Actually Austria does start with one Trading Port in the gulf of Italy next to Venice.  It's pretty much hidden and I didn't realize I had it until I realized I had a bunch of overseas trading options.  But, until expansion they only have one port. 

For my Austrian story...I'm about ten turns in maybe but I've taken Venice, Bosnia and Serbia I think. Those two were Ottoman controlled.  Venice still have one city on the tip of Greece so I'm fighting my way through the Ottomans to take it :)  That's about all for now haha

Keep it real

-Phalnax

Oh you're right. I took that piece from Venice by sea. It's just sitting there. Ottomans in front, ocean to the east. It'd probably be the first place to get attacked.

Left the Ottomans alone in my game. They were a bit big and I had my eyes set on France from the very beginning. Look at that huge chunk o' land!

In my Prussian game I took the Sweds first

How are you guys enjoying the game?  I've heard a lot of negative feedback from players and I was tempted to try Men of War instead because that seems to have the opposite.

What kind of negative feedback have you heard?

Other than a few bugs and maybe semi-dumb AI at times its good.

Yeah that Greece city I'm not bothering with by sea since Venice has a bigger fleet than me.  I don't have a single ship yet and they have about six so efforts would be wasted via sea.  And the reason I decided to attack Ottomans was because they had three Cities/Towns in my LOS that had one unit of defense each so I couldn't pass the oppurtunity up. And the Ottomans are spread over 12 (now 10 hehe) territories so any counter-defensive would give me time to entrench and claim all of the Balkan states as I intend to do so. Muhaha

First I'm hitting the gym then I'm hitting Greece

-Phal

OMG stop making me want this game more people PLEASE i beg you

Ya, I haven't experienced any (noticable) bugs so far in my Russian campaign, currently about 50 turns in. Just avoid forts at all cost. The AI will make you want to murder it if you try to tell them to do things near forts walls. I think the biggest thing is finding the starting nation that works for you. I couldn't stand the British or French as well as certain aspects of the Marathas (slow fence crossing GRRRRR), but Russia really seems to be fun for me. I also have heard about random crashing for people, but it hasn't been an issue for me in the game (it was an issue for me in the demo though, patch fixed it for me). My guess is by the next patch all crash bugs will be squashed and two patches from now the AI will actually like you on fort walls.

Now back to taking out those pesky Prussians... Gotta make sure those evil Nazi's don't march on Moscow in 215 years... And how better to do that than by making future germany into Russia? Methinks its time to give the USSR a bit of a head start on NATO...

Yeah, I tend to auto-resolve on walled emplacements for now.

I auto-resolve everything!!! haha. My laptop is good but it's crashed during battles so I just let the AI do it in a second

That's usually when mine crashes too. Most times it's on loading. But a few times it crashed at the end of long ones and that's always crappy.

I auto-resolve only when I am short on time or really outnumber the enemy.

I've had some bizarre auto-resolves, though. Probably ended on the extreme end on the RNG. I remember I didn't want to find some battle, forces were close to evenly matched and a full 20-unit army on each side. I hit auto-resolve, and I won losing only 200-some men, out of ~2.4k. I don't think anyone could pull that off manually.

My autoresolves when besieging cities are highly disproportional many times.  Sometimes its 1500 vs 1500 about and they lose all 1500 and I lose like 50....many times...I'm not complaining but seriously...a city and its people would put up more of a fight....unless you're fighting the French that is...

-Phal

rofl

Actually, I have pulled that off sometimes... It is all about making the enemy army flee before they get a chance to charge in and muck things up. Some nice far range artillery is good for that. Also, I think it takes tech into account way to much. The Austrian's full armies I could easily crush with autoresolve while the British armies would take 2 of my armies for a gaurenteed victory.

In other news, ever since the latest patch my game has been crashing a bunch. Also noticed a glitch where my army disappears. One turn the army is fine, the next it is still on the campaign map(even has the bar showing how many units), but clicking on it shows no units, and it cannot be used to fight enemies (it tries to make you declare war even though you are already at war). And anjother bug I noticed recently, although it could just be because I haven't used many ships until now, but they seem to get stuck doing pathfinding when clicked on for upwards of 15 seconds in some fleets. Another new bug with the patch is a load screen being stuck even after loading. You know the battle finished loading since it lets you do exactly what you can normally do in a battle (including starting it, using menus, ect) but the load screen is still up. You are unable to see anything, but are able to hear and interact with it. Ever since the latest patch it feels more like playing Sin's Entrenchment Beta 2 than a released game.

Currently still playing Russian game on easy settings. I have conquered all of Europe except the Ottomans and the year is only 1766. Due to my large conquests, I have had all tech researched since about 1750, and now destroy any universities in new regions to prevent 'clamour for reform' from reducing happiness by 14. I have still managed to keep an absolute monarchy as government type. I am planning on declaring war on the Ottomans by 1770, and hope to have them all steamrolled by 1775 and then march my troops overland to India by 1780. By endgame I hope to have used my massive standing armies (upkeep costs of about 115k out of my income of around 135k) to take over most if not all of India.

Edit: Ugh. After loading up my autosave, the fleet which I clicked on when it crashed the previous time crashed the game again when I tried to click on it. Seems my full fleet of heavy first rates are now toxic assets.

Edit 2: Seems the aforementioned fleet problem can be fixed by telling other fleets to merge with the fleet causing the problem and move the ships into the unproblematic fleet! Now if only it wouldn't crash so often...

Haha....I've only tested the game for about an hour with the two latest mini-patches. I started as Russia.  Its around 1710 maybe idk.  I took Ingria from the Swedes and persuaded them into a peace b/c both of us had four enemies (barbary states included).  I wiped out Georgia (the country lol) and Dagestan.  Crimea...what's that? That never existed in my history lol. Ottomans are about to lose two cities once i start up the game in a few minutes....

Yay!!

-Phalnax

Well, the year is 1781. I went WAY ahead of schedule. Declared war on the Ottomans in '67, had all my troops to India by '70. In '78 the last of the Mysore fell, leaving me in control off all of Europe, the middle east coridor, and all of India. Started sending my armies to the New World by '80, and now in 81 some fleets are starting to arrive. If all goes well I can take all of the world by 1799.

The biggest problem I am encountering now is the problem of the ships crashing the game. Click on a fleet, the game crashes. The bug can be fixed manually as stated above, but is a royal pain to do so. The bug persists even after reloading. In any further posts I will refer to it as the 'toxic assets' bug.

i guess I'm one of the "lucky ones" then....  

I haven't had a single crash running Empire TW since release-day.  weird....    

Well, I figured the "Sins never crashes for me" thing would come back and bite me in the ass one day It just did it with E:TW.

lol monk that is because you know what to do to prevent bugs like that

No worries monk, the last patch did it for me (bug free til then), so I'm sure there is a patch that will break it for you yet! Just have patience, for your doom approaches as well

Haha bugs....gotta hate them...

In my Russian campaign I have no intentions to invade Poland or Sweden (b/c I have Polish/Swedish/Russian/Irish blood) but I do intent to completely surround their empires with mine lol....that's not intimidating at all. I'm going to send a fleet to the Inuits eventually once I wipe out the Prussians. Morroco is going to die soon too. Spain doesn't like me b/c i'm at war with their lover France b/c France attacked my lover Poland (and because I utterly hate the French language cuz I'm taking it now in college and its just stupid.  Have an A in the class tho cuz of opennote).

Anyway...Prussia/Morroco/Inuits await there distruction later tonight

-Phal

Je ne parle pas Francais. Je parle seulement Anglais.

Heathen. Heretic. French is awesome It's the only language that lets you cuss worse than a drunken sailor and have it sound like gold. Compared to German that makes it sound like you're cussing someone out when you try to give a compliment