Like diving into a murky lake from the rocky cliffs looming
above, plunging into Empire: Total War is an intimidating prospect but an
exhilarating experience. As with previous games in this strategy franchise,
there's an overwhelming amount of content to unearth, though now the clock has
been spun forward hundreds of years. Technological advances have made bows and
arrows weapons obsolete, the British colonies strive for independence, and
major empires approach their inevitable collapse. These historical waters are
deep, but also a bit turbulent. Empire is the biggest and broadest Total War
yet, and like an aging historical parchment, it's brilliantly ambitious in
scope but somewhat tattered at the edges. Nevertheless, the game's historical
breadth, turn-based tugs-of-war, and enjoyable real-time battles (both on land
and at sea) will transfix series fans and newcomers alike.
The grand campaign is the meat of Empire: Total War, and
it's there where you're likely to spend the most amount of time. The game
stretches across the 18th century and lets you choose from a number of world
powers, from Great Britain and Russia to fallen domains such as the Maratha
Confederacy and the Ottoman Empire. Once you choose an empire, you can select
from a few different campaign types that determine victory conditions and
campaign length. Whichever you decide, be prepared: Even a short, 50-year
campaign can take a good amount of time to complete, given that each turn
requires strategic thinking on multiple fronts. Battles usually determine how
regions are won and lost, but diplomatic relations, economic strangleholds,
assassinations, and many other subtleties must be tweaked and considered at
each turn, and they have noticeable impact as the years progress. If this
sounds overwhelming, or if you're an American history buff, you'll want to
check out the Road to Independence campaign before jumping into the grand one.
This is essentially a long American tutorial that slowly introduces you to the
basics and culminates in a grand campaign of its own.
The factors you must consider run the gamut, starting with
an important new feature: the technology tree. Three areas of research and
multiple subtrees let you improve your military, industry, and philosophy; in
turn, your choices may benefit your economy or your success in battle. The
benefits may seem minor at first, but as the campaign wears on, their effects
are more noticeable, and your choices within these trees must be informed by
the strengths and weaknesses of your particular empire. Do you concentrate on
industry and use sheer numbers of troops to overwhelm your enemies, or do you
focus on naval improvements and reap the ensuing benefits of successful
trade-route blockades? As your campaign wears on, your needs may shift, whether
because enemy blockades require a stronger navy, because you are spreading
quickly across land, or because your economy is unable to sustain your growing
army. Technology is also a limited diplomatic option, given that it's a
commodity that you can not only trade during negotiations but also steal from
foes. Additionally, it's not easy to convince a friendly nation to offer
technology. Even when offered multiple technologies or monetary compensation,
your closest allies rarely accept a request to share even a single technology,
which makes it a limited political tool. In Empire: Total War, knowledge is
more easily stolen than shared.
In fact, your more successful political dealings are the
underhanded ones. Your agents may differ between nations (for example,
gentlemen and rakes for the British, scholars and hashishin for the Ottomans),
but the tasks are similar: covertly disrupt the affairs of your enemies and
potential enemies. Religious agents such as missionaries will slowly but surely
convert the populace, staving off potential rebellion in newly captured
regions. On the other hand, the impact of religion is not as deep or impactful
as in the Europa Universalis series, in which social and diplomatic events are
more fully explored. Regardless, it's great fun to cripple whole economies,
especially when your strategies work in tandem with each other. Sending in a
naval fleet to seize enemy trade supplies, sending another directly into an
enemy's port (and therefore obstructing incoming goods), and dispatching an
agent to sabotage commercial ports can have profound effects. In cases like
these, an angry, resource-deprived public and cash-strapped armies then ease
the way for a quick triumph.
Nevertheless, this is Total War, and though assassinations
and sabotage lighten your wartime load, there are no diplomatic, religious, or
technological victories. Might is right, and as such, your armies and navies
drive the quick spread of your domain--and if you want to meet the campaign's
success requirements, you'll want to be aggressive, right from the start. The
artificial intelligence doesn't always take sensible steps; smaller countries
may declare war, only to be quickly steamrolled, whereas major foes can seem
almost oblivious to your spread across their regions. However, campaign AI is
good enough to keep you occupied across multiple theaters, and minor nations
and rebels can often keep your hands full, leaving room for major foes to
invade. You will review every fleet and army at every turn, and now that army
recruitment, resource production, and other aspects of play are spread across
multiple locales within a region, mobility (and therefore, roads) is an
important strategic asset.
Unlike with most turn-based historical games, battles can be
played out in real time, and though the autoresolve option may look tempting,
you should, at least on land, manage any battle in which you have a reasonable
chance of winning. The most obvious reason is that they're enjoyable to command
and enjoyable to watch. Thousands of units clash in a dizzying mass of
artillery and bullets, camels and swordsmen, and as in prior Total War games,
it's more about position, formation, and geography than about unit
micromanagement. Garrisoning musketeers, and taking heat off of cavalry by
keeping enemy gunmen occupied with melee infantry, are just a few of many
possibilities to consider. Once armies clash, these prebattle decisions
generally have far more impact than any midskirmish choice, and it's as
enjoyable as ever to zoom in close to your troops and watch them engage. The
landscapes are on the bland side, but soldier animations and the general amount
of model detail make for a wonderful visual treat.
The other reason you'll want to play out most battles in
real time is that the real-time AI is weak and can be exploited to your
advantage. Enemy troops often fail to engage you, even when under direct fire. It
isn't uncommon for your AI opponent to use only a few units at any given time
and let you get an early upper hand, particularly when you have taken care with
your formations during the deployment phase. This is especially true on
settlement maps, in which narrow paths must be taken into account and buildings
can be used for garrisoning. The AI is often confused by garrisoned troops,
letting cavalry get pummeled by gunfire without taking any steps to reposition,
even at higher difficulty settings. And at times the artificial intelligence is
outright broken. On multiple occasions, we watched units refuse to engage or
respond to attack commands, our own troops and the enemy troops milling among
each other as if they were at a cocktail party rather than in the midst of
battle. Other battle quirks--such as rare moments when movement across the map
occurs in slow motion, as if troops are moving through mud instead of a grassy
field--may also crop up.
Real-time naval battles are another new feature, and they
are the most impressive visual offering here. The water is absolutely stunning
and the ships are incredibly detailed, down to the movement of sails and oars,
as well as the movement of troops on the decks. As ships take damage, debris
falls from the hull and litters the water, all while fireships may be volleying
flames into the air. It's the best-looking naval combat in any game, and it is
compelling when in top form. Like land battles, naval warfare benefits from
smart positioning, and you can further micromanage by choosing different ammo
types, firing your cannons manually, and even by grappling and boarding another
ship. But as with land warfare, the AI seems incapable of managing the battle
with much success on normal and hard difficulties. In dozens upon dozens of
naval battles, the enemy deployed ships in the same exact manner and always
focused on doing hull damage, but never on alternate strategies such as using
grape shot to whittle down a crew and then initiating boarding. In a
stand-alone naval skirmish using default deployments on normal AI settings, we
won a battle after issuing a whopping two commands during the entire match; if
you want a challenge in one-off naval battles, crank up the difficulty level to
expert.
As problematic as the AI can be, both types of battles are
fun to play, and the addition of oceanic combat fleshes out the package well,
making for multifaceted gameplay that encompasses a lot more than it could be
expected to. This includes a number of multiplayer options, both over a local
area network and online. You can battle both on land and at sea in a one-off
skirmish for up to eight players; take part in a one-on-one siege in which one
player defends a fortress while the other attacks; or engage in a historical
scenario, such as the battle of Brandywine Creek. Sadly, a full multiplayer
campaign like the impressive 32-player extravaganza featured in Europa
Universalis III is not yet part of this package, though developer Creative
Assembly has announced that a multiplayer campaign mode will be added later.
The strengths of the core gameplay are far more apparent
when you're playing against real people. As with prior Total War games, you get
finite resources to spend on units of your choice, you can customize weather,
and you can narrow unit selections to early or late 18th century. Without the
bizarre AI behavior, you can concentrate on real battlefield tactics and not on
exploitation, and matches can be an absolute blast. The measured approach and
attempts to flank, the intimidating presence of a rocket troop, the final
standoff of two fatigued units: These moments make Empire: Total War's
multiplayer options worth returning to again and again. Naval battles are also
much more fun when facing a human opponent, who will be likelier to slow your
frigates by using chain shot, and to take advantage of tactical positioning and
effective deployment.
However, you may very well need to turn down your graphics
options when entering an online match, lest the frame rate drop to a crawl
under the weight of the game's ambitions. Indeed, Empire: Total War requires a
lot of horsepower to run, and it's prone to peculiar behavior, even on systems
that exceed recommended requirements. We experienced a few crashes on several
machines, and the game tends to slow the longer that it has been running. On
two test systems, the soft haze applied to distant objects also blurred out
some ship geometry and the onscreen compass, and various other graphical bugs
cropped up from time to time. At least within battle, however, it seems that
this power is being put to mostly good use; hundreds if not thousands of
individually animated troops can be onscreen at any given time. Pleasant
weather effects, the din of clashing swords, the pop of gunfire--all of these
elements make for an enjoyable audiovisual experience during battles.
It's impossible to condense an experience as broad and as
rich as Empire: Total War to a few thousand words. Its complex amalgam of
turn-based empire building and real-time skirmishing is exciting and involving,
and it's both fuller and more streamlined than its predecessors. But like those
predecessors, it inspires that compulsion to accomplish just one last turn,
even when your eyes are bleary and your body longs for sleep. Although some
rough edges are in serious need of sanding, this is a complex and rewarding
game that will keep strategy fanatics tied to their keyboards for months at a
time.
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