Empire Total War question

[Bahumat]

It's on steam for about £6. I remember playing Medieval Total War years ago and enjoyed it, however what I dont enjoy is the actual fighting (weird i know!).

I enjoy planning what bits of the world I want to take over, sending spies all over the place, defending key points etc, but I dont enjoy going into the 3D map and moving units myself (as I'm useless at this).

Can I play the game and let the computer fight the battles for me? or do you really have to get involved to stand a chance of getting anywhere?

[mooSe_]

you can skip all the battles and get the computer to do them for you yes

p.s. you're weird. Although I do occassionally skip battles, especially if I have had to do lots of similar ones in one turn

[fettoken]

But a crap job it does at that

[Bahumat]

Although I enjoy strategy games, I'm not very good at them. I never play against people, however I play with people against the computer lol.

Here is an example. In Command and Conquer Generals I never had any Uber Micro, I just sat in my corner building tons and tons of tanks. After about an hour I'd zerg the CPU. This did mean I had to play on Medium at best.

hmm maybe I will give it a try and just play on easy or something lol.

[mooSe_]

n00b

[Bugz]

Originally Posted by Bahumat

Although I enjoy strategy games, I'm not very good at them. I never play against people, however I play with people against the computer lol.

Here is an example. In Command and Conquer Generals I never had any Uber Micro, I just sat in my corner building tons and tons of tanks. After about an hour I'd zerg the CPU. This did mean I had to play on Medium at best.

hmm maybe I will give it a try and just play on easy or something lol.

You are not alone there Bahumat - I suck at strategy games too.

[Raven]

You can auto resolve battles if you like but you will lose more units than you would by playing them yourself, when fighting far from home it can get a bit dangerous to do it that way.

[Bahumat]

Yeah I figured I would be at a disadvantage. If I play on easy, I can eventually take control of the battles and see how I do.

[kirennia]

Whichever portion you prefer, you can skip in the game. It really is definitely worth while and at £6, it's a steal.

If you have a good... very good computer, it's absolutely stunning and I still have absolutely no idea how they can get away with so much graphical content going on on the screen.

And yes, you can play with people against the computer too (iirc).

[Bahumat]

ah I have Q6600 and ATI 4890 so should be fine

[fl3a]

a strategy you could use if you are just getting started with the real time part:
1) have your army consist of at least 70-80% of line infantry
2) dont use skirmishers(light infantry)
3) do your best to be the world leader in research in line infantry tactics (fire by rank etc)
4) the most important part to this strategy, when trying to take territory just siege and/or generally piss them off until they attack you (you defend)
5) in battles use a long battle line (not too many rows of men, keep the units side by side)
6) the cpu will (on lower difficulties) invariably attack somewhere along the middle of your looooong battle line
7) move the units that have not been engaged so that they face the enemy from the sides (essentially turning your orignal | into a ] with the enemy army being flanked)

thats a good way to get started. when you are doing battles you will notice spots (the advisor might even tell you, dunno) you can take advantage of by moving your men around some more. using a tactic like this might get you started with the battles in the beginning, and as you get more handy with the controls and flanking and so on, you can adopt different nuances to it, adding an element of discovery and satisfaction when you do pull it off.

i tremendously enjoyed both parts of empire total war, hope you find the way to get there as well

[Bahumat]

Thanks very much for the help fl3a. Will rep if I can

[Access Denied]

If Empire is anything like Medieval 2 I'll not be getting it. I absolutely loved Medievil and Shogun but the whole system of Medieval 2 just annoyed me.

[mooSe_]

The only problem with empire imo is the AI is shit. They will often line up their army in the deployment zone and then send their units at you 1 at a time to get attacked, and only once you have destroyed/routed one unit will they send in the next one to attack. I don't think it was on the highest difficulty setting but it definitely wasn't the lowest either.

[Rulke]

Apart from the AI in battles being crappy I always got fed up with the fact none of the battle maps are that interesting

The tips above are all sound, I'd add that for a huge advantage make sure you research the best techs:
* Get the best Bayonettes as soon as you can, at the start of the game using these, you're better off just meleeing the enemy rather than standing off and shooting
* Fire by rank is amazing but has a couple of restrictions, first off it's buggy if you don't manually tell the unit to fire (ie if they march into your line of fire, only rank 1 will fire) which means you have to watch out when your target runs away or your guys will chase. Also its only the front 3 ranks who fire.
* Platoon firing is pretty good too.
* If you're a veteran of previous TW games - get used to never using your general to attack anything, they die in a heartbeat in E:TW
* Low walls are great cover but always deploy your unit slightly behind it - if you deploy them against the wall they wont fire properly