[article] Empire: Total War Patch Update

[VooDoo]

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/46...r-Patch-Update

One month in and there have been no gameplay improvements made available for Empire: Total War - what exactly are Creative Assembly up to?! CA staffer Jack Lusted lets us know:

First off, we are going to support Empire for a long time. The first game play patch with both a lot of fixes and balancing/economic changes as well as more is in testing, and then the cycle of hot fixes then game play patches will begin again. At the moment every programmer is focused on fixing bugs.

What balance/economic/other changes will be in the first game play patch?
Quite a lot really. Unit balancing has seem some general tweaks across the board to improve it. Unit costs have changed for both multiplayer and single player.
For multiplayer there are now separate costs for early and late era so that units better reflect the techs available, and units such as mortars and rocket ships have had big cost increases and light infantry have had their cost increased a bit as well.
For single player, unit costs have increased on normal, even more on hard and even more on very hard so that on very hard units cost 4x their upkeep cost. Bigger ships have had their cost increased and all ships upkeep costs have increased.
There have also been general economic tweaks to prevent the huge sums of money that were possible in the late game, and so to increase the challenge of the game.
As for the other changes, we've added in a delete save game button, a button to allow you to view battle replays from the single player Play Battle menu, improved ship grouping UI and other things.
There are also of course AI improvements and yes naval invasions though they may be rare for now.


What you going to do after that?
Well we are going to carry on fixing and improving the game. The AI (both battle and campaign) will see continuous improvements, multiplayer will see improvements, there will be more balancing improvements, and some nice free stuff you'll be hearing about in due time.
From a personal perspective as someone working on unit balancing, the next game play patch after this one will see some big improvements in terms of diversification of different unit and artillery types. The game play patch after that one will see improvements to naval battle balancing.



So what are you getting at?
We are going to carry on supporting Empire for a long time. We are going to carry on improving Empire. You'll see more as things get done.

sounds interesting and promising

[Skeleton Of The West]

Yes it sounds really good .

But did he say when the patch will be ready?

[notger]

Some econ tweak, unit costs tweaks and a button? A BUTTON?

Hell, I could not care less and this is a disgrace.
Modders have done more in two days than their teams have done in two weeks.

Rare naval invasions = scripted invasions, I guess.

This does NOT sound good, if you ask me.

[white_elephant]

I really don't understand why it's taking them so long to release the next patch, especially since so many modders have shown us how fast one can fix certain issues in the game.

I bought this game almost a month ago and haven't played it for more than a couple of hours, due to it's bugs.

A disgrace.

[Don in the North]

does this need to be in darthmod forum? shouldn t it be in general discussion?

[Syntax]

That's really not much what Lusted listed here - and yes the modders have done more in two days! Talking a lot about unit price change - hey come on - everybody can do himself. What about the important things - as release of modding tools? Path finding issues all over? Surfing soldiers...., make the game to be playable with lower computer specs,...and also on the very important naval invasion they seem to struggle! I try not to bash CA here but on other hand also can't defend their achievements on the open issues - come on that's not much! - okay lets see first - I shouldn't "murr..." ahead of the patch!!!
The game engine would have so much potential - just look at all the mods - so please CA give them modding tools, as without legs its real hard to walk and there is a limit what one can archive!!

[Barabus]

Rare naval invasions = scripted invasions

I was thinking the same thing...sadly...

[Bob the Insane]

To make this apply to this forum lets look at this tweak:

For single player, unit costs have increased on normal, even more on hard and even more on very hard so that on very hard units cost 4x their upkeep cost. Bigger ships have had their cost increased and all ships upkeep costs have increased.


Interesting concept for higher campaign difficulties, meaning that the player will have to play ther econmic game even harder (while the AI is getting cash bonuses I guess)...

How do you think this will impact the mod? I guess Darth's changes will continue to overwrite theirs, but will the AI be rolling in even more cash on harder difficulties as a result?

[VooDoo]

as Bob the Insane put it Don of Atheos from my work with previous mods (not TW series) having a understanding of what the patches are going to change etc are of great importance, as sometimes it means you have to start from scratch or recalculating the way you balance things, so more or less i have always found patches to be the most disrupting thing to a mods progress (but for the better)

[Lone]

I wish they could somehow make naval invasions a natural part of the AI thinking process. If the AI just regarded water as land and learned how to efficiently transport armies with ships. I mean it only takes one ship to transport more than 2000 men in the game, which is a bit funny and should maybe be limited somehow.

[white_elephant]

I find it funny that Civilization's AI could do naval invasions ten years ago, but these guys effed it up. Talk about product rushed out the door.

[Bob the Insane]

One thing I have learn't from Darth's mod is that that AI is able to act in an apparantly intelligent manner, but this is highly influenced by the balancing of many factors in the game. Make unit cost to low for something and suddenly the AI is building lots of that and looking stupid in battles as a result...

This is not to say that aren't code issues to be fixed. But the naval invasion functionality could very well be buried in there already, but the unit balancing and AI priorities means that it is never used...

Still, how testing missed that sort of thing is beyond belief (if they did miss it)...