Empire: Total War is the most recent instalment of the highly venerated strategic series that so far has brought us the turbulent history of feudal Japan (Shogun, 2000), the chivalry of medieval Europe (Medieval and Medieval II, 2002 and 2006 respectively) and the glory of the Roman Empire (Rome, 2005). All of these games are essentially the logical extension of table-top wargamming, combining a solid troop recruiting, city building campaign mode with the most historically accurate and intense real time strategy battle mode going around. Over the nine-year history of the series the underlying graphics engine behind the game has become increasingly more impressive, so much so that the engine behind the Rome edition was famously used by the History Channel for recreations of ancient battles in a number of documentaries.
With such a pedigree, such a tradition of excellence, it almost goes without saying that Empire: Total War is one of the biggest releases of the first part of 2009. It was certainly that pedigree that inspired me to fork out 150 big ones for the collector’s edition. That’s not to say that I didn’t have my doubts however. The move to 18th century warfare, while logical in terms of appealing to the ‘military history buff’ player base does throw some significant challenges. The most significantly of these being how an engine built to handle the hand-to-hand combat of earlier eras could be adapted to accurately portray the regimented lines of musket fire so essential to the period.
Fortunately, Empire has answered these concerns with aplomb. In battles I find myself making dozens of period appropriate decisions. I agonise over the best parts of terrain to claim for my artillery, I fight for the higher ground so that my cavalry can get some elevation to their charge, I lure opponents into pockets of fire so that my men can open up on them from all sides, and should I ever get flanked by enemy cavalry I form my infantry up into squares to repel them, and best of all, it all works. The enemy AI for the most part reacts appropriately, staying mobile to shift points of attack, cleverly using cavalry to either flank me or open up gaps in the line, in one particular battle in Italy I even fell victim to a classic ploy stolen from Alexander at Gaugamela. A flanking manoeuvre forced me to divide my line of infantry sufficiently for them to sneak a unit of lancers through the gap to my General, killing him and almost instantly causing a rout. And don’t just take my word for it, there are a number of fans of the period out there having a lot of fun applying realistic strategies for the period and getting all the appropriate results.
Another new battle-mode feature for Empire is naval combat. Once again this is a resounding success, with realistic strategies creating realistic results. Perhaps the most impressive feature is the modelling of cannon fire, if you have a cannon-ball that has the good fortune to hit a mast it will damage it and possibly break it. Luck like that, the roll of the boats in the seas, its all a factor, and that is a very good thing. Unfortunately it isn’t quite perfect, the interface could be a little cleaner, ships don’t quite seem to take the amount of damage that they really should, and there do appear to be a couple of minor bugs in the system. But these are probably largely fixable errors, and the whole system has already been enough to encourage me to re-watch Russell Crowe getting about in a crisp uniform as the captain of the HMS Surprise.
Unfortunately the quality and attention to detail really falls apart in the campaign mode of the game. First of the rank are some of the inexplicable decisions that have been made. An example of this is the family interface which in previous titles has explained the complex relationship between royal families and determined who would take charge after the death of a monarch is gone. I cannot understand why you would do this in an era where peerage was at its most complex. During the grand campaign period of 1700-1799 the Hapsburgs ran out of male heirs in both Spain and Austria, leading to wars of succession in each case, while in England you had a whole world of complications with the Act of Settlement in 1701 bringing in the House of Hannover and its rather controversial and unpopular German kings by the names of George I, II and III. Perhaps they decided to remove the system on the grounds that countries can move to representative governments during the game, but even those tended to be a bit familial at the time, so a system could certainly have been implemented. Certainly any simulation of the period is lessened without that layer of intrigue and mixed loyalties to ensure that diplomacy stays in a heightened state.
Diplomacy in general is a disappointment in the game. There’s plenty of excellent options, with a largely functional trading system, the option of creating protectorates, and the usual exchanges of regions and technology, but the AI has no idea what to do with this. Other countries will refuse even the most generous of offers on occasion, while at other times will give things away far to cheaply. And most disappointing of all it is quite common to have a nation decide that it wants a territory of yours and every turn send you a ridiculous offer for it, such as 1 technology and a little money for all of Canada. It’s fair enough for the AI to try things like this, but to come back every turn with an equivalent offer and never once try any other approach is just ridiculous and annoying.
And then there’s the bugs, and there are plenty of them. Worst of all are some considerable memory leak and save-file corrupting bugs that have been ending people’s games 20-30-40 years in. Fortunately I haven’t had one of those myself, but I certainly feel for those that have, playing that many years can take as much as a couple of weeks of your time.
Added to this are some terrible AI issues and bugs. For example, there are a number of water passages, notably on both sides of the Mediterranean where there is only one “square” for ships to pass through. The AI has a wonderful habit of parking ships on these squares and in so doing prevents all other nations from passing ships through, regardless of whether they are allies or enemies. I once broke my alliance and declared war on Morocco just so I could sink one measly galley that was preventing my fleets from passing by Gibraltar. This is a spectacular failure to not realise that not allowing fleets to pass through each other and having channels so narrow that one or two ships could block them was going to be an issue. Worse is that the AI doesn’t know what to do with the situation, Spain had been at war with Morocco for 20 years or so and had amassed a massive army in Gibraltar to use the little pretend land-bridge there to invade. With that path blocked by the ships, rather than finding another route, Spain just continued to build up troops, crippling its economy in the process.
Even worse than this is another water related bug. The AI never makes naval invasions, never, not once, not ever. This is the 1700s, the back end of the colonial age, the time that the English East India Company is expanding rapidly through India. In short it is a massive oversight, one that makes playing as an island nation, such as Britain, ridiculously easy. Now I am sure that this will be fixed in a patch, possibly even in community made mods, but it is simply the sort of bug that shouldn’t make its way into a final product, certainly not in combination with the other bugs and issues (there’s more than I have mentioned here) which to many people have rendered the game essentially unplayable.
Currently I am playing as the Russians since without many ports or coastal provinces in general these bugs should not effect me much. Although even now I have a problem as the few ships I do have in the Black Sea cannot pass the Dardanelles because the Ottomans have parked a galley there and I’d rather like to maintain my truce and trading agreement with them. Even aside from those obvious bugs, the AI feels soulless and unexiting. An invasion of Persia gave no impression of ending a once proud and mighty empire. Sure, they knew to keep their army dispersed and up in the hills for protection, they raided villages to make it hard for me to control the regions I’d claimed, and built up masses of camels to scare my cavalry. But there were no attempts to bring allies together against me, no calls for peace when things looked grim, not even an ambush of my armies as they travelled through the mountains. Once they’d lost their one last stand in an open field adjacent to their capital, they just quietly disappeared into the sands.
A final gripe I have with Creative Assembly and Empire relates to the abysmal way that they have treated their player community in this release. Games like the Total War series essentially serve a niche market. Whether you call them nerds, anoraks or tragics, its those people who devote huge portions of their lives to researching, memorising and recreating military history who are both the biggest market and biggest asset of these games. Go to a site devoted to the series like http://www.twcenter.net/ and you will see forums devoted not only to how to play the game better, but also to discussing the historical accuracy of various elements of the game, and particularly to mods to make the game better, more accurate, or possibly less accurate to allow for fantastic possibilities such as a Roman legion in middle earth. Not only is Empire a disappointment to these people as buggy game at release, they’ve also managed to mess up the release itself to cause consternation.
In what can only be assumed to be a profit maximising exercise, Creative Assembly decided to release various versions of the game with different military units available. If you buy the basic copy off the shelf you get the whole game with a reasonable amount of variation between the troops of each country. If you spend $10 more you can get the Special Forces edition which provides all that plus some extra interesting units such as Ghurkhas, Spanish guerrillas and Nelson’s flagship the HMS Victory, all important units in their own right. Beyond that, there were special unique units that you could only get by pre-ordering from particular stores, these include the USS Constitution, an Amazonian unit and the Prussian Deaths Head Hussars. Essentially they’ve made a game where nobody has the same collection of units available, even having spent $150 on this game there are still units I don’t have.
Given that the extra units primarily provide a bit of variation and colour, not having the units is only a small issue for the individual player, and shouldn’t influence gameplay too much. Where it really becomes an issue though in what it means for the modding community. Already there is a large push against modders to prevent them from producing mods that replicate or unlock these extra units as it will be treated as piracy. A bit of a problem for anyone who might be trying to, for example, recreate the battle of Trafalgar, or a complete set of eastern European cavalry regiments. This is a great pity, as it is these historical accuracy and completeness mods that are what turns a game like this from a good one into a great one, it has certainly worked wonders for the previous games in the series. In creating the various versions, Creative Assembly has basically locked out and complicated the process for their most useful fans.
They’ve also lost a potentially very useful anti-piracy measure. Like a number of recent games, Empire requires a Steam account to register and make it possible to play. Basically you need to get online, get a Steam account and activate the game or its no conquering the world for you. I understand the concept of this, it makes the game just that little bit harder to pirate, meanwhile Valve (the makers of Steam) get a bunch of extra users onto their digital distribution service. In return, users get a whole lot of hassle and an “achievements” feature which gives you trophies for completing certain tasks like conquering your first territory or winning a campaign, at least it would if it worked. I’ve seen a number of these Steam activation or similar approaches used in the past, and all of them create a small percentage of people who for whatever reason can’t get the game to run, either due to a lack of internet access or just a simple problem like a bug or a dodgy activation code that somehow prevents them from getting access. It’s a bad PR exercise, a huge sign of distrust in your users, and something that could so easily have been avoided if they had instead allowed you to play the game out of the box and held these extra units, and the potential of many more in the future as a reward for those who registered a legal version. That idea of rewarding your honest consumers has worked very well in this market for Stardock, and with the extra content already prepared for Empire, and an expansion or two almost certainly on the way, it should have been used here.
The thing about Empire, though is that at the end of the day, despite these large, almost gamebreaking problems and feeling the pain of the community, I just can’t put this game down. I’ve already completed the American Independence campaign, a 50 year “short” campaign with the French and am now half way through another 50 year campaign, this time with the Russians. I’ve pumped in 100 hours or more into the title and am still seeing new things, new types of units and new strategies from the AI. Sure, I am also seeing new bugs and quirks, but for some reason none of them bother me enough to cause me to actually stop playing. In short, despite everything, Empire: Total War is a whole lot of fun that really makes you want to play for “just one more turn”. It’s just such a pity that it is also the subject of a patronising and buggy release. Thankfully a few patches and mods, some of which are already emerging, should fix that up just fine.
Nice article and I agree with you on those counts. There currently exists AI, diplomacy and other bugs which we’re eagerly awaiting a patch for. I don’t like Steam much but with all the idiots still pirating so much software these days what can they do to guard against lost revenue. *shrug* Fix the game for one.
Harlz
http://www.harlz.com/totalwar/
A good, entertaining review. Your thoughts on the game seem to parallel the common view of the game. I do hope the AI isn’t too bad… but I absolutely can’t wait to get playing! *Please let it be sitting in my PO box tonight* =)
I agree with all of your comments. I also feel that there were little things left out of the game, and little things make a good game a great game. First off, blood. All those bullets flying about, and all those swords coming down and not one drop of blood. Also, when boarding ships you can’t shoot at them but they are pumping your hull full of lead. This lead to a full Heavy First Rate crew losing to a sloop because by the time the boarders slid down the ropes to the deck, it had fired two broadsides into my hull.
Fine article but the “land bridge” is not a land bridge then the Øresundsbro (Bridge that connects DK – with SWE) should have been build in 1700? or before? no they are short easy crossable passes but a ship can easily control the area from transport vessels…