Why does everyone hate this game?

[RootsKW]

I heard it was really glitchy when launched, but didn't the patches fix it? I'm having a ball with Medieval 2 and its mods right now, and I downloaded the Empire demo and thought it was a ton of fun.

[Tiberius Tosi]

Because people are whiny, personally I hated M2TW, but maybe thats because I never got in to mods for that game. I like Empire, hell actually I love it. To each his own I guess, a lot of people expected too much of it, partially because of CA promising too much and partially because their imagination went wild. Once the game came out in the state that it did (which I had no problems with it so I didnt' complain), many peoples' ideas on the game were concrete and they will refuse to change their opinion until the game is "perfect" which it will never be, nor has any other total war game been even close to in the past.

That's just my opinion...

[bigfootedfred]

Because people are whiny, personally I hated M2TW, but maybe thats because I never got in to mods for that game. I like Empire, hell actually I love it. To each his own I guess, a lot of people expected too much of it, partially because of CA promising too much and partially because their imagination went wild. Once the game came out in the state that it did (which I had no problems with it so I didnt' complain), many peoples' ideas on the game were concrete and they will refuse to change their opinion until the game is "perfect" which it will never be, nor has any other total war game been even close to in the past.

That's just my opinion...

Agree 100%...well 90% i liked m2tw lol

i love ETW

i will tell you whats funny though, ive found for quite a while now here, if you dare to say you like ETW, you get jumped on by the aforementioned people,
Demanding to know "how can you possibly like the worst thing ever created in the history of mankind"

at OP

Id suggest getting it yourself and deciding for yourself, its pretty cheap now i think so give it whirl, if you dont like it, not that big a deal.

[gary]

Because people are whiny, personally I hated M2TW, but maybe thats because I never got in to mods for that game. I like Empire, hell actually I love it. To each his own I guess, a lot of people expected too much of it, partially because of CA promising too much and partially because their imagination went wild. Once the game came out in the state that it did (which I had no problems with it so I didnt' complain), many peoples' ideas on the game were concrete and they will refuse to change their opinion until the game is "perfect" which it will never be, nor has any other total war game been even close to in the past.

That's just my opinion...

Err... the reason why many disliked the game was because many could not play it! on acount of it being bugged, glitchy, ctd's. those who have had no trouble with the game i guess they are in the minority judging by other forums. I have played pc games for years but IMO empire to my mind was a disaster because of the countless problems many were having i wont be buying another creation off CA. Thats my opinion. The fact that they have turned their back on the modding comunity with DLc says so much more about the new way CA do busness.

[Enemy0fSociety]

Yea, to be honest, I play most if not all of the entire game on "low" quality. I don't really mind either as long as the frame rate is great and I can play it! I love this game but the time period mostly.

- EoS

[Miracles]

I don't hate ETW. In fact I rather like it. The poor battle AI is what put me off sometimes but it's still a great game to me.


Hear that CA now make us Shogun II Total War already!

[Blofeld2k]

Hear that CA now make us Shogun II Total War already!

Now that is a game that has potential and I would be serious about buying, not a overcharged expansion, or wait, a "premium-standalone-expansion".

[Zomg]

It seems to me that some people have really bad battle AI's (BAI), while others dont.

I have never experienced the problems with excessive melee charging etc. Enemy cavalry always flanks and hits at opportune times like when I'm engaged, and enemy armies always make me go to them unless they are the attackers or very much greater in number. It puts up a reasonable fight.

I think many of the performance problems are system based so some people really hate the game because it doesnt work right for them, while others like myself quite enjoy it. There are some legit problems, but contrary to some peoples overgeneralizations, they have put out a fair number of patches which have improved the game drastically from release (the campaign AI was extremely passive mainly).

[Blofeld2k]

To be able to repair walls is hardly asking too much, don't you agree Tiberius Tosi? And this is just one of the things they blatantly ignored.

RootsKW: People are "whining", as the fan boys like to call it, because CA constantly ignore any plea's from the community to fix the game, and to deliver what was promised. People also "whine" because we see the same thing with NTW that was done with M2TW and ETW which is a massive pre-launch PR that has little to do with what is actually delivered. Nice cut scenes and eye candy, no real facts on Campain AI or Battle AI. The faulty CAI and BAI is up to the consumers to discover on their own, after purchase.

This is why people are "whining".

[bobbo]

Sometimes I wonder this too, why I am a whiner even though i don't play this game and am most likely finished with the TW series.

I am a big fan of TW since Shogun, but sadly while I feel the series while graphically has improved, the guts of the game hasn't and has actually stagnated or got worse. And after all the lies and PR rubbish we got before empire and how that turned out, it's left a bitter taste in the mouth and a feeling of somewhat being hoodwinked or cheated.

Truth is I want the TW series to be fantastic and I love the huge battles. But they are no fun and no challenge and the moronic AI does nothing but infuriate me. So we complain and whinge and whine and moan and groan and grumble and cry, and the developers don't listen to a single thing we say.

All the developers can do is improve the graphics, change the skins, and put new hats on the soldiers.

[SnjoNegri]

Ive been complaining about entire cities being reduced to just a school here, and a mine there.

Oh, France is apparently one state. Way to show your bias Creative Assembly. Retards.


Least they could have done was leave us with enough mod tools to fix the game. We could have done their work for them but they leave us with garbage.

[Markmilan]

I love ETW, think its a great game. Not playing with any mods either.

Am hoping CA make a ETW II 1800-1899 adding Africa.

[Killian]

I don't hate it,I just can't play it

every time I attempt to,it just crashes.

[leonn]

i dont hate it either,i cant play it at all because steam doesnt work for me.

[Halvars-XII]

Things i hate about ETW

1. BAI almost every time goes straight into melee
2. BAI dosent know how to use cavalary
3. The BAI reacts to your mouse clicks
4. You cannot repiar walls
5. Maharathas Conquers whole of india an Expands long into Europe (pretty much every campiagn)
6. No scroll bar in units recruitment (so when adding units to the game u cannot get an overiew over the diffrent units)
7. Everything about seiges sucks, Ninja ropes, pathfinding, BAI etc
well it can go on and on....

[Jarus]

I really despise the resolution scaling in this game, which results in (for my 1440x900 monitor) really hard-to-read blurry text.

[Tim_Ward]

10 Reasons Empire Sucks:

1) AI
2) siege battles
3) AI
4) Broken reinforcement system
5) Can't repair walls after a siege because CA are too lazy to fix it.
6) AI
7) Idiotic and lazy implementation of pirates
8) AI
9) Poor balance which doesn't reflect history (Super Maratha)
and, most importantly
10) AI

[dmcheatw]

I think most of the negativity comes from what happened around the time of the game's release. ETW was supposed to have been out in shops by around September 2008 but it got delayed for months. CA reassured fans by saying that this was done in order to sort out bugs, and that ETW would no doubt be the best game in the series' history. Hype for the game reached stratospheric levels.

Come March 2009 the gaming magazines and review sites were praising ETW to high heaven, I quote:

Total PC Gaming
"The greatest strategy game of all time." 100%

Game Informer
"This is one of the most sophisticated, entertaining, and historically accurate strategy games ever made." 95%

IGN
"...deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the greatest names in gaming history." 9.5/10

This only increased people's excitement for the game.
Then the public finally got to play it. And they got a taste of the masses of bugs, crashes and missing features. AI was extremly poor, and even fundamental features didn't work - like distorted music, sound cutting off, the game being slow and jerky even on high end machines with the graphics set low, and soldiers refusing to take orders during battles. Some of the bugs were very silly, like asking an agent to leave a city, only to have the army depart instead. The game was practically drowning in faulty features, bugs, glitches and poor presentation (no option for managing saved games on the loading menu for instance). Even the much vaunted new naval battles managed to disappoint. The game was so faulty for the majority of people that it was practically unplayable.
As a result, there was a backlash against CA and professional game reviewers. Many fans felt that they had been lied to or duped into buying a faulty game. Some people seemed to take this rather personally.

The fact that we had to wait several months for big patches to sort this out only frustrated people even more. There was/is a sense that the fans' requests weren't/aren't being listened to by the designers.

[emperor77]

Release
Empire: Total War has exceeded all our expectations. It's one of those rare "great works" that the team will remember with enormous pride for the rest of their lives, and the public will remember as one of the landmark games of the decade

Mike Simpson

October
I had 6 copies of Empire: Total War sat on my shelf intended for close gamer friends that I didn’t send out because I was too embarrassed about the flaws.

Mike Simpson

nuff said really

[irish437]

I like the game, I think many others like the game. What we don't like is that it was overly ambitious, CA made promises and didn't deliver. Worse yet, they spun things and flat out lied in some instances. And now they are pretty much abandoning it.

Its more frustration than anything. If the game worked on all levels it would be worth easily $100 to $200. Its that deep. Unfortunately they skipped out on fixing some glaring problems and then CA told us with a smile that EMpire was a "wounded donkey" and NTW will be a "thoroughbred". So we should just buy that instead.

I think what you are seeing is a disdain for CA's PR spinning and not necessarily for the game. The game just needs a few fixes and it would be great. In its currents state its decent. I got my money's worth, but I am not chomping at the bit to buy any more CA products.