Revisiting Empire Total War

I finally have a bit of free time, so I decided to revisit some old games. This post will be about Empire, but first I did a bit of Medieval 2.

Medieval 2 Britannia as Wales

So first, Medieval 2 Kingdoms - Britannia campaign - as Wales. I only played Britannia once before, but I played the hell out of Medieval 2.

I didn't play that much Medieval 2 recently, and the manual claims Wales is the most difficult country, so I picked only hard / hard. I'm not really sure how they reached this conclusion - Wales gets enormous event stacks during first few turns. I was the strongest country almost right away with barely any recruiting. The only problem was paying all those troops, but then there's loot button.

In 10 turns it was basically over, with England being reduced to Nottingham and some Irish towns. I actually lost a few battles, but most of them were me sending a single unit to grab some fort (forts in Britannia campaign are small permanent castles) and that unit getting ambushed or attacked. Oh well, not a big deal.

I really like those mini-campaigns. They add just enough new mechanics to make things fresh for a few sessions, but don't do anything crazy. "Culture" replacing "religion" was a cute idea, but then London was 50% Welsh in 5 turns of me holding it, so maybe nobody looked at the numbers. Permanent forts definitely mattered. In all Kingdoms campaigns merchants are somehow worth many times more than vanilla, so they're actually good.

Overall Medieval 2 is fun, but damn it's easy. Now onto Empire.

Empire Total War

I reviewed this game once before. It's nice to see I hated "professional game reviewers" years before Gamergate made it mainstream to do so. Hating someone before it was cool is even more hipster cred than liking someone before it was cool. It's still completely ridiculous that publisher-paid whores rated this game as better than Medieval 2.

Anyway, regardless of its many flaws, I mostly enjoyed this game, and it's been so long since I last played it. I had some old mods - one I wrote to remove walls, and another someone else wrote to fix diplomacy based on my research. Figuring out how to activate them took a while. A lot of links I googled were dead or led to tools for newer Total War games.

So here's the story. Rome and Medieval 2 were very moddable, but then Empire came with a new engine, and moddablity was nearly zero. Even Creative Assembly couldn't really mod it, they had some extremely convoluted build system to duct tape everything together overnight, and that was it. I was so annoyed by this state of events that I researched format after format, and wrote decoder after decoder - not just for Empire, but for all Total War series going forward. I even wrote tools to mass crack tens of simple formats with statistical analysis.

There were a few people doing some research and tooling, but to be honest I don't think the Total War modding scene would have survived without my push. By the time of Shogun 2, CA figured out modders exist, started releasing some modding tools, mostly complementary to what community already did, and it's kinda self sustaining now. Still none of the new titles are anywhere as moddable as Medieval 2 was. Medieval 2 was peak Total War.

The modding scene is formed mostly by all the people who actually create mods, but there's plenty of games which could have had thriving modding scenes, but don't due to lack of tooling. Like XCOM has godawful tooling and it basically has just one mod (Long War) - plus a bunch of minimods doing literally VM binary patching, half of which got broken by a game patch and never fixed. Total War series was heading in such direction before it got saved. Congratulations past me.

Empire Total War as Russia

Unfortunately while adjusting graphics settings I accidentally switched to Large unit size (120 for line infantry, 3 cannons per unit) instead of Ultra I wanted (160 for infantry, 4 cannons per unit etc). I only figured it out after a few turns and didn't feel like restarting.

My least favorite part of Empire was naval combat, so I picked Russia at normal / normal to avoid it as much as possible. I used to play on very hard / very hard, but this is just a casual revisit. 1700 Russia starts at awful economy, awful tech, awful army with most of infantry not even having guns, and at war with Ottomans and Crimea. It feels so much more realistic than EU4, where 1444 Russia is basically a fully Westernized power already.

In the first war I took Crimea, tried to peace out Ottomans, but they didn't, so I took Moldova to get them to peace talks. This gave me first port (in Empire Arkhangelsk doesn't have a port), and let me get my economy on track.

OPM Dagestan declared on me. I forgot just how aggressive Empire AI was. They didn't last long. Since I already had my troops there, I took Georgia - and Armenia which Georgia grabbed in some war with Ottomans. I allied Persia as I didn't want another front.

I attacked Sweden for Ingria, Livonia, and Finland, leaving them with just Sweden.

Ottomans attacked Persia, pulling me into their war, so I grabbed Bulgaria, Mesopotamia, and Constantinople itself before they peaced out.

Sweden attacked me, and was sending 2 nasty stacks all the way around the coastline, so I recruited a single ship (in Total War the whole army fits on the smallest ship), and dropped it next to Stockholm ending the war in no time.

Then once Constantinople chilled down I actually attacked Ottomans again.

That's overall a shocking mix of everyone declaring wars in every way. It's biased against the player, but every AI was fighting one or more other countries. This is fun. EU4 diplomacy is so tame by comparison. After this session, Paradox games feel so static, as all wars are either declared by me, by a coalition against me, or by some AI blob against minor who can't defend itself.

I tried trading techs, and I managed to buy a lot, but I have no idea what's the AI logic. Friendly AIs would refuse trades like 1 their tech for sometimes even 10 my techs. Overall this Civ1 style tech trading is a bad mechanic as AI is always awful at it, and it's not surprise that very few games have this mechanic nowadays.

I built a lot of universities - 3 in my capital region, and got 1 each in Georgia and Sweden, then I discovered just how big clamor for reform penalty gets with enlightenment research. I had to destroy one of universities in my capital region. Then again, the only really important tech is Canister Shot, and it's available right away. The rest are nice-to-haves.

Empire Total War tech system

Empire has such a weirdly designed tech system. A stack of like 1 General, 10 Line Infantry (available right away), 6 basic mobile artillery (needs Canister Shot), and 3 whichever cavalry to chase routing units is really close to being a perfect stack, and you can get it basically immediately.

Line Infantry gets a lot of upgrades for first few techs, but high tier infantry units are more gimmicky than good. High level cavalry is better, but cavalry is mostly going to be chasing routing units who don't fight back. High level artillery doesn't get meaningfully better.

Everything naval is a joke - the optimal strategy is taking one cheapest ship and zig-zag-ing with chain shot to defeat a fleet with 100x as many cannons.

Industry tech unlocks better buildings, but while early buildings have amazing return on investment, late ones are fairly mediocre upgrades and come with lower class unhappiness penalty.

Enlightenment techs improve research speed, but they also massively increase unhappiness from universities, so it's quite awkward.

Oh and you also get prestige from researching tech, which does literally nothing unless you select Prestige Victory condition. Not like there's any chance of ever winning by prestige, if game lasts that long, you'll just be the biggest blob with most prestige anyway.

It's super easy to rush late techs by just building more universities - having 4 universities means 4 times faster research than having 1 most major countries start with. But it doesn't feel like there's really that much reason to get those techs. I can't think of any game that does this.

Minor Interface Annoyances

In Rome and Medieval 2 it was possible to rearrange units by getting all your cavalry in one stack, all your infantry in another, then merging them, or so. Basically last unit to join the stack was last on the list, except for generals always being first. Also during battle grouping and ungrouping units rearranged their order to my liking. Trying the same things in Empire? Nope, all unit cards are always totally mixed, and that gets on my nerves. I think in newer games at some point they introduced drag and drop to rearrange units.

Inability to wait for better weather is annoying too, but at least Empire doesn't have those extreme foggy weathers like Medieval 2, where AI could see everything, but I couldn't unless I paused all the time. So it's about even. Are there any Medieval mods to get rid of those silly weathers? They mostly make everything look bad.

With building slots scattered in minor town of every province, it's difficult to see what's available for building. There's "building browser" which shows what's current state of all towns, but you can't see what's under construction or build anything from it, so it's a bit wasted interface. Not like it matters terribly much to do it a bit suboptimally. In new games there's just one central place to manage all building in a province.

None of these are what makes Empire a bad game. It's just an inevitable consequence of new engine.

Battles in Empire

Empire AI tries some maneuvers - infantry lines up, marches forward until enemy is in range, each unit faces nearest enemy, and keeps shooting until one side or the other is dead. Mobile artillery advances to the point where enemy is in range, then start firing. Cavalry prances around and sometimes flanks.

Except it never works properly. Just standing still with a mix of line infantry and artillery on canister shot completely obliterates AI in 80% of battles with nearly zero loses. About 20% of battles are actually fun, when this script doesn't work for any reason.

Battles in Empire are paced like a Tarantino movie. There's a very long setup, then the action is over in a minute. AI spends so much time forming its initial line, often derping in process and having to restart multiple times, while under artillery fire. 10 minutes of that, and it loses maybe 1% of its troops, because long distance round shot is so inaccurate against infantry. It's more decent against cavalry, enemy artillery, and buildings, so it's common that enemy general dies before the battle stars.

Then AI slowly marches towards me. It's all tolerable up to this point. Then 125m from my line artillery unloads canister shot causing massive casualties, but AI infantry still slowly walks forward, and takes time to form lines facing me at 70m while both canister shot and muskets are murdering them. Many units never even fire, they just break. What's left loses the firefight quite fast. I might send cavalry against units running away, but that risks friendly fire, so it's the riskiest part of the whole fight. Not exactly exciting.

The only AI counter to this I've ever seen was when AI had a lot of garbage melee infantry, and decided to just charge at my lines. Of course it didn't win, line infantry (especially after a few bayonet techs) is actually much stronger in melee than most melee infantry units, but it inflicted far more casualties than typical AI slow derping.

The simplest AI strategy that could work is checking if enemy has canister fire, and if so, don't try to form lines to shoot, just get bayonets on and run through the whole canister fire range straight at artillery. Or just nerf canister shot and make regular shot better to compensate?

The obvious self-limitation of using less artillery doesn't work, as without artillery superiority on my side AI often just derps around forever, and I have to really slowly advance while it runs around the map. It makes every battle drag on forever.

Actually now that I think of it, I'm seeing a lot less suicidal cavalry behaviour than I remember. Did that get patched?

Oh and this was all normal, but it only gets worse on higher difficulty levels, as AI gets completely ridiculous morale bonuses, as well as more reasonable shooting bonuses, basically making cavalry unusable, and nerfing a lot of tactics, but canister shot is just as good at very hard as at normal.

Continuing as Russia

And so I destroyed the Ottomans - this gave me really nice borders down South as there's no way to walk to Egypt from the West in any reasonable time, and shockingly my ally Persia didn't backstab me yet.

Then I wasn't sure about Norway (who rebelled from Denmark at some point I guess), so I took the stack which was keeping Sweden under control and took it.

Battle of Norway, viewed from AI side. I did a very suboptimal thing and placed artillery on a cliff, just because the cliff was there and it was something different to try.

Notice AI immobilizing both its artillery unit with entrenchment. This is like top trivially preventable dumb AI mistake. Entrenched artillery not only can't move, it can't even rotate properly and can only shoot forward, so basically it will ever affect the battle, and any unit can just walk around and shoot them at its leisure.

It's notable because this is the worst tactic I've ever seen LegendofTotalWar try, when tried to play Empire.

Lower class was getting unhappier and unhappier. Weirdly farms at level 3 have -1 to lower class happiness, but that disappears at level 4, and level 5 is actually +1 upper class happiness. All industrial buildings get from 0 to -1 t -2.

So I triggered revolution, and switched from absolute monarchy to being a republic. I didn't even need to do any shenanigans, 2 universities in capital region was enough. That didn't really help that much - instead of nobility and lower class, I have middle and lower classes now, and better lower class base bonus. But absolute monarchy let me have amazing cabinet with huge lower class happiness bonuses, so it ended up being not all that much better.

At this point it became really weird that none of my allies backstabbed me yet, and we were already in 1726, so I attacked Polish protectorate of Courland to invade Poland. I took 6 provinces from Poland, 1 from Courland, then I bribed Poland to peace out with 2 techs. AI seriously overvalues techs.

Two turns later, OPM Austria attacked me. I thought they'd actually do something useful, like attack with their full stack and a bit in Vienna against my 2/3 stack in Pressburg, as my armies were scattered around recently the conquered Balkans to keep public order, but AI didn't do anything, so I moved some extra troops from Serbia, sieged Vienna, and won in one turn. I still hate lack of grid on this map. I had to reload 3 times just to move my armies from Serbia the way I wanted to join the siege. With Medieval 2 style grid it's very easy to do precise movements. In Empire if you clicked a few pixels off, your armies will just barely not be able to join, and the route game choses is generally not the faster route due to random downs blocking roads which can you enter but only manually. It's an awful change.

I remembered just how highly AI overvalues techs, so I bought Morea from Venice for 10 techs. That really cleans up my borders. And there I was wondering if they'd take all techs plus Vienna for Morea - mostly so I wouldn't have to babysit Vienna while resistance slowly dies out (for capitals of majors it's 30 unrest, for everything else just 13, either way dropping 1 per turn). I tried it with a few other countries by nobody took it. Looking at tooltips I guess that's because Venice likes me as I'm a republic, but all absolute monarchies hate me.

OPM Mysore declared war on my ally Persia, so I joined. Mysore doesn't even have a port.

I was end of 1730, I was absolutely dominant militarily, economically, and scientifically, so I guess that's a good time to end this.

Battle of Hungary. Poland had two stacks against my one damaged stack. The river map has 2 crossings, so I split my army in two defending each. 6 line infantry, 2 canister shot artillery, 1 howitzer, and 2 cavalry chilling behind.

AI could have easily forced the crossing if it just charged my artillery, or if it unpacked all its artillery (8 or so total) and tried to win a long distance shootout against one of my half-stacks. It was still a good battle, and I had to send cavalry across multiple times.

Overall impressions

It was much slower paced game than how I'd usually play. I used my regular stacks to maintain public order instead of just hiring some cheap dragoons while I keep pushing against next and next enemy.

What I totally loved was how it really felt like the country is developing. Villages turned into new towns, industry and infrastructure developed, disorganized militias turned into professional armies, there was peasant unrest for a while, workers' unrest getting worse as time went, revolutionary movements among the students only got worse and worse, while religious and ethnic minorities in conquered lands slowly accepted my rule.

Thanks to the mod I used, AI diplomacy was actually interesting, not just suicidal as in vanilla, and it wasn't just standing there waiting for me to do things like in EU4. This world felt far more alive and evolving than EU4, where 1444 is basically same as 1821 except for some bonuses.

Comparing campaign part of Empire to Medieval 2, I think Empire mostly wins, especially if we forgive it all the minor issues caused by a new engine.

Battles compare much worse. Every now and then I'd get an interesting battle, but most felt just trivial and some were outright tedious. I disabled sieges with my mod, and picked a country which could ignore naval battles (the only naval action was sneaking my stack to Stockholm and some recon), as they are far far worse than land battles. Naval battles are completely unfixable, and I'm saying that after wasting far too much time trying to mod them into something not horrible years ago.

Probably the best thing is that sieges are generally just regular field battles - Rome 1 and Medieval 2 field battles are far more fun than sieges, but playing them normally sieges are a big majority of fights. At least early game, late game without mods become boring siegefest.

The game definitely needed massive polish and balancing fixes it never received. I don't even think it was such a bad game, it was just a big downgrade from Medieval 2 in so many ways.