On the Fence for a Purchase

[Cornelius Plautus]

I've been wanting to play this game for ages, and now that it's only about thirty dollars, I figure I might give it a shot; however, I've been hearing some terrible things about ETW, and I wanted some opinions before I committed thirty dollars to the affair.

It should be worth mentioning that I have been really fascinated with the workings of a 1700's army, specifically those of the British army recently, and wanted a game that would accurately (while still being fun) portray that time period.

My System is:

Dell Inspiron 530
Nvida gtx 260
2 GB RAM
2.66 Processor
32 bit Windows Vista Basic

Should my machine be able to handle this game? Is it even worth it?

Thanks a million!

[Darth_Revan]

i think you could run it maybe on medium? whats the amount of video MB on your vid card? and are you running dual core? quad? amd x 2?? also if you do, play the darth mod

[hellas1]

@Cornelius Plautus,

Look brother, I b**ched and complained about ETW that because of the Battle Artificial Intelligence ESPECIALLY and other issues that NTW should be boycotted. I changed my mind about boycotting being effective AND I gave CA a chance to "redeem" themselves, as they had requested, result:
NTW is better than ETW but not perfect.

Now, a company like Sega won't stop and say "Pardon us...We believe you are totally right in ALL of your assessments....We'll fix ETW to be just like NTW." It's not happening.

However, a promised BAI patch/fix IS due to be released. Until then, WAIT and save your $$ and let us who got screwed with ETW post regarding the BAI patch/fix (should be called patch 1.6, I believe BTW.)

Watch the official forums for more info. regarding the BAI patch/fix, WHY?:

The BAI as is for ALMOST ALL ETW owners is broken:
- Units rush towards the center of your line like madmen, only shooting minimally first. (pathfinding issue)
- Units form squares 25-50 feet in front of your line allowing you to blow them away like nothing. (Who knows what kind of issue this ultimatley is! I sure don't!)
- Units shuffle in front of one another and front and back of one another as well. (pathfinding issue)

Buyer beware dude,
hellas1

[Heavy Weapons Guy]

i think you could run it maybe on medium? whats the amount of video MB on your vid card? and are you running dual core? quad? amd x 2?? also if you do, play the darth mod

Actually he couldn't run Darth Mod! If he is on medium he couldn't fight with 350 unit regiments!

[Cornelius Plautus]

Actually he couldn't run Darth Mod! If he is on medium he couldn't fight with 350 unit regiments!

What!?

[Heavy Weapons Guy]

Darthmod increases unit sizes, if you can only run game on medium your comp couldn't handle that much units! It would lag!

[irish437]

How much game time are you looking at getting out of the game? I guarantee you will get at least 30 hours of entertainment out of it. Once you go beyond that, you may or may not find the bugs/glitches to be game killers.

I personally like it much better than Napoleon TW due to the Suicude Generals and the fact that the BAI is WORSE than ETW if artillery is present.

[rubenandthejets]

You could probably run it-I've got similar specs (duo core) and I get pretty good preformance / FPS on low end graphics. Minimum requirements for a game are the Big Lie, up there with "the cheque is in the mail" or "size doesn't matter".

You'll need to really squeeze your memory to get the best out of it-clear all non essential programs, overclock a little, maybe run some software to free up memory, optimise your graphics card, stuff like that. You can get some good performance, but you'll need to tweak your rig.

As for the game itself, well, there are plenty of threads about if it's good or bad, what kind of problems you can expect etc. You'll probably turn to some of the mods (see the "Hosted Mods" and "Released Mods" threads ) to get some more unit skins or change the style of the game to one that suits you better. It's pretty unlikely that CA will contintue to support ETW now that they have a new game in the shops, but stranger things have happened, I guess.

I'll just say I played all of the other games in the series and was a bit disappointed as I was expecting a lot more. I did get many hours of gameplay out of it, maily thanks to some gameplay mods like DMUC, but I've kind of given up on it and gone back to more immersive, reliable and moddable titles in the series.

[hellas1]

Hi all,

Again ETW as is, IS broken.

CA's official rep. DID state that the BAI fix will be forthcoming. I believe them, NTW being out and getting patched as well, regardless.

IF CA puts out an official statement and DON'T deliver, They're DONE for in this community. Period.

hellas1

[Blofeld2k]

hellas: the BAI patch will address (not necessarily fix) 3 things: melee bug + leapfrogging glitch + blob issue. Don't expect it to address anything else.

To the OP: If you have money burning in your pocket buy the game. If you are a fan of strategy and diplomacy stay away.

[Nebulosa]

It's certainly not a no-brainer and depends a lot on you.

First of all, the specifications seem okay. My notebook has similar settings and it runs very decently even on high graphics and ultra large unit size. However, I have experienced as well as heard strange things about the entire Total War series in regard to graphics - not only is it often unpredictable what settings improve performance, I have also had people on better computers tell me the game was running worse.

Second, the atmosphere of Empire Total War is well done. That alone can provide for some enjoyment.

Third, learning the enhanced depth of the game can entertain you for a while.

Fourth, how you experience the difficulty depends a lot on what history of playing Total War games you have. Playing ETW after MTW2 is a bit like playing RTW after MTW - graphics and game depth took a leap forward, AI and therefore difficulty took a plunge, and that is even so with mods. The game can probably be enjoyed best by people who never played TW before. Given that the experience on how to win is transferable between TW games, it will in no case give you the same challenge as any TW game before, even if the remaining bugs and glitches (that affect difficulty) should be fixed. Since you can not play as many small, hard factions as in other parts of the series, and the large factions are extremely easy, the time you can enjoy challenging campaigns is short unless you don't mind playing the same faction more than once.

Fifth, how you experience can also depend on how much you have read the forums, especially this one, before playing. Having read the threads here will make you immediately see the bugs and glitches that would otherwise probably only begin to disturb and annoy you after getting accustomed to the game.

Sixth, some of the remaining bugs are indeed bad and shouldn't even have been there at release, let alone one year after.

Seventh, the initial playing time (the time between after buying when playing it almost every day) will probably be shorter than for other games in the series. I have bought it only three weeks ago, and I don't expect to play it much longer unless some patches come out (which is not to be expected); considering that my initial playing times were ~6 months for MTW, ~4 months for RTW, ~3 months for MTW2 (decreasing with every sequel, which is to be expected because the novelty value of a new sequel is never as great as that of a new series), that IS short.

In short: The game will provide you with some days, maybe weeks, of good, solid gaming time. But there are some flaws and bugs that prevent it from being what it could have been, and seeing this lost potential is disturbing. If you expect an epiphany or anything close to what was advertised from it, you will be disappointed. If you have more realistic expectations, it might be worth the money.

[vonDuus]

Eighth: If you expect to experiment with linear battle formations you are in for a disappointment. You can deploy your troops in a line allright, but column formations is a joke.

[Cornelius Plautus]

Nebulosa, thank you for the advice. I think I will purchase the game now. Please, have some reputation!

As a general question, what is Darthmod, and how much more strenuous on one's system is it than ETW?

[rubenandthejets]

Just go and read the thread in the HOSTED MODS section.
Lots of info there.

[scott_e]

I've been wanting to play this game for ages, and now that it's only about thirty dollars, I figure I might give it a shot; however, I've been hearing some terrible things about ETW, and I wanted some opinions before I committed thirty dollars to the affair.

It should be worth mentioning that I have been really fascinated with the workings of a 1700's army, specifically those of the British army recently, and wanted a game that would accurately (while still being fun) portray that time period.

My System is:

Dell Inspiron 530
Nvida gtx 260
2 GB RAM
2.66 Processor
32 bit Windows Vista Basic

Should my machine be able to handle this game? Is it even worth it?

Thanks a million!

its a WONDERFUL WONDERFUL game, has soooooo many plus point. Have played this game more that i have every playing anything ....even "Football Manager" ! I appreciate the time and effort an indepthness of research CA put into these products. Granted a few bugs along the way but these things happen.

[nopasties]

Darthmod comes in different settings. You can get Darth lite which does not have some of the changes like larger units and doesnt add some of the smaller mods that would strin you system.

I got Empire 3 weeks ago after holding out because of the lack of moddability. I got it off of Steam for $10. Like alot of people joke, Empire is really more of a beta version. The scope of the game, covering North America, India and Europe is epic. The vanilla version is not worth more then 30 hours of your time without getting boring to non-enjoyable. Darthmod can easily double to triple the replayability but still the lack of moddability in Empire seriously cuts down on the replayability of the game.

The moddability of RTW and MTW2 vastly extended the replayability and CA has no intentions of allowing Empire to be as moddable.

[Cornelius Plautus]

Darthmod comes in different settings. You can get Darth lite which does not have some of the changes like larger units and doesnt add some of the smaller mods that would strin you system.

I got Empire 3 weeks ago after holding out because of the lack of moddability. I got it off of Steam for $10. Like alot of people joke, Empire is really more of a beta version. The scope of the game, covering North America, India and Europe is epic. The vanilla version is not worth more then 30 hours of your time without getting boring to non-enjoyable. Darthmod can easily double to triple the replayability but still the lack of moddability in Empire seriously cuts down on the replayability of the game.

The moddability of RTW and MTW2 vastly extended the replayability and CA has no intentions of allowing Empire to be as moddable.

Thanks; I feel much better about purchasing a copy tomorrow.

Also, thanks for telling me about darthmod lite. I am definitely going to give that one a look!