This game is overwhelming at first.

You can initiate diplomacy anytime with any country.

Sea battles are going to be hard as shit.

Buildings are spread out in countries. You can build most in your city but you build farms, ports, chappels at the farms ports or chapels not in the city.

We shall see

3/5/2009 6:54:28 PM

Wish this ran better on the old computer. I can play MTWII on high. But ETW has some seriously long load times and the campaign made stutters very badly. Oddly, combat runs fine. But the load times and campaign map basically make it unplayable. Though, I heard a rumor that they might release another patch next week to fix some issues with the stuttering.

Oh, and appaerently, if you have a multicore AMD chip the game doesn't utilize but one core.

Pretty sloppy release. Looks like a lot of people are having speed/playability issues on computers that shouldn't be having these problems. Funnily enough, reading TWcenter forums, it seems a lot of i7 users are having problems, which is ironic.

3/5/2009 8:40:04 PM

So are the battle load times any better in the full game than in the demo? I'm sitting through 10 minute loading screens to play the demo battle.

3/6/2009 12:15:37 AM

It seems to me that battle loads are faster on the full release on the demo, but (at least in my case) not by too terribly much.

I have similar problems to Ytsejam, in that I could always run MTWII fine on all settings but have really slow loads on ETW. It's not even that the campaign map is particularly slow, but all the loading associated with it causes a huge problem, especially when I'm waiting for all the other countries to play their turns. Even when I'm not watching their moves, it takes forever, and at the early stages of the game I find myself spending most of my time waiting for other countries to do their shit.

The release has been all kinds of fucked up. They kept pushing back the release date until their fans wouldn't take it anymore, and decided to shit something out without being fully prepared, both on the game and the distribution end. I'm sure they'll hear about it, but I'm just as sure that once things start working and everyone gets into it, nobody will care anymore. Then we'll have the same problem with the next release, and so on forever.

3/6/2009 2:48:52 AM

Quote :

"They kept pushing back the release date until their fans wouldn't take it anymore,"

?

AFAIK it's been March 09 since they first announced a date.

3/6/2009 3:47:47 AM

yeah... this is really odd...

3/6/2009 9:54:17 AM

What's really odd?

3/6/2009 9:57:24 AM

Quote :

"AFAIK it's been March 09 since they first announced a date."

I seem to remember watching it get pushed back a few times, but maybe I had bad sources or was just drunk. You never know.

3/6/2009 11:02:13 AM

My computer should run circles around this game, but it's not. This release seems really sloppy to me. I understand they wanted to rush it into the market, but they need to takes notes from Blizzard when it comes to releasing games when they are truly ready. Hopefully a patch will come out soon, so far I'm slightly disappointed in the graphics. The gameplay is really fun though.

Resolution = 1200x800
Medium Settings
Runs... OK

However, any other steam game I have I can run at the highest settings 1900x1200 or just below it on Medium/High Settings.

3/6/2009 11:09:13 AM

Quote :

"I understand they wanted to rush it into the market, but they need to takes notes from Blizzard when it comes to releasing games when they are truly ready."

You gotta blame Sega for that, not CA. Blizzard is their own publisher, they can take as long as they want to make their games.

3/6/2009 1:38:08 PM

what are your comp stats?

this game takes more resources than say, HL2

3/6/2009 2:23:42 PM

Quote :

""XPS M1730, Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 (2.8GHz, 800Mhz 6M L2 Cache) 1 223-6314 XPS M1730, Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000(2.8GHz, 800Mhz 6M L2 Cache) 1 310-9525 PERSONALIZATION SHIELD, LCD COLOR WING OPTION,GRAY 1 311-7447 4GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm for XPS M1730 1 320-5788 17 UltraSharp TrueLife Wide screen WUXGA for XPS M1730 1 320-5790 NVIDIA SLI Dual GeForce 8700MGT with 512MB GDDR3 Memory 1 341-6099 640G (2x 320) 5400RPM High Performance SATA HDD 1 420-4775 Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 English Stick with this? 1 420-8143 Media Direct 3.5 1 310-8617 Thank you for choosing Dell 1 412-0689 Image Restore 1 420-4928 Windows Media Player 10 1 420-5769 Internet Search and Portal 1 463-2282 Dell Owners Manual installed on your system,click on icon after system set-up to access 1 420-5924 Icon Consolidation Application 1 420-7622 DELL SUPPORT CENTER 2.0 1 420-7468 ADOBE ACROBAT READER 8.1 DIM/INSP 1 313-5591 8X DVD+/-RW Drive 1 420-8183 Roxio Creator DE 10 1 313-4217 Integrated High Definition Audio, Inspiron 1 430-2582 Intel 4965 WLAN (802.11a/g/n) Mini Card 1 320-5789 Logitech Gaming LCD 1 410-1839 McAfee Security 9.0, 3-Year Subscription 1 312-0603 85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery, for XPS M1730 1 310-9521 Backpack Carrying Case 1 412-0148 No Internet Service Provider Requested 1 420-6589 Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition 1 950-3339 3 Year Limited Warranty 1 412-0359 Soft Contracts - Qualxserve 1 960-3652 Warranty Support,2 Year Extended 1 960-8710 Warranty Support,Initial Year 1 988-0318 Dell Hardware Warranty PlusOnsite Service, Extended Year(s) 1 983-2552 Type 15- Third Party At Home Service with Nights and Week ends, 24x7 Technical Support, 2 Year Extended 1 988-0317 Dell Hardware Warranty PlusOnsite Service, Initial Year 1 983-8460 Type 15- Third Party At Home Service with Nights and Week ends, 24x7 Technical Support, Initial Year 1 412-0358 Soft Contracts - Consumer Complete Care 1 960-9188 CompleteCare Accidental DamageProtection, Inspiron, 3 Year 1 991-1159 Bund. LoJack Theft Recovery - 3 Year DHS 1 420-8653 LoJack Theft Recovery Softwarefor Laptops, 3 Year 1 330-0171 S and P Drop-in-Box Marcom forDHS Notebooks 1 310-5408 Free Recycling Kit 1 320-6171 AGEIA PhysX Physics Accelerator 1 464-9572 No Entertainment software pre-installed 1 310-9651 Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme Processor 1 310-8624 You have chosen a Windows XP System 1 420-7091 DataSafe Online Dim/Ins/XPS 1 420-7092 DataSafe Online Dim/Ins/XPS 1YR-FREE 1 987-4817 Insp Datasafe 3GB,1YR(Incl in price),DHS 1 988-0099 To activate your online backupaccount, go to Start, Programs, DataSafe Online""

It's basically a server. My laptop runs Crysis better than Empire: Total War, lol.

3/6/2009 3:14:19 PM

you're plugged in right?

that's odd... yeah probably just the demo. the game loads faster and is smoother for me on my old comp, though i am looking to upgrade (~500 it seems) than the demo was...

you're also not running anything else at the same time right?

3/6/2009 4:15:47 PM

That's the biggest downside to my laptop, I am always plugged in, so it's more like a portable desktop than a true laptop. I cannot run games off the battery at full capacity. I'm just running one application and nothing in the background is interfering with it. Also, other steam games run liquid smooth, like Left4Dead, Bioshock, Fallout3.

3/6/2009 4:33:23 PM

God I hate Steam

I've been trying to install this for 2 hours, it won't recognize the 2nd disc.

3/6/2009 8:04:12 PM

Got it installed finaly

Now I just have to get through the day 1 update

3/6/2009 8:43:23 PM

day one update? when does this occur? and is it automatic or?

3/6/2009 10:36:42 PM

Soo, is there a reliable way to tell when a ship is going to sink? The hull health bars lie.

3/7/2009 10:17:14 AM

^^ Yeah it's a patch that downloads before you play the first time. Took about 8 minutes to download.

[Edited on March 7, 2009 at 12:07 PM. Reason : Also, this game is incredible so far]

3/7/2009 11:41:33 AM

I never noticed the day 1 update, is it done automatically through steam?

3/7/2009 3:47:24 PM

yeah, the update is done automatically through steam. I updated to the 185.2 beta nvidia drivers, and that has helped with the crazy stuttering on the campaign map.

3/7/2009 5:16:55 PM

i too updated drivers, it helped with the intro movie...

but nuked the 3d entirely making the game unplayable...

rolled back to 178's (i have a xfx 7950gt) and everything is golden (little lag now)

freaking breaking drivers, though this is making me look hard at upgrading... ($500 for a good mobo proc ram vidcard, want to get it less than that)

3/7/2009 8:51:43 PM

fun game so far

3/9/2009 2:49:26 PM

Quite entertaining so far. Working through Chapter III of the Road to Independence.

3/10/2009 11:18:04 AM

Needs patches.

3/10/2009 5:19:31 PM

yeah i think patches will help this game the most...

3/11/2009 2:59:32 PM

Definitely still has a few stability problems.

3/11/2009 4:26:12 PM

Oh yes. This game should run liquid smooth on my machine.

3/11/2009 4:27:01 PM

crashed on me for the first time today.

3/11/2009 7:32:18 PM

This game has destroyed my productivity.

3/12/2009 9:16:49 AM

There's apparently going to be a fair sized patch next week.

Hopefully it fixes the naval invasion bug. Not sure if you guys have noticed, but right now the AI never invades via the sea, and by never I mean NOT EVER. They actually had this same problem with Rome, and it took them until they made the Barbairan Invasion patch a year later to fix it.

But it's one thing with Rome, where you pretty much only use the sea to grab some Cretian Archers and maybe once to invade Carthage, but another thing when the biggest draw of the game is traveling to and conquering other continents. Right now you never have to worry about the AI taking one of your islands. Also England as the player is invincible, because the enemy can't invade your homeland. But England as the AI is nerfed, because they can't take armies off their own homeland.

Also, when the AI advisor tells you you'll have to hurry to beat the French, Dutch, and Spanish to the riches of India, that's a lie. They will never get there. Even though the Dutch have an island right off the Indian coast.

At least this time they recognize it publicly and are saying they are trying to fix it, rather than deny it exists like they did with Rome

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 9:45 PM. Reason : ]

3/13/2009 9:43:53 PM

Good point. I never did have to worry about that. Ever.

SO IT TOOK ME A WHILE TO REALIZE YOU CAN RESEARCH A TECHNOLOGY AT EACH SCHOOL OR COLLEGE!!!

3/14/2009 12:07:03 AM

Ah yes

I always try to have at least 5 high level colleges researching stuff.

3/14/2009 12:25:34 AM

so is it worth me upgrading my machine to be able to play this?

3/14/2009 12:25:55 AM

How much would you have to upgrade?

I love the game, I would upgrade for it. Luckily I don't need too (I can play it on medium/low settings fine. And it still looks pretty good).

Anyway, you're gonna have to do it eventually.

[Edited on March 14, 2009 at 12:29 AM. Reason : What do you have now?]

3/14/2009 12:28:25 AM

id need a new video card definitely, more RAM too i think, possibly other stuff, im not a computer savy guy

3/14/2009 1:32:19 AM

Keep in mind also that Total War games are also very processor intensive. Basically, unit quality is based on your video card, but the total number of men your PC can handle is based on the processor.

You also can't really base the game performance on the demo, if you've played that. I was extremely concerned I wouldn't be able to run this after playing the demo, but the full game runs ten times better.

[Edited on March 14, 2009 at 2:02 AM. Reason : ]

3/14/2009 2:01:14 AM

I dont think I will ever like playing the british or french campaigns. You are essentially forced to concentrate on the Americas.

Can someone tell me what it takes to trade technology?

Can someone tell me how you improve you standing with other countries?

If they start allowing countries to invade the British main islands its going to make the campaign insanely hard.

meh,

3/14/2009 12:14:57 PM

Trading for tech is very difficult. It either takes huge amounts of cash (like 20,000 for each tech or so) or regions.

Improving your standing isn't too hard, just give out some state gifts. People love those. However you can only give one per faction. the cheapest one it improves your relationship by 100 points, don't know about the others.

3/14/2009 2:41:03 PM

mmmm this game is niiiice

3/16/2009 2:16:01 PM

Anyone else experiencing the white screen of death?

If I do anything with a particular general or enter the diplomatic screen for any reason, the screen turns white and the game crashes. So, that campaign is pretty much impossible to play, now.

I started a new campaign, and nothing's happened yet. Still lame, though; I was pretty far into the broken campaign.

3/22/2009 4:40:58 PM

Just got my ass handed to me in the united states chapter 3 or 4. Where its you vs everything in Britain. Never got france to be an ally and fight the british. I just got army after army thrown at me until I got overwhelmed and could never repair my units.

3/22/2009 5:58:30 PM

Can someone tell me where in the god damn hell the saved games folder is for this game installed VIA steam?

The update screwed with the saved games and I cannot see my old saved games.

RAWR

This is for Windows Vista. It may be a problem of not being able to see the save game files. I got nothing

[Edited on March 25, 2009 at 9:02 PM. Reason : da]

3/25/2009 8:56:50 PM

Most of the time steam saved games save to some subdirectory in the steam folder. Also since it is vista try Users\[you]\Documents\Saved Games or even just your Users\[you]\Saved Games folders. Maybe in a data directory in the game's folder in Program Files...

3/25/2009 9:06:16 PM

I cannot find any saved games anywhere. Fucking bullshit patch. Anyone know how to unlock the americas campaigns so I dont have to go through all that bs again?

ghey


backup your saved games.

3/25/2009 9:18:25 PM

I'm sure there's some in-game console command cheats for it. There might not be an auto-unlock, but instantly upgrading all your stuff and having near-infinite money would probably speed up the unlocking process a ton.

3/25/2009 9:20:46 PM

After I started a new game the save games popped back up in the menus.

go figure....

3/25/2009 10:37:39 PM

To find your saved games go to start/run, then type in %appdata%

You will see a Creative Assembly folder, and your saved games folder is in there.

that's the only way to delete saved games right now (unless they put it into the new patch, I'm not at home so I don't know).

[Edited on March 25, 2009 at 11:24 PM. Reason : ]

3/25/2009 11:23:07 PM

Quote :

"Just got my ass handed to me in the united states chapter 3 or 4. Where its you vs everything in Britain. Never got france to be an ally and fight the british. I just got army after army thrown at me until I got overwhelmed and could never repair my units"

i think i gave them the low end state gift, you also have to win a major battle, then ask them, they should agree, but it's less of an issue... mostly for navel support

i didn't end up having any major problems with the american campaign. about 1/3 the way through the british main campaign, need to hit up india after i rough up europe some... i cleared the pirates 1/2 the indians, and the french out of america already. have about 23+k income a turn, still upgrading trade ports and base government

3/26/2009 2:12:12 AM

gonna take out morocco, got a 5 turn military access from them in exchange for 400 and a 20 turn military access for them, needless to say i will be over staying my visit....

makes the one turn lag from landing not at a port moot, they have a decent navy so killing them in one turn is ideal. malta is next, or maybe france/savoy. i should give something to the UP as they have been very good naval allies... perhaps take croatia and give it to the austrians... (eheh)

3/26/2009 11:45:54 AM