Empire Total War

[DREDIOCK]

  It has never been explained why the French chose to mount their bayonettes on top of the barrel, therefore blocking the sight of the user when firing.

Probably because in Napoleonic style warfare they did more concentrated area fire on command like one large load of buck shot then actually aiming inasmuch as the guns were so inaccurate to begin with. it really was the only effective way to fire upon an enemy at range so having a gunsight really didnt matter.
and once they got close enough to aim accurately it was pretty much point and click so you didnt necessarily need a sight.And by then  you would only get a shot or two off before it was time for the bayonet anyway.

Course thats just a guess. but it seems to make sense to me.


Off topic. I've been messing around with Rome total war alot lately.

Great game but cant get the damn music out of my head LOL

I hate Gauls. they breed like frikken cockroaches.
Romans arent much better once you decide to turn on the Senate  once you've had enough of the Senate meddling and setting objectives that some of which you cant possibly succeed in in the time limit. or if you can. you cant hold onto the objective.

[Saurdaukar]

Probably because in Napoleonic style warfare they did more concentrated area fire on command like one large load of buck shot then actually aiming inasmuch as the guns were so inaccurate to begin with. it really was the only effective way to fire upon an enemy at range so having a gunsight really didnt matter.
and once they got close enough to aim accurately it was pretty much point and click so you didnt necessarily need a sight.And by then  you would only get a shot or two off before it was time for the bayonet anyway.

Yes, but this style of warfare was not exclusive to the French.  The point made by the game is a good one - all other muskets and rifles of the day had bayonet lugs either below or on the side of the barrel.

If memory serves, it was generally considered "bad form" (by the Brits, anyway) to actually look at the individual whom you were trying to hit so "aiming" is a big of a different discussion to begin with.

Either way, mounting a bayonet to the top side of a barrel seems about as backwards as putting a 190's engine in the tail.

[Fishu]

I'd guess it's related to handling and reloading of the gun. The french could been trained to handle the gun in a manner in which the bayonet below the barrel would get in the way and therefore it was easier to install it above the barrel than teach everyone a new way of handling the muskets. For example reloading was a lenghty process and skill made a difference of several seconds - change something in the procedure and you will have to learn again the whole procedure to be quick about it.

[mechanic]

ok Fulmar you won me over, and the game working now it is worth it for sure. I just dont want to install anything that might degrade my AH2 connection as i dont play any other games as much. Thrila, thanks for the offer man, i actualy have a copy of HL2 somewhere. I got stuck down this big hole with egg pods in it, I could find no way out and had no other save games.. never played it again. Great game for its time.

[Fulmar]

ok Fulmar you won me over, and the game working now it is worth it for sure. I just dont want to install anything that might degrade my AH2 connection as i dont play any other games as much. Thrila, thanks for the offer man, i actualy have a copy of HL2 somewhere. I got stuck down this big hole with egg pods in it, I could find no way out and had no other save games.. never played it again. Great game for its time.

Back on my old P3 800 system (right when steam came out), it was a resource hog.  Even on my older P4 system I turned it off to save on memory (though I can't recall it really being a hog, maybe slowed my start up some).  Now I have a C2D with plenty of ram,  it doesn't bother my system.

[Curval]

Who got the special forces edition?  Anyone?  Is it worth getting?

[Vudak]

Who got the special forces edition?  Anyone?  Is it worth getting?

I bought it...  The half dozen or so units are not worth it at all..  I bought it because I was worried that someone might choose to make their mod with it and I'd be left in the dark.  That's probably a stupid and illegitimate concern of mine, but hey.

Anyway, like I said a few posts up, it's not worth buying, period, just quite yet. 

To give you an idea of the problems, on twcenter.net there is a "The Official ETW Praise Thread " that is 5 pages strong, and a "The Official ETW Rant Thread" which is currently going 36 pages strong.  The bug report also has 36 pages.

It's been a real headache for many people.  Spare yourself.

[bongaroo]

I knew they'd do this crap to themselves again.  They could have had the team spend 3 more months on it to release a good product.  They didn't do it with MTW2 and I knew they wouldn't with this one. 

[Saurdaukar]

To be honest, Ive only encountered a single bug.

Once, on the battle screen, while I was rightfully ridding the America's of those pesky natives, what with their mohawks, poor hygiene and such, some of their reinforcements got "stuck" entering the map.

Only one or two individual soldiers would "hang" on the red line, but it made the rest of the unit unattackable (is that even a word?) because the game thought they were still crossing over into the fight.

Other than that, no issues for me.

[Vudak]

To be honest, Ive only encountered a single bug.

Once, on the battle screen, while I was rightfully ridding the America's of those pesky natives, what with their mohawks, poor hygiene and such, some of their reinforcements got "stuck" entering the map.

Only one or two individual soldiers would "hang" on the red line, but it made the rest of the unit unattackable (is that even a word?) because the game thought they were still crossing over into the fight.

Other than that, no issues for me.

Some people have been luckier than others.  Before the March 10 patch, I wasn't having any "major" problems, either.  Since then, I've had trouble with memory leaks and had to reinstall the entire game because all the options from Steam (defrag cache, re-acquire files, even delete files) weren't responding.

I understand that designing computer games is incredibly complex and that with the vast amount of variations in machines it is impossible to get something 100% right on release.  Obviously, patches are needed and I won't fault the company for that.

OTOH, the fact that this game shipped with bugs like the trade port bug is pretty damning evidence that they did a very lazy job playtesting this thing.  Admittedly, they fixed that quickly (one week), but STILL...  I mean, come on.  The AI won't launch naval invasions, you couldn't trade as certain countries at first...  These are problems that would have been noticed had they just had a playtester play the game through once for each country.  I would think something like that would be a basic playtesting goal, but they obviously didn't do it.

If you buy it now, you're basically paying them money to do their job.  Granted, it's a pretty fun job. 

[Fulmar]

Some people have been luckier than others.  Before the March 10 patch, I wasn't having any "major" problems, either.  Since then, I've had trouble with memory leaks and had to reinstall the entire game because all the options from Steam (defrag cache, re-acquire files, even delete files) weren't responding.

I understand that designing computer games is incredibly complex and that with the vast amount of variations in machines it is impossible to get something 100% right on release.  Obviously, patches are needed and I won't fault the company for that.

The game's release was already delayed.  It's really all business at this point.  The game isn't clearly done developing.  They never finished the Multiplayer Campaign part of the game (that is promised in a later patch TBD).  When you're delaying a game, you're losing money.  So they'll release it unfinished to get a cash flow going and continue patching the game as it goes along.  This happens time and time again.  The biggest game I can think of that was delayed so many times and then released a little too early was Star Wars Galaxies.

[Saurdaukar]

OTOH, the fact that this game shipped with bugs... 

Don't get me wrong, I'll be the last to apologize for CA (and every other manufacturer) who, over the past 10 years, has moved from releasing solid products to releasing betas for future patching.

At the end of the day, its really just about money.  Shogun and Rome were labors of love.  While the rest of the TW series is good, it was ultimately motivated, almost entirely it seems, by profit.

Empire is no exception and although I havent run into many significant bugs, I will say that its clearly not a finished product.  It lacks polish.

Perhaps that doesnt really bother me since, compared to many other recently released titles (Conan and WAR come to mind) Empire is a shining example of a playtested product.

Nature of the beast, I suppose.

[Vudak]

Obviously it's about money, and I hope they make enough to continue making these games.  Like I said, the game is great fun, and I'll completely recommend it once some of the worse (crashing) bugs are fixed, which, hopefully, will happen with next week's expected patch.  It really is great and addictive.

That being said, I also hope a point is found where the negative reviews cause a significant enough delay in their reaching their target profit that they bother testing things better in the future.  I have no numbers to back me, but just from checking out the Amazon.uk user polls/reviews, it looks like CA is going to lose some potential customers at least temporarily.  Will that loss be greater than the cost of delaying the game a month?  Who knows.

Still, although I appreciate the nature of the beast and that, comparatively to other games, it might seem like a wonderfully playtested product, It is blatantly obvious that all the playable factions were not playtested.  That trade port bug was a smoking gun in that regard.

It feels like HTC adding a new plane and never taking it for a spin to see if it can really climb to 3,000 feet.  I just can't imagine it, but then again, I've been pretty spoiled by HTC in terms of customer support and reliability...

[Curval]

My copy arrived on island today.

My weekend plans are now made.

[Ack-Ack]

At the end of the day, its really just about money.  Shogun and Rome were labors of love.  While the rest of the TW series is good, it was ultimately motivated, almost entirely it seems, by profit.

Exactly.  At the end of the day, it's the money that counts.  A lot of studios (especially smaller studios doing 3rd party development for bigger studios/publishers) have milestones they need to reach.  In some cases, if these milestones aren't reached, additional funding is withheld or penalties levied.  This can create developers to rush a product out to the market before it's fully completed with the belief that they can fix whatever problems at release with patches. 

There are very few companies that can take their time and not be handcuffed by these milestones.  Just look how long 3d Realms has taken with Duke Nukem Forever, thing is going passing the 12 year development mark.  Bio-Ware and Blizzard are another example of studios that aren't hemmed in by milestones and can take their sweet time in developing a game without having to rush it out of the door incomplete. 


ack-ack