Does anyone know wtf happened during Total War Empire's development? It really looks like they just made half the game and mechanics and called it a day (like when you get succession wars or the heir born event even though there's not even a royal family tree or royal characters anymore)
They started making napoleon
Even though it's an unfinished mess, I still love Empire and I wish we got a sequel.
>>2273943Me too, it does deserve a second chance (wing properly made to the end of course)
>>2273922they ran out of money
>>2273922Empire was the first game on a new engine. The new engine was necessary for a couple of reasons, there was a generational shift in happening around that time and everybody needed to make sure their shit would be compatible with the new standard, which ultimately became a very expensive endeavor that sank a lot of companies.CA had to find a lot of partnerships to get their new engine made, which also meant a lot of factors complicating the process, and ultimately ran out of production money with a half-baked product on a half-baked engine and had to rush the game out the door just to avoid bankruptcy. They ended up lucky that the good will from Rome and Medieval 2 carried Empire to a successful launch despite the many issues, but then they thought it would be cool to rush out Napoleon with a much smaller (yet no more detailed for it) campaign and paywall all the bugfixes and improvements behind it.They're still on the same engine, by the way. It's been updated so much you'd hardly recognize it but they haven't moved on in the intervening 16 years.
it was a little too ambitious
I'll never forget the absolute disappointment I had playing ETW on release, but then I had hyped myself up a lot
>>2273922The AI in this game holy shit>start game>every major power declares war on me within the first five turns guaranteed especially if France or Austria>fighting battles without cavalry is pointless since routed AI units will come straight back unless ran completely off the field>Sea battles are an absolute boring slog with no real strategyCould go on and on about how shit the AI in this game, amazed CA made it past this one.
>>2274093TW games have always had bad AI
>>2274155Strategy games have never had good AI
>>2273972>They ended up lucky that the good will from Rome and Medieval 2 carried Empire to a successful launch despite the many issuesNot me, I played shogun, MTW1, Rome, and MTW2, and Empire was so bad I swore to never buy another game of theirs again. I still haven’t.
>>2273980man gaming magazines were such sovl
>>2273972Yeah Rome 2 was the same, new engine + taking away development time to focus on DLC + CA quality standards= shit game
>>2273922Shit game, the only reason it's played today is because of mods.
>>2275736Rome 2 uses the exact same engine as Empire. There were obviously updates and changes to it, but that's not why Rome 2 came out as a technical disaster.There's a whole lengthy post on glassdoor from a former CA employee who worked on Rome 2 and tells all about how the game became such a mess. The long story short is that a few fantastically incompetent people in charge of the whole thing fucked up the project royally despite the best efforts of literally everyone on the team. Afterwards, those same incompetents went on a crusade to pin blame on anyone but themselves and chased most of the long-term talent out of the studio in the process.
>>2274815you missed out on Shogun 2
Even on my modern PC turns take forever, making this game unplayable.
>>2273943There is, it is called Napoleon Total War.
>>2275744At least they eventually patched up Rome 2 into a decent game. They abandoned Empire and to this day it's still a buggy half finished broken mess.
>>2278092I wish that were true. Every time I think I can play R2 I quickly uninstall because cavalry sliding everywhere is a deal breaker.
>>2273922its exactly what you have said, they had grand plans but then got hit by deadlines and released pre-alpha unfinished garbageit happened again with rome2>>2277805this is just laughable, napoleon lacks grand campaign and are limited to europe, its a downgrade of already crippled game
>>2278092yeah when they released atillarome2 is still god awful garbage
>>2278321>its a downgrade of already crippled gameOnly if you cared about le "global" map, otherwise it fixes basically all of the most serious problems of Empire of the Bugs, for example the AI actually tries to make formations instead of those disgusting meme elongated lines so common in ETW.
>>2278860The global empire map was also deeply flawed. Europe didn't have enough detail for wars to be a big deal, you had no fun colonial play options because there was no south america or east asia.I greatly preferred the resolution and timescale of napoleon.
>>2273922They literally run out of money to finish it and tossed on the market what they had.>>2273980>Underworld premiere
>>2278092>>2278105It is true.However, "they've patched it" doesn't mean "it works well". It means it's patched.I've been there on R2 release.I've been there mid-unfucking.I've been there when Emperor unfucked it fullyAnd I've been still there when they kept tinkering with it.Is it good? Not really. Is it vastly better than it was on release? Without a single fucking doubt.>>2278322It's the reverse, and with few extra steps>R2 is a shitshow on release>They scrap Atilla, their first major DLC, as a separate game>Patchwork on R2 while A is developed>A is released, while R2 is still in patchwork>A is the same shitshow as R2, just with an extra polish, but just as broken and bugged>They put big-ass marketing spin to pretend this is a wholy separate game>Actual reception is rather poor, since it's "R2, but slightly less janky">They now have free manpower from A, so they double down on fixing R2, with minimal maintenance for A>R2 eventually gets unclogged, shit gets removed, while NOTHING is done with A>R2 is now fixed of bugs that A inherited from R2 and never were patched for A>R2 continues to get support till 2018, while A is long abandoned and forgotten by thentl;dr Atilla is a shitshow abandonware, no different from Empire in terms of "unfinished jank that they just discarded and moved on"
>>2274157Counter-point: Original War has no AI whatsoever (every enemy move is simply scripted) and yet it's challenging and requires to strategise
>>2276024He said "never buy".He never said "never play".t. someone who only bought Shogun 1 and 2, but played all their games except Troy, Pharaoh and WH3
>>2273922Simple: they run out of money.The real question is why didn't they patch it, but still made a phone version that fixes a fuckload of bugs and issues the PC version has.
