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Empire: Total War

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Revision as of 15:52, 13 October 2010 by Nksnks (talk | contribs) (→‎Unplayable Factions)
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Overview

Empire: Total War is a game based on the musketry warfare that revolutionized how the battles were fought. The insertion of gun powder and the changes that it brought is one of the hallmarks of this game. The changes in social structures, a period of revolutions, of turmoil. The span of the campaign is the turbulent 18th century, a period that shaped great empires with the colonization of new continents and the stabilization and growth of a global economy.

Empire: Total War introduces to us a great number of changes, being the most valuables the addition of a new type of battlefield, water; a new diplomacy system; a complete new technology system; and a great review of the economic system. Those changes come in the light of what the scope of the game had, major naval battles, the hardships of battle using line infantry, the age of enlightenment, colonies and empires that the sun never goes down on. Those changes only add to the immersion of the game, seeing how you can go to battle with a aristocratic empire and suddenly fight a renewed republic with troops ready to defend their acquired freedom.

General Information

There were several innovative changes in this title since the start of the Total War series.

Campaign Map

The campaign map is one of the first noted changes in this game. It expands the European centric focus of the first Total War series (the exception is the Shogun: Total War and the Americas Campaign in Medieval 2: Total War Kingdoms Expansion), and this expansion covers simultaneously, arguably, all of the World be it either with multiples maps, or be it with trade nodes.This expansion is one of the most uncontroversial ones within this game.

The new campaign map offers new possible strategies to the player, being it with local expansion or the foundation of colonies in diverse theaters of action. Aside that the economic complexity is also affected by this major change, with the addition of new feature called Trade nodes.

The trade nodes add immersion to the game, by allowing the player to acquire and trade resources via merchant ships at specific theaters in the map, those are: South America, West Africa, East Africa and Indonesia. This simulates the enormous growth in trade that is a hallmark of the scope period of the game, with bustling sails reaching far corners of the world with the purpose of trading/colonizing. These theaters offer a great economic boost to whoever controls them, with rich resources like ivory, spice and sugar.

This add to a much neglected part of the Total War series, the need to maintain the dominion of the seas. The pirates now pose a great threat, leading to what was a bustling economy to a ruined empire in a few turns. Another major component to the now need for a great armada is that the trade routes which appeared in previous games are interactive, leading to options of not only blockading the ports put to hinder the enemy economy through state piracy giving you the goods that were flowing through that route.

The resources inside the provinces have now a closer resemblance to Rome: Total War than it had to Medieval 2: Total War, since the latter needs a merchant for the exploitation of the resources, similarities aside this is an expansion on the concept of the province system for that the building who is responsible for the harvesting is not centralized in a capital, but it is spread in the territory itself. This change is more visible in the new town system.

This new town system involves a capital and several subsidiary towns, thus removing some of the importance of the capital and spreading along the whole province. The new slave towns are born from the growth of the population in several villages that are already defined in number different to which territory. Those towns can be configured in four basic towns: schools (used for research of new technologies), manufacturing plants (factories that have several types: textile, smelters and pottery the choice is not up to the player, churches and entertainment buildings.

This add to military strategy as well since that the control of those towns is responsible not only for the income, but for the general happiness of the province, thus raiding towns is a useful tactics and preferred by the AI.

Technology

A game based in the century of lights can't cast aside the revolution that happened in several fields of the human knowledge and perception. Empire: Total War brings to the table a new form of supremacy, the technology. The 18th century was marked by several changes to the humanity as a whole, bringing to light several concepts that marked and constructed the post modern world. The tech tree is divided in three major branches, being those: Military, Economics, Governance.

This is one of the most relevant aspects of the game, leading to an empire being weaker than the other considerably just because one has the technological edge over the other. The research also lead to the changes in the way the population behaves and perceives the government, an absolute monarchy is going to have much trouble to sustain itself in the late stages of the campaign, because of the governance researches that were made.


Factions

-See main article: Empire: Total War Factions

More than fifty factions are included in the game, 36 of which are playable. The other factions cannot be unlocked and have to be modded into the game. The eleven playable factions from the the beginning are:

Playable Factions

Unplayable Factions

Starting Protectorates

  • Barbary States - Islamic Absolute Monarchy
  • Courland - Protestant Absolute Monarchy
  • Crimean Khanate - Islamic Absolute Monarchy
  • Louisiana- Catholic Absolute Monarchy
  • New Spain- Catholic Absolute Monarchy
  • Saxony- Catholic Absolute Monarchy
  • Thirteen Colonies- Protestant Constitutional Monarchy

Emerging

  • Afghanistan - Islamic Absolute Monarchy
  • Gran Columbia - Catholic Absolute Monarchy
  • Greece - Orthodox Absolute Monarchy
  • Hessen - Protestant Absolute Monarchy
  • Hungary - Catholic Absolute Monarchy
  • Ireland - Catholic Absolute Monarchy
  • Mamelukes - Islamic Absolute Monarchy
  • Mexico - Catholic Absolute Monarchy
  • Naples & Sicily - Catholic Absolute Monarchy
  • Norway - Protestant Absolute Monarchy
  • Punjab - Sikh Absolute Monarchy
  • Quebec - Catholic Absolute Monarchy
  • Scotland - Protestant Absolute Monarchy
  • United States - Protestant Republic (Grand Campaign)

Battlefield Gameplay

The introduction of the naval warfare was a major addition to the series. This new and unexplored battlefield was plagued with problems at the game launch, several pathfinding errors, and the more complicated nature of naval warfare led to strategies used by the admiral from the past don't work they way they were supposed. After several patches this became a good experience, the AI still has deficiencies. But the experience is more balanced.

The land battles have improved graphically since shogun, the re introduction of gunpowder in this title made more prominent a great problem in the series, the AI. The land battle AI before patch 1.6 is worrisome since it leads to a commander to inevitably win a battle unless faced with overwhelming opposition.

Multiplayer

ETW multiplayer was supposed to be revolutionary with the addition of a brand new feature, the multiplayer online campaign. Aside that we can also highlight that with the integration with steam the game could get a ladder system, giving players the motivation to pursue constant online battles.

The Multiplayer online campaign only reached beta phase, and thus is not integrated into the game. Although it was fully implemented in the Napoleon: Total War. This move was done since that the Hot Seat feature would be discarded in this title.

Although it is still in beta, its possible to conduct a campaign with other players, this requires a registration

System Requirements

Minimum System Requirements
Supported OS: Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista™ or Windows 7™
Processor: 2.4 GHz Intel® Pentium® or greater or AMD® Athlon® equivalent CPU, with SSE2 instruction
Memory: 1 GB RAM (XP,) 2 GB RAM (Vista™)
Graphics: 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible hardware accelerated video card with shader version 2.0 support, 256 MB video memory
Display: Minimum screen resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels
Sound: Directx9.0c compatible sound card
Hard Drive: 15 GB free hard disk space formatted as NTFS
Peripherals: Windows compatible mouse and keyboard
Recommended Requirements
Supported OS: Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista™ or Windows 7™
Processor: 2.4 GHz Intel® Core 2 Duo® or greater or AMD® Athlon64® equivalent CPU, with SSE2 instruction
Memory: 3 GB RAM (XP,) 4 GB RAM (Vista™)
Graphics: 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible hardware accelerated video card with shader version 3.0 support, 512 MB video memory
Display: Minimum screen resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels
Sound: Directx9.0c compatible sound card
Hard Drive: 15 GB free hard disk space formatted as NTFS
Peripherals: Windows compatible mouse and keyboard

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