Empire: Total War (PC)

...you buy a hard-copy of Empire: Total War you'll need to activate it online via _Steam_, a free digital distribution service run by _Valve_, the creators of Half-Life. Now, some people avoid Steam like the plague but this is more on account of its troublesome beginnings and not the current state of affairs; I personally think it's a care-free way to buy games and a decent method of piracy prevention; unlike, say, the incredibly obnoxious Tagis, as ...
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Empire: Total War is a massive game that safely expands on its predecessors, without taking as many risks as it ought to. There exist serious problems that, despite being present throughout the franchise, the developers are simply unwilling to tackle and that gamers seem resigned to accepting. Kinda like Football Manager having awful graphics and virtually no sound but no fan seeming to mind. So while I recommend Empire to series ... more

The one-trick ponies over at Creative Assembly continue their quest for world domination with “_Empire: Total War_”. The fifth main title in the Total War franchise, has you charging, shooting, trading and counter-spying your way around the globe as gunpowder becomes widely utilized and turns warfare mechanics upside-down.

***The Story***

The Main Campaign focuses on one of recent history's biggest landmarks, the emergence of the United States. “_Road to Independence_” starts with Britain's first attempts to colonize the New World at the expense of the native Indians, continues with the fierce antagonizing of France for land and concludes with the colonists obtaining a national identity of their own and fighting the American War of Independence.

All this is divided onto chapters that gradually magnify the game's scope and unlock more intricate features, like Gentlemen and Technology Research, or Indiamen and Trade-Routes. In a way, “Road to Independence” is an educational perusal that warms players up to the real meat of “Empire”, the Grand Campaigns.

In a Grand Campaign, you are given complete control over one of the 11 nations that, at the start of the 18th century, seemed poised to achieve global domination, before regressing into the comparatively modest lands in which they reside today. So, in true Total War tradition, the Empire's mostly about answering the ultimate question: If you were the nigh-omnipotent leader of a superpower, could you conquer the world?

There are also several scenarios, one-off recreations of legendary battles that defined the course of history. It's a relatively simple and humble gameplay mode, where you pretty much take the place of a historical figure just before he beat the odds and turned the tide of a whole war, and are asked to fulfill his destiny. The number of scenarios is very limited compared to previous titles, but more are expected to arrived via future patches or as extra downloadable content.

***The Gameplay***

For the Campaigns, Total War is split into two distinct gameplay modes. First there is the “_Strategic Map_” portion, reminiscent of board games like “Risk”. You have most of the world neatly divided into regions, with their capitals, ports, farms and other natural resources visible on the “board” and completely upgradeable, so as to yield further bonuses, while each nations' armies are the “game pieces”, able to move around and attack, fortify or perform special missions. You and every other nation take turns in an effort to expand and fulfill the campaign requirements. These vary according to your selected nation and a few customized options, but they pretty much revolve around capturing a number of regions within a specific window of time. The longest possible game spans the whole 18th century and, with each turn representing 6 months of “game time”, this translates to 200 turns.

This might seem as a tame number to players of strategy games like Sid Meier's Civilization, or Galactic Civilizations, but it is actually a very lengthy affair due to the battles: Whenever one of your armies is about to clash with a rival, you are given the option to have the computer “auto-resolve” the battle instantly, as is the case for most strategy games, but you can also take command and personally lead your army.

If you do choose to play out the battle, you are greeted by a tedious loading screen, 30 seconds long at bare minimum, before being brought to the “_Battle Map_”, which is the clear star of the show. That's not to say that the “Strategic Map” isn't adequate, it is remarkably detailed actually, but while there are plenty of good turn-based strategy games, there are hardly any real-time war-games that offer Empire's sense of authenticity and scale.

In fact, I dare say the only games that pull off Empire's particular brand of making you feel like a masterminding general are the other Total War games. This “exclusivity” has led to a lot of lenience towards the series' gameplay, but, with memories of “Shogun: Total War” going as far back as 2000, the novelty is definitely wearing off and the problems are becoming more and more apparent.

During the Battles, you are given full control of your army which can consist of up to twenty units that range from simple civilian skirmishers defending their home town, to impeccably trained Line Infantry, from mixed-breed regiments of horse to daunting elephants and from mere fixed canons to mobile machinations that more resemble rocket launchers. Reinforcements can also come into play, if they are available, but only if your unit count falls below twenty.

You'll have to outwit the enemy leader, by taking advantage of cover, high ground, troop fatigue and morale. You'll have to keep in mind the unique attributes some units have, like Indian tribesmen that instill fear to those they engage in melee combat, or camel regiments whose odor drives horses crazy. But few units have the importance of the General and his bodyguards. His presence inspires his comrades to fight at their best and hold their ground, while his death can be devastating, spreading panic and insecurity all around the army he led.

There are formations, feints, ambushes and other factors that can make a battle exhilarating to conduct. Unfortunately, things aren't always as epic as they might sound, on account of the aforementioned issues that make the experience either easier than it should be or far more frustrating.

Most stem from the game's Artificial Intelligence, with a common one being that your troops are pretty much devoid of free will: If you've ordered a cavalry unit to form-up behind enemy lines, they'll indeed go there, line-up and stay perfectly still until the cows come home, even if they find themselves under heavy fire from a unit two steps away. Granted, they'll eventually flee on their own, but I feel there should be a middle ground between blindly following orders and routing.

Path-finding can also be irritating, as your troops rarely seem to go where you want with a simple right-click of the mouse, in contrast to most games and especially when you have multiple units selected. You can usually get around this by right-clicking and dragging the mouse, which specifically resets the formation, but it's a bit more work and another needless obstacle for casual players.

As for enemy AI, it usually isn't the brightest bulb in the box. Mileage may vary according to the rival general leading the troops, but usually the enemy will employ the same tactics over and over again, will routinely leave its artillery unguarded and while the rival general's bodyguard is, apparently, psychic and knows to run whenever you mark it for an attack by right-clicking on it, even when you use artillery from miles away, the regular troops rarely react to your flanking maneuvers, making some big skirmishes really easy if you take advantage of your cavalry.

When the size of the armies is smaller the computer seems to play a bit more intelligently. In one instance, I had just one cavalry and one infantry unit, while the computer two infantry squadrons. Completely out of character, those two enemy squadrons zipped around the battlefield constantly, in order to avoid being sandwiched between my units. This might have looked silly, but it was actually the correct move, so maybe the computer is a bit like a human opponent who can't quite micromanage everything when the unit numbers start running high.

The AI is also consistently stymied with stonewalls for some reason. Whenever the enemy finds a wall or fence behind which it can take cover, it will dedicate squads to it that will remain there until the end of time, even if the actual battle is taking place acres away. This is like shooting fish in a barrel, as you can often get your cavalry right behind them, at a very leisurely pace, while the enemy calmly stays there, on the lookout for danger from the other side of the wall but oblivious to your imminent charge.

This might be tied to the following fact: A case can be made that the AI is somewhat competent and can at least provide the player enjoyment in most scenarios; when it comes to utilizing buildings, however, it is inexcusably horrible. The enemy troops don't seem to know how exactly to go about storming a single building, much less a whole city or fortress! They often become stuck in the weirdest places, or proceed to continuously scale up a tower and back again. This has been an issue for years and is a clear case of code needing to be scrapped and rebuild from scratch, but Creative Assembly is being complacent.

This is a real shame, since sieges are an integral part of the game. They are often the culmination of a war effort, since you'll usually siege the big city after you've cleared the surrounding landscape of rival troop activity, so they should feel like the cherry on top; instead, they are such a disappointment you'll certainly find yourself auto-resolving them far more often that regular battles.

Creative Assembly isn't as complacent when it comes to writing entirely new code, however, as naval combat makes its first interactive appearance, in a heavily touted new feature. Unfortunately, it isn't nearly as enjoyable as the land battles and not just because of its inherent nature: I could buccaneer all day in games like “Sid Meier's Pirates!”, it's the illusion of realism that makes things difficult here.

In land-battles, you can select one of your units, right click on an enemy and they'll do their best to attack effectively. They won't do as good a job as when you micromanage their movement and placement, but they'll perform at least adequately, especially if they are better equipped or a natural counter to the enemy unit. But in sea-battles, setting one of your ships to auto-attack is all but useless. They maneuver horribly and their rate of attack is much slower, making an extremely hands-on approach mandatory if you want to be successful. But even playing in slow motion and after lots of practice, I wasn't able to command anything more than a handful of ships to victory. There is simply too much to keep track off and the interface, continuously resetting things like the sail speed for example doesn't make things any easier. There is the option to play at half speed, but this seems roughly half as fun as the, admittedly fantastic, graphical effects look off and the sound is practically non-existent. At the very least, there should have been a separate difficulty slider for naval combat, but even that would have been a stop-gap measure.

Anyway, whenever one of your admirals or generals survives a battle, he might gain a trait, or an ancillary. These, sometimes humorous, effects, translate to bonuses or penalties to morale and various other things. For example, your general's flawless reputation can be a huge boost to troop morale, his patriotism may make him more effective when fighting in his homeland, or his crazy barber might have a chance to cut a major artery and kill him on the spot every time he gives him a haircut. These have a chance on appearing on your ministers, the guys appointed to run your nation behind the scenes, as well. They are usually about them being especially honest or greedy, a "common people" type of guy or a nobleman, but sometimes they are just irrelevent; like becoming "trenchermen" which reduces their movement range, even though ministers, unlike generals and admirals, don't appear on the Strategic map and thus don't move at all.

Depending on your government type, you'll be able to sack or freely replace department heads according to their strengths and weakness. A minister with a knack for embezzling might not be the ideal choice for your treasury for example. This is another fine detail included in the “Strategic” map and it's interesting that the moment your replace a minister they vanish from the game; I like to think that, depending on the nation you're playing, they are either vacationing on a tropical isle, forced into exile, or summarily executed.

If you prefer being able to hand-pick your ministers, or if you grow weary of clamor for reform, or if you are just all about Change(tm), you can even worm your way into changing your nation's government, by leaving your capital's citizens unhappy and unchecked for a few turns. I feel it should be a bit easier, since a decorated war-hero should be able to sway enough people to organize a rebellion. At the very least, you should have the option to stage a coup whenever a monarch dies; and they really should be assassinate-able.

Rakes play the part of Spies in Empire, agents that are able to infiltrate cities, sabotage buildings and assassinate important targets. I generally dislike playing with spies in any game, but I at least make an effort to work around them; in Empire it's as unappealing as it ever has been for me, with cold stats representing a Rake's possibility of success. Everything else in the game seems all dressed up and coated into an 18th century facade, but for Rakes it's simply and clearly a press of the button and a roll of the dice. There is absolutely nothing you can do to raise your chances for any type of mission and that leads me to simply placing my Rakes in Universities for counterspying purposes and forgetting about them.

Universities are, unsurprisingly, where research occurs in the game. Surprisingly, they are also a region's center of misery and wrath, presumably because the better educated the people the more likely they are to hate their current leader. Anyway, each of your universities can research one technology at a time, and the turns needed, to prove their theories I suppose, can be greatly shortened by the presence of another type of agent, the Gentleman. Research and breakthroughs really bring extra weight to the passing of the in-game years: You start off with guns that barely work and fire once every two days and almost end up with repeating rifles, from brigs that might withstand half a canon-ball barrage to a majestic Ship-of-the-Line that seems incapable of sinking, even though my engineer assures me she can. This extends to domains other than military, namely industrial, like making your mines more effective with smelting breakthroughs and enlightenment, like inventing the concept of the division of power and greatly enhancing your national prestige.

Greater prestige should make diplomatic relations easier, but the computer doesn't play fair when it comes to that. Historic alliances can deteriorate at the drop of a hat and other nations continuously offer deals that leave you with the short end of the stick. They like to ask for your regions and offer pittance, while remaining adamant about parting with their own regions when it is you making the proposals, unless you offer a ridiculously unfair deal like trading Spain for Gibraltar.

Even though your allies will declare war against a nation that you go to war with, this is more of a technicality, as they are actually very unwilling to send troops to help you out. I've yet to have a coordinated attack against a nation, which was, historically, a pretty common occurrence. Often, one nation was supplying all the money and weapons, while another just the manpower, something that is pretty much impossible to recreate in Empire.

This makes personally establishing military superiority a much more effective method of winning. To be fair, this is true for most games and expecting different from one subtitled “Total War” might seem silly, but “improved diplomatic relations” was also touted as a big new feature in Empire.

Now, this could go on forever. One feature seems nerdy, yet cool, but also buggy, which leads to another feature and so on and so forth until we go through the whole bajillion of them. But the point is, that, even without taking into account the punishing load times and the numerous other problems, simply having so much to do can make taking on all aspects of Empire feel like work! But when you devise a Machiavellian strategy to an underdog turnaround and a last-turn victory, the rush is incredible and makes it all worth it.

It is very replayable too: My typical game has at least one battle per turn, but there are times when I class things up and act ridiculously diplomatic, forgiving and generous. Then it's common not to have a single shot fired for the first 40 turns. And, like the auto-resolve option that allows you to quickly simulate them, you can also choose to have most of the “Strategic Map” decisions, like taxes or construction, made for you automatically.

Long story short, he said after countless paragraphs of commentary, this latest Total War is made out of Creative Assembly's classic tried-and-true formula, seems to have the same issues the series had nearly a decade ago made more more glaring due to the passage of time, but also highlights a lot of more polished distractions to help you take your mind of them. It's still the best at what it does, but for newcomers it's not nearly as accessible compared to the contemporary gaming scene and for series fans there is a clear feeling that there isn't enough progress.

***The Presentation***

Empire has the potential to look phenomenal, provided you have a hefty computer that can handle the game engine's crushing requirements and that you don't look inside the buildings, as they don't seem to have floors.

You'll also need to stay pretty zoomed-in on the action to take in the full effect, but you'll paradoxically want to stay zoomed-out in order to issue your commands.

A “cinematic mode” would definitely be intriguing: You press a button after you've issued your latest orders and the camera switches the focus on the eye-candy, with random close-ups to points of interest. When your strategic guile is needed again, you'd click the button again and resume to your latest . Alas, such a mode doesn't exist, so you need to play cameraman as well as general.

Still, there are plenty of things to admire even at zoom levels so far out that your troops look like ants: The three theatres of war, America, Europe and Africa, all have radically different terrain, units and music to go with them. It's really something that, in one moment, you can be charging with beautiful white mares in one of America's green pastures, and in the next battle you might be leading camels in the vast, bare expanses of Asia.

You can certainly get caught up in the moment, but the continuous pauses that break up the pace will break the illusion for all but the most patient of players. Not only are there loading screens everywhere, featuring just a progress bar and some interesting, yet hard to read, quotes, but there are slight pauses practically every time you select an army or a city. In addition, you have to watch every nation that is near your borders, or your troops, take its turn; this makes sense as you need to know where each nation repositioned their troops, but there has to be a better way to convey that information. Barring that, there should at least exist an option to just skip the bloody thing completely for those who like to be surprised and/or prefer not wait a few minutes from the moment they end their turns to start the next.

The sound effects are top-notch but voice acting is uneven. There are three voiced helpers, one for the strategic map, one for land battles and one for naval combat, which is a nice spread of the standard “tutorial voice” around, only, they all sound pretty weird and, more importantly, they repeat the same things over and over again. Some nations commendably feature native speakers for their armies, while others employ the standard Hollywood method of accented English.

Speaking of which, “Empire” in general feels like a Hollywood blockbuster that spent most of its budget for the battles and did the best it could from scraps for the other parts.

***The Authenticity***

The Total War series have always been hailed for their historical accuracy, specifically when it comes to battles, with the Rome: Total War engine even being used in the BBC programme “_Time Commanders_” and History Channel's “_Decisive Battles_”.

Granted, there are things aplenty that would make historians cringe, like Indians fighting in strict military formations and the complete omission of supply trains, but in the field of videogames, where bulletproof commandos routinely duke it out with English-speaking Nazis, such mix-ups seem trivial.

There is a nature of good will surrounding the game, the feeling that it tries to be as enjoyable as possible while also sneakily educating the players a little bit. Every time a nation researches something, for example, a news item pops up which has the mandatory flavour text and bonus breakdown, but also includes a few paragraphs of “how and when this really happened” that read like an encyclopaedia entry.

Empire also prompts several news items and world events that might occur out of chronological order, but this can be viewed as your leadership's effect on the world: like the Greeks making their bid for independence 20 years earlier, on 1801, on account of Cossacks trouncing the Ottoman Empire.

***The Multiplayer***

Like previous Total Wars, Empire supports stand-alone skirmishes over LAN and the Internet, featuring up to 8 players. Pure and simple, each player has a set amount of points, or gold, that he can spend to recruit units for his army or improve their experience, and then, the battle is conducted. Scenario, or historical, battles are also available in this mode, which features the stat-tracking and ranking systems that are becoming the standard for multiplayer gaming.

There is also the promise of incorporating multiplayer into the Grand Campaign, which is, supposedly, a huge issue if it actually comes to pass. At this point, even the method they'll use isn't concrete., but the latest talks seem to point to the player whose army isn't involved in a battle, taking control of the computer army, for every battle. This certainly looks like it could work, even if it pretty much eliminates the option of player alliances.

Honestly though, even if they do create something that seems viable on paper, it will be more like a technological victory; the already considerable time investment needed for playing the Grand Campaign is pretty much doubled for multiplayer, making this a feature for the most dedicated of fans.

***The Steam Activation***

It might be worth mentioning that even if you buy a hard-copy of Empire: Total War you'll need to activate it online via Steam, a free digital distribution service run by Valve, the creators of Half-Life. Now, some people avoid Steam like the plague but this is more on account of its troublesome beginnings and not the current state of affairs; I personally think it's a care-free way to buy games and a decent method of piracy prevention; unlike, say, the incredibly obnoxious Tagis, as seen on titles like “The Witcher”, which routinely prevents more paying customers from playing the game than it does pirates.

Anyway, keep in mind that any computer you want to run Empire on will have to access the Internet at least once; and that Steam's offline mode is still a bit wonky.

***OVERALL***

Empire: Total War is a massive game that safely expands on its predecessors, without taking as many risks as it ought to. There exist serious problems that, despite being present throughout the franchise, the developers are simply unwilling to tackle and that gamers seem resigned to accepting. Kinda like Football Manager having awful graphics and virtually no sound but no fan seeming to mind. So while I recommend Empire to series veterans that have recently upgraded their computers, newcomers should be aware that they'll encounter a handful of annoying issues; should they make a patient effort to surmount them, they'll find a game that'll hold them for a very long time.

At worst, Empire can be bought for showcase purposes, as the latest and greatest version of the textbook computer game. Its spectrum, its depth, its time requirements: they really don't make them like this on consoles. Having it on your library means that you'll always have something to clearly distinguish your PC rig from your PS Wii60, something that shouts: “This, my friend, is PC gaming”.

Precise Score: '''8.0'' 

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