So I bought this game a few days after release. This is an era I absolutely love, so when I seen it was being made into Total War, it was on my list to buy. I actually downloaded it through.. unmentionable means when it became available.. although with a few sound issues (firing guns produced no sound effect). But after playing it a while, I fell in love with it and pretty much ran to the store and bought a copy. The first total war game I bought was Shogun, and loved it. I never bought any others till now. Mainly cause I'm cheap. I did however get to play the Medieval II one and enjoyed that as well. Empire at first seems really complicated, and almost overwhelming. There is a lot more to manage. Most noticeable is how towns are broken up within a region. Things like Schools, Churches and Farms are all spread out. At first it was a pain, but it really adds an element of strategy to the over all game. It pretty much forces you to protect your land more so than before. Navel battles are new, I still haven't really gotten the hang of it yet and get my arse handed to me regularly. But the graphics are awesome. Land battles in this game.. what can I say.. awesome. I'm such a HUGE fan of muskets and to see line battles recreated in here is pretty damn cool. Watching two hundred men all fire in sync pop pop pop popopopop pop then have a big ass plume of smoke float over the battlefield.. damn. Too friggen cool. There are a few really annoying bugs though.. path finding for units for example.. have a hard time jumping over fences in battles, and there are tons of fences/walls, sound issues with troops.. guns popping but no ones actually shooting. The UI is a little clunky IMHO.. Lots of wasted space. Looks like they tossed it together last minute. AI in some cases can be smart, but are generally pretty dumb right now. I hear its being worked on however. Nothing really game breaking though, I've read there are a lot of people getting crash to desktops.. but I haven't. Played it extensively on Vista Ultimate 64 and Windows 7 64 with no real issues. There is a demo on Steam and think its definitely worth a look.
yeah, make sure you do recent windows updates if you aren't good about doing them for steam games to work right... the learning campaigns' loading screens were bugged to hell until i did. i was hoping for a more navy centric total war, but it's hard to technologically advance without having riots from social reform (which is required to get steam engines which is required for this and that etc etc)
This game is the buggiest piece of shit I've ever played in recent memory. It's like an alpha that needs another year of testing. Enjoy having your men in "firing" status but not really firing? Units taking cover behind a wall get raped by grenadiers. They don't bother to fire back, even though it says they're firing. Moving your agent from a town into a strategic neighboring state usually moves your garrisoned army and wasting all of your move points. And the last time I defended a sieged fort was the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. Ship battles are a mess, so I just resort to battles of attrition and auto-resolving it. AI generals still charge headlong into your lines way ahead of their own. Game crashing randomly before you get to save. Fun times. NOT I've finished the American campaign and found it mildly entertaining. However, I'm playing through the British faction, conquered America and India, but really have no incentive to play any of the other factions. Snorefest. Medieval 2 is the better game graphically in my opinion. Empire is full of clone armies and lame fighting close up.