After watching Master and Commander and Waterloo, decided to give ETW a run.. I also read somewhere that CA said they may go back and fix it as a lot of people still play it.
The game isn`t bad in part, and there`s a LOT of potential. But what use is potential if it is not brought up to it?
Sieges- ugh. Still awful.
1.Campaign map: Enemies never retreat, no matter what the number. Not troops nor ships.
2.Maratha still causes that dreaded slowdown halfway into the game (can`t believe CA never sorted that out).
3. Diplomacy- Playing as British -"Give me Ireland, give me Scotland!" From everyone, even the Indians... again, and again, and again.
4. Peace? Anyone want peace? nope, let`s just fight no matter what.
That said campaign Ai isn`t that bad as at least the enemy will do naval invasions on me and make me fight.
Battles aren`t bad until...
1. Cavalry that react when you
TARGET them, not when actually under fire. Bad coding. I can literally `dance` them by targetting, not targetting.
2. Troops get easily confused, both yours and theirs, especially in sieges.
3. Arty goes into weird walking mode through troops and become unkillable.
Etc, etc, etc.
MODs do save the situation a bit. Sieges can be just got rid of and with the smoke/blood mods is pretty immersive in battles.
You`d think if CA truly were professional creative artists it would bug them in leaving such a big and unique game so incomplete, and they would go back and fix these most glaring problems, even years later, but no, they just can`t be arsed.
CA and their carrot-on-a-stick routine of `maybe we`ll fix it` - such nonsense. Pity there really isn`t anything better out there when you want up in your face 18th century battles and strategy.