oh my jesus. can someone please tell what the dick happened to the interface?

seriously, let me put out a big ... WTF?

lol@Derf... you're a shining beacon of negativity lately, I swear. The interface has definitely changed, but until I get used to it I won't complain too hard.

I've had some bugs, though, and that's mildly irritating. No crashes, which is something, but occasionally units have some issues getting over fences and walls. And I had one level where I was in a valley and everyone walked like they were zombies (of the slow variety). I took forever to go anywhere. The enemy on the surrounding hills moved at full speed, but once they descended into the valley they had the same difficulties.

In the end it actually was in my favor... they were charging my lines for so long that I completely decimated them and they routed before they could engage in hand to hand combat. If it hadn't been bugged, I would've taken considerably more casualties.

Im the king of jaded gamers.

No i not that bad. I've had a heap of fun with L4D and Knights of Honor of late.

I've played a few more turns now and yes, im getting used to the interface, but i still think its whack.

playing as the brits at the moment just to get a hang of things, but to be quite honest, i think im going to restart as the french. The french have more an imperial aura about them given good ol Bonaparte in that period (more or less).

Im just bummed i cant play as the Italian states / Genoa or Venice. I would love to build up a Venetian empire.

Anyway, havent played a land or sea battle yet. I like to overhaul the economy in these strategy games as soon as i start, which means have no military until i get threatened.

Is the diplomacy really that much better btw? Because that's one of their selling points, the AI no longer acting like a completely random sociopath when it comes to alliances and deals. Or when faced with annihilation by an empire with 50+ provinces and only one province left of their own, they decide to refuse a protectorate deal. Yeah, that makes sense.

Heard nothing but good things about this game so far. Minor problems here and there (as Satis pointed out) but overall people seem to be pretty universally excited. Except Derf, King of Jade hehehe

Can't wait until they implement the MP campaign map. Gonna be totally sweet, methinks.

Satis, maybe this explains your issue with the slow moving?

Y'know, I thought of that possibility, but it didn't look like a swamp at all. That would make sense, but then the AI isn't so grand. If I were the AI with my enemy in the swamp, I would've stayed back and pummeled them with cannon for awhile. Instead he moved to engage me and actually 'charged' my lines through a swamp while I tore his men apart.

On the other hand, the AI is improved tactically. They try to flank me a lot, so I regularly have to break my lines and move a unit or two so they can cover the flank. Cavalry is also approaching worthlessness... they're still handy under specific circumstances, but a unit can turn, aim and fire so fast (and it's so effective at taking out horses) that a cavalry charge is suicidal most of the time.

BTW... I recruited a general, sent him into a battle with some troops and was chasing around some indians for awhile. I finally cornered them and had my 2 cavalry units (actually 2 generals) charge him from opposite sides. The Indians barely got off a tattered volley before I crushed them... I took one casualty... my freakin' general. On a 'stranger' note... the general's bodyguard still exists. They're still a formidable cavalry unit, just no general. I don't really know what I'm supposed to do with them.

Regarding the AI at a strategic level, I haven't used enough diplomacy to know how 'insane' it is. The french keep rejecting my alliance requests, but that's not necessarily craziness. Other than the Cherokees declaring war on me for no reason I could tell, it's been fairly calm diplomatically. I have demanded an enemy surrender in siege where I massively outnumbered them and was rejected, though. In fact, no one's ever surrendered when I demanded it.

The diplomacy is still a bit weird. Im 15 turns in as france and 2 city states declared war on me for no reason (Stuttgart and Savoy). I stomped them and took their cities with ease. They didn't really have a military force or economic / political influence, so they kinda signed their own death warrant.

Anyway, the 2 land battles were pretty cool. I like the little walls and fenses strewn around the battlefield, but there is serious problems in making your troops take cover behind them. E.g. i would order my unit of infantry to cover behind a wall and they would skip over it and take cover in the wrong direction (with their crouched asses in plain view of enemy musket).

I've seen some weird stuff regarding battle AI too.

1. I started a battle against an army that which broke my siege. but: a) the fight was in the open (farms and such) instead of "at the gates". b) Their starting formation was comical (2 lines astern). wtf? I laughed as they tried to scurry into a more suitable structure.

2. A tiny savoyan force (~200) decided not to flee my full French stack. They obviously died easily but i wonder what chance they thought they had.

3. On one instance i had my infantry lined up (as you do) and 1 enemy cav unit decided to run accross the face of my infantry. Obviously it was shooting practice for my infantry and the cav unit was soon reduced to around 5 men, broke and fled. Ghey.

I love how cavalry leaps over walls / fences. But i find that cavalry was very useful to me in these 2 battles. In one battle i had 2 cav units acting as fast backup to any of my musket units getting into close combat. In the 2nd battle, i had 5 cav units, but on one flank i had 2 line infantry units against 5 militia units (a losing battle). I had the 2 line unfantry units pull back and at the same time quickly committed all cav units to their position. Then i charged all 5 cav units + the 2 line infantry units to the militia and broke them easily.

I've never had a fight with me charging city defenses, so I'm not sure how that works. I've besieged cities until the enemy was forced to attack...the only time they came out of a 'city' was when I was besieging a fortress. With cities it's always open fields, which is a bit strange. I'm wondering if limitations in battlefield size are causing problems.

Is there some specific way to force your men to take cover behind a wall? I usually just line my guys up at the wall and that's it. I may not be getting the full tactical advantage.

Cover seems a little screwed up too. I've flanked an enemy behind cover and basically fired volleys at him from the side (where the wall should've made no difference) and he still seemed to be taking less casualties than he should have. But who knows, that may have just been my interpretation.

I still get giddy when I wipe out a cavalry charge with a nice volley of muskets, though. One volley and 45 cavalry get reduced to like 20 or less. It's pretty impressive watching all those bodies fall. I'm looking forward to later in the game when the units become more effective. So far my best units have 2 stripes.

Still don't have the game yet, but love reading you guys talk about it. Satis, apparently the AI picks up the pace outside of the "road to independence" campaign, both on the TBS map as in the realt-time battles. I head it's not always as it could be simply because the campaign is meant as something of an extended tutorial and as such has to move through certain stadia without the AI being stupidly strong. So maybe it gets a little more challenging later on.


Good news: Empire: TW is the top seller on all platforms currently, beating all the big console and multi-platform names. It's also the top seller on D2D and Steam (digital sales don't count towards the retail ranking), so it's really selling huge amounts.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/uk-ch ... killzone-2



Also, kinda funny: the box art is different dependong on localizations. Obviously, American buyers would rather not see a redcoat waving a British flag on the cover and vice versa.

heh...funny. Makes sense on the tutorial aspects, so I'll not be too mean about the AI.

So, at this I've got Boston (the starting city) as well as Maine, Quebec, Philadelphia and a few other cities I forget the name of. The Cherokee and Iroquois are at war with me, but it's no big deal. I've got two large armies steamrolling west and south and a pretty massive economy (about $15k profit each turn). The only place I'm lacking is ships, but I've torn down one of my trading docks and am building up military shipyards.

All my research is focusing on military technologies. I really want to roll out some better cannon, though once I get that shipyard cranking I may switch over to those related techs. We'll see.

My armies are about 40% minutemen/militia and 40% line infantry... the first half due to what I was limited to building, the second half from more recently recruited units. The rest is cannons and the occasional cavalry unit. I don't really use cavalry and I never recruit them, but they can still be handy for chasing down and butchering fleeing units.

Cannon are nice, btw. One of my units (the one that just took Philadelphia) has 5 units of 12lb cannons, so 10 cannons total. They're not as accurate as I would like and I'm still working on explosive shells, but the devastation can be awesome. When the enemy units are all drawn up or marching together in groups, a lucky volley will tear huge gaps in their ranks. I should have explosive shells in the next few turns.. that should make this even better. I've had my cannons route units single-handedly already... with quicklime shells I'm thinking that may become even more often.

In Rome and Medieval 2 I had armies that were 80% archers because it was so effective. If the cannons later on are as good as I'm thinking, I may have armies that are 80% cannon with some badass infantry for final defense. But we'll see.

Hey Satis, have you come across this situation? (attached).

I'm missing out on 700 gold of trade revenue per turn supposedly because these ships blocking trade to the Ottomans. They are Moroccan boats, but i'm at peace with Morocco. My first instinct is to sink them and free up the route, but that implies declaring war on Morocco, which is wierd because you'd think THEY would have declared war on me for blockading in the first place.

Is there a way of freeing up this route without getting my fleet involved in fighting?

Anyway, ive also posted my typical army setup at the moment. 4 cannon 4 horse and 13 line infantry. I've got 2 of these armies. I really like cavalry alot. Very useful for charging down isolated distracted enemy units. Cannons are awesome, i've had a couple of battles using grapeshot to full effect and although the accuracy is sometimes questionable, the effects are awesome. Right now I think i have a slight excess of infantry given that i've not researched platoon firing, so a cannon or two more may be a good idea.

I've got good income at the moment. ~9k profit per turn and rising due to a some economic reform with taxes. Im planning to have 1 main military base per theatre as a specialised military recruitment zone. Paris for Europe, New Orleans (i think) for America. Both of which get funding priority for the best barracks, armoury and shipyards available.

The bulk of my surplus funds goes towards building schools and commercial stuff. Priority on schools for now.

Im going crazy on research too. Military research is prioritised as I want to have the best units possible as soon as possible.

Navy-wise i've got 1 big fleet, but it's old and full of Brigs, Sloops and shitty boats like that. In a couple of turns i may return it to the docks in France and replace everything with 4th rate ships (new tech).

without having played the game...can you maybe coax another nearby faction into attacking the Morroccans? Like, with a little cash riding on it? Or would that necessarily break your alliance with Morrocco?

It's little things like that that make or break a game's diplomacy window for me...'covert ops' where you indirectly eat away at your supposed allies etc. With human players it's always an option, with CPU - not so much.

I remember a game of Alpha Centauri, playing with a friend and 5 CPU-controlled other players on Hard. Of course, at first we allied in a pact to make sure we'd survive the early onslaught of strong starting factions like the militarists and the zealots (I was playing ecologists, he had the research-focused faction). Then we kinda coasted on without bothering each other too much...with me constantly probing his weak defenses with probe teams and stealing one technology after the other, making it look as if other factions were responsible (framing other factions was an option, but relatively hard. It's only really possible if your probe teams were good and your opponent's defenses against spies weak).

After a LONG while he found out and refused to communicate with me anymore, downgrading our pact to a treaty of friendship instead, which gave less access to friendly faction info, no free troops movements and less trade bonuses. My spy teams continued to infiltrate as it was obvious by now that an escalation was inevitable. Then, as the technologically strongest faction, he felt confident enough to attack me and sent in what he called a 'punishing expedition' of some of his more advanced units to teach me a lesson for stealing his tech.

Funny thing was, from all the undercover missions my spy/probe teams were highly disciplined and in combination with my friend's strong units with low morale (decadent technologists etc. ) it made it relatively easy for me to 'subvert' his units to my cause with a mind control probe. I destroyed the ones who resisted with my newly acquired toys (in combination with my inferior defense forces), sent half the attack forces back to his border to keep him busy and 'gifted' the other half to an ally of mine behind his lines. Then I convinced that ally to attack my friend's back in exchange for some of the technologies I'd stolen.

It was awesome fun. My friend quit in disgust, saying that it was 'lame'. Sorry for the rant...just bored at work. And I think it shows just how rich the Alpha Centauri diplomacy was. And that's just 5% of everything you could do really.

That's a good mini-read actually. Sounds like an awesome game. Nothing wrong with what you did. I would have been tempted to acknowledge your sneakiness as cunning and offer a closer friendship (keep enemies closer, etc...). Although by enemy, I imply 'potentially powerful neighbor'.

I'm not allied with the Moroccans though. Just at peace. It seems like they're at war with the Ottomans and blocking their routes (subsequently blocking all other nations ability to trade with the Ottomans). If this is true, then it's got to be some kind of gay bug. How can you get away with that and not imply instant war? I'm going to upgrade my fleet by replacing each ship with a 4th rate ship-of-the-line ... Pirates of Morocco, here i come! Muhahaha!

Exactly, that's the same thing I would do. Or I'd break off all alliances with him and start building alliances with other factions by spreading the tech wealth around so that they could gain strength, asking them only to harass my former pactmate with their new toys in return.

One of the faction leaders (the populist faction) actually has a very appropriate quote re: information in-game.



Anyway, Sid Meier's Alpha Centuari is great but I'll give some more info in a different thread, this one's Empire's thread.

So you smacked those Morroccons back to North Africa yet? And has it become clear if it indeed was a bug, or if maybe the game just doesn't feel that 'at peace' means that they should let your ships pass? After all, in MTW and RTW you couldn't even pass through a mountain pass if an enemy's army was blocking it - not even if you were allied. Which is bizarre really.

I've never had that happen, Derf, so I can't really help you. I still don't have a navy to speak of (though I'm working on it now) and only the Brits are blockading me. The indians don't have much of a navy. :p

I had a longer post going, but I fat fingered ctrl-w and closed the browser tab, so you guys don't get to here about my conquests. My game is starting to crash... that's unfortunate. I was routing a rather large indian army and was letting my general massacre all the routing units when it locked up. That's such a great way of getting 'courage' modifiers, but whatever.