The Wooden box is a Collectors Edition available for OZ and NZ only...History channel DVD? No idea...perhaps while stocks last.

Eurogamer live interview:

beerio asks: The demo had unconscionably long load times for both the battles and to start the demo itself. Was this, as rumoured, an artifact of the compression used to keep the demo small? And how do the load times in the actual game itself compare? If they're as long as the ones in the demo I think I'll be cancelling my pre-order, as waiting a couple of minutes for a fight to load up is not really on given the number of battles in a campaign.

Kieran Brigden: That's a fair point. Since the demo build (which is incidentally very dated now) we've knocked a large amount off the loading times at the start, and to and form, battles. This is the basic process of optimisation, it takes time and is often done very close to release. You should notice a significant difference in the load times, somewhere between 30-40 per cent and in some cases more than half.

ZOMG everyone playing the game already!!!! I haven't got mine yet...will get it tomorrow(unless they betray me lol!)

Gormaz...I know previous Total Wars the chances of corrupting your save file was higher if you saved VERY often. It did happen so it doesn't surprised me

It's not as simple as that. Empire is a Steam game...Tried pirated L4D? Definitely works...but not worth the hassle and many complications.

The pirated versions are missing sound files... The full game is near 15GB...

And my god the install time is epic...nearly 2 hours for me...and the manual is crap...no fun reading it while waiting also...

It could be because of compression, install time could depend on CPU power...My CPU is really olde...

Pentium D 2.8Ghz...nuff said

I have 3GB Ram and a HD3850(256MB)

Installation tak pakai GC punye... CPU dependant...btw are you locked at Medium settings? How much VRAM your GC have?

Update has gone live...it's downloading now...so much for next week

If you want, you can overwrite the games graphic detecting code. You can set 512MB in your preference file. But it may make the game less stable especially considering your GC wont have enough VRAM to load the higher res textures.(shared memory wont work).

Stay away from texture quality and make sure particle quality is at medium or lower.

Go to c:\documents&settings\username\application data\the creativeassembly\Empire\scripts\preferences.empire_script.txt

change:
gfx_video_memory 0

to

gfx_video_memory 512000000

So here we have the army of General Washington against an attacking French force protecting Quebec. Outnumbered the French had reinforcement from a nearby fort. I thought of retreating but that would slow down my advance onto Montreal so i decided to hold my ground and defend our position


I decided to do what great defenders do...turtle I used the battalion square tactic and created this line of infantry between my artilerries and the enemy attacker. The left and right flanks covered by line infantry and about 2 extra infantry in the square to reinforce the defence.

I place two infantry lines behind my artilerries so that they don't get mowed down by cannon ball. The strategy started off well with the enemy appearing stumped. They sent units to my left flank. Their general lost his mind. He was probing my defence for weakness and moved directly in the line of fire of my cannons. Kaboom...enemy general dead...

Enemy reinforcements arrived on my left flank...at that point i moved some of my infantry on the right to the left. Then they hit me...apparently there a large reinforcement behind my square...and General Washington fell...even before I realised what was happening.

At this point the enemy in front of my square are in flight and a major battle raging behind my square. I had to move the troops in the front to the rear to stem the tide. Managed to hold out, lost my cavalry. The enemy routed...The day was ours. A close victory.

Thankfully, I still got General Washington back in the campaign screen.(you can't lose him in the RTI campaigns). Now with this french force defeated, the fort across the river was clear and Quebec defenceless. Hmmm...now on wards to Quebec...i will hold Quebec and attack Montreal from there. That will make us the dominant force in the Americas!

There is a small patch today...no change list...probably some sort of hotfix...

I hate patches that have no change list or notes...

Just a question...have you ever been invaded? Has an enemy force ever landed on GB?

IC...how odd...I must say CA OZ has done a remarkable job improving the AI's use of naval invasion and the unit pathfinding in sieges in M2TW(1.2) and Kingdoms.

I expect CA UK to do just that in future updates...I think its because it's a new engine and they really have so much to do considering the scope of the game...

Frankly the only bad thing I can find apart from the technical issues like some glitched water graphics in land battles and the load times(bearable now)...is actually the pathfinding in sieges...units getting stuck in walls etc...down right annoying...I think its partly has to due with unit cohesion...

anyway I'm confident these things will be improved...

Thats what makes it difficult to troubleshoot. I never had any crashes and the Quebec siege worked.

If you notice, the loading for the scenario battles with scripted intro camera/speech is usually a lot longer than the GC or normal battle.

Try marathas...they are actually quite interesting and unique...

On the Quebec siege...I know what bug you would have experienced...the slow unit movement near the bank of the river...not even sure if its a bug or a feature....Devs have said before that the terrain can slow down your units(like mud etc)...but the animation are like slo mo and not realistic to actually being slowed down by mud...

We have no choice but to apply patches...since its steam...its automatic..it is always updated.the patch so far has been for other issues.

ZOMG...no internet connection for 2 days....cannot play Empire! Finally back I think have to set up offline mode everytime I turn off the PC just in case.

Guys anyone want to join Friday Night Battle? I need Steam ID's if you are interested...Only land battles for now because Naval battles need some tweaking to allow some restrictions in online battles.

This Friday starting 9pm. I will work on a format to make this interesting.

I've created a new Total War LYN community on steam. It is invite only so if you want to join online multiplayer battles please tell me you steam ID so I can invite you.

A lot easier to manage than just adding to friends list. Steam ID's please.......

This post has been edited by frags: Mar 18 2009, 01:01 PM