I've personally eradicated two nations so far (Lithuania-Poland and some dinky one) but turn times still take awhile. :p I managed to free up some units from babysitting my captured territories and am about to move against Austria. It shall be glorious.

However, I have one port and no navy. I'm seriously considering marching on Copenhagen to get me another port and hopefully increase my cash. That's really my weak point. Even with all these areas I've conquered, the populace is being a bunch of bitches and tying up my armies. It's keeping me from expanding as rapidly as I'd like. Otherwise I'm doing quite well. I have two generals with great morale bonuses. A general slaughtering fleeing infantry is something to make every soldier proud.

isn't Austria a superpower? Not that that should stop you, by any means.

heh...yea, Austria is fairly large, but their nearest city is virtually unprotected. I have an army besieging it now. I'm hopeful that they're protestant like me so I have less unrest due to religion. That's one of things screwing up my Warsaw holdings.

I have my three colleges spewing out research at a good rate now. I moved them entirely away from military research. I'll be able to upgrade them again in about 2 turns... I'm hoping that'll let me get back to cannon research with a vengeance. I still don't have any mobile artillery.

lol @ mobile artillery. I hope the Austrians turn out to be very mobile light cavalry dudes who go after your cannons.

Is the line shooting upgrade thingie a huge difference btw? I mean the one where they shoot, step back/reload, other line shoots, etc etc? I can imagine it is...mighty frustrated over seeing only the first line of my units fire with the others standing around doing nothing.

Btw Derf, did you mean wat you said about Empire last night (in L4D, before anyone gets the wrong idea...no pillowtalk ).? That it's "shit"?

Given one word as a review, that would have to be it.

I stopped my French campaign (too easy) and started a new Russian campaign on max difficulty. I was seeing more of the same silly diplomatic AI (everyone starting war with me for no reason) and me stomping all over their unprotected cities.

Then i noticed strange things happen in proper battles. My units would some how always lose heavy numbers, even if i had better ground, numbers and formation. I came to the conclusion that the ramping up difficulty does not increase AI difficulty, but merely ramps up enemy stats.

This is heartbreaking, especially when you're up against a Georgian army of equal numbers. It's bad enough that the Georgians are modelled just like any European nation (pointy hats, clean clothes, flawless formation) but them being superior soldiers (accuracy, range, morale) is a joke.

I won the battle but it was inconsequential because i had to pull my army back for replacements.

Derf is the king of game hating. I'm enjoying my game still, even though it blue screens my box fairly often. Not that the AI is genius or anything, but it's an incremental improvement over previous total war games. BTW, I wiped out Saxony and am putting the pain to Austria now. They're the only country I'm at war with that shares a border with me now. And my income is finally getting respectable.

What are your campaign goals anyway with Prussia? Holding Paris is one of them I'm sure, given the historical animosity between the France and Prussia. And are you guys going for a particular style of government? I've always been a big fan of absolute monarchies in any civ-like game so prolly going the same way here.

lol @ Derf hating. Is Left 4 Dead the only recent game you didn't hate man? I'm just wondering. Ironically, I didn't think you'd like it much when you first picked it up. But that turned out differently.

But if the AI getting harder really only increases their unit strength then I agree that it's a major disappointment, yeah. I always hate that in games. If and when I ramp up the difficulty of a game, I expect the AI to do better than on normal but WITHIN THE SAME RULES SET AS ME. I don't want an identical character to mine just being bigger and tougher. That's lame.

A big dumb version of Ox?

My game goals actually don't involve Paris, I don't think. Just owning a lot of central Europe I actually expanded too far west... I need to move east but am trying to keep from antagonizing Hannover until my flanks are secure.

I just recently took Prasburg Hungary and Vienna, Austria. I'm attaching a screenie. If you add those two to my empire, you'll get an idea what I'm at. I need to expand west into Hanover's zone. As for my government, I'm still whatever I started as, though my home region (which has 2 colleges) may be revolting soon and changing my form of government.

http://clankiller.com/stuff/satis_etw_p ... 0mar09.jpg

No no, i always loved L4D. It's awesome. So is Knights of Honor which i recently bought.

I'm a bitch when it comes to games i dont like.

So I think I beat the victory conditions for Empire: TW a couple days ago. I conquered the 14 territories I required and then the additional ones to round out my empire and got a little popup. I didn't get a video or 'do you want to end the game' kinda thing like previous E:TW games... a bit underwhelming of a win, to be honest. I'm still playing though because it's fun completely crushing everything in my path.

I wiped out Austria, which apparently pissed off Venice. I then kicked Venice out of their home territory, but they still exist somewhere else (not entirely sure where). I also kicked Denmark out of Copenhagen and destroy France. After conquering Paris their faction just dissolved... their North American holdings became a new country. I'm moving into Spain next, then probably England. After that I'll run down the Italian peninsula and push east. Btw, it was about 1740 when I beat the campaign... at the rate I'm making money and pushing my armies out I should own all of Europe by 1770. After that I think I'll move into the trade hubs.

My cash situation is pretty awesome. I was pulling in about 3-5k per turn when I was struggling...then I hit my stride and was making 9-10k per turn. Now that I'm expanding like crazy I'm pulling in 20-30k per turn and it goes up every turn. All that extra cash I pour into building improvements, most of which result in increased income.

So, as you may guess, the game is a bit on the easy side. Prior games I had trouble completing in the allocated time frame... not this one. After I tire of conquering the world as the Prussians I'm thinking of switching to a native American tribe and ratcheting up the difficulty a bit.

Easy? You're playing on medium right? Maybe try playing the next campaign on hard/hard or something like that. Though if it's really just changing the enemies' units HP like derf said than that sucks.

Stupid question perhaps, but do you even have any colonies overseas? Sounds like your campaign is heavily focused on mainland Europe.

Correct, my campaign was entirely focused on Europe. And yes, I'm playing on medium.

BTW, I took Madrid, but still want to take out Portugal and Madagascar or whatever before I head into Italy and England. I'm sitting on Paris and Amsterdam with some pretty large armies until either I get another revolution or their people chill out some. I'll then take those two armies and jump over into England. London is really close to one of my ports... I figure I'll have my fleet shuffle over one of the armies to take out London, then grab my other army and herd it up to Scotland. Meanwhile I have another army ready to begin taking out Italy. I'm just waiting for some nearby cities to finish upgrading their building to facilitate resupply.

I was also the first nation with a rocket ship. Oh, and I'm also really close to finishing out the tech tree. I've begun tearing down my colleges and converting them into pleasure palaces. No point in having a source of public irritation if there's nothing to research.

a rocket ship?! What are those?

heh...it's a ship with a rocket launcher on it. Seriously. I'm guessing it's a long range artillery boat... I haven't really done much blowing up of crap with my fleet yet. I plan on building a bunch of them and then going into battle.

By the way, I went ahead and began my final assault to claim europe. Well, most of europe. I declared war on England and have London under siege. A second army is set to sail for Scotland. I've got an Army in Spain headed toward Madagascar. And I declared war on Genoa and have their city under siege. Once I conquer England and Scotland, I'll pull off units from those two armies and conquer Ireland. Meanwhile I strip some units from Madrid and Madagascar (once that's in my hands) to March on Portugal. My progress down the Italian peninsula will be slower... I figure I can subdue the populations of England/Scotland/Ireland/Spain/Portugal and Madagascar, then use my fleet to move all my military units from those areas to a landing on the southern tip of Italy, with perhaps a stop in Greece and thereabouts.

BTW, I'm still plugging away at my last few technologies, but have pretty much upgraded all of my provinces with the best roads and the most upgraded cash makes (mines and weavers and all that). I'm pulling in around 80k per turn. At this rate, I can probably build some pretty huge armies and steam roll over Sweden and east into Russia.

You finish the game yet buoy? I have yet to develop the rocket launcher ship, but looking forward to it.

So, I'm getting into the game now more as the United Provinces (the Dutch, if you will). It's actually something of a baptism of fire, because your attention is required all over the world map...you start with 2 colonies in the Americas, one in India (the island Ceylon) and only ONE province in mainland Europe.

Things started out well, with me capitlizing on my colonies and the ample trade incomes from them. I'm more of a manager than a general, so I start improving logistics and infrastructure and soon I'm making a lot of cash. Holland is up-to-date with everything, except there's one problem: I don't have many colleges. Started out with just one, so I barely make any technological process compared to the supernations that have 3 or more of them. Nevertheless, I start picking off colonies in the Carribean that have been overrun by pirate bands and build up a nice little niche for myself there without pissing off other nations.

Then somewhere along the line I'm forced to side with Prussia against France and realize that the Frenchies have quite a few colonies within my reach in South America and Canada...so I compile an army and overrun their (few) troops stationed there and start exploiting the colonies by building gem mines and sugar plantations. At this point I'm crazy rich...I make like 9000 florins of profit per turn and barely have any costs (with only 6 provinces or so in total). I also control the entire shipping route in Madagascar. I'm starting to buy tech from bigger nations for obscene amounts of cash, to compensate for my lack of facilities.

And then...things start taking a turn for the worst. My main colonial army overreaches as it eliminates the French presence in Canada and gets ambushed by a huge force of natives (Iriquoy). Experienced army slaughtered and province lost. With no other troops near and scarcily a town to recruit from, my hinterlands are open and the French blockade my main port after a fierce naval battle with my own ships. In the distance I see the Iriquoy gathering and marching for my last contintenal N American province...

In Europe, the French strike at my (only) European port in a guerrila fashion, disrupting my trade lanes. On the water, the frakking Swedes are raiding every concievable trade lane with their huge mega insane fleet. And the French even once marched up to Amsterdam and defeated me, effectively ending my game (how retarded is that btw? Like I can't keep existing in my colonies?). I also went bankrupt and regretted my extravagant spending earlier.

So...I'm kinda crawling back. I sold the province that was about to be raided by the locals to the Brits for a good bit of technology, defeated the last remains of the French fleet in America in an epic battle and assembled my two main fleets (Euro and American) to one so I can sweep the tradelanes of those Swedish motherfuckers raiding my colony income.

One thing still sucks: the French are constantly besieging Amsterdam. And I need to keep a huge standing army there just for that reason. I think they're still pretty pissed over me taking over their colonies.


Anyway...all good fun, but a few remarks:

- battles are ridiculous on Hard. It took me every last man to defeat an army of freaking PIRATES in the Carribean...all their units were called "pirate rabble". Seriously...retarded. I'm walking in with a nicely balanced force of trained soldiers with (presumably) superior weaponry, cannons and cavalry support and the fuckers just won't break. Like I said to Derf yesterday, an unruly bunch of pirates should shit their pants in an open battle with a professional army. Bah. Same for the American natives, but to a lesser extent.

- you can't seem to elegantly dispatch of ships raiding your trade lanes. Declaring war on a nation seems the only way...yet they seem to be allowed to raid your merchant navy without consequences.

- just in general, OPPONENTS NEVER BREAK. I need to fucking reduce them to 15 men out of a 120-man battalion with fire coming from all sides before they think about giving up. And then they usually come back. Sigh.

- Still need to figure out a lot of the trading dynamics. Like the trade 'routes' where you can anchor ships for improved income...how does it work? Do I just keep the ships there or take them back to a port from time to time? Do more merchant ships in one berth raise income (as opposed to a single ship)? Is there a screen where I can see just how much income each ship generates? But that's maybe not the game's fault but mine.


In general, great fun. But I agree with Derf that the technique of just improving enemy units in HP, strength and morale on Hard is seriously lame.