Thanks,  running vista hp 64, 6 gig ram, 9800gt and quad core cpu, hope/should be ok for empire......

You guys are so lucky, my framerate on this game has made it near unplayable. What is your specs? My graphics card is in the lower range (Nvidia 8400 GS), but I've got more than enough RAM so I don't know why its been so laggy. For some reason the battles tend to run better than the campaign map, and changing the graphics settings does little to change anything, for better or for worse. Did you guys have to do anything special to get it running correctly?

The 8400 is a pretty weak card. In nVidia's numbering system (the new GTX series aside), for gaming you want to avoid anything with a second number of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.

Do you think the card is the problem? I've heard people complaining with graphics cards much better than mine saying the game wasn't very responsive. Though I'm sure it doesn't help...

TBH I'm running it on a Nvidia 7800, pentium 4 1.66 ghz, xp sp3, 1.75 gb ram. I knew going into it that my system would barely (if at all) run it, but I plan on getting a new one soon anyway. So far though I just have occasional crashes. Kinda laggy now that I'm getting up there in the years though. I can have medium settings, but i put mine on low since I keep the camera zoomed out anyway.

I haven't played it much, TBH. I got on the other day and played 2 turns worth which was about 2 hours worth, mainly in battles. I ended up taking a city in India so now I have a beach head. Destroyed some martha ships. And fought a few battles in North america against the iroquis. Just haven't had alot of free time.

Been playing Empire for a while now and have found out that rocket ships are absolutely deadly against others when used en masse. Played a skirmish with four heavy first rates against four rocket ships and before my first rates got into rage one blew to pieces when hit by a full barrage and the one next to it caught on fire, put out, but still. Before i have met one ships was sunk and three had small fires. Those things are deadly. don't mind it though because i did the same thing to the enemy later with the rocket ships.

Love everything about Empire Total War

P.S. Sorry sins for the content of this post, you guys have a great game too.

Can you ever play it lag free. Just about everything on my PC is better than yours (no offense)  but the lag often gets so bad it affects my ability to issue orders, especially on Campaign map.

BTW: Do your in game cinematics work? Mine are even laggier than the game. Its not a big deal as you can skip them, but I kind of wanted some background for the road to independence campaign.

Hey guys. How is the strategy part of this game? I've played the demo, and the graphics are great, but I am more interested in the 'nuts and bolts' of the game. Have they improved over previous incarnations?

I'm utterly dissapointed with Empire:Total War.  

E:TW has the potential to be a great game but excessive waiting coupled with numerous bugs/AI flaws drag the game down. It really could've used another few months of development. I'd suggest not buying it until Creative Assembly releases a large patch to fix the kinks.

Side note: I'm getting really tired of developers, like the Creative Assembly, that practice "release now, patch later" development.

Np, as I said, I knew going into it my system would suck. It's almost always laggy, but the lag doesnt bother me that much. I dont know how true it is, but I read on CA's forum that older systems are actually better because they run the game in a differnt way since they can't handle it the way newer systems can. Only cinematic I've seen is the opening scene, and thats generally pretty smooth except for the sound. Never played the RTI so not sure if I should be getting cinematics or not.

I like it. For one thing, your regions don't just have the one city anymore. There is a Region Capital that's your main city, and depending on how well you treat its population, nearby towns pop up as the population grows. You can customize these towns as well, like building churches to give you more missionaries and increase happiness (and convert to your religion), or schools to be able to research more techs at the same time and have more agents, inns to recruit spies and make people happy, or some crafting building that increases region wealth. These towns can be damaged and occupied by invading armies denying their bonuses until you fix them back up.

Regions by water can also spawn ports this way, and you can customize those between fisheries for food, trade ports for cold hard cash, or shipyards to build your navies. Your navies can raid enemy trade routes to give you extra income, and decrease the enemy's. Theirs can do the same, of course. The trade routes are shown in clear lines between ports, and hovering over shows you which countries use that route and it's colored respectively (green for yours/allied, yellow for mix of allied/enemy, red for enemy, white for neutral).

Besides these towns that are created, regions also have things like mines, wineries, farms that you can upgrade (after researching the necessary techs).

There's a nifty research screen that's easy to navigate and assign which school researches what. There's a "Lists" screen so you can keep tabs on all your regions and the buildings/towns within them, so all the new stuff is neatly organized.

Other than these additions, the campaign map doesn't play much differently than at least TW2 (I didn't play the earlier ones). You recruit your units in your region capitals, based on which buildings it has, march 'em to enemies and start fighting. One other neat thing is you can recruit on the road, they'll be created at the nearest region capital and automatically march to join your army. You can also re-fill your units without having to retreat to a city. So it helps keep the action moving.

The Monk, I share your feelings. Something is just not "right" about ETW. I also think that the Total War series found the right era in the middle ages. In Rome, Cavalry was still dominant, which annoyed me a lot.

I must say, while I like Medieval 2, I never ever got so many pitched, exciting and tactically challenging fights as in Medieval 1. The Sieges were horribly bad, yes, but the tactical battles were much better. There was also a much better introduction to the tactical battles. The byzantine Archer tactics, the cavalry charge and so on - the Tutorial was much better than nowadays. Today the focus seems to be on fast and furious and tactically much less demanding quick battles.

Na man, Rome was the best. At least against the AI as long as you kept your infantry in formation, you could usually absorb frontal calvary attacks, and if you're attacked from the rear you probably deserve to lose anyways.

And thanks fearless, I guess I'll try posting on CA or steam forums to see if anyone with my graphics card has gotten the game to run somewhat smoothly.

@ Annatar11:

Thank you for taking time to post that very well thought out reply.

I'll give the game a whirl.

Sincere best wishes, Mistralok

Def worth it...its a great game to study to or read to...do a turn read/study a page...

We'll see how well this theory holds up on Monday when I get my Crime and Society test back....gulpage

-Phal

Yes I love this feature...especially in the fight against Indian tribes in the middle of nowhere (Plains Nations??!? who decided to put that there....its the Black Hills and no gold mines...wasn't there a gold strike there once? even though it wasn't founded at the time of the game yet I think....wow I rant good night)

-Phal (again)

wait no refilling having to fall back to refill YES

Yes indeed

My Grand Campaign is with Austria. I made a really good choice going for Vienna and Italy as my first targets (those minor races just don't stand a chance). It gave me a few trade ports, one of the best regions I own still (up to 25ish now I think?) with 4 or so wineries. It's insanely rich. It's Naples, Italy of course

From where I went to Egypt and wiped out the Barbary States, and also learned a very important lesson that if you want to hold regions with vastly different religions, you better sit a missionary there for 10 turns before you even think about capturing it. I wasted so much time putting out armed rebellions.

Anyway, from Egypt I went back up to Europe, figured I'd get France from behind but I'm stopping by to capture Portugal first. France is a huge region, it's going to make so much money when I get it. In the north I'm at war with Prussia, Lithuania-Poland, and Russia. I'm holding them off, but waiting for my main army to make their way up through southern Europe before I go after those in a blitz with 3 armies. Hopefully that'll be fast enough before the Ottomans decide they don't like me anymore, they've started asking for regions and that's never a good sign..

I think I'm on 1745 or something.

I've been playing Austria as well! It's like 1742 and I have managed to beat the ottomans out of erurope and I also accidently >> conquered Prussia, Poland and a few minors in Europe and the Americas.

I also get the nice crashes after 3-4 hours of straight playing. My game CTDS and gives me the 'not enough video memory' bullshit. I guess it's my fault for running every thing on max. ;[

Hmm Austria, I have not even started an Austrian campaign.  I beat the British campaign on Normal. That was fun but it didn't register it in my stats as a Campain Completed.  Maybe in between classes I'll think about the Austrians...

They have an interesting start. No colonies anywhere, no access to water.

Plus, you have to make sure Austria sticks around otherwise we wouldn't get our Arnie.

I found the nation which works best for me! Russia!
No annoying overseas colonies to deal with.
Fast expansion is possible.
And a large starting area (unlike the Marathas).
And most importantly of all THEY DON'T USE CAMALS OR ELEPHANTS! Those thing just take way to long to cross fences...

I also discovered the true usefulness of canister shot. I was in a town defending against enemies coming at me. 2 units of horsemen charged at me down an alley, so I flanked down another alley with one unit of my horsemen. As they came down the alley, all 4 of my demi-cannons fired, taking out over 3/4 of the 90 or so charging cavalry, leaving the rest to be sent running by my flanking cavalry. 

I don't like that Canister Shot gets replaced. I haven't finished upgrading Explosive Shot, but Canister was amazing for short-distance fights.

I'm now getting this game so I can tell stories like these but I have to wait til i get back from Fl