92

Massive Scale and Utter Detail

This game is impressive. Simply impressive. After playing this game I see myself going to bed and thinking about how im going to manage my trade routes for maximum profit while keeping my allies appeased when I make dealings with their enemies; how I'm going to take a settlement and hold it against the hostile borders how I'm going to take control of the entire Atlantic Ocean.

In Empire Total War you have to build the improvements gradually more and more complex to increase your revenue and get other bonuses, in addition to the mother city, the possession of which will determine control of the region, but in addition there will be a series of settlements according to the government can grow and evolve from small and insignificant villages and large cities, leading to 'empire of attractive returns in economic terms and not only. On the battlefield scenarios are much richer not only to the static elements with which you can interact directly to obtain tactical advantages, but also a lay of the land. This will allow more variety to choose from an infinite number of possible new tactics, thus making every single fight. The introduction of firearms has also completely changed the way to deal with the battles in Medieval 2 and, basically, everything led back to the crowded melee Empire in the vast majority of the fighting will take place over the distance, with hundreds of soldiers who bombard a musket.

Simply speaking, you will put so much time into this game and every single second would be worth it.

Also it would guarantee you A+ in your Historical Economics and Geography exams.

78

Not the greatest TW game but good

While the game adds a lot of complexity to the frame that existed from earlier series in a way that makes the game more realistic and engaging (such as making mines, farms, etc. points within territories that must be defended), the added complexity becomes quite repetitive quite quickly. Unfortunately, the added complexity almost appears to be a half-baked after thought. Diplomacy in the game is almost comically horrible. Military alliances have been replaced by a general alliance system which makes it almost impossible to ally with certain nations due to factors outside the control of the player. Furthermore, it is almost impossible to develop a peace treaty with combatant nations regardless of who started the war or if territory changed hands leading to wars that have lasted for over fifty years (hardly realistic of the time period). Battles also appear quite buggy with animations being performed at the wrong time. While purely cosmetic, it does put a dampener on what is supposed to be the game's main feature. Another problem with the battles is their repetitiveness. While I don't mind fighting a battle for 45 minutes, I have used the same two tactics in almost every battle with either very few losses, or losses that are disproportional to those inflicted on the enemy. Finally, we have the steam element. After purchasing this game, be ready to wait for a roughly 1.5 gig patch to download through steam, and be sure to run steam offline if you have a bad connection. Otherwise, you will be unable to play as you have to be online to turn on the offline mode for steam (go figure). One distinguishing plus to add, however, is the naval battles. Although these are incredibly slow (even with the fast forward button), it is a legit step above simply having ships auto battle each other (especially when your nation is Dependant on a navy to hold its empire together. Graphics are also amazingly good save for the bugs mentioned above. Unfortunately, these are only present in the battles themselves where in general, you're too busy fighting to notice them. In general, Empire Total War is a great game if far from perfect. Admittedly, it was somewhat of a let down for me in comparison to Rome Total War. While fun at first, the problems I mentioned take quite a bit of the fun out of the game. Furthermore, the complexity, which does add a challenging layer, is one more thing to have to have to look after while still implementing the same interface present in Rome Total War which presents its limitations quite quickly.

75

OverUnderrated

Creative Assembly have come out with some of the best strat games to grace the genre and the platform. This is no different, It's not perfect, but it's essentially Shogun 2 Total War's Alpha model, if you like. But anyway, The Good points i can make about the game are as follows, -Varied campaign map to the borderline monotonous European continent, Although would have liked more of Africa involved. -Engaging sea battles, difficult to master but ultimately worth the split hairs due to outright shit AI -Semi Accurate representation of the period's land battles. The game's battle ai wasn't the sharpest nail in the box, and was sometimes laughably easy. But i found other times that it really hammered me.

Now for the ultimately terrible points -The cannons were about as effective as BB guns (at the same range), Luckily they fixed this in Napoleon(sort of) but then went OP in Shogun? -The forts were OP, it took almost all the ammo of 2 sets of Demi guns to knock a wall down, thus eliminating the possibilty of multiple entry ways unless you wanted 4 valuble slots taken up by nearly useless units, by the time your cannons had done the work, they had swarmed the entrance, and what should have been an easy pound and ground turns into a bloodbath at the entrance, more often than not for you. With a lack of "heavy infantry" and decent cavalry to smash down the defenders, it turns into an awkward pokey shooty match between the two of you. -The units were terribly bland, and gave more of an industrial feeling to your armies than you should have got with a game this "advanced", with only one skin for line infantry, it was more than a little disappointing in that respect. -The America's are also a sore point. Some provinces were far too isolated to be of any use, and sometimes you were on the march 3 or 4 turns to reach it (plains nations, im looking at you) and by then you were fed up.

Now i'm not saying don't buy this game, I'm just saying buy Napoleon instead. For the simple reason that, they fixed maybe 80% of the crap from Empire in Napoleon, Eg Naval Battles(praise the lord) and land battles(and pass da ammunition). Plus, I spent many an evening chasing down Napoleon himself while waging a costly war against Prussia. Much fun.

82

Great game hampered by too many bugs

The scope of this game is massive. Creative Assembly tried to do a whole bunch of new things with this game. Multiple continents, trade theaters, navel combat. They succeeded in some areas but completely and utterly failed in others.

I'll start with what CA did correctly. The navel battles are a welcome addition to the game. The ships look beautiful as does the water. If you have the graphics card for ultra settings you will not be disappointed. The huge campaign map is really nice, it gets away from just fighting in Europe all the time. The Campaign AI after the 1.4 patch has started to behave like it deserves the title artificial intelligence.

CA failed a lot with the game. The Battle AI is non existent. It rushes the middle of your battle lines only to be encircled and destroyed, utterly, every battle every time. Land armies are a little bland. One model for line infantry just team colored. The land graphics are good up close. Though they brought back clone armies. Farther away the game switches to sprites at inappropriate distances and looks terrible. Fort battles are a mess and boring, the BAI is so terrible you can hold a fort with minimal forces outnumbered 3 to 1. CA's support is terrible with this game, It took patches up to 1.3 to get the game playable. Then after 1.4 and whatever 1.5 did they decided the game is finished. Hardly.

It would sound like I don't like this game. I do, it is fun to an extent but the BAI is just too terrible. It took 7 months or so of patches to become fun

90

Truly one of empires of the strategy genre

Empire: Total War is a more recent installment to Creative Assembly's flagship strategy franchise, Total War. Empire: Total War has vastly upgraded graphics compared to earlier games in the series, and includes sea battles, which helps complete the Total War formula. Empire: Total War is an innovative strategy game that makes many improvements over its predecessors, and is a fine installment to the Total War franchise. If you enjoy turn based or real time strategy games, Empire: Total War is a game to consider buying.

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