Why do people like this game? I've seen le hidden gem posts but this is the most boring rts I've played. Is there something I'm missing? Are there mandatory mods?
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>Is there something I'm missing?
Nostalgia
>Nostalgia
>Autism
>You just like the time period and there's literally no other games to scratch this itch
There had been a few pike & shot era games (like Cossacks) but generally they are all very niche and/or somehow even worse than empire
Napoleon has great battles but gets boring because of how linear the campaigns are
So if you want a proper line warfare pike and shot era game you either play empire or you're shit outta luck.
Why don't you ask the other thread about this very game that's up right now, newbie
some of us just like men lining up with muskets and some of us are not at all interested in swords and boards
NOOOOOO MY BOARD FILLED WITH AUTISTIC SCREECHING ABOUT PARADOX GAMES HAVE TWO OF THE SAME GENERAL TOPICS ABOUT MUSKET WARFARE REEEEEEEEEEE
I like the time period and map painting, also its not like rome or medival 2 have better battle ai or are more complex
I remember back in the day people didn't like it much, it seems that retrospectives have changed the view
>large map, which meant more choices in direction of expansion and strategy, complex relations between nations
>diplo system sucked but it allowed a lot of possibilities
>kino time period
>both land and naval battles
>kino loading screens
>total war style gsg map plus manual battle allows tactics and strategy in one game
>modest economic with spices and goods and tax system but better than nothing
>really rudimentary pop system but better than nothing
>playstyle slightly changed based on the political system, so going for absolute monarchy made sense but tech progress slowly put pressure to liberalize, reflecting historical tendencies and creating a challenge
>seasons cycle is nice although it had no effect on the gameplay
>you can start the game as Sweden at the maximum power and get full stormaktstiden
Quite buggy and shit AI, but it was a good try on behalf of the devs.
>large map
>France is one province
This game really signaled the end of major mods. Map modding could very easily fix this game. I think CA changed something and they don't own their own tools anymore so no more map modding.
What's worse, Shogun 2 was given it sometime after release (a year after I believe) and b***hed people didn't do something major with it as an excuse to never try again.
Going back though, Napoleon changed up the gameplay introduced in Empire by making it faster and smoother, the gameplay is arguably better as far as battles go in that. Campaign however is just...there. Peninsular campaign should have been the game from the start but with all of Europe.
It's worth mentioning that you CAN mod these games but it's considered illegal by the TOS, as it requires editing the .exe. So no actual mod sharing
>have this game in my steam library
>oh fine I’ll do a UK campaign
>France attacks me
>ok
>send an army to France
>Paris has close to no troops
>take it
>that’s the only province in all of France
>the country gets a collapse event after a few turns so all colonies are released as easily conquerable colonial states
I see.
The devs wanted France to transition to revolution quickly, which is a single fight in the capital region. A good mechanic that was underbaked and resulted in the legendary one province France.
People meme on France but forget that Spain is one province too.
Played a Portugal campaign once focusing on trade monopoly, not on territory grabbing, and it worked marvels. A couple of key lands in Americas and India with plantations, a strong navy controlling trade nodes and I was rolling in cash.
The only thing that brings the game down is the proverbially stupid AI (and it brings it down a lot). Other than this it's a great game.
Trade really keeps economy going, problem is moronic ai wants absurd amount of tech and gold to open their borders
>Building plantations
>Not burning them down
It's like you don't know how to make money out of the trade system
Can you really do monopolies? I once conquered all the lands containing furs, but the price remained low.
from what I remember, in my campaign trade weilded diminishing results, only it was compensated by increased production. However I don't really know how to make money out of the trade system (
)
Demand is controlled by global gdp excluding town wealth. Supply controlled by amount of resources existing even if not being traded. Also the other goods trade section is like 10% of the combined gdp of both you and target trade nation.
It was kinda fun.
>play France
>eradicate all pirates and take all Caribbean towns
>have so much money I can just pay any nation to end war
Dude musket warfare is just where it’s at and unfortunately empire is the best musket game there is
Now if CA would stop ignoring my daily emails, letters, voice mails, and just make empire 2 we could move on to that
do you know how much I wanted this when I was a little boy in 1959?
>Why do people like this game?
Because they have different tastes and preferences than you do.
it had so much potential
tech is way too slow
ai might be the worst in any tw game
obviously the map also but siege battles are unplayable + all other tw jank you can think of
>tech is way too slow
Use a gentleman to steal tech every turn.
I only play empire and Napoleon for the big chonkin cannon botes
I don't know how to bote battle
>cross the T (i.e. turn before they do so you get one broadside right into their bow)
>desperately try to regain an advantageous position as the two ships slowly spiral closer and closer while exchanging shots
Also, have more cannons than the enemy. Congratulations, you're now as good as any Age of Sail admiral
This.
Also try to cripple their sails with chain shot first. Having a speed advantage is a big plus in naval battles. 5th rates are imo the best balance of speed and firepower.
Empire tutorial tell to just click on enemy ships, but your ships will break formation this way. I just manually order and aim powerful salvoes to damage enemy ships quickly.
There's something inherently satisfying in having a huge empire that spans from America to India
I wonder what would be the best time period for a full world map Total War
Any period would be perfectly fine. Iron Age, Medieval, Age of Sail, Early Industrial. All would be fun.
too unfocused, best would be mid 19th century and still it would be just unnecessarily bloated
>more content = bloat
Do nufans really
Focusing on 50 different cultures and governments types over long span of history ends up making them bland.
Rather have well balanced and thought out factions and grand campaign mechanics than play same shit with different pixels
Nah, there's nothing wrong with lots of content. Warhammer got more uniqueness for the factions and it didn't make the games any better.
Id rather have good mechanics about HRE politics than 20 different copy paste factions of american tribes
It had potential but every single battle is exactly the same, the map lacks way too much detail for being as big as it is, every faction's army feels the same, ship combat is slow as frick and its buggy.
I wouldn't mind an Empire 2 that fixed all that but we all know current CA can't do that.
>musket warfare is pretty cool and it's fun to see warfare evolve before your eyes as new techs and units get introduced
>first and only time they tried to make a campaign with a global map and not just europe and middle east or Japan
>more open-ended with a GSG feel to the campaign
>economy building is alright and gives you something to do when you're not conquering
>kino time period
>not many games in general that let you enjoy musket warfare
>this is the most boring rts I've played. Is there something I'm missing?
Yeah, stop fighting battles by just lining up your mans against the enemy mans and letting them shoot each other. Employ actual line infantry battle tactics appropriate to the time period like bayonet charges and you'll find the battles much more enjoyable and not so slogfesty. Units actually break if you execute a bayonet charge after delivering a few good volleys, instead of sitting there until they are 90% dead. Also weave your artillery into your battle line instead of keeping it behind it; grape shot exists and it is very effective.
If you bayonet charge me i will unleash torrents of grenades
Simple as
Have you actually tried to hit anything with grenades in Empire? They literally cannot land on a moving target.
Yeah, that works if your enemy is standing still. Nine times out of ten they'll charge at you though, and all switching to grenades accomplishes is your grenadiers throwing their bombs over the enemy's head to explode behind them and then getting skewered by bayonets.
Bros I like this mod quite a lot with Napoleon TW:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/pikeshot-total-war
Also here's some Pike & Shot kino:
i want to pluck out my fricking eyes
thy are at their last territory, have 20 peasants left and fricking wurtemberg doesnt want to become protectorate, and then you have to fight 10 turns of rebels for shitty region bordering austria
and if you peace them they will declare war after 5 turns
literally unplayable
yeah, diplomacy was one of the points in the earlier total wars that i wished they ironed out. the same issue occurs in fall of the samurai where a faction who has great relation and plenty of reason to stay allied with you will just suddenly flop alignments to frick with you.
usually in empire, i reach a point where im long past being tired of assaulting forts, so i spend 20,000-30,000 gold or whatever the price is to buy up all the territory on the map, then i take over whatever the last province is for that country.
now you know what napoleon felt like
Besiege them with a small enough bait army that they attack you, beat and kill off as many of their troops as you can.
Move your doomstacks within range of their settlement.
The ai should agree to become a protectorate however the ai diplo gets more and more unreasonable the higher difficulty you go.
If you wanna cheese diplo in empire trading techs seems key but who knows what the ai values, you have no idea until you send the offer.
It was the first total war I played so I’m pretty attached to it for that reason alone.
>big fan of the TW games since the Shogun Warlord edition
>buy Empire within the first month it's out at Wal-Mart of all places
>you need a new-fangled online service called Steam to play this game
>alright, whatever - sign me up
>first battle is between my militia unit and a regular line infantry unit
>watch in horror as the enemy hunkers down behind a low stone wall and allows me to outflank them
>well, okay - I'll give it another chance
>next battle finds me at an advantage on a hilltop with advancing infantry and artillery approaching
>they fire their cannons from down below
>their shots safely hit the hillside well down slope from me
>they keep at it until they run out of ammunition
>click out of battle
>exit game
>uninstall.exe
>Well, let's see what this Steam is all about
Did it ever get any better?
>Did it ever get any better?
not really
>still remember when enemy inf hide behind stone walls with their backs exposed to your troops
The problem TW has with firearm units, even back in Empire, was that it's a game based on massed block units, and by the time you get modern enough that you're in the 1700s you start running into the problem that while that suits linear musket infantry fine, the game can't really model rifle infantry tactics because the ability to hit targets with aimed fire caused the degradation and eventually total breakdown of linear tactics, though they didn't totally die out until WW1 because old people can't learn. Because TW's interface is base don linear formations, you can't properly place riflemen in cover because you can only place them in lines - widely space ones, sure, but lines nevertheless. You can't fill a treeline with skirmishers if that treeline isn't a straight line, otherwise you'll have some men in the trees and some out in the open because the UI literally doesn't allow for non-linear unit formations, nor does it allow models to break formation except in melee (this also leads to the problem of entire formations firing into the side of a hill because one model on the end of the formation had a clear shot at an enemy on the other side of the crest).
They were hitting the absolute limit of what traditional Total War units, tactics and mechanics could handle. If they were to ever make a TW based on, say, WW1, they would have to totally rethink how units are commanded and how unit formations work.
While you're right about it lacking later infantry tactics (using terrain is shit in TW in general), "massed block units" absolutely DOES fit the musket era up to Napoopan's time
Skirmishers are separate units, just like they were in real life
It feels dumb to just march big blocks of infantry right at the enemy so they can shoot each other in the open but that's how they operated. The only thing the games are usually missing is to model the absolute shitloads of smoke the guns produced, which was a big part of why tactics worked like that
I know all that, it doesn't change the fact the game can't model skirmishers properly because skirmishers didn't have to use linear formations because they had rifles.
i just watched hornblower, an episode called lobsters and frogs i think, has the young major cross the ford with skirmishers. shows a good example of a skirmish line in formation. i though it was nice to see. carry on
I wish all the morons who ask "why don't they make a WW1 TW" in every single TW thread would realize that.
TW fans aren't known for thinking things through.
81
All those words, and yet you said nothing. What is your actual point?
the sound of musket fire was so dull and bad, they sounded like tiny firecrackers for children. I couldnt forgive this. The sound atmosphere is very important for immersion and realism.
play darthmod
Last time I played I remember that Euro countries had bloated unit rosters with 15 flavors of line infantry that you could only recruit 2 of each and they had nanoscopic differences in stats, I think that's why I just played eastern countries.
yeah i agree makes the already bad ui completely unusable
theres also some completely moronic mounted carbiners with longer range than standard line infantry
and the ai moves 10 different 1-2 stacks around their capital doing nothing
I fricking hate it when modders do his shit.
>Why do people like this game?
I like it mainly because of the time period and geographic scope.
>Are there mandatory mods?
Darth Mod goes a long way to help improve the game. Not sure about other mods.
I'd love to see an Empire 2 or an equivalent during the colonial era. I'm not really into their current focus on fantasy and narrative driven games.
I'd play it more if you didn't have to rush the ottomans every fricking game because they bug out late game and grind every turn to a fricking crawl