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Albeit a few days late but I think it is about time. Hopefully the AI has been improved seeing how two players can also play as a co-op.
![[image loading]](http://images.eurogamer.net/assets/articles//a/8/5/9/9/4/2/Empire__Total_War_PCScreenshots18980British_invasion.jpg.jpg)
After nearly 10 years, SEGA and Creative Assembly's seminal Total War series is ready for Campaign multiplayer.
At first, integration will be rudimentary; a global beta will begin on 7th December and you'll need to sign-up for to participate. To begin with, only two human players will be able to occupy the Campaign map, either working against each other or expanding co-operatively.
The Campaign map, incidentally, is the Risk-style, turn-based portion of the game that involves building and managing settlements like in Civilization and plotting your global conquest. The Battle map is the hands-on RTS element that involves bossing your troops to glorious victory.
Six months have been spent testing Campaign multiplayer features in-house at Creative Assembly already. There are a few screenshots of the multiplayer in action in our Empire: Total War gallery.
On 7th December we'll also be treated to the Elite Units of America DLC. This adds, for £2/€3, powerful new fighters to the American, British and French factions - recognisable soldiers that changed the face of history forever.
Campaign multiplayer may the missing ingredient that has prevented the Total War series being awarded a 10/10 from Eurogamer. Still, a 9/10 for every core iteration isn't a bad tally.
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This seems very exciting. I've played a decent bit of Shogun Total War, and recently I bought Medieval 2 (I haven't had a chance to play it at all yet). I love this style of strategy game.
I want to get Rome at some point, as the Roman army seems just fantastically cool. The visuals in the more recent installments seem incredible.
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shogun total war was the only game that was actually a game imo, where you actually had to compete with the other factions for victory. Now it's all about expanding your empire as fast as possible T_T i didn't play empire total war alot though since its ai was so dissapointing. Well not only that, it also got pretty repititive :D
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for most of the games, if you don't play with a mod that improves the AI, then they're way too easy. if you're a history buff though, it is still possible to sink dozens of hours in them trying to play out different situations.....like trying to hold off the mongols, or attempting to rebuild alexander's empire...makes me want to go reinstall right now and forget about my exams....
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United States20661 Posts
mods for RTW were so good.
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United States3824 Posts
Oh wow this seems cool.
I remember playing Shogun. Was that the first one?
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Shogun, Rome were the best by far XD! I have Empire but I don't enjoy ranged armies as much as melee based ones :O!
On December 09 2009 03:51 cgrinker wrote:
Oh wow this seems cool.
I remember playing Shogun. Was that the first one?
Yes.
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I'm not sure about this. Turns normally take a very long time in Total War games.
And I'm getting disappointed by the series more and more. CA is pretty terrible at game balance. Later upgrades for buildings, especially economic, are pretty bad in almost every single game of the series. There are also way too many useless units and upgrade paths. The worst for me was Rome, since they turned an infantry dominated period into a cavalry dominated game.
Each game seems to have more bugs as well. Empire crashed way too often for me and it had pretty bad memory leaks.
All that said, I'm a sucker for these types of games so I still enjoyed my first play through of Empire. I couldn't bring myself to play a second campaign, though. Of course, CA is the only company that makes these types of games.
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Bumping this due to a blog from a CA Developer regarding AI, he says that it is not a fixed deadline but that the AI wil get better with each game which, to be honest, seems very poor IMO.
Since then we’ve had our most talented programmers pick up where he left off, but becoming the master of a chunk of code that took almost three years to write is not an instant thing. In the updates so far we’ve got rid of some of the worst behaviours that are close to the surface, and have started to tackle deeper issues like unstable decision loops that cause the AI to mill around rather than hold its line and fire. We’re also starting to add new behaviours, for example taking better advantage of hilly terrain. These improvements take the code further than we’ve been able before and will be there for Napoleon but we’re not sure yet whether we’ll be able to reverse them back in to Empire in a future update – the code has moved on. If we can we will.
Our overall aim with the improvements is first to get rid of any erratic behaviour, second to improve general performance to the point where the obvious handicaps can be removed, and then to add a greater variety of ’smart’ behaviours. None of these have a fixed finish line – it’s a process of continual improvement, and each game will get AI better than the last one. Including Napoleon.
Now my question is why there are AI mods but CA seems to be sifting through it's AI code.
http://blogs.sega.com/totalwar/2009/11/10/battle-ai-by-mike-simpson/
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Canada5565 Posts
I played Rome Total War sooo much. Love that game. I tried Medieval but I didn't like it for some reason
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On December 08 2009 16:35 Last Romantic wrote:
mods for RTW were so good.
any suggestions?
also, a Warhammer mod for Medieval II: Total War is coming soon.
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RTW was the most fun for me. RTR and Darthmod are great mods to extend the lifespan of the game.
MTW2 is really fun with SS mod.
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On December 09 2009 05:09 andrewlt wrote:
The worst for me was Rome, since they turned an infantry dominated period into a cavalry dominated game.
Install the Rome Total Realism Mod and most problems with RTW are gone!
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On December 27 2009 16:05 Pyrrhuloxia wrote:any suggestions?
If you have a lot of time, and you still want the game to be Roman-time based, than EB (Europa Barborum) is a good time burner. Its incredibly in-depth and more complicated, and the combat is good.
The only problem is the AI is still bleh.
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On December 28 2009 08:17 Maenander wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2009 05:09 andrewlt wrote:
The worst for me was Rome, since they turned an infantry dominated period into a cavalry dominated game.
Install the Rome Total Realism Mod and most problems with RTW are gone!
I prefer Roma Surrectum, awesome mod.
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EPT
