I noticed that usually with big nations like Marathas you can do:

- position an army at one turn from the region you want to conquer (either ask for military access or post it on your territory near the border)

- Declare War

- Conquer the city in the same turn

- In the same turn again, ask them for Peace

In lots of situation the AI will accept as when you start taking their regions they are more willing to accept peace (they kinda get intimidated)

You won't be able to exchange region with them for this specific region since its their capital (from what you said before)

No problemo, but better make a save or something before doing that though, it usually works for me for big countries but sometimes the AI get stupidly stubborn and refuse to make peace no matter what.

Like yesterday I was finishing Chapter 4 of the RTI campain and I ended up at war with UK (no surprise there) and all their allies joined in, including Marathas, Prussia, Hannover, Portugal and a couple of others.

I managed to make peace with every single one of them, including UK (!) and Prussia... but hannover (and Portugal) absolutely refused to make peace with me until the end of the campain no matter how much money or gift I was giving them. It sucked because they were raiding my trade lines in Europe and actually making me loose quite a lot of money every turn.

I even considered making a navy (I did not bother with navy research/construction since I did not plan to make one) and drop a stack on Hannover to get rid of them.

Hannover.... seriously...

Small countries and US Natives are tough cookies and go kamikaze style very often

Which type of cannon are you talking about? All?

I do agree with pikeman, they seems pretty broken to me and the pikes do not seems to do much actually, even against Cavalry

Sword cavalry can be "okey", they have lower charge bonus than lancers but higher normal melee skill so it kinda even out (having 1 unit of lancer with 1 unit of sword works pretty well for me actually). I do agree I prefer lancer or light dragoons (who can fire the carabins while moving)

It's Shrapnel shot if I remember well, it does works well.

I do agree round shot are not that great (the only thing I find them useful for is against buildings and cavalry, they pwn cavalry pretty bad actually)

But canister shots are pretty awesome and for me more than half the value of the cannons.

Same for Mortar, the round shots are really meh, but explosive shells are really pretty good

I do agree that the stationary cannons are pretty meh, but the ones you can move around are pretty good, you just need to make them follow your lines and not leave them behind.

It's a choice, I think an army without cannons can do well as well, at least the ennemy will not know exactly where to attack.

Update on the incoming patch:



Hi guys,

As many of you have asked what will be contained in our next update, here is a list of some of the fixes that are currently being worked on:

- Load time detection on trade routes to fix pathfinding crash in campaign (this fixes a crash to desktop)

- Some General Sound balancing improvements (this fixes some unit sound problems)

- Fixed UI Chat hang when spectator leaves unranked match with 3+ players (this fixes a multiplayer problem)

- Addressed several code issues causing crash to desktop

- Fixed several save or load issues

- Corrected campaign map agents behaviour (this fixes a crash to desktop)

- Fix to animation glitch causing repetitive sounds when battle is launched.

A full list of fixes will be published with the update.

Thanks,


Mark O'Connell
(aka SenseiTW)

ETW Forum

At least good to read they fix lots of CTDs

I hope the final list is a bit bigger though (like fixing naval invasion for AI)

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Mar 25 2009, 12:26 PM

Yar, I will wait to see if they fixed all of the CTDs before rejoincing too much.
I also except to have more than this fixed because for the last patch was 2 weeks ago (and did not fix much), they promised some heavy support for the game and so far it's not the case.
Lots of people on the forum are expecting lots from this patch so I hope CA deliver.

Some AI balancing would be great to be honest.

Yar, I do not really expect them to iron all the bugs coming on all the possible machines (some random CTDs are pretty reccurent in the TW games as you said)

But some of the crashes that people are having are pretty "common", like the CTDs during some AI factions turn (Huron, Inuit, Pirates mostly) or when selecting fleets (which I never had myself) so these should have some coding issue that can be pinpointed by CA. I think that it is these issues that CA is trying to fix in the incoming patch. I do hope they manage to nail them down or at least most of them, that would make the game much more enjoyable for me.

After that I can wait more for Ai fixes or naval invasions, these are also quite big issues but at least meanwhile I can play the game without fearing loosing my campain each time I click on the "End Turn" button.

Do hope they announce the patch date soon and that the full patch list will have more surprises, but I do not keep my hope super high to avoid more disapointment.

---

Added on March 26, 2009, 11:37 amBump, Patch is live!

Hi guys,

The next Empire: Total War update is now live. It will download automatically next time to connect to Steam online. If it doesn't download automatically, make sure you have automatic updates enabled in your games list for Empire: Total War.

Here is a complete list of fixes:
- Load time detection on trade routes to fix pathfinding crash in campaign
- Some General Sound balancing improvements
- Fixed UI Chat hang when spectator leaves unranked match with 3+ players
- Various Campaign Crash Fixes
- Some Save/Load fixes
- Boarding fix where cannon crew board order was not being deleted properly causing crash
- Fix to kill characters instantly to stop crashes in campaign on agent/general deaths.
- Save games limited to 1000
- Fix to animation glitch causing repetitive sounds when battle is launched.
- Multiplayer - can now find friends across regions

You can read more details on our forthcoming update cycle here.

Thanks,

Mark O'Connell
(aka SenseiTW)

Nothing much more from what they said, I hope it will fix my issues

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Mar 26 2009, 11:37 AM

Yar, after lurking in the forums more seem lots of people are now reporting new sounds issues.

Which sound card are you using? Seems many people using Xifi are getting the issues

So from CA's announced patch planning next patch will be a bigger gameplay only patch focusing on AI and balancing.
It is supposed to come in "few weeks" (so would not count on it soon.... )

Maybe they will have a small hotfix to fix some of the issues the new patch raised but other than that I think we are struck with this version of ETW for a while now. I do hope they will have fixed my CTDs.

Apparently if you load saves that were faulty before, it might still bug. You need to start new campain to make sure you have the fixes in it.

I am praying hard...

I can personally play without sound for a while if they fixed my grand campains getting corrupted. Most probably they will hotfix it soon yar

Woot I played tonight for like 3 hours continuing my France Grand Campain. Before the patch it was doing a CTD during AI turn, now no more!

It does seems CA fixed at least some of the crashes I was facing.
I also feel the Grand Campain map is smoother than before.

Now I am happy, managed to play tonight without any crash or issue and with faster AI turns than before also. Good stuff!

Yeah, hopefully I get good connection tonight and no more crashes!

Early mortars not very good.

But late one with explosive shots can be pretty damaging.

But it's also depends how lucky you are with the shots, it's a pretty random weapon. Some days you can't seems to hit much even by aiming few units stacked together, some other times you would think they are modern tomahawk missiles

When I played Russia I decided Navy was for sissies and went to Indian through Persia and the Ottomans, was not "that" bad, more than Ottomans really have buttload of regions and they really dunno how to build their regions (maradrass everywhere.....).

He he he, in campain I use auto-resolve a lot actually, the AI do not really give a challenge enough to bother and when it's my full stack against 5-6 units I really do not see the point to wipe the floor with them. As of naval fights, there is not that much action going on (I usually try to pwn the Pirates early, their plantations are nice and they stacks full of gallions and all are a pain in the ass) or it's full stack of ships fighting each other which is troublesome and not really fun to do for me.

I will try to free myself for tomorrow, I got some plans though, nothing fully confirm though

Internet in my area is pretty crap right now, I am really not sure I can play tonight. Shitty internet + possible plans = do not wait for me

Yar, I have even issues just connecting to Steam personally, for once my housemates are not downloading stuff and I still have issues accessing lots of stuff on the net (and I do have a good IP for my location).

Personally I have more or less shelved ETW until they improve it so I won't be joining.

AI too shitty, performance issues and I am still getting some "new" CTDs during battles (like happened in the last time) which I was not getting before.

For now I am back to Civ4, way less eye candy, but at least the AI is worth it, does naval invasion and do not bother me every two turn for one of my city.

The next gameplay patch is supposed to have "Rare naval invasion" according from one developer on official forum, for me it just show they really rushed the game out with a sucky AI and now they have to rework the whole thing to make it better than a guinea pig's intelligence. CA for me focused way too much on nice graphisms and did a step backward on gameplay and AI from previous TW games.

The multiplayer games were nice and fun with you guys, but too unstable on my machine (I realised I usually managed to finish only 2/3 of my battles as average, the rest ended up as CTD and co)

I think ETW will be good in few months when CA will have worked on it, I will wait for patches and mods to be out before starting again, right now I have a bitter taste in the mouth each time I think of the solo campain.

Yar, I actually hope so too, I really did not disliked the game, I was just kinda "disapointed" by it. After they fixed the game a bit so I could actually play campains more than few turns I really realised the AI was pretty dumb (I am not Napoleon either as you guys saw during the online matches, I am not pretending to be modest but more realistic, my "skill" is normal). The starts are a little bit tough, but once you settle down your economy you can just steamroll the AI and pwn any theaters very quickly.

The only ones that usually cause issues are the American's natives and small countries like Courland, the rest of the countries wait for destruction doing nothing much.

I for sure won't buy another CA product on release if I am honest, they do good games.... after many patches and once the mods are out.

Xp or Vista?

Basically the saved games are in the AppData folder if you know what I am talking about.

Under XP just do Start -> Run

Type %appdata% (with the two % signs), type Enter

You should see a "The Creative Assembly" folder in it, the saves are in it.

No idea for Vista but it's something very similar (just the AppData folder is located somewhere else)

You should be fine after reinstalling, I would think since the folder is not under the Steam main folder it should not overwrite them.

Not sure if you can have Steam "search" the games you had installed previously and thus avoid to have to reinstall them, I am still quite noob in Steam...