only a few can fire out the windows. Troops outside would have a much easier time shooting, even though the defenders are under cover. This isn’t the case in Imperial Glory. Units in buildings do MORE damage with their muskets and will wreck any unit shooting at them from outside as they get massive attack and defence (not just defence) bonuses when in a building. This is compounded by the fact that if you want to attack a building by sending troops in to melee you can only send one unit of 60 men in at once due to a bug that the patch doesn’t fix. A single unit in a building can kill three others with no problems in the game.

    There is little strategy to battle in IG because of the way historical tactics don’t work and you’ll almost always take as many casualties as the enemies, which is completely unlike Total War where tactics rule. Artillery is also a complete pain to use not giving a crap if it takes your own troops out and often fails to shoot over the heads of your own soldiers, therefore killing your army. There is also no “in range” cursor for Imperial Glory so its hard to tell if your artillery is close enough making it of severely limited use.

    Militia is yet another unrealistic unit. Militia in IG are untrained men who have no weapons but large sticks and would have had no amour of any kind. They simply charge straight towards enemies and attack them in melee Historically they would have be devastated by one or two vollies before they even reached melee distance and even before then broke and ran in fear since they are not disciplined trained soldiers. And even if they reached the enemy they would be no match for trained soldiers in melee.

    Again IG screws this up. Militia are not only armoured and take relatively little casualties from musket fire they also BEAT professional light and medium infantry with muskets and bayonets in combat. A single unit of Militia can almost beat two units of trained infantry such as line infantry. What was Pyro Studios smoking? It’s so bad a fan made patch had to be made to resolve the issue.

    Morale also doesn’t exist. Troops being annihilated by gunfire or artillery stand their ground; the last four men in a unit of 60 continue calmly reloading and firing amongst the countless corpses of the fallen, flanking attacks don’t panic units at all. Troops always stay and fight exactly where they are until everyone is dead. This makes battle feel utterly unrealistic and things that shouldn’t happen like losing artillery to a suicidal cavalry charge, do.

    IG has controllable naval battles unlike Total War but they are horrible micromanaging nightmares fought on tiny sections of the sea where it’s all too easy for a ship to sail right out of the battlefield. And if you retreat, all ships that escaped will ALWAYS be sunk. WHY?

    Like total war IG besides the tactical (huh?) battles, also has the familiar strategic overview mode where you have a map of the world and you build buildings, train units and orchestrate your overall strategy for world domination.

    History in IG is spilt into three eras each more advanced than the last with more advanced troops, technology and buildings available.

    This also sucks for a variety of reasons. The first is the worthless attempt at diplomacy.

    This at first looked good because it has more advanced options compared to total war games such as loaning troops but it isn’t. For any of these to have a chance of accepting you have to pay the target ridiculous amounts of money, way, way more than you can spare and things like alliances are pointless because besides the ridiculous cost they also are forged for a very limited amount of turns usually right afterwards you’ll be attacked by your former ally. Nations show how they feel towards you by their sympathy a number out of 100 which is acutely pointless. The idea is that this is how much the nation cares about yours and if you can sweet-talk it to 100 the nation and all its territories join your empire willingly and come under your control. I’ve been attacked with nations with 80+ sympathy and nations with 20 or less are peaceful. It is not cool at all when you pay a nation a lot of money to accept diplomatic deals then get attacked by that nation. Like how I had a defensive alliance with France and another nation for ages when it ran out I renewed it and the nation had 75 sympathy and after a few more turns the time to renew it rolled around and id dint have enough gold so then the nation simply attacked me regardless of the fact it was my ally up till now. This makes diplomacy completely pointless, even worse than the notoriously bad Rome Total War diplomacy.

    The game moves at a snails pace, armies are very expensive and time consuming to raise and buildings are expensive. Every army also needs a commanding officer, which means you need to wait more while ones trained. The basic captains can only command three units so you need to make more, or research buildings to get Cornels or Generals which allow 4 or 5 each. There are also Field Marshals that you can only get though battle field experience. Unlike Total War traits and command ability don’t exist here and everyone is the same, even the units as every faction in the game has exactly the same units with exactly the same status making battles even more boring. When you conquer a territory it slows down even more because you have to wait and wait for the territory to be annexed and for your troops to suppress all rebellion forcing you to leave your troops there for ages. This is the same as the TW games but armies take so long to move and build it’s a real hassle in IG. Conquering a major factions territory by military means also makes it so you can’t build there anymore which makes the territory virtually useless. Why this is I don’t know.

    Since conquering by military might makes territories useless permanently and peacefully annexing a country is impossible because of the horrid diplomacy this effectively makes the entire campaign game extremely forced and annoying.

    Graphics wise IG is decent. Troops are painfully small and woefully underdetailed sprites but the environments don’t look that bad and are nice and big. Some effects like melee combat with bodies and blood mounting up and the huge clouds of smoke from musketry and cannons are nice. The game lacks scale though, with just 60 men in an infantry unit and 40 in a cavalry unit even the biggest battles that should be world changing and titanicly huge feel like small skirmishes. This is laughable compared to the thousands of troops total war has in battles. Charging cavalry look ridiculous, as the cavalry stop a short distance from the infantrymen, a bunch of them magically fall over while both units stand still and then they suddenly change to melee. Horrible.

    The sound is IG’s saving grace. Guns and artillery make nice beefy sounds and you hear commanders yelling orders with some good voice acting in their native language and troops yell and scream like they should. Sounds like marching and flowing water are well done too. IG really brings the battles to life sound wise.

    The voiceovers for preludes to battles etc aren’t so good. They try to give a kind of deep feeling to the battles but it ends up sounding tryhard and corny.

    The music is also very good with moody orchestrated pieces for battles and nice meditative music for the campaign. In fact the music is too good for a game like IG the battles just aren’t big enough for such a grand score.

    Over all Imperial glory is a deeply flawed and horribly unrealistic total war rip off. If you love the time frame like I do you might get some extra mileage out of it but don’t expect too much.

    Fin.
    Guessing you've never done much Napoleonic reading mate. Infantry always had to form square against cavalry, lines could not take a cavalry charge.

    I was looking for a new game, I guess I shall have to look elsewhere, this doesn't even seem worth trying!

  2. #42
    God-Emperor of Mankind's Avatar Apperently I protect
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    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    Quote Originally Posted by Ahlerich View Post
    BAI and CAI was better then total war though. still a crap game..
    There wasn't a BAI, it was entirely scripted.
    You can easily see since every province has it's own map(and that map only) and you will see that the AI will do the exact same thing every time. It takes no heed to what you do unless you have artillery in which case, like a bee on sugar it homes in on it even if it means it will lose it's entire army.

    And the CAI is a complete joke as well, there is no AI at all. Just a bunch scripts. Only time I think there is any hint of AI is in the diplomacy and there it is completely braindead and makes the diplomacy in RTW look like a genius.

  3. #43
    Jingles's Avatar Praefectus
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    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    I suppose I have the dubious honour of being the only person in this thread who genuinely enjoyed the game. I remember I used to play it on my lunch breaks in 6th form on my laptop when I first bought it. The LAN multiplayer was pretty good too - thanks to the rigid rock-paper-scissors style of the battles, playing a human opponent became a serious battle of wits.

  4. #44
    Lord Horatius's Avatar Civis
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    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    Imperial Glory was the first game I could find that satisfied my love of the "Age of Horse and Musket". When I first purchased it new, My computer could not support it, so I ended up waiting two more years, leeching off of friends' machines before I was able to buy a band new PC that could handle it. That night, I stayed up 'till 4 in the morning, enthralled. Since then, I've formulated the opinion that there is often too little to do per turn on the campaign map, all the factions troops are repainted Frenchies with the notable exception of Great Britain, and that you just can't form square fast enough to repel Mamluk lancers.
    Last edited by Lord Horatius; February 16, 2011 at 05:39 PM.
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  5. #45

    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    Quote Originally Posted by The Ugly View Post
    I suppose I have the dubious honour of being the only person in this thread who genuinely enjoyed the game. I remember I used to play it on my lunch breaks in 6th form on my laptop when I first bought it. The LAN multiplayer was pretty good too - thanks to the rigid rock-paper-scissors style of the battles, playing a human opponent became a serious battle of wits.
    I also enjoyed the game when it came out. I liked the risk-style map that makes battles decisive.

    Empire borrowed alot from this game, especially the naval battles are very similar.

    Great graphics for the time, I loved watching cannons shooting into lines, the clouds of smoke and the writhing wounded which we wouldn't se until... last week when Shogun 2 was released!

  6. #46
    Shiloh's Avatar Senator
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    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    This was the game that made me decide to buy a rig and eventually got me into the Total War series. I really enjoyed the campaigns and it was just a fun game overall.
    www.totalgettysburg.com
    Take an in-depth look at the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War. This site is dedicated to education and the conservation of Civil War battlefields.

    www.youtube.com/twbattles
    View Total War battle commentary videos on an epic scale.

  7. #47

    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    I really enjoyed this game and spent entire days playing it. I bought it for 7€ when ETW was released. And I played until I bought a computer that could run Empire.

  8. #48
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    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    This game was breakthrough in gameming when it was first realeased

  9. #49
    debux's Avatar Senator
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    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    In what sense?
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  10. #50
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    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    Navel batteles

  11. #51

    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    it was a game that tortured you by threatening to be brilliant, and then shooting itself in every part of its body it could find, never mind just the foot.

  12. #52

    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    Quote Originally Posted by Aodh Mor View Post
    it was a game that.
    It was a game I know this ok because I bought it mate.
    falnk with cavlary. stay a way from muder hoels.

  13. #53
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    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    Was this released befor rome total war or after it?

  14. #54
    Sigma's Avatar Ducenarius
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    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    Quote Originally Posted by pharoh View Post
    Was this released befor rome total war or after it?
    After, it was released in 2005, so not long after really.

  15. #55

    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    I remember buying the game in 2006 or something around that time. I don't think it was that bad and I enjoyed it quite a bit, as there was nothing like ETW back then. Of course, it was flawed if you look at it in a different way. Cavalry was so overpowered that I remember being attacked almost every turn in Silesia and Poland by a big army and just defending them with a few units of hussars and lancers. Oh and it's quite normalthat infantry are weak when not in square formation against cavalry, but they were too much so in this game. Square formations are OP though. Still remember the campaign map music in my head now. Weird.

  16. #56
    debux's Avatar Senator
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    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    Music was epic. I can't remember, but it seems it was only two songs for the whole game. It's funny, but it never got old for me.

    The command sounds of the subordinates were also good. I still open the game files to listen to them and hope to learn french/german/russian
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  17. #57

    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    Yeah, maybe CA decided to do the command sounds like that in ETW because of this game.

  18. #58
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    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    nah from the videos these comands sound better

  19. #59

    Default Re: Imperial Glory (PC)

    I played this game before Empire Total War, and it was first game with wished from M2TW naval battles (only reason for good memory).

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