CA finished with Empire?

[deeptrance83]

Neddy, go to dictionary.com and look up the word "scope" you'll see one listing as "aim or purpose". The SCOPE of ETW is the combination of Strategy and RTS. That's it's purpose, to take 2 game styles and merge them into a new, unique style. And when I mentioned it was "brand new", that's exactly what I meant. The game engine is BRAND NEW! (Also, we don't need the editorial [sic] for every typo I made, this isn't Time Magazine.) I think it speaks for it's self when CA employees drop in to make personal comments on the status of the game to their dedicated fan site, and all they see is "you suck you suck you suck". Do you WANT a better TW game? Then live with the fact that ETW was not the god-send that review sites made it out to be and simply give you're thoughts, in a construtive manner, to the forum so they can piece together the overall conseus of the community. Is Empire finished? Maybe, but who knows? We very well could see a patch after NTW, especially if they don't have to race to catch up with the code development after release like they did with ETW. Who knows? But will damning CA and their products really bring about anything positive? Finally, I'm here positing for the same reason you are, because I can. Like I said on the other page, take it or leave. No one is forcing you to respond to my post.

*Just noticed Lusted is currently viewing this page. Keep up the hard work CA, some of us DO appreciate you trying to do something new*

[(HG)Super]

*Just noticed Lusted is currently viewing this page. Keep up the hard work CA, some of us DO appreciate you trying to do something new*

And?

Are we subjects or discontented buyers?

Thousand of players are unhappy with his game and 11 moth later,those guys want to cheat us again .

Noboy would must buy Napoleon¡¡

[Neddy]

Neddy, go to dictionary.com and look up the word "scope" you'll see one listing as "aim or purpose". The SCOPE of ETW is the combination of Strategy and RTS. That's it's [sic] purpose, to take 2 [sic] game styles and merge them into a new, unique style. And when I mentioned it was "brand new", that's exactly what I meant. The game engine is BRAND NEW! (Also, we don't need the editorial [sic] for every typo I made [sic], this isn't Time Magazine.) I think it speaks for it's [sic] self [sic] when CA employees drop in to make personal comments on the status of the game to their dedicated fan site, and all they see is "you suck [sic] you suck [sic] you suck". Do you WANT a better TW game? Then live with the fact that ETW was not the god-send that review sites made it out to be and simply give you're [sic] thoughts, in a construtive [sic] manner, to the forum so they can piece together the overall conseus [sic] of the community. Is Empire finished? Maybe, but who knows? We very well could see a patch after NTW, especially if they don't have to race to catch up with the code development after release [sic] like they did with ETW. Who knows? But will damning CA and their products really bring about anything positive? Finally, I'm here positing [sic] for the same reason you are, because I can. Like I said on the other page, take it or leave [sic]. No [sic] one is forcing you to respond to my post.

*Just noticed Lusted is currently viewing this page. Keep up the hard work CA, some of us DO appreciate you trying to do something new*

Yep, I know what "scope" and "aim" or "purpose" mean, and for the life of me, I can't work out why you keep adding new words that you hadn't included in that post that I first quoted. You said it was a combination of RTS and strategy, and that it was the first of its kind. It isn't. Ditto for "engine". It is only something you've decided to add to your meaning now. Sheesh... you've even said it again:

The SCOPE of ETW is the combination of Strategy and RTS. That's it's [sic] purpose, to take 2 game styles and merge them into a new, unique style.

But Empire is not the "new, unique" combination of these two. TW might have once been, but "ETW" is not. And that's the point: CA were not beginning at scratch and just beginning to combine the two genres together.

I think it speaks for it's self when CA employees drop in to make personal comments on the status of the game to their dedicated fan site, and all they see is "you suck you suck you suck".

Really? Well who wrote that? The complaints, to me at least, seemed a lot more specific than the summary you just provided. Is that really what you read from this thread?! You should have another read in that case.

Finally, I'm here positing [sic] for the same reason you are, because I can. Like I said on the other page, take it or leave [sic]. No one is forcing you to respond to my post.

Yeah, we know. You're the person who complains about the people who are complaining about genuine grievances. No-one can work out what exactly it is about other people voicing their concerns that irks you so, but ... here you are anyway.

Is Empire finished? Maybe, but who knows? We very well could see a patch after NTW, especially if they don't have to race to catch up with the code development after release like they did with ETW.

And if anything is going to get them to change their minds and work out a hotfix or patch, telling them that everything is fine, the complaints are unjustified, and that we're happy with whatever is certainly going to work.

(Also, we don't need the editorial [sic] for every typo I made, this isn't Time Magazine.)

Get over it, and don't come crying to me because of your own mistakes. "[sic]" is hardly something that is limited to Time--let alone any crappy publication. It's a common device used in English to differentiate between the quoted person's mistakes and your own. If you re-read your own posts and bothered to fix your own "typos" I wouldn't need to place "[sic]" after every mistake of yours.

You should be happy that I went to the effort of noticing your errors and working out the meaning of your words despite those errors.

Just noticed Lusted is currently viewing this page. Keep up the hard work CA, some of us DO appreciate you trying to do something new*

The ... um ... whole point of this thread is that CA are no longer working on Empire. Instead, they are switching over to Napoleon. Just in case it hasn't sunk in, I'll paint it for you clearer: They're now working on Napoleon, and there is no claim that they will come back to Empire. It's gone. The "something new" that you are appreciating them "trying to do" and telling them to "keep up the hard work" in relation to is no longer being worked upon. They are working on Napoleon now.

Finally, I'm here positing [sic] for the same reason you are, because I can. Like I said on the other page, take it or leave. No [sic] one is forcing you to respond to my post.

Yep! I'll happily not waste another minute on people who wish to complain about other's complaints. Leaving it.

[Plautus]

It would spare us all time not to answer to those who try to at least convince, if not force us to like empire in this thread. I asked myself many times why they are posting here in order to shut us up. My own aswer to this is: trolling is trolling. And there is only one way to deal with trolling: ignoring.

On topic:

I dont hate empire. I do no longer play it. I will never ever again buy there products and i dont care if someone doesent believe me to be honest. I understand business that deliverer who dont fullfill there contract (mod tools etc, all those problems are mentioned big time) will loose there customer...lying, and big ass bad marketing will shorten that process. While i know that the gaming industry is working the other way i dont care a . They lost me as customer and i dont even care if they will loose there series or are even going bankrupt if others would do that as well. Maybe that would bring fresh wind into this market where customers are still treated like 14 yrs old kids even if statics show that this growing market has another mainstream.

To the creative minds, defending CA and trying to shut us up, im still here on TWC because of the great community, im still in the ETW forum because i bought ETW and i do not want to miss the opportunity to play a game which i bought in case it got repaired / modded or whats o ever.

[Lucullus]

Or you could even come to the conclusion that you can't ask of someone what you want to ask and live with something less than perfect. Especially in the case of girlfriends, you can't ever have the perfect girlfriend. You have to live with such things.

I'd say that if you expect the perfect girlfriend and want to get everything you have been promised, you're always going to end up disappointed.

In a relationship (no matter which kind) you will never find perfectness of course. But only those relationships will last where one tries to keep the partner happy over time and hes only measured by his actions not words. Broken promises seed distrust, leaving problems unresolved (unpatched so to say) kills every relationship.

CRM (customer relationship management) is extremely important. CA has zero. Communication only happens for 2 reasons:

1) Damage control (post release)
2) Marketing and trust blahblah fo feed the hype (pre release) --> "out of the sudden" officials talk to the community after months of zero substantial conversation

[MorganH.]

Originally Posted by TW Rehab
The general consensus of community feedback has been that 1.5 is all around (BAI included) a good patch that offers more fun.

Kind regards,
Kieran

The 1.5 patch was a great patch overall,only to bad it broke the BAI,and not for a minority !

But when even hundreds and hundreds of posts who were mentioning the issue or dozens of specific threads who were written on it,supported with many screenshots and movieclips,and the unofficial support from CA for Darth to fix it taking into consideration,Well when even then CA says its a minority problem, ill have to rest my case sadly !

[TW Rehab]

Dear all,

Thank you for those who have written considered responses and posed, polite difficult questions. I'll endevour to add some more to your points below.

Once more into the breach...

...you act like handing out those maps extended the universe in the same way as Unit Packs or other DLC did, when, in reality, those maps were only used by the select few who actually participated in the Competitive MP scene of ETW...

For those people who enjoy the multiplayer aspect of Total War, the maps were an important and welcome addition. We're sorry they're not your focus, but they did help some people enjoy the game more.

Backing on up, here. You're confirming that NTW will, in no way, effect ETW? You might want to get this information out to everyone else, because everyone still believes it will improve ETW. Even the NTW section of "Confirmed Information" on this board has NTW listed as augmenting ETW.

It's this kind of "cut a feature and don't tell anyone until after release" that made ETW a piece of crap game too.

At the present time NTW does not augment features into ETW. We had intended to do so and that is something we stated at the start of development. For reasons explained in my previous post, we can unfortunately no longer do that, hence us releasing the information here and elsewhere. We're not happy about that, but it's the current reality of the situation.

Napoleon has not yet been released, so hopefully this information has reached you in a timely manner.

Will you, Creative Assembly, continue to support Empire Total War with patches after Napoleon Total War is released?

The answer is currently no. This is because we will be concentrating on supporting the growth and enjoyment of Napoleon as a title. We are confident Napoleon will not need the same level of initial technical support as we have changed our development process to offer more polish, experience and stability. That said this may not always remain the case, as in there may be a further Empire patch should we decide there is time and resource to do so. Please do not take this as a 'promise' or commitment to do so, it is intended as no such thing. We are not trying to mislead you or imply something that is untrue. We will keep the situation under review and if technical time permits, it is possible we will return to Empire.

The main issue I currently have is the abandonment of ETW in the state it is in, while asking me to purchase the next title. Doing this while saying things like "judge us on our actions" is slightly offensive. Do you actually think that I haven't formed my opinion based on CA's "actions" ?

If you've had an experience that has lead you to feel let down by the company and the product, we're sorry. We love games and we love Total War above all others, we have to to make it. Where that experience doesn't measure up to peoples expectations is always disappointing for us. If that is because we've let expectations get too high or because the game itself is an under delivery (I'm guessing we'll be accused of both here) then we need to manage that better in future. Again, our hope is to showcase Napoleon as the great game it is and hopefully win back your trust, although we appreciate this may not be possible in some cases.

It is not lost on me that your PR account was created here very shortly before the new release - at a time when many of the fanbase is questioning their further support. We only seem to receive communication when CA has something to sell. What has CA really done to convince that support for NTW will be any better ?

We tend to restrict our communication to our official forums in order to give a central resource for community to interact with us. That said, it's important to try and reach out where possible and this is exactly that.
We're about to announce a measure that we hope will build a bit more trust before release, this will be carried in our forums.

is their a possibility some PC will act the same as they did with ETW even with recommended minimum CA specs for NTW.What happens then?

We cannot guarantee that every PC that ever runs Napoleon on whatever kind of setup the user runs it on will run Napoleon without a glitch. There isn't a piece of software that can. What we can say is that Napoleon will be stable, polished and most importantly fun. Again, this is something you will judge for yourself, either by buying the game or by reading the opinion of others whom you trust.

we patched it 6 times in as many months crap; you should be ashamed to even be saying that, not bragging about it.

What we're doing here is not bragging. We want to offer evidence for the claim of being dedicated to supporting a product post release. The fact that we did so is merely an indication of where we tried our utmost to support the majority of users overcome the majority of issues. This is not pride in the fact that there were problems, we were unhappy about this, so we tried to do something about them.

However, I still plead, along with hundreds of others here (literally) for an exception to be made here. Even if it isn't for several months, after NTW is rolled out...please give us some semblence of a workable BAI. Its such a crucial part of this game which has the potential to be really great....just one small issue remains in my eyes.

Understood, and as my answer to the patching Empire question above states, we will keep the situation under review. That said we are committed to supporting Napoleon post release and that means we have to make decisions on Empire in that light. We can't rule it out, for now we have to say no further patches are planned to be forthcoming, even if we change this later, purely because we don't want anyone to get a false hope in that regard.

Honestly, this game could be one of legend if we can just get the BAI sorted out.

I am sure you understand the frustration of the community as we all want this game to be all it can be. Its a win/win for the gamers and CA. Most of the people on this forum can influence at least a couple of other gamers to either buy or pass on your products. I will be happy to promote your products and increase your revenues if you continue to communicate with us and do everything in your power to pass along knowledge to fix what can be fixed to the community.

We do understand, its why I'm here. Your points as a community on BAI are being made loud and clear within CA. We cannot promise you action (As above) and we don't wish to mislead. Honestly, we will keep the situaiton under review and if time and resource permits we may attempt to revisit the issue.

So to us, there isn't anything natural about leaving so much critical work unfinished. In the end, it's impossible to escape the conclusion that you sold out the owners of ETW. You may have needed to do that for any number of reasons, but whatever the rationale, it still happened. And that's why I cannot support CA at this time by purchasing Napoleon. I'll have a look at what you're up to after that and I genuinely hope it's good; but NTW, I cannot go there "no matter what," because you won't support Empire.

We're sorry you feel that way. Perhaps my answer above gives you a little hope, perhaps not. We can't be perfect for every gamer and as before, if we've lost part of the communities trust, it needs to be regained. We'll keep working on making interesting and exciting games that we hope will bring you back. We believe Napoleon is genuinely good. That said, we appreciate you'll want to hear that from others, not me.

When your customers are struggling with the stability of your game, months and months after it has been released, the fact that you can direct resources towards DLC when the game is not working is NOT going to sit right. Those are the actions, and talking of "longetivity" and "expanding the universe"--when your fans are putting the Empire boxes on the shelves to gather dust--is specious twaddle.

The hard truth here is that the vast majority of our players who had any issues experienced less and less problems as the patches were released. When we got the focus on stability and performance right we provided some DLC. As we've said previously, DLC does not detract from the core patching effort. This is why we were able to release DLC after and during the patching effort. Again, we want to offer those gamers who are enjoying the game more variety and more experience. And there were a lot of these people, obviously this group is minimally represented here and we accept this audience will find that a harder message.

Additionally, patches and hot-fixes were released before the first DLC was even announced and our focus was always on getting the best experience for our players, before selling anything extra.

Blah. KB's greatest PR value would be to do a grand tour where he is put in stocks and pelted by the dissatisfied customers prevented from returning the game. Come to think of it, THAT is something I WOULD pay extra for....it would even be historically apt....

This is possibly the digital equivalent.

but well, doesn't it bother the developers that this game has caused so much discord amongst a community that was set up specifically around this franchise? I guess it won't die or anything, but how is it not a big deal to a company that their hardcore fanbase, that's stuck with the franchise, is so upset?

It does bother us. You chaps (and ladies) are our core support base. In political terms you're the people that either support the party or don't, not the undecideds. We don't take that lightly, and we recognise there's only so far we can please you, we just hope that's far enough. Can we do more? Yes we can. Could our efforts be better? Yes, which is what we're always working towards.

However this is the TWC. A place where the dedicated player,s, mod creators tend to congregate. Most of us know our TW games and mods backwards. We know when we have the real goods or a botched attempt. The new marketing strategy by Sega/CA has done serious damage to our TWC gathering, Our main platform, mods for the TW series has suffered a serious set back with the way ETW has been coded and released.

This is a fair point and one we'd like to address. Games need to be marketed. This involves doing articles and the like for the greatest majority of your potential audience. The vast majority of the TW audience are not represented here. As defined in your post, this is a place for those who are our 'hardcore'. To survive and grow commercially CA needs to sell its games to more people. This does not mean we 'dumb down' or 'market to the lowest common denominator' but it does mean we have to spread our focus. In so doing we naturally have less focus on the other groups, including the hardcore. We might not always talk, but we do listen. It's our intent to do more with you guys, but it will never be enough.

This comes back to the fact that you care about TW and so do we. So that's a good starting point for our communication.

1) We appreciate the grand vision that lies beneath Empire. Really, if made to its full potential, this would be a legendary game, one of the best (if not simply the best) of all time for me. TW is a series we love. I understand, having been on the receiving end of forum "love", how tough it is sometimes to log on and read people moaning, ignoring or misinterpreting what you wrote and voicing the same complaints over and over again. The only excuse we have - we do it because we love the idea of Total War.

Agreed, and as above we take that seriously.

2) We feel the game is still not... done. Here we judge you, as customers do, by your results. Not your efforts, not your investment, not your declarations, but down to earth results. And let's not kid ourselves - have you tried fixing a damaged fort in a game of Empire recently? How did that work out for you? Why is it, that after 6 patches and so much polishing, the game has numerous tiny bugs. I'm not talking big scale BAI/Sieges. I'm talking fort-fixing, Warpath content leaking and wrong voices... That doesn't seem difficult to fix. Maybe this is not true, and it is a vastly complex issue - if so, please explain. Many of us are reasonable people with reasonable expectations.

We know there are still some outstanding issues with Empire. Obviously we're not happy about that. We focused our effort (and delivery) on things like multicore support, stability and later game play such as campaign map AI and naval invasions. Where 'data' fixes are required we often have to redistribute data packs. These are the biggest files in your TW game directory and having everyone re-download them can be problematic. So our patch effort was performed on a 'severity of issue' basis. Where occasional sound bleeds were reported (A minority problem, not to trivialize it) it was deemed that this area did not need as much attention as say, CAI. So those things retained focus.

3) We feel somewhat cheated when we hear (for example) that mod tools are coming and ETW will have continuing support and then we hear you say "we could either release the mod tools or polish the game, so we chose to polish the game half-way and then discontinue support a month after stating the contrary". Please, be more careful with promises in the future.

Noted. For our part I'd ask that you verify the source of a quote or article and where needed, ask. We'll try and answer if a genuine misrepresentation has occurred. A good recent example of this is the recent 'Is Spain playable' issue.
We can't answer everything and some of what you read is journalist or player speculation, it's not always easy to tell where quotes or promises originated. But where it's clearly from us, or indeed me (Which may be the case here), we'll try to be more 'tightly worded'.

Another point on this is also relevant to my last post.

In development things can change very slowly and indeed very rapidly. Sometimes some things are overtaken by events, on occasion we can do more and on occasion we deliver less. What we can't do is go silent in the middle, and where issues occur we'll try and get them corrected promptly.


Again, hopefully we've gone some way with some more of the criticism. If not, feel free to place a polite question and we'll try to address it.

Kind regards,
Kieran

[Anibal at portas]

if napoleon totalwar is another disaster as empire totalwar with a horrible AI and diplomacy,antihistorical game,empty and bored campaing etc.

see what says now the mouth of sauron.

good propagandist who are these people.


I think the CA boys have played little with empire to see the disaster of the game that have made.

[big_feef]

The answer is currently no. This is because we will be concentrating on supporting the growth and enjoyment of Napoleon as a title. We are confident Napoleon will not need the same level of initial technical support as we have changed our development process to offer more polish, experience and stability. That said this may not always remain the case, as in there may be a further Empire patch should we decide there is time and resource to do so. Please do not take this as a 'promise' or commitment to do so, it is intended as no such thing. We are not trying to mislead you or imply something that is untrue. We will keep the situation under review and if technical time permits, it is possible we will return to Empire.

Thank you for that; to me that is the most important thing in this whole discussion: whether or not you're committed to supporting and fixing a product that is a slap-in-the-face flawed. The fact that it has to be put under 'review' while you deal with your new baby is enough to convince me to stop supporting your company.

[Neddy]

@TW Rehab:

Although I can appreciate the unpleasant errand you've been sent on, to come here and run this gauntlet, I'm also of the opinion that your actions have failed. For whatever reason, you are ceasing your support for Empire, and that reason is of no concern to me. You advertised a particular product (including a screenshot of a naval battle with land present (that still exists in stores today)) and you were happy to take my money without qualifying those advertisements. I don't owe you an extra "chance" and if I ever felt I did, it disappeared with your (ultimately honest) statement that you are ceasing your support of Empire.

DLC didn't distract from your core patching?! Well excuse me if I take your current and future statements with a grain of salt.

[Jevon]

Understood, and as my answer to the patching Empire question above states, we will keep the situation under review. That said we are committed to supporting Napoleon post release and that means we have to make decisions on Empire in that light. We can't rule it out, for now we have to say no further patches are planned to be forthcoming, even if we change this later, purely because we don't want anyone to get a false hope in that regard.

So, you are committed to supporting Napoleon post release... based on your past actions, I guess that means you'll be releasing a new product next winter and dropping all support for Napoleon at that time? Sure, I'll pay full price for that... again...

As a company, you have burned the 'trust' bridge I'm afraid. You have NOT done nearly enough to support Empire post release - DLC is a luxury, I'm talking about the kind of 'support' that actually makes the AI fun and challenging, no more crashing to desktop, corrupted saved games, etc. Heck, even in the technologies tabs there's a simple image bug that should take someone 30 seconds to fix...

My friends and I will buy Napoleon and all DLC for Empire and Napoleon if and when you can prove to me that you will support and stand by your products that we have already paid good money for. This means finally finishing Empire. CA will not get another cent from me until then.

With all the polishing going into NTW that you're talking about, and thus less support needed after release, surely that means CA will 'finally' have the time/money/man power to fix ETW.

Thanks for having the balls to throw yourself to us the wolves, ie throwing us a bone and some communication finally. Even though you're getting torched (and rightly so) it does help.

Now to make some more popcorn and read what was posted here while I was writing this

[random_samurai]

We are confident Napoleon will not need the same level of initial technical support as we have changed our development process to offer more polish, experience and stability.

I'll hold on to this little tidbit for future reference. Maybe you can ship the game with an AI capable of crossing water this time. Snide remarks aside, I'll watch how this one goes down from the sidelines.

On a side note, I also eagerly await to see if launch will see Steam errors again.

[Plautus]

I'll hold on to this little tidbit for future reference. Maybe you can ship the game with an AI capable of crossing water this time. Snide remarks aside, I'll watch how this one goes down from the sidelines.

On a side note, I also eagerly await to see if launch will see Steam errors again.

May i add:

- cross the water and reach a shore and land troops and (if this is not to much for your programer: land on senseful spot)?

[Principe Alessandro]

There isn't a piece of software that can. What we can say is that Napoleon will be stable, polished and most importantly fun. Again, this is something you will judge for yourself, either by buying the game or by reading the opinion of others whom you trust.

After having almost 50% of the work(ETW) done.

I only hope that you won't put again orrible things like pretty european buildings in middle east.

Even for them you don't need so much work, use models from arab cities of Medieval 2 and you are just fine.

[Pickle_mole]

Noted. For our part I'd ask that you verify the source of a quote or article and where needed, ask. We'll try and answer if a genuine misrepresentation has occurred. A good recent example of this is the recent 'Is Spain playable' issue.
We can't answer everything and some of what you read is journalist or player speculation, it's not always easy to tell where quotes or promises originated. But where it's clearly from us, or indeed me (Which may be the case here), we'll try to be more 'tightly worded'.

Another point on this is also relevant to my last post.

In development things can change very slowly and indeed very rapidly. Sometimes some things are overtaken by events, on occasion we can do more and on occasion we deliver less. What we can't do is go silent in the middle, and where issues occur we'll try and get them corrected promptly.


Again, hopefully we've gone some way with some more of the criticism. If not, feel free to place a polite question and we'll try to address it.

Kind regards,
Kieran

When kieran said this it was in response to a question someone posted about where is the mod tools. First he asked for a source (i dont have it yet, im at work) than he skipped the question, maybe on accident, then he never answered the question. So kieran what is the ETA on the mod tools?

[Lucullus]

No we can't promise an Empire patch, for reasons explained. By putting a finite list together of things you're unhappy with, which has been given by the feedback from you all here, we know where our hardcore fans feel we may have dropped the ball. This allows us to look at what we're doing and make sure the ball is picked back up where necessary.

The first fatal assumption from CA is that TWC represents the hardcore fans. They are among them but this board is also full with more or less casual fans. Talking to many ETW customers outside this board personally, your assumption that only the hardcore players have a problem with the state ETW was left in I strongly have to disagree with. The problem I see here is that CA has lost contact to the fanbase and not just the hardcore ones. The extremely "restrictive" forum policy on CAs homeboard has made it completely unrepresentative for your customers. Its full of claqueurs.

We are not here to sell you Napoleon. Of course we are proud of Napoleon, of course we believe it's a great addition to the series and yes of course we want to sell it; The fact remains that the majority of feedback here is clearly aimed at Empire. Yes as a company we want our fans to go for Napoleon...

You shouldnt try to persuade people to believe you are here to adress the problems with ETW and the concerns with CA if you refer to NTW in nearly every sentence. Just count how many times you use NTW and ETW.

Patches don't make money, so it would be commercially non-viable to count on patching a game post release as part of your business model. We don't mean to be churlish in pointing out the obvious, again, it's just to shed a little light on the conspiracy theory. It's likely some will read this statement as 'its not financially viable to support Empire so we don't'. We would hope to draw your attention to the number of patches released, their frequency and the duration with which they were distributed after Empires release.

Its called damage control. You had to patch it if you ever wanted to sell even a hundred copies of future titles. It was interesting to watch how CA observed the results of the patches. After 1.3 they hoped it could be enough but there were still too many people upset. With 1.4/1.5 however there was some good feedback during the first 2 weeks especially over on yuku where many of the claqueurs were in denial about broken BIA etc. Assumption from CA: Ok, that was good enough. Its not costeffective to make another patch. Problem: Many, many ETW customers had moved on allready and the homeboard couldnt give a representative overview anymore. Thats why CA is still in denial about the BAI. They made the false and critical assumption that only few people have problems with it. Wouldnt have happened if they wouldnt have lost the contact to their fans. Restrictive and biased forum policy is pointless anyway, I tend to argue it makes them loose a lot of credibility and potential muliplied lost customers.

We clearly did not find all the issues...

If that is true you are far from being professional. But I tend to believe you here as I assume you had no time at all to look for any issues with early march being the absolutely last opportunity to sell ETW before the end of sega sammys finacial year end of march - no matter in which state. Sad anyway.

[Respenus]

Does anyone find it ludicrous that in the days before massive internet usage, game developers were able to create games that fulfilled more the wishes of their potential customers than today? A "bunch of geeks" (gross oversimplification) managed to create something that today a big company worth of individuals cannot, even after massive input from their customers.

Long live the internet and gaming revolution!

[Humble Warrior]

Does anyone find it ludicrous that in the days before massive internet usage, game developers were able to create games that fulfilled more the wishes of their potential customers than today? A "bunch of geeks" (gross oversimplification) managed to create something that today a big company worth of individuals cannot, even after massive input from their customers.

Long live the internet and gaming revolution!

That`s because in those days the `geeks` actually cared about the game they were making. They had the imagination and wanted to see it come alive. This was very much the case with Shogun Total War when CA were still basically gaming `geeks` and all the better for it.

Now they`re corporate money greedy employees who need to use a propanganda staff member to talk for them, making them detached from the original ordinary player casual and not. We have no idea if our message even gets to the people that really matter as now they stand aloof like some snob from us, deigning to send kieran to deal with us.

[nigelnire]

I bought a game called take command 2nd Manassas a few years back made by a few guys on a limited budget and although no BAI is perfect its BAI is great forming really good battle lines, using formations advancing and retreating, flanking using cavalry. If Empires BAI was half as good I’d be happy and we are talking here about a small company with very limited resources. They are fantastic with their fan base and the game has been modded like crazy.
Check out this screen notice the units firing at each other if you don’t believe me go download the demo and compare to Empires BAI
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/wordp...assas/ohio.jpg

[Huberto]

I assume you had no time at all to look for any issues with early march being the absolutely last opportunity to sell ETW before the end of sega sammys finacial year end of march - no matter in which state. Sad anyway.

I had forgotten about SEGA's fiscal year end. This explains a lot! It's also true now CA needs big Napoleon sales prior to March 31 so SEGA can book them.

If we want to change their stance with respect to Empire, we have this window of opportunity to influence them.