Empire: Total War

Epic proportions

There are three main battle types in the game. Naval battles will not win you any territory but success will open up trade routes while denying the enemy routes of their own and give you the chance to land forces at the enemy's rear. Typical land battles vary greatly depending on the terrain of the strategy map where the armies are clashing. The seasons also effect battlefield conditions so, for example, expect some blazing heat to reduce the effectiveness of your cavalry. Then you have the siege battles, which start off quite dull then become a lot more entertaining once your boffins have invented more powerful canons. It must be said that before this happens the siege battle AI is the most evidently challenged; what I wouldn't give for some good old fashioned boiling oil as it seems defenders are afraid their musket balls would roll right out of the barrel if they aimed straight down towards the swines merrily crawling up ropes or having a BBQ at the base of your walls. It also takes a fair amount of patience to get to grips with the battle interface. When tactics were based almost exclusively around getting your units of men to line up in good order and unload volleys at the enemy then it is essential you can maneuver them around the changing battlefield with ease. Things have improved, but it is still hampered by the fact there seems to be absolutely no routine that takes accord of the direction the men were facing, the angle the camera was pointing and the state of their line when you send them off to a new position. The various icons on the bottom right of the screen allow you to advance and rotate your unites yet it is still unwieldy and depressingly prone to' erratic moments'. You know that increased skill will put units under better control but you'll find your initial advances on the strategy map curtailed by the sluggishness of the battle controls. Having your men in formations resembling the start of a game of Pick-Up Sticks is bad enough, but having your cavalry charge in entirely the opposite direction to where the mouse was just clicked is borderline inexcusable. If CA are trying to simulate the confusion and hysteria of war these 'features' do a grand job, but it would be nice if we could turn them off in the gameplay options screen.

Even after all these years and all those man-hours the AI continues to underwhelm. On the battlefield it will often pull off some moves which leave the human player scratching their head in admiring wonder. Other times, however, the AI which controls your own men is not quite so smart. Even after hundreds, if not thousands of years of intellectual advancement, the soldiers of Empire are just as liable to be utterly flummoxed by a clump of bushes as their ancient Roman comrades. This is even more aggravating as the battlefield is a busier and more richly populated environment these days. When it can be used to your tactical advantage this is grand but not so great when your entire left flank crumbles because militia men drawn from the rustic countryside were apparently recruited in parts of the world where the fence had yet to be invented. Their difficulties do not kill the game but they certainly aggravate the player, and blow a little cloud of funk in the face of the long time fan who continues to hope that the CA would have been able to address these immersion torpedoes. Oh, and why someone decided to lift the diplomacy AI straight from Civ-aye, ye can bugger off with any deals mate; in fact, let's have a fight-sation. It seems the developers were told to remove the 'Shower them with virgins' State Present by Sega and forgot to put in the necessary replacement which makes diplomatic trading viable.

Even with all these disappointments the sheer scale and reach of Empire never fails to impress and, for the most part, the elements which bear ugly stretch marks are overcome by its overall form and beauty. In my opinion it is the sign of a good game that once I finally stopped myself from taking one more turn and going to bed, it wasn't long before I was considering getting back up and trying out some new ideas. Much like the wars of the era consumed humanity, Empire has a ferocious ability to consume the player. Being able to pretend to be in control of the destinies of so many is addictive in its own right, but the gameplay mechanics that underlie this pursuit continue to make the Total War games a sequence of stand-out titles. While I wish The Creative Assembly would spend less time polishing what isn't broken and more fixing that which is, I'm resigned to the fact that I will be playing this game for a long time to come. There are so many different paths to victory, so many different styles of victory to aim for, that it's hard to just walk away after a successful campaign. Plus, it is always exciting to see if one of your gentleman scholars can best a rival's in a bitter duel.

I didn't even manage to try out the eight-person multiplayer; there just wasn't enough time. Once they get round to releasing the full strategy game as a multiplayer experience I'll review that for you, as I'm sure I'll have a lot more to talk about than latency and lobbies. Until then, if you have the time and the dedication, Empire: Total War will shower you with gaming glory and riches. I'm just going to make my deadline with this review. If the game hadn't just crashed, (for the third time in close to 30 hours) out an hour or so back it would no doubt have been even later. It's now almost 1AM and I'm giving serious thought to at least firing it up once more and finishing off the Poles before letting the smoke settle for the night.

88%

By Sam Gibson