Empire: Total War

However good the game is the marketing's annoying. Not only do you have to pay £10 extra for the Special Forces Edition to get the extra units (HMS Victory, Rogers' Rangers, Ottoman Organ Gun, Ghoorkas, Corso Terrestre Guerillas and Bulkeley's Regiment) but each retailer has an unlock code for a different extra unit: Game - Deaths Head Hussars, Play - USS Constitution, Amazon - Dahomey Amazons, HMV - not listed yet. Hopefully all the unlock codes will work with any version as I'm sure they'll be on the net
 
Just to let everyone know, a demo for this will be released today at 4pm on Steam! :)
 
sweet - i may have to download this.

i've seen one review in a UK mag so far that raved over it. i understand its not release til march ?

just concerned my old old 3.2 ghz standard pentium 4 with HY (!!) and only a radeon x1950 pro 512mb wont run it vey well.
 
i've seen one review in a UK mag so far that raved over it. i understand its not release til march ?

4th March I believe, which is odd as that's a Wendesday and games are normally released on a Friday, but as US stuff is normally released on a TUesday and it's also on Steam they could be going for a simultaneous global release.
 
Steam is unable to take the strain so it might be some time next week once the demo downloads :boring:
 
Demo runs great, max settings on my 3ghz C2D, 4gb ram,
Radeon 4870@1680x1050, but takes a while to load.

The level of detail in the sea battles is great. Will take some practice to command a large fleet of ships in the heat of battle. Not tried land battles yet.
 
Yeah I have started the download just now and it is crawling along at 100K/sec.

Still looking at the official forum, most people seem to be raving about it, just hoping my system can cope :p
 
I downloaded this yesterday and changed my location to east coast usa and the download jumped from 20kb to 450/500kb's instantly.
 
Anyone else get extremely long load times?

I got a DC Athlon 3800 and a radeon x1950 and 2gigs RAM. Not particuarly decent by any standard, but I can run the demo scenarios fine at medium settings, but it must take at least 5 mins to load in and out of the game......

Are you guys with fast systems getting the same?

As far as the game goes, it definately seems pretty tight, I really liked the battles, and I think it is more an age I am interested in. Not sure if I have the time to invest though! :p
 
I got as far as downloading this last night (download rate was quick) but didn't get a chance to play it. Are the graphics as stunning as they looked in the screenshots on the official website?
 
Anyone else get extremely long load times?

Yes, it seems to be a general problem, whatever spec machine.

I just hope they've sorted it out by the time it's released.
 
I got as far as downloading this last night (download rate was quick) but didn't get a chance to play it. Are the graphics as stunning as they looked in the screenshots on the official website?

This looks stunning. Absolutely amazing.
 
Amazon have posted this today and should be with me tomorrow (Wednesday) but as it uses Steam for verification I don't think I can actually play it until Friday. I even saw it for sale at my Tesco last week!
I am really looking forward to this game. I've played every Total War game, from Shogun to Medieval II and the Kingdoms expansion too. But I wonder, where now for the series? I'd like to see a new version of Shogun. Maybe expand it to include China, India etc.
 
Does anyone have any experience on running this on a mid range laptop? I have a Dual Core 2.2 Ghz with a 8600M GT and hoping to get some decent framerates....

Regards
 
Installed this on my laptop yesterday with e 8600M processor. The game is spud ugly but flies on minimum settings at 1280x800. Put everything on medium and it still seems to be playable. I'll be doing some fine tuning tonight to try and find the best balance.
 
Game has just dropped throgh the letterbox :thumbsup:

Will be running it later. Let you know how I get on.

By the way, for any HMS Victory fans (like me), the special forces edition has the Victory.
 
screenshots required :)

do not think my pc will run it very well.

maybe tempted come the weekend though....although i'm concerned it needs something to do with steam to run ?:eek:
 
Can someone comment on the computer AI as this consistently lets the total war games down.
Do computer armies display any tactical aptidute or does it just pile in with everything its got?
 
I just about meet the minimum specs in all but one of the areas.. CPU speed.. I've only AMD 1.6GHz. Would the gameplay be crippling, do you reckon?

Instead of asking I tried to download the demo from Steam, but it doesn't install the damn .exe file (all the other files install just fine though). Because of this seems I've absolutely no way of launching the demo! I've tried redownloading, updating Steam.. all to no avail. I even heard one guy bought the retail copy and he doesn't have an .exe file on his either - something to do with anti-piracy, but honestly - can't think what there would even be on my comp that's illegal to cause a conflict in this way..

If anyone can has an idea on how to get it working, please help.
 
I've been playing it for a few hours now. I must say, at first glance this game is daunting. It's HUGE. The way the campaign map has altered and the tech and research has changed. It's a lot to take in.
Anyway, I would say the AI does seem to work quite well, but I've only had a few skirmishes. The sea battles are great fun, firing off a broadside...bang. And the sound is very good. But I have had a glitch or two. On the campaign map the graphics have glitched as if the cities etc vanish and re-appear or move on the map. It's spasmodic and speeds up then slows down. Odd. But I have had it crash after saving. It's no surprise. I'm expecting a patch by the end of the week or a little later to be honest.

I can run it at fairly high settings on these specs;
AMD Athlon 5600+ Dual Core
9600GT 1GB x2 Sli
5GB Ram
Windows Vista

Luckily the options are pretty good at customising the graphics so you should get a decent performance out of it, even if it's all set to low. Funnily enough the Campaign map puts more of a strain on my PC then the battles.
Anyway, off to try some more.
 
Runs fine on max settings on my quad core system, although those with nvidia cards may have to turn v-sync off as theres a bit of tearing.

AI is much better. Still the odd occasion of standing there, but most of the time they show a good tactical awareness. Ships can run rings round you sometimes.

No screenshots yet, post some tomorrow. Game is awesome though.

Steam is a downer for me. Whats the problem with just releasing a game on dvd and be done with it. Steam just causes problems.
 
I think I am gonna wait a while before I purchase this, not got a lot of spare time and I want to wait for a few patches, the loads times were horrendous on the demo. It looks like an amazing game, but being able to make a cup of tea and drink it by the time the battle has loaded in, puts me off a bit :p
 
Played for an hour or so last night, won't get a chance to give it a real go until tomorrow night.

Haven't tried the naval battles yet.

I started off with the min-campaign thing, can't remember what they call it, the one where you start off in America and follow a story. Built a couple of things and killed a few indians. All running smoothly (quad core system, with an ATI 4850).

I was going to play a turn or too of the Grand Campaign, but seeing the sheer scope of it, once it had started up was just too much for me at that time of night :)

Daunting is easily the right word. Unlike Medieval or Rome you start off with so many more towns and stuff, with the Americas and India to deal with as well as Euorpe, didn't even make a start, becuase I just didn't know where to start, to be perfectly honest :)

Was going to have a quick try at multi-player, so tried a couple of times with the "quick battle" option, but both times it failed to host or something, so as it was late, I gave up.
 

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