Empire: Total War gameplay question

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0Tyler0

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#1 0Tyler0
Member since 2008 • 2602 Posts

Ok I love Age of Empires games but problem is AO3 was released years ago and not very popular online anymore. So I was wondering if E:TW's gameplay was like AO3 with like resource collecting and base building. If not, can you give me like an idea of how the multiplayer skirmishes work? I've been looking online and all the videos I've seen are just random battles.. I'm looking for like how you get an army, etc.

Thanks guys! :D

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lundy86_4

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#2 lundy86_4
Member since 2003 • 62042 Posts

Ok I love Age of Empires games but problem is AO3 was released years ago and not very popular online anymore. So I was wondering if E:TW's gameplay was like AO3 with like resource collecting and base building. If not, can you give me like an idea of how the multiplayer skirmishes work? I've been looking online and all the videos I've seen are just random battles.. I'm looking for like how you get an army, etc.

Thanks guys! :D

0Tyler0

Try downlaoding the demo... unfortunately I haven't bought the full game yet, so someone else will have to fill you in on details

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starwarsgeek112

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#3 starwarsgeek112
Member since 2005 • 3472 Posts

The game is a mix of turn-based Civilization style empire building and real time strategy battles. It's quite a bit different than AoE3, but if you are into strategy games and like the time period I'd pick it up. Definitely try the demo out first, and see if you like the battles. And it's worth noting the game is more single player oriented. As of right now you can only play battles on multiplayer, but soon CA is going to release a patch that will make the Grand Campaign multiplayer.

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XaosII

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#4 XaosII
Member since 2003 • 16705 Posts

the multiplayer has no resource gathering or base building. Multiplayer is strictly battles. I don't think E;TW is worth getting solely for multiplayer. All of the Total War games have epic singleplayer campaings.

But if you are interested in the multiplayer, try the demo. The sample battles (both water and land) will be just the same.

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0Tyler0

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#5 0Tyler0
Member since 2008 • 2602 Posts

[QUOTE="0Tyler0"]

Ok I love Age of Empires games but problem is AO3 was released years ago and not very popular online anymore. So I was wondering if E:TW's gameplay was like AO3 with like resource collecting and base building. If not, can you give me like an idea of how the multiplayer skirmishes work? I've been looking online and all the videos I've seen are just random battles.. I'm looking for like how you get an army, etc.

Thanks guys! :D

lundy86_4

Try downlaoding the demo... unfortunately I haven't bought the full game yet, so someone else will have to fill you in on details

Yeah I did.. it didn't work =(
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SpaceMoose

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#7 SpaceMoose
Member since 2004 • 10789 Posts
What I want to know if the combat AI isn't hilariously bad like it was in previous games in the series. Here's a brief summary of a battle I had in Medieval II: TW. I had a castle with just a few troops guarding the place. Up marches the enemy and they lay siege. (Unless you have artillery, you need to spend a turn building ladders, battering rams, and / or siege towers to assault an enemy stronghold.) So there is this moderately sized army outside of my castle, so I bring some other troops in next to it so that they can reinforce them when combat begins. Well, around comes the turn where the enemy begins their assault. They send some guys with a battering ram marching toward my gate. I send out my lone team of cavalry to harass them while my reinforcements are marching in from far across the battlefield. My troops in my castle are grossly outnumbered until help arrives, so the reinforcements had better hurry.... The enemy sends some more troops after my lone group of cavalry. My cavalry hightail it back into the castle and the gate slams shut behind them. Some of the enemy troops resume their approach formation. The men with the battering ram, however, are stuck there because a couple of THEIR OWN cavalry are standing in the way and won't move. All the while my archers and towers are firing down upon the small group still amassed right in front of the gate. However, my enemy is cunning! For while distracting me with their first battering ram which they oh-so-cleverly decide not to just move around their own cavalry standing in the way, a group of men manning a second battering ram try to move through the first battering ram group, after a bit of deliberation come to the conclusion that doesn't work after all, and they then maneuver around them to the gates of the castle. Such cunning! Such bravery! So, anyway, eventually the second battering ram manages to break through, and I hold them off with a decidedly small force until the reinforcements arrive and clean them out, which is pretty much business as usual against the silly AI. Had the roles been reversed, I would have had the castle wiped clean of the few troops already there long before the other men got there from clear across the battlefield. So, the AI is pretty bad, and the game (talking about Medieval II, the previous game in the series, remember) really does not lend itself well to multiplayer as the core game is a very long campaign. The game is great, except that once you figure out what you're doing it's easy to see that your computer opponents are utterly terrible at it. Pretty much any battle where the game has rated it an even match I will decimate the enemy by micromanaging cavalry and harassing basically any units except spearmen, which I leave to my melee troops on foot. I even win a lot of battles where the enemy is ostensibly a huge favorite to win. It's not that I'm great. It's just that the computer is so bad.
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Poshkidney

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#8 Poshkidney
Member since 2006 • 3803 Posts

Never understood why people panned the AI in Total War games.

ok your plans might not go to, well plan but in real combat they neverwill as there is a saying every plan goes to pieces with the first bullet.

it's clever in some parts like making you focus on one thing whiile they seek some boys onto your flanks.

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SpaceMoose

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#9 SpaceMoose
Member since 2004 • 10789 Posts

Never understood why people panned the AI in Total War games.

ok your plans might not go to, well plan but in real combat they neverwill as there is a saying every plan goes to pieces with the first bullet.

it's clever in some parts like making you focus on one thing whiile they seek some boys onto your flanks.

Poshkidney
It's not uncommon for the AI to simply leave melee units stand there like morons while you're pounding on other units. That's another example. The thing is I basically always beat the AI unless I am GROSSLY outnumbered. It varies between poor tactics and sometimes just being plain broken. Sometimes in a battle away from a town I will fire artillery down on them, but they'll just keep standing there waiting for my forces to approach. There's a lot of dumb stuff it does that is not quite so dramatically idiotic as that, but that's a great example. The AI also uses terrible formations and as long as I have a decent unit mix I can easily break them every time. The AI just about never properly guards its ranged units and especially its artillery. The AI seems to have a real problem with adapting to decent micromanagement of cavalry, particular if you run wide off to their side or behind them and use hit and run tactics. The AI absolutely does not know how to deal with hit and run tactics. The problem is actually that there are too many factors in the combat and too many different things you can do later in the game and thus writing AI even up to the level of a moderately skilled experienced player for it would probably take longer than developing the whole rest of the game. The AI in games with far simpler combat systems like Civilization 4 has trouble making good judgments sometimes, and that's just basically a numbers game. The poor AI in TW is a result of the game's own complexity.
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GodLovesDead

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#10 GodLovesDead
Member since 2007 • 9755 Posts

the multiplayer has no resource gathering or base building. Multiplayer is strictly battles. I don't think E;TW is worth getting solely for multiplayer. All of the Total War games have epic singleplayer campaings.

But if you are interested in the multiplayer, try the demo. The sample battles (both water and land) will be just the same.

XaosII
Empire will soon receive a multiplayer campaign.
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VideoGameNerd77

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#11 VideoGameNerd77
Member since 2008 • 47 Posts

What I want to know if the combat AI isn't hilariously bad like it was in previous games in the series. Here's a brief summary of a battle I had in Medieval II: TW. I had a castle with just a few troops guarding the place. Up marches the enemy and they lay siege. (Unless you have artillery, you need to spend a turn building ladders, battering rams, and / or siege towers to assault an enemy stronghold.) So there is this moderately sized army outside of my castle, so I bring some other troops in next to it so that they can reinforce them when combat begins. Well, around comes the turn where the enemy begins their assault. They send some guys with a battering ram marching toward my gate. I send out my lone team of cavalry to harass them while my reinforcements are marching in from far across the battlefield. My troops in my castle are grossly outnumbered until help arrives, so the reinforcements had better hurry.... The enemy sends some more troops after my lone group of cavalry. My cavalry hightail it back into the castle and the gate slams shut behind them. Some of the enemy troops resume their approach formation. The men with the battering ram, however, are stuck there because a couple of THEIR OWN cavalry are standing in the way and won't move. All the while my archers and towers are firing down upon the small group still amassed right in front of the gate. However, my enemy is cunning! For while distracting me with their first battering ram which they oh-so-cleverly decide not to just move around their own cavalry standing in the way, a group of men manning a second battering ram try to move through the first battering ram group, after a bit of deliberation come to the conclusion that doesn't work after all, and they then maneuver around them to the gates of the castle. Such cunning! Such bravery! So, anyway, eventually the second battering ram manages to break through, and I hold them off with a decidedly small force until the reinforcements arrive and clean them out, which is pretty much business as usual against the silly AI. Had the roles been reversed, I would have had the castle wiped clean of the few troops already there long before the other men got there from clear across the battlefield. So, the AI is pretty bad, and the game (talking about Medieval II, the previous game in the series, remember) really does not lend itself well to multiplayer as the core game is a very long campaign. The game is great, except that once you figure out what you're doing it's easy to see that your computer opponents are utterly terrible at it. Pretty much any battle where the game has rated it an even match I will decimate the enemy by micromanaging cavalry and harassing basically any units except spearmen, which I leave to my melee troops on foot. I even win a lot of battles where the enemy is ostensibly a huge favorite to win. It's not that I'm great. It's just that the computer is so bad.SpaceMoose

It's far better than the other Total War games' AIs, but there are some glitches that can affect them occasionally. However, the enemy can easily defeat you if they have the right troops, etc. on the hard difficulty setting, and can annihilate you on the very hard difficulty setting, so it definately is better.