Have CA cracked it?

Yes I know it's still early days and the game has only just come out for a few but I have been reading this forum for weeks now and all the review and though I haven't purchased the game yet NTW appears to have got off to a promising start. A couple of negative comments but a lot more positive

I still feel like CA owning me an excuse or a refund. If I buy NTW it will sit right next to ETW. ETW which I know cannot run because of the dreaded bug with Nvidias latest Forceware driver (missing woods, cities, weapons). And CA wont fix it.

As I cannot erase the game from my Steam account I will be constantly remembered how CA screwed me - screwed us all - and what a big letdown ETW was.

I'm still not convinced to buy NTW. But as I said...I love the era...I'd love to play...argh!

Originally Posted by GODzilla

As I cannot erase the game from my Steam account I will be constantly remembered how CA screwed me - screwed us all - and what a big letdown ETW was.

Same. I wish i could delete the whole thing. We who have ETW really should be given NTW free for our effort. Or that they fix ETW, which I suspect they increasingly won`t. We`ll be lucky to even get this BAI patch now, i`ll bet.

Originally Posted by GODzilla

I still feel like CA owning me an excuse or a refund. If I buy NTW it will sit right next to ETW. ETW which I know cannot run because of the dreaded bug with Nvidias latest Forceware driver (missing woods, cities, weapons). And CA wont fix it.

As I cannot erase the game from my Steam account I will be constantly remembered how CA screwed me - screwed us all - and what a big letdown ETW was.

I'm still not convinced to buy NTW. But as I said...I love the era...I'd love to play...argh!

181.22 drivers work fine for me, quit the nerdrage and rollback. TW series is my fav game genre so its not a problem having slightly older drivers....the grafix card still runs fine..and for all the ETW haters, i do agree vanilla is complete junk, try darthmod ultimate commander, its like night and day.

Napoleon was intented all along to be the expansion to Empire. Just like Alexander is to Rome. Empire however was such a disaster, although it sold like wildfire, they let Empire's platform sail into the sunset and made a standalone game/expansion. Empire just isn't stable enough to tie in a full-fledged expansion. I wouldn't expect any more support and/or stuff for Empire, it's a dead horse.

I just checked my retailer btw and he said I wasn't the only one asking about Napoleon. But... almost all of them just want to know the price, they aren't buying until they read more from gamers online. Good. Like Angry Joe said, we have a very good reason from 2009 to be pissed and/or hesitant

Originally Posted by vrgadin

181.22 drivers work fine for me, quit the nerdrage and rollback.

Despite your nice words which normally would be enough to simply ignore the little fanboy that you are I try to give you an answer:

I wont roll back to such an old driver. Driver updates make sense. They fix bugs, introduce new features, boost performance and are essential to a stable system. Every support on earth first asks if you got the latest (WHQL) drivers installed and if you don't they say: Do it.

ETW is a rare and special case. Having bought 15 full priced retail games in 2009 I know for sure that 14 of them - no matter if they're from January or from December - are still running. They work with the latest drivers, the didn't suffer new bugs. They just run. And they should be because that's the standard.

A standard ETW is not meeting. CA did something wrong if their game runs faulty on a WHQL graphic driver on a graphic card that is well established in the market (Nvidia GTX 260, so nothing exotic really) only a year after release. Don't get me wrong, I know that older games tend to malfunction on newer hardware and software. Like Star Wars Republic Commando, where the bump mapping doesn't work on modern graphic cards.

But ETW is not old. It's brand new, so to speak. Yet it was unfinished, faulty and badly programmed from the very beginning.

Originally Posted by GODzilla

I still feel like CA owning me an excuse or a refund. If I buy NTW it will sit right next to ETW. ETW which I know cannot run because of the dreaded bug with Nvidias latest Forceware driver (missing woods, cities, weapons). And CA wont fix it.

As I cannot erase the game from my Steam account I will be constantly remembered how CA screwed me - screwed us all - and what a big letdown ETW was.

I'm still not convinced to buy NTW. But as I said...I love the era...I'd love to play...argh!

I had that problem with ETW as well, all you need to do is rollback your drivers to an earlier version.

Not a difficult process.

However, I too would be curious to know if CA fixed the driver issue, as I would like to move on in drivers.

@ Godzilla


Did you try & play Empires since patch 1.4 mate? I had a lot of similiar problems till then too but that fixed it for me. I looked at your specs & ive got the same drivers as you only my graphics card is only an 8800 GTS 512. Maybe worth a try but of course it varies with every OS I guess.

cheers,scottie3.

Originally Posted by scottie3

@ Godzilla


Did you try & play Empires since patch 1.4 mate? I had a lot of similiar problems till then too but that fixed it for me. I looked at your specs & ive got the same drivers as you only my graphics card is only an 8800 GTS 512. Maybe worth a try but of course it varies with every OS I guess.

cheers,scottie3.

Even with the latest patch I still have AA and AF problems with Empire. From what I have seen Napoleon doesn't seem to have the same problems.

I guess it depends what interests you in a game. Word is the AI still can't handle a stationary force of equal power on normal settings and there are still many features of older TW games missing, but I believe the general consensus is that the graphics are in fact better.

I'd get it anyway, of course (MPC would be a seller for me), but while CA boycotts the TW modders, Nvidia and the truth, I can't see my conscience removing its trade embargo on CA.

I think NTW looks rather promising after reading a few threads about it. Won't know for sure before friday, though.

Only negative I have come across so far is:
- NTW doesn't alter ETW
- NTW got too few factions and the map is too small (not really a surprise to anyone, but the one stating this in the OP for the "Wow that was fast" thread)

I still haven´t made up my mind yet., but i´ll be keeping my eyes on the forum.

I still feel that CA abandoned ETW to soon. Not just with patches and stuff, but I would have loved an ol´ school expansion pack like "Kingdoms".

Originally Posted by Daneboy

I still haven´t made up my mind yet., but i´ll be keeping my eyes on the forum.

I still feel that CA abandoned ETW to soon. Not just with patches and stuff, but I would have loved an ol´ school expansion pack like "Kingdoms".

this is the expansion to empire.

Originally Posted by Bigfootedfred

this is the expansion to empire.

No, its a standalone. You do not have to have ETW and it does not install any new files to ETW.

Originally Posted by GrnEyedDvl

No, its a standalone. You do not have to have ETW and it does not install any new files to ETW.

well some CA staff have stated on this very forum that its a standalone expansion...but i guess call it whatever you want

Originally Posted by Bigfootedfred

this is the expansion to empire.

Well, yes, it should have been. Instead they are selling it as a new game, less than a year after the release of Empire.

It doesn't alter ETW? But they said it would...somebody has the old announcement of this? I'm absolutely sure they said it would introduce some new features to ETW!

Originally Posted by GODzilla

It doesn't alter ETW? But they said it would...somebody has the old announcement of this? I'm absolutely sure they said it would introduce some new features to ETW!

Hi GOD, they said a lot of things, this was one of them. First it would alter ETW, then it would if they had time, I guess finally they realized that they had no time (or will) to do it.

Wish I could delete ETW from my memory.
Anyway, onwards and upwards to NTW, which seems to be quite good, the best place so far to see is the guy doing the stream.

Well, I'm not going to pay before I'm certain its playable on my machine. And I want to make sure it stays playable so I guess I have to wait till they publish the last patch(wich should be about november this year, if not earlier). Too bad you can't believe a PR guy on this word (as they proved last time).... they could have been a bit richer.