ETW Empire War Discussion Thread

[ZaPPPa]

Hey kiddo's!

I apologize in advance if this is not the right forum to do this, but I consider DLV the only real mod worth playing, so I'm sure I'll reach the right-minded people here.

Been a long time since I've shown my ugly mug in the DLV forums, but I just downloaded the ETW demo and got pretty excited... However, not nearly as excited as I got after unpacking the demo files and browsing through the script files. It seems my wish has come true and CA went in a new direction for the scripting language:

(Example from the ancillaries.lua file)

events.BuildingCompleted[#events.BuildingCompleted+1] =
function (context)
	if conditions.CharacterType("minister", context) and conditions.CharacterMinisterialPosition("governor_america", context) and conditions.CharacterBuildingConstructed("large_cotton_plantation", context) then
		if conditions.DateInRange(1700, 1900, context) then 
			effect.ancillary("Ancillary_African_Servant", 8,  context)
		end
		return true
	end
	return false
end

I haven't modded in ages, but my fingers are itching to get my hands on this baby. I wonder if, for example, "minister" is not hard-coded, but a variable that is set in some other file and can be made to be anything. If so, career paths are going to be very flexible.

The first thing I'll probably do is to change the ship combat to a more realistic simulation. Turn rates are currently ridiculously high and reload speeds should be lowered. Also, Ships should not be able to turn into the wind the way they do now. I understand it is a game, but c'mon, a little bit of knowledge of naval warfare should be required to win these battles.

Obviously I'll check into the DLV stuff I did for MTW as well, such as aging, family trees and career paths.

[Xtiaan72]

Very cool man! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

[XiombargDei]

hehe i'm as excited as you ^_^ anything more difficult, more role-play, longer or more historically accurate is much welcome

[hotcobbler]

That's cool man. Where do you download a demo? I didn't know this existed. I guess I've been living under a rock. +rep for bringing this up mang.

[ZaPPPa]

That's cool man. Where do you download a demo? I didn't know this existed. I guess I've been living under a rock. +rep for bringing this up mang.

The demo can be found all over the internet. Just try the IGN or Gamespy websites. It's only two tutorials and two battles, but it gives a good impression of what the game is capable of graphics-wise.

[Tokus*Maximus]

Demo?

Out now?!!!

HOOTIN' HECK! Downloading noo!

[Cougar109]

Interesting, it's the same language as the STALKER games. I've done a little scripting with those games and it's very easy to do so maybe I'll finally be able to get into Total War modding.

[ZaPPPa]

It looks to be the LUA language. The big question is how many variables are public. I hope, for example, it will be possible to set the Heir or next-in-line ruler from the script. If we can then also figure out the family relations (such as are two characters brothers and which is the oldest), we can make sure the family line is done properly and we don't have to kill off princesses to keep children-in-law from taking the throne.

I applaud CA for going with an established language instead of writing their own. I believe it was already said that the whole game engine was rewritten from scratch and this pretty much proves it. It's too bad not all files were made available (I couldn't find vices & virtues), but once they are I'll make sure to take a good hard look and perhaps catalogue all available parameters to see what the possibilities are.

PS. The demo can be downloaded on Steam at 1MB/s if you're lucky.

[hotcobbler]

I downloaded it on Steam, but can't get it to go past the loading screen. It's weird.

[La Bestia Von Garlet]

I downloaded it on Steam, but can't get it to go past the loading screen. It's weird.

You were lucky! I couldn't even do that, when it was at 20% downloaded, it restarted from 0%, twice!

[ivanhoex]

LOL!!!

you know? those vids that the devs of empire have placed on the net, really suck..


not only that, i posted on the one that was suppossed to show a square formation against heavy cavalry, and my post was something like:

"hey! i dont like your video, it only shows less than 2 seconds of actual engagement between sqare and heavy cavalry, and about 8 minutes of that guy´s head and mouse... why dont you do something more serious that actually shows what it promises?"


offcourse they banned my comment.

they only want people saying "yay, ill buy it right now, how cool is tha!!?"...

and i bet their videos will keep sucking bad...

[Alatar98]

my only disapoitment so far aside from loading times and scyrinized animation was that there appears to be little attention to detail in the battle fields.

star forts in the videos were just walls, nothing on the insidie of them, no buildings, no nothing. any houses and buildings on the battle fields look like they were just dropped in there, no paths leading to them, no roads. In M2tw the towns and castles are very detailed and looked lived in. looks like they took a step backwards in graphics.

[XiombargDei]

been playing the demo a little bit and there is something wrong about this game. i cant really tell what it is, its just a feeling. maybe it is because the 1700th century is closer to us than the medieval times, thus carrying less emotional values, less phantasmagoric images. maybe it is the lack of real differences between the land units you get in the land battle demo, or the slowliness and difficult control of fleet in the sea demo battle.

Of course i'll buy it tomorow and play it, but when i take a look at what the modding community did to vanilla M2TW, i just cant wait for you talented guys to put your hands on it and deliver us basic players with a much greater feeling of what an historic and accurate strategy game should be.

[Xtiaan72]

TW demos have never been that compelling. Wait and see

I think what you might be feeling is the same gripe I have....Marching in Column doesn't feel right....No advantage at all to it and it really ruins the period feeling a bit.

How can you really get lost in the period if the troops aren't moving around properly?

[ZaPPPa]

Well, I played the released game and it's good. Though, I also see a lot of opportunity for a group such as DLV to make improvements.

The traits and ancillaries seem a little bland. There should be plenty of room to spice things up a bit. The whole governor/general career path is out the window. Governors don't exist any more and your President can not lead an army (have not tried a kingdom yet, but I believe Kings also stay in their palaces).

The game difficulty is easy... very.. easy. Money is flowing like water and upkeep of ships is incredibly low. In reality ships were extremely expensive and took a long time to build. In the game you can launch ships every turn. I'd rather see the ability to build two ships in paralel, each taking 6 or so turns to launch.

Game is 2 turns per year, while 4t/y would be better considering army moves.

I'd love to see the East-Indies and South-America be fully modeled instead of being reduced to trade zones only.

Characters started dying from the start. In 5 turns I lost two generals who were both in their 40's due to natural causes.

This weekend I'll try to unpack all the files and fiddle with the files to see what does what.

[Alatar98]

i plan to pick it up this week, if it hits shelves in canada.

didnt know people could unpack the files yet, from what ive read its encrypted differently than mtw2.

id like to see 4t/y, 200 turns just doesn't seam like enough to me.

[Xtiaan72]

Zappa,


Any word on how to unlock factions? Seems like it's much more difficult than it used to be....

[ZaPPPa]

It's not much more difficult. If I remember correctly it took a while for people to figure out how to unpack the files the last time. We'll just have to wait for someone to figure out how to do that before the modding can begin. We're still within 24 hours of release, so it's way too early to worry about how hard or easy it will be.

I'll look into the files this weekend, but for now I'll just play the game.

[Xtiaan72]

It's good....is an understatement! I'm a jaded old school TW hound.... and this this is just blowing me away....

So much potential for that chapter based content... I really thought the TW combat system wouldn't work as well with 18th century but I was wrong. It works better....

And the maps....so big with terrain that is always interesting... It's slamming my computer though... I'm playing on low-medium settings and it still looks better than MTW2 on my rig

Makes me wish I had a monster rig... It would be incredible!

[repman]

I allow only one ETW discussion Thread. The other one is closed