Empire Total War demo!

Ardscoil Ris

Sega has emailed to say that the Empire: Total War demo will hit Steam today at 4pm GMT.

The demo features two battles.

You'll be able to play as the British Empire against the upstart colonials at the Battle of Brandywine Creek.

Then you can try your hand at the game's new naval warfare when you command the French Navy at the Battle of Lagos.

The full game is released on March 3rd. I'm about as excited as excited gets.

Enjoy people!

Auvers

oh sweet Jesus *drools* my weekend is sorted

Stev_o

Want proof right now!

Auvers

Stev_o wrote: »

Want proof right now!

http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic/42851

look at the 1st post :cool:

*EDIT*

http://www.totalwar.com/empire/gameinfo/news.php?n=3030

Stev_o

Auvers wrote: »

http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic/42851

look at the 1st post :cool:

http://www.totalwar.com/empire/gameinfo/news.php?n=3030

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

Sierra Oscar

It will be on Steam very soon.:)

EDIT: http://store.steampowered.com/app/10620/

Stev_o

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

It will be on Steam very soon.:)

How soon the links said 4 GMT! God damn Valve time......

Sierra Oscar

Is anyone having any issues installing it? If so, simply restart Steam.

Sierra Oscar

awhir wrote: »

it that 4pm gmt or usa ?

It is already out. Click here.:)

awhir

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

It is already out. Click here.:)

thanks just found it there

Branoic

Oh heaven above, I just came. Stuck in work another hour though

Auvers

Branoic wrote: »

Stuck in work another hour though

thats what logmein is for my download is complete and ready to play as soon as I walk in the door

Stev_o

Argh this game is painfully slow to load in every aspect. Getting to the main menu takes a age, so does configuring settings and don't even start me about the loading for the battles! Hope this is just me and i can sort it out!

Sierra Oscar

Stev_o wrote: »

Argh this game is painfully slow to load in every aspect. Getting to the main menu takes a age, so does configuring settings and don't even start me about the loading for the battles! Hope this is just me and i can sort it out!

Yep, same - annoying as hell. I guess its just the demo.

Stev_o

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Yep, same - annoying as hell. I guess its just the demo.

Iv just said this to you twice on steam forums and this haha.

Ardscoil Ris

Not painfully slow to load for me, but then again, I'm using 8 gigs of RAM

Branoic

Arg this is ridiculous! Steam is downloading the demo at an average speed of 40 KB/s!! It says it'll be ready to play in 4 hours! 4 HOURS!

Ardscoil Ris

Branoic wrote: »

Arg this is ridiculous! Steam is downloading the demo at an average speed of 40 KB/s!! It says it'll be ready to play in 4 hours! 4 HOURS!

Check the download options and make sure selected in the right region.

Branoic

Ardscoil Ris wrote: »

Check the download options and make sure selected in the right region.

Yep, it was already correctly set to UK / Ireland :mad:

Ardscoil Ris

Branoic wrote: »

Yep, it was already correctly set to UK / Ireland :mad:

Unlucky you so :P

Krieg

Ooh, Downloading now

Thanks for the info

titan18

what size is the file to download?

uglyjohn

Branoic wrote: »

Arg this is ridiculous! Steam is downloading the demo at an average speed of 40 KB/s!! It says it'll be ready to play in 4 hours! 4 HOURS!

me too its gonna take ages.

titan18 wrote: »

what size is the file to download?

2 gigs aprox

Branoic

Ardscoil Ris wrote: »

Unlucky you so :P

Checked the Steam forums and there were a couple other people with the same kind of download speeds. I changed the download region to East Coast USA and its now downloading a more healthy 320 KB/s. Yay.

Krieg

Silly steam. I get to 99% and its decides to jump from 500kb/s to 12kb/s
Gonna try playing around with the region

Sean Templar

Ardscoil Ris wrote: »

Sega has emailed to say that the Empire: Total War demo will hit Steam today at 4pm GMT.

The demo features two battles.

You'll be able to play as the British Empire against the upstart colonials at the Battle of Brandywine Creek.

Then you can try your hand at the game's new naval warfare when you command the French Navy at the Battle of Lagos.

The full game is released on March 3rd. I'm about as excited as excited gets.

Enjoy people!

The total war series rocks.I got away with the last one medievil just,but i don;t think the auld pc will be able to handle the new one.

Kiith

Well, whats it like, like?

Ardscoil Ris

It's pretty damn good.

BlitzKrieg

impressions

It was painfully slow to load for me aswell

But

the flipside is that more so then any other prior Total war entry this has to be the smoothest one to run ingame. Maybe for once I am actually ahead of the bellcurve in the updating hardware of things but I dont think so. I have Medieval 2 on my machine on max out settings and it still has a sligh slug to its motion.

But Empire. Wow, it looked fantastic and it ran with not a single ingame issue of slowdown or tearing or anything.

Felt very satisfying.

I did the two tutorials to get a feel for the changes. THe land combat actually does feel refreshing with a mix of new and old and the maps have a bit more natural feel to them rather then the field with a few hills that made up the majority of the prior games maps, this one felt it was actually somewhere. The tutorial didnt give me access to alot of choices and I am tired so I cant say much on the land battles beyond that.

THe naval battle was where I wanted to be. First, drop dead gorgeous water and ships. Really fantastic. But outside of that the tutorial gave me the basics but sadly not much in the way of tactical tips.

So when I went on to do a full battle I floundered a bit in trying to work out what went where and I lost. My naval tactical knowledge goes as far as knowing to Cross the T if possible. I put my loss mostly down to beign tired and will give it a better try tomorrow.

I might admit that my only worry on naval battles is that they could get a bit repetitive if not much diversity beyond what is shown in the demo is put into them. I hope the campaign allows for a number of scenarios such as priveterring on merchants, storms etc. Either that or unlike the land battles naval units will be treated as something very valuable and you simply cant replace your lossess in a number of rounds making naval battles for both sides something not to be done on a whim.

If I have time tomorrow I'll get proper stuck in. But I admit the long loading times are a bit offputting, but once your pass them, its perfect.

Pyr0

Playing a game at 6:04 tends to do that to you

Looking forward to giving this a bash and seeing how they pull of the new fighting styles and era as a whole.

Ardscoil Ris

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

impressions

It was painfully slow to load for me aswell

But

the flipside is that more so then any other prior Total war entry this has to be the smoothest one to run ingame. Maybe for once I am actually ahead of the bellcurve in the updating hardware of things but I dont think so. I have Medieval 2 on my machine on max out settings and it still has a sligh slug to its motion.

But Empire. Wow, it looked fantastic and it ran with not a single ingame issue of slowdown or tearing or anything.

Felt very satisfying.

I did the two tutorials to get a feel for the changes. THe land combat actually does feel refreshing with a mix of new and old and the maps have a bit more natural feel to them rather then the field with a few hills that made up the majority of the prior games maps, this one felt it was actually somewhere. The tutorial didnt give me access to alot of choices and I am tired so I cant say much on the land battles beyond that.

THe naval battle was where I wanted to be. First, drop dead gorgeous water and ships. Really fantastic. But outside of that the tutorial gave me the basics but sadly not much in the way of tactical tips.

So when I went on to do a full battle I floundered a bit in trying to work out what went where and I lost. My naval tactical knowledge goes as far as knowing to Cross the T if possible. I put my loss mostly down to beign tired and will give it a better try tomorrow.

I might admit that my only worry on naval battles is that they could get a bit repetitive if not much diversity beyond what is shown in the demo is put into them. I hope the campaign allows for a number of scenarios such as priveterring on merchants, storms etc. Either that or unlike the land battles naval units will be treated as something very valuable and you simply cant replace your lossess in a number of rounds making naval battles for both sides something not to be done on a whim.

If I have time tomorrow I'll get proper stuck in. But I admit the long loading times are a bit offputting, but once your pass them, its perfect.

I wouldn't jump for joy yet about the smooth gameplay because a lot of textures and high quality models were left out of the game.

T-b0n3

My download region was set to Japan. No wonder steam downloads where so slow!!:rolleyes:

pwd

Very slow load for me too. Agee with mst of what Blitzkrieg said about it. It really summons up a sense of being there very well - I really noticed that when I boarded a ship in the naval battle.

I played each battle once. The AI wasn't too promising. I had a close victory in the land one and a cose defeat in the naval one, but I didn't play well, and didn't know what units did what etc. In the land battle there was one occasion where a platoon of enemy riflemen just stood right in front of my men who slowly killed them off until they routed. Bad. Then at the end of the battle I had two units left against their one. I had strange trouble in getting the units just to march over to the last enemy and kill them - they kept going off right down the other side of the map instead. They only responded how I wanted them to after the enemy engaged with them.

Overall I suppose I'm not looking forward to it a much as I had been. The colonial times don't appeal to me as much as a setting as medieval or ancient times. I'm not sure if there is as much room for strategy with guns being the main weapon as there was in the previous games - I think it will be more of a case of who has the stronger force and less to do with maneuvres in the game.

BlitzKrieg

The colonial times don't appeal to me as much as a setting as medieval or ancient times.

I'd be the opposite, I'd find the colonial times to be much more dynamic then medieval, so I am looking forward to the campaign map more then anything.

Stev_o

pwd wrote: »

Overall I suppose I'm not looking forward to it a much as I had been. The colonial times don't appeal to me as much as a setting as medieval or ancient times. I'm not sure if there is as much room for strategy with guns being the main weapon as there was in the previous games - I think it will be more of a case of who has the stronger force and less to do with maneuvres in the game.

Well i think the dynamics of the game has changed completely now with the focus on muskets. Arc of fire has replaced on mass flanking in terms of priority and it seems that your use of artillery will be the deciding factor as they can win a battle alone it seems when used right.

I can't wait, really looking forward to a 2v3 with my mates. Just hope that it won't turn into mass stand off's and the whole "no you go first" approach.

Sephiroth_dude

Is the AI anygood?cant wait to download it.

Stev_o

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Is the AI anygood?cant wait to download it.

Hard to judge as theres only two battles excluding the tutorials, the sea battle isn't hard once you know what your doing and the land battle is tricky but do able.

Ardscoil Ris

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Is the AI anygood?cant wait to download it.

The Naval AI is solid imo. Seems to know when to strike and line itself up quite well. The only reason the battle is so easy is your fleet is far superior to theirs.

The Land battle AI is a mixed bag. It's half scripted to hold the right river crossing, but half the army is free reign and adapts to the situation. The problem here is that they divide their army and advance into your united front being easily destroyed. It's not their fault really. The scripted AI takes away so key units from the army that advances.

So, long story short, it's almost impossible to judge the AI from this demo. Another reason for this is the fact that there is no difficulty option so we have to take that into account as well.

Hope this helps.

Sephiroth_dude

it sure does thanks.

hinduhamster

I totally agree with Ardscoil Ris, The demo is nice and shiny but there is still a lot that isn't given to us. The lack of difficulty settings was a shame and I think 1 or 2 extra battles wouldn't have been overkill for a demo.....but hey, it's free as it is. I'm finding naval battles pretty addictive and can't wait for a large fleet engagement in the main game! My main concern is having played the demo, I intend to buy the game and go down the steam line of having games and I hope that that does not become a nightmarish ordeal of downloading and verification!!

Ardscoil Ris

hinduhamster wrote: »

I totally agree with Ardscoil Ris, The demo is nice and shiny but there is still a lot that isn't given to us. The lack of difficulty settings was a shame and I think 1 or 2 extra battles wouldn't have been overkill for a demo.....but hey, it's free as it is. I'm finding naval battles pretty addictive and can't wait for a large fleet engagement in the main game! My main concern is having played the demo, I intend to buy the game and go down the steam line of having games and I hope that that does not become a nightmarish ordeal of downloading and verification!!

You can change the difficulty of the demo by going into the demos folders and editing a file.

Naval battle do look fantastic, but I fear for a large scale battle as I found my own ships path finding rather poor.

Also, you have to use Steam whether you have the digital version or the physical copy.

Other then that, I can't wait to get my hands on this. :pac:

EDIT: ATTENTION THERE IS A WAY TO REDUCE THE LOADING TIMES

Follow the instructions in http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=227956 and unpack demo1.pack. After this, rename demo1.pack to demo1, without the ".pack". Copy the folders(beside the unpacked folder) in /data to somewhere else for backup, then cut and paste the unpacked files into /data. That's it.

The first time I started the game after unpacking, the load time is still the same, but when I restart the game another time the loading time was halved. Have fun.

PonderStibbons

Is it going to be possible to play this without an internet connection if it runs through Steam? I only have net access on an old laptop in college - my gaming machine is at home with no internet access at all... I'm going to be very annoyed if net access is needed - I've been looking forward to this for the last six months!

Ardscoil Ris

PonderStibbons wrote: »

Is it going to be possible to play this without an internet connection if it runs through Steam? I only have net access on an old laptop in college - my gaming machine is at home with no internet access at all... I'm going to be very annoyed if net access is needed - I've been looking forward to this for the last six months!

You will need Steam running in order to run Empire. You can run Steam in off-line mode, so you only need to be on the internet once during installation and from then on you do not; unless you want to play Multi-player of course, which will again require you to be on-line.

Kirby

The demo didn't wow me but i've never been a fan of demo's. If you put too much in them, your game won't sell because most people get their fix from just the demo. Which leads to putting hardly anything in them, giving the impression of a shallow and buggy experience.

Total war is one of the few game series that are an automatic buy for me. Im sure I will love it. I just hope like hell that if the have town assaults in this one that the pathing and AI is improved. Moving an army through a town in rome and medi is really frustrating.

sink

Bah just downloaded the demo today and I got a BSOD right when the battle was turning.

It was the land battle and I had sent my lighter infantry to harass and distract the main bulk of the enemy at the first river crossing suffering heavy losses. I sent my heavier infantry to the second river crossing to flank them and sent my cavalry the same way to take out their poorly defended artillery. My plan was all coming together when it crashed. :mad::(

Hopefully this is just a hiccup with the demo and the full game will run perfect. I have the settings on ultra at 1920*1200 and it was still very smooth while it was working. QX6700 @ 3.2GHz, 4gb pc2-8500, 2x 8800gtx SLi. Definitely buying it as I'm obsessed with total war games.