Starting out with Empire: Total War

I'm finally getting around to actually playing Empire: Total War. Of course, I'm starting with the "tutorial" campaign, which details American independence. The first campaign was pretty straightforward, but then I started the second campaign. Armies became large and battles seemed complex . . . but I couldn't help but wonder if they realy boiled down to "select everyone and click on the enemy". Then, I got a new mission (to build up a fleet of ships and use them to transport troops to take another location). The map zoomed out and suddenly I was looking at the entire east coast. That's a . . . um . . . pretty big campaign map. I decided I was too tired, so I saved and stopped.

I guess it wouldn't be a Total War game if it wasn't intimidating.

Still, damn those battles became huge!

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Try the "select everyone and click on the enemy" some time. You can win doing it but the battlefield gets VERY messy, which is fun in its own way.

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Just wait until you try the 'grand campaign.' 100 years (200 turns) in control of an entire nation...

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"select everyone and click on the enemy" will hardly get you any victories on ANY Total War game. You really must use strategy. I read E:TW has even more combat features such as cover, haven't played it though. In Medieval, you could really thrash the enemy while outnumbered if you use the proper counters. setting pikemen to halt a cavalry charge, while flanking the enemy's archers with your own cavalry. If you really manage your batallions and use the terrain in your favor (charging uphill == bad) you can get much better outcomes from combat.

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In Medieval, you could really thrash the enemy while outnumbered if you use the proper counters.

That's one thing Medieval has a leg up on over Empire. In the medieval period, there were proper counters. In Empire era, the majority of your units use muskets. So your counters for muskets are.. more and better muskets. There are of course some counters. Pikemen still exist and some cavalry still exists and pikemen beat cavalry, anything else beats pikemen, and cavalry might beat everything else, as long as you dont' do a frontal charge. There are also cannons, but most of their ammo types are rather flimsy and uninteresting for dealing with troops. The best shot type they have (scatter shot, short range but it rips through groups of infantry) is also the most low tech so it gets forcibly replaced as you research new technologies.

It's still possible to win outnumbered matches in E:TW, but it relies more on having higher tech units than proper counters

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Annatar: Agreed. I purchased Empire, but have been quite unimpressed thus far. It's not like Shogun & Medieval, where you can win using actual strategy & tactics. Instead, having bigger/better toys are about the only way to ensure victory.

Not that Empire is a *bad* game per se: There's much potential there, and it's definitely better than Rome (although admittedly that's not saying much). However, it needs a great deal more patching & polishing before it can suck me in like STW/MTW do.

Quoting Brazilian_Joe,

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"select everyone and click on the enemy" will hardly get you any victories on ANY Total War game.

You can in Rome. The AI in that game is so brain-dead that you can literally almost win with your eyes closed.

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