The (Old) Official ETW Criticism Thread

[Lord Nova]

PS - Your memory is quite faulty if you recollect M2TW running great on release day. Dig through the threads from that period if you wish to argue this further.

You're right, I remember cavalry not charging correctly, 9 times out of 10 it would gallop into the enemy but not have the charge bonus. It was so annoying since knights were useless. There's also the passive siege bug where the AI would not move if laying siege on you forcing the player to go out and fight it, instead of fighting it on the walls. These were gamebreakers for me which forced me to not play the game until the kingdoms expansion came out that fixed a good majority of the issues people had with that game. I still think even after kingdoms it suffers more bugs then Rome (Alex.exe) cause I still have problems with siege towers in MTW2 when they don't deploy, making the unit I used with it frozen or the bad pathfinding in sieges (way worse then Rome, partly cause the cities were more complex in layout). Not to mention the way the AI uses gunpowder units (crisscrossing them, positioning them in places they can't shoot, ect.) that still exist today.

The reason I was looking forward to Empire was mainly due to how much I thought MTW2 suffered from being on an engine not built for that era (it was basically the Rome engine, hence why gunpowder sucked). Wascape engine was designed from the ground up to be a gunpowder based game engine and Empire was concieved from day one to have line battles, so there's really no excuse for this AI sillyness. Empire might actually get fixed, Rome and MTW2 are already set in stone and will never be fixed(funny since Rome's Alex.exe is the most solid out of the 3 titles right now in terms of AI/CTDs).

[Fubar4fun]

I am not defending anything, I am commenting on the questionable, immature behaviour shown in many of the posts here, including yours.

You want your bugs fixed ?

Report them right.

These teeanage rants, such as yours - regarding CA "lying, stealing," etc etc, accomplish absolutely nothing, and are most likely to be ignored. So if you really wished for this game to be fixed you would act constructive. Actions like yours show a childish need to simply come and rant.

My point: If you wish to rant like a spoiled teenage brat, then prepare to be responded to as such.

PS - Your memory is quite faulty if you recollect M2TW running great on release day. Dig through the threads from that period if you wish to argue this further.

Just fix the bloody game for 64 bit.

I am SICK of these:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: AppHangB1
Application Name: Empire.exe
Application Version: 1.2.0.0
Application Timestamp: 49ef4878
Hang Signature: dbab
Hang Type: 2050
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Hang Signature 1: c9b0f7fb38952f886b3433bb5cd0f6a2
Additional Hang Signature 2: a967
Additional Hang Signature 3: 72e707d2d7a079eda57c5904d8db56bc
Additional Hang Signature 4: 398d
Additional Hang Signature 5: abd6a88d325a1d95952852291ef0cce8
Additional Hang Signature 6: c3e8
Additional Hang Signature 7: 399d4e46c4185b1166dad57d284ab0d7
Read our privacy statement:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?link...3&clcid=0x0409

This is an APP problem. All hardware testing completes OK so is not hardware. Something within the APP is looking for a service running native in the OS that isnt present in every OS version. The common thread here is that legacy games such as Alien Nation and Far Cry 2 catch this error in Vista as well reportedly (see Microsoft.com forums) There is no solution to this on the OS side excepting a possible DirectX issue which, in the land of Vista SHOULD BE DirectX10, not 9.


I paid $70 of my income to play a simulation of land warfare that, out of the box is supposed to work in a 64 bit environment. It does not. Instead it supports the drinking habits for a crew of 32 bit programmers and their servant testers that are focusing on content and not reality.


GET A CLUE PEOPLE! The copyright dates on Bink, Miles and Speedtree products used to make this product are NOT 2009 and two of them are not even 2008. They are PREHISTORIC as far as this game technology is concerned. In fact Speedtree 5 was just introduced at the GDC in March!!


And then there is the memory cap....didn't you people ever figure that a customer owned 64 bit box might sport more than 2Gb? I am using 8Gb and watch with great frustration as this app forces the OS and any concurrent app to swap out, meanwhile there is 6Gb left that can be used for video and app stack buffer space. The same thing was going on with Hellgate London not a year ago...and even then they were sporting a dedicated 64bit app interface. While the unfortunate folks at Flagship fixed their product albeit too late, you folks at CA are too busy making the horses look realistic or giving the Ghurka's a bit more offensive power. My OS runs EVERYTHING BUT this application flawlessly. In fact M2TW worked very well out of the box in 64bit...albeit after the patches were applied...but it still works well today and I can do full campaigns. This E:TW POS works up to the point the map appears and then goes to la la land because there is no more RAM in that 2Gb barrier you have suckered yourself into.

And then the latest patch...So what is the freeking deal CA? You just pushed a patch and now the game is worse?! I could actually run E:TW and play a battle or two between crashes. Now the patch is out and I cannot. I digress to that $70 I spent...a patch is sopposed to FIX a problem not make it worse.


But, the frosting on this cake, you are sporting a Core I7 logo on the startup advertisements...why is that different than a Core 2 Quad or for that matter a Pentium 4 for this 32 bit app? The app won't work in the 64 bit world so why do you flaunt it so?


Inconceivable!

[Modestus]

I am not defending anything, I am commenting on the questionable, immature behaviour shown in many of the posts here, including yours.

You want your bugs fixed ?

Report them right.

These teeanage rants, such as yours - regarding CA "lying, stealing," etc etc, accomplish absolutely nothing, and are most likely to be ignored. So if you really wished for this game to be fixed you would act constructive. Actions like yours show a childish need to simply come and rant.


PS - Your memory is quite faulty if you recollect M2TW running great on release day. Dig through the threads from that period if you wish to argue this further.

Here's a teenage rant for you.....

New Campaign as Prussia at turn 30 got a corrupted save needed to go back to turn 23 and start from there. Now at turn 50 I have once again a corrupted game. Made sure this time I had a few saves in between but you know what none of them work they are all corrupted.



By the way I think I know what's corrupting them its the preference file.

I Normally play on VH\H and for what ever reason I felt that my campaign had suddenly got too easy so after my problems I checked the difficulty settings in the preference file and they where set incorrectly at N\N and not at VH\H

All I know now is that having deleted the preference file as a test the only ones that attempt to generate a new preference file are the corrupted saves.



Will calm down later.

Edit : Oh bugger thats my thousand post.

[Abspara]

I've reported several game breaking bugs. The forum has collectively reported many bugs. Videos have been taken showing these bugs in action. What do we receive in return? An update from CA letting us know they are improving the looks of the units for the next patch.

That's a source of frustration. People are having a hard time even playing a stable campaign. Saved games corrupted. Random, unexplained crashes occur, and CA appears to really not even give a damn. Well, maybe that's a bit harsh I suppose. Perhaps they do care.They really do care about us. They just don't seem to show it that much.

Oh, and the teenage comment about rants. That's pretty lame. ANYONE who paid full price for this game has a voice. A voice to kiss CA's butt, or one to kick it.

[Murfios]

ANYONE who paid full price for this game has a voice. A voice to kiss CA's butt, or one to kick it.

Ahhh dam it! I bought it at 5% discount at the local game shop. I guess i won't be posting anymore

[The Noble Lord]

Yeah, they really pulled a fast one on us with this steam. You can't return the game, you can't refund it or exchange it. Basically, we are stuck with it.

[tuore]

I partly agree with Dunecat, as i played M2 nonstop after it's release to the last christmas. Even though it had and has still bugs, it worked. And if a game works, it is playable.

I only few times got a ctd in M2, in Empire i get them regularly. Medieval 2 was easier to mod (at least for me), and M2 was more interesting.

E: And almost forgot: The Music in M2 is waaaaaaay better than empire's.

[Nazgûl Killer]

I honestly never had any crashing to desktop or the likes of problems... Not even the white screen, the game is perfect in matters of system to me... However:
TERRIBLE BAI, and CAI, I mean, in a duration of 10 turns, I had 15 nations declare war one me. Some for no apparent reason, the rest because I shared a border with them. Ridiculous.
Dreadful diplomacy; The problem above, and the fact that most of those 15 nations had very friendly relations with me and a very profitable trade lane, in addition, it is impossible to get an AI, even very friendly, to give you tech/get an alliance/get a region, even if you offer them a region ten times better, in M2TW it was MUCH easier. Whilst I love the click-of-a-button-away-from-embassy thing, removes the annoying diplomats, the diplomacy is VERY flawed.
The fact that there are 12 playable factions, ONLY, makes it very boring.
Naval battles - Impossible... I mean... Come on!

The game is not worth buying, for now. It has a LOT of fixes to be done.

[jimkatalanos]

Name-calling and insulting other members is not allowed.

[aussie42]

Hey, l just want to know if my problem has been fixed. My problem is that l installed it all right, BUT when l try and get on the game, it just was a white screen and than 1 min later a message comes up saying that, "Empire.exe has encountered a problem and needs to exit". All l want to know if its been fixed, before l try it again. Just to tell you this, l don't care for lag or how the slow the game would be, l just want to play the game.
P.S. l'll send you my computer specs when you reply to my message, so l know you got it. and to mention is that it start since day 1, when l got the game
Thanks.

[Sosobra]

CA shoud just release the tools to mod the game properly and let the Modders do the job that CA are apparently incapable of doing quickly or well.

[Murfios]

I must say:

I was really disappointed with this game. It feels so raw and unfinished. At first, the overly crowded map annoyed me, and I see no practical sense on having farms and textile huts appear on the SM. The UI is also cumbersome and crowded. The AI makes want to kill puppies and the separated maps feel so uncomfortable. Just my thoughts

[Hauler]

What is really funny is when the game came out IGN gave the game a 9.5 rating. Now it seems that they have taken the game off the review board. Funny.

[Lethn]

These teeanage rants, such as yours - regarding CA "lying, stealing," etc etc, accomplish absolutely nothing, and are most likely to be ignored. So if you really wished for this game to be fixed you would act constructive. Actions like yours show a childish need to simply come and rant.

If you are going to lecture people and call them names then it might be a good idea to at least spell check or edit your post so that you seem more intelligent than the person you are lecturing. Games Companies lose thousands of customers and currency due to these 'teenage' rants whereas if people were to just call the company up we would get ignored and no one would ever know about it, freedom of speech is a wonderful thing.

- Yours truly, a 19 year old teenager

[craziii]

meh, most people is just piss that there are so many CTDs for ETW on release. mtw2 had gameplay bugs, not CTDs. all TW games were very stable for pc games, now ETW is just another one of those buggy generic pc game releases.

fortunately, CA is at least very dedicated this time on patching. once the CTDs + performance bugs(5 minute turns) are ironed out, I will bite this bullet and hope for the best.

[Megalos]

I am so fed up with this game. I just canot bring myself to play it any longer.

Bug after bug after bug.

Sorry CA, but you really did drop the ball this time. The game is still not acceptable after how many months and how many patches?

Is it acceptable to have to wait months for a playable game, after I have long since parted with my money?

Sorry, but the videos you showed, with this amazing new tactical AI was false advertising, and clearly scripted for the sake of the video. Again not acceptable.

[Tyr3ll]

It seems it's hit or miss concerning CTD's and bugs... it has only crashed on me twice during like 6 different campaigns. I don't get it

[lerenardsubtile]

Its been mentioned here before and I'll echo it again, these games are too large and complex to get right the first time. The game publishing process requires the feedback of the fan community to get them to a point where that have the fewest problems with the greatest number of computers. Medieval 2 underwent the same process and its a better game than its first release. So keep ranting but with the understanding that you are now playing a game with exponentially more complexity than ever before. So much so that your feedback is necessary for us all to enjoy an eventual improved version sometime in the near future.

[Abspara]

Its been mentioned here before and I'll echo it again, these games are too large and complex to get right the first time. The game publishing process requires the feedback of the fan community to get them to a point where that have the fewest problems with the greatest number of computers. Medieval 2 underwent the same process and its a better game than its first release. So keep ranting but with the understanding that you are now playing a game with exponentially more complexity than ever before. So much so that your feedback is necessary for us all to enjoy an eventual improved version sometime in the near future.

If this was the first, second, or maybe even third attempt with a game that is "complex", i'd give CA a bit more understanding, but after 4 years of development and several titles under their belt, all with problems out of the gate..what's the excuse now? Sure the features may have increased over the years in every title CA has made, but i'd of hoped so would of CA's experience, knowledge, and equipment for testing. I guess not.

[tuore]

Imo CA could have released this one year later, to fix the AI and include multiplayer campaign.