An update on my British campaign in Empire.

I took Trinidad and Tobago, so no more annoying pirate raids! My disorder problems were due to me having 6 schools/universities and seriously ignoring food shortage problems. Researching great estates and updating all my farms did the job. Destroyed all schools/universities except for Cambridge and the one in New France. Now every province of my empire in america except for New France is being taxed, and still happy and growing. Same with England.

My best and favorite general, Adam Huntsman, led a full stack of veteren infantry and my new rockets and hussars to take Morocco. I underestimated Morocco though, and their camel troops decimated my infantry. I survived the battle only because of my line infantry's fantastic morale, but not before Gen. Huntsman was killed in battle. I avenged his death, and burned Morocco's city to the ground (literally, see my new screenie). No arabic buildings left in Morocco now; I'm building over all the towns.

My diplomacy is majorly messed up. The Maratha Confederacy hates me now because my ally Portugal attacked them and there was a glitch where I couldn't decline joining the war. The Ottomans and Mughals refuse an alliance and Prussia and Poland-Lithuania refuse to make peace. At least I got a peace treaty with the French, but they won't accept a trade agreement. So basically everyone but the Dutch hate me.

I'm not sure what I'll do next. Well, my first priority will definintely be to destroy Maratha's fleet. They're pirating off my trade fleets in Ivory Coast and Madagascar, and although my new tax cash makes up for it (still getting $30,000 per turn), I still need to get rid of them. Now, I may not want to risk invading Spain with so many other people hating me. I'll probably just conquer the Barbary States and maybe Malta and then decide if I want to invade Europe yet. I may just go to India since I have objectives there and both Indian factions already hate me.

In the 1740's now. I just defeated the Iroquois Confederacy and now control all of north america west of the mississippi (except for inuit territory) and louisiana. My Dutch allies declared war on my Swedish allies and I sided with the Dutch, mostly because they are a big trade partner and will be a big help when I fight the French and Spanish. I'm currently consolidating my forces and forming 1 1/2 stacks from leftover Iroquois campaign units. Then I will attack Morocco (their pirating is seriously hurting my trade income) and from there will probably take over north africa (except Cairo) and then advance on Italy and Spain. The French will be next.:D

Also strangely since the mid 1730's I have very low public order across my empire. I had to univerally lower taxes and exempt about 90% of my empire from taxes, and some cities are still losing population. I don't know why this has happened as my military campaigns have been very successful, I've developed my entire empire very well, and my government is very solid and is very popular. Odd...:|

My custom unit mod (making Scottish Line Infantry for Britain) still won't work right. I've worked on it for at least 8 hours by now, but the screen name for the unit will not show. It just says (Line Infantry). I just ended up asking how to get it to work in the twcenter thread I've been following (link below).

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=239103&page=2

The whole custom units thing is getting really confusing. I got everything right up until I put in a screen name entry for my custom unit. I couldn't get the name of the unit to appear in Empire and then something came up on the forum thread I was using as a guide that it was outdated and led me to another. This one said to choose a unit like European Line Infantry to edit, but there was no European Line Infantry entry. :?

Have worked for hours to try to get the screen name displayed and it never worked.:(

Working on figuring out how to create a custom unit in Empire. It's tricky (can't get unit name to show up) and I haven't even tried to edit textures (I'm not a photoshop pro, so that might take a while lol).

For anyone who wants to learn how to make custom units, these really helped me:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=239419

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=246263&goto=nextoldest

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=238847

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=241069

Playing the long campaign as the British. It's around 1730 and I have Upper and Lower Louisiana and everything in North America east of the Mississippi other than Newfoundland, the Iriqouis territories, and the Inuit territory. I have a few trade fleets in the Ivory Coast and Madagascar areas and I'm bringing in about $11000 per turn. Just got the American Colonies a few turns ago so I'm focusing on building them up.

Sent an army up to the last Huron Confederacy territory to try to eliminate them but my half stack of veteran troops got swarmed by about 2 1/3 stacks of Huron. Not good. Now I gotta raise another army to eliminate them.

Knocked out the last main French fleet in North American waters in a big battle off the coast of the Quebec territory. Annoying Prussians tried to blockade my main home port in Britain so I taught them a lesson (check my pics of a Prussian ship going up in flames). Hopefully they won't bother me anymore. :D

Overall strategy is to either invade India or Europe once I sort out my new American conquests. 8)

Just figured out how to capture screenshots in Empire Total War. I uploaded a few of them to Gamespot just a few minutes ago. It's not showing the pictures though. Probably waiting for approval or something like that :?

Hopefully they'll be up soon. I got a great snapshot of the fireball shooting out of a French ship when I hit the powder magazine. Boom 8)

Just checked up on some new games:

Bioshock 2 looks pretty cool.

Assassin's Creed 2 sounds like it's gonna be good, I've heard you'll be able to swim (finally! no random drowning!)

Modern Warfare 2 looks awesome! I had COD4 for PC for a while and sold it to get World at War for my 360. Modern Warfare 2 looks like it's gonna be awesome!:shock:

Also I just figured out how to mod Empire Total War.:D I'm using:

Silly Little Mod's British line infantry textures (now they've taken the download link away :(

The Battlefield Smoke v3.0 and Blood Mod 1.2

And the Tracer Effects Reduction Mod (yay for no cartoony musket bullets) :D

Haven't put up a new blog in a while. Been too busy playing Halo 3 and Empire Total War.

I just got Halo 3!