Empire: Total War Heaven

Empire Total war will be the best thing since individually wraped packages of floppy cheese.

The battles on the video look awesome, though my graphics wont be able to handle that many troops.

I liked the screenshots in this article, as they actually showed the game being played, not just situations at the beginning. On that note, I see the Maratha Empire does not joke around; in the shot with the Austrian territory of India, all the rest of India had been conquered by the Marathas.

Darn you. You capalised on the review before me.

Reading the review created a gentle tear in my eye,

Nice, thanks for linking.
Also PCGameplay, the Belgian magazine I also mentioned here concerning a review, has given this game a 90 out of 100 in their review.

I was looking at some pictures of Empire on IGN and saw some faction flags. One of India included the just released Maratha Conederacy. I also saw one o Italy with a very Venetian looking flag and another above Italy that looked a lot like the Teutonic flag. Also another flag from Italy with a red background and four white arrows facing in.

EDIT: Also in India, was a Portuguese flag and a (from the looks) Mughal Empire.

[This message has been edited by Trottski (edited 03-01-2009 @ 06:11 AM).]

Newsied Nort

Well that was a good read, glad to see he praised the Sound Effects as I was a little worried after playing the demo - the ambient battle sounds seemed missing but I'm glad they've sorted this out

Certainly heightened my anticipation.

I also saw one o Italy with a very Venetian looking flag and another above Italy that looked a lot like the Teutonic flag. Also another flag from Italy with a red background and four white arrows facing in.

To clear this up a little:
Yup, Venice.
Not the Teutonic Order, but Prussia. The Teutonic Order had a simple black cross on a white background as emblem.
That's the flag of the Hospitallers: the Knights of St John/Knights of Malta. Good to see they're in.

There's also Genoese (white field with red cross), Dutch and Spanish flags on that particular screenshot.

Secondly, the AI never really comes back with a counterproposal when they reject an offer, so players aren't ever really going to be sure what they need to do to sweeten the pot.

A step backward from M2:TW.

The AI will be throwing curve balls at ya left & right. I am very eager to see if I can notice the diplomatic difference.

A step backward from M2:TW

Maybe, yes. But the complete Diplomacy overhaul might've made it a little difficult to program the AI to effectively and sensibly respond to your diplomatic efforts, just as we know from Medieval II. Granted, it was a cool feature but it didn't always work very well and if they couldn't fix it for Empire I see the sense in removing it because if CA left it in there but didn't work very well in the sense of the Diplomacy AI it would seem like no progress was made on the diplomatic overhaul.

I'd rather it be not present than present but not 100% functional and fitting with the new Diplomacy bit.

I don't know about you all, but I found the princesses to be very annoying, although it was hilarious to steal faction's men away from them

Closing now.

Please refer all discussion to our Grand Reviews Thread.