your opinion please chaps

[redcoat]

ive not had a steam game since the days when half life 2 first came out,partly due to extremely slow internet.
but now our communications masters have seen fit to upgrade our exchange,steam has become an option again.
my question is this.i dont own any of the total wargames since empire came out,ive seen napoleon tw on a mates pc and frankly its a joke so i dont think i'll bother.so is empire worth the effort?

theres no point asking on the tw forums as its full of fanatics either pro or anti and you dont get a sensible answer.
i figure you chaps have probably tried 'em all andhere i may get some good opinions.cheers

[con20or]

Personally I enjoy the total war games and I own most of them.

I think Empire is fun, and grows on me the more i play it.

Pro's - nice eye candy for battles - some sort of realism, and really nice naval battles. Theres also a few MODs that improve it quite alot (google Dathmod if youre interested).

Con's - can be buggy, AI is pretty poor even on hard. After playing SOWGb you will really notice the difference.

The Napoleon addon was supposed to be a bit of improvement on empire, so if you didnt like that, no point buying empire.

Shogun 2 got some good reviews, although it doesnt seem to have held people attention for long.

[redcoat]

my problem with nap total war was the complete absence of any napoleonic tactics! it was just like medieval total war but in fancy uniforms.
i suppose i hoped that empire being a bit earlier,there might be some realism in there.
i have an english civil war mod for mtw2 which is exellent,within the limits of the engine that is.cheers

[con20or]

Darthmod introduced different formations - take a look at that.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1126

[Saddletank]

my problem with nap total war was the complete absence of any napoleonic tactics! it was just like medieval total war but in fancy uniforms.
i suppose i hoped that empire being a bit earlier,there might be some realism in there.
i have an english civil war mod for mtw2 which is exellent,within the limits of the engine that is.cheers

Hi, yes, that ECW mod for me was one of the highpoints of the TW franchise. I played it a lot from the Royalist side but the Parliamentarian side had a bug caused by a general when the Royalist AI Cornish army first attacked across the Saltash in 1642.

If you are looking for any sort of nod towards period authenticity then Empire will dissapoint as much as Napoleon did. The battle game engine is exactly the same one with no formations (beyond square which all credit to them they did add) and the formations you can make are the same ones from M2TW, drag a unit out into as many ranks as you like, with no gaps between company lines in a column (like you see in SoW), etc, etc.

The naval combat was a joke, it being a direct port-over of their land warfare engine so you got a square of sea with edges, no discerable weather gauge and ships that halted when they got to their desitination (like infantry units will on the land battle maps).

The eye-candy in all their games is wonderful - they truly are fantastic to look at - but as for gameplay... I'd give them a miss.

There are some brave souls who have made ACW mods for Empire and Napoleon but these cannot address the shortcomings of the battle game engine which are numerous and having played the ACW Empire mod all I can say is that it felt exactly like Empire but in blue and grey uniforms. There was no ACW period feel to it at all.

I recently installed the Lordz Napoleonic TW3 and wondered what all the hype was about: same dull unrealistic gameplay, same masses of bodies from muskets within a couple of minutes. Grossly over-effective infantry fire and melee casualties; stupidly fast movement rates...

Apart from the wonderful Middle Earth mod for M2TW and that ECW mod you mentioned, "For King or Country" the only other mod worth touching in the TW series IMO is the Kaunitz Project for Empire and the Seven Years War. The problem with that is the mod designer uses proper wargame scales with a true groundscale and unit frontage and move rates but the AI simply doesn't understand it and so you have to play it vs human opponents and there is no campaign game either. A great pity as this is the finest I've seen the TW engine perform and it shows whats possible when a real wargamer and grognard designs a proper wargames mod for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFA60tr9Wqw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dET7AcOtVbo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxxY0rk00fk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1NfoO9Xkg8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nrszmkiwd3Y

[redcoat]

yes i was involved with for king or country (in a tiny tiny way as i came late to it) doing some historical research.unfortunatly i was too late to provide art for it.
if thats your pic in your sig,im guessing you are a ecw reenactor.ecws,or sealed knot? cheers

[Stevedrumsdw]

Medieval 2 total war kingdoms rules based on the simple fact that it has a great active modding community and does not have modding limitations like Empire and Shogun. Just to give a few examples of what I am talking about, I will post some videos of current mods and some soon to be released.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_5_v_2LuAo


http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=493154

[Stevedrumsdw]

Here:

[Stevedrumsdw]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... tLzRJEeZI4

[con20or]

I enjoyed Medieval, and I have kingdoms as well. What would you reccomend?