Empire Total War Retrospective

Empire Total War has a mixed legacy. It received almost universal acclaim by critics at its release but among fans, it’s one of the more divisive in the series. When Shogun 2 was released the general feelings turned negative, where Empire’s bugginess stood in stark contrast to the pristine execution of Shogun 2. But recently, bereft of a grounded historical Total War, fans have returned to Empire and marveled at its utterly ambitious scale and design. 

If I could summarize the design philosophy behind Empire it would be “new and more”. New mechanics: naval battles, building slots, a new focus on ranged warfare, and a new engine. More Stuff: three continents, a story campaign, more units, revolutions, more diplomacy, and more factions.

Medieval II perhaps should have served as a warning for the Creative Assembly about feature creep. The parts of that game that worked were the parts it refined from previous titles, while much of the new focus on religion and diplomacy, fell flat. 

Empire Total War tries to do so much more, so much that’s new that I can’t help marvel at the attempt, while quietly(not quietly really because I’m writing this) thinking it was doomed from the beginning. It tries to do way too much, without the time needed to flesh its new changes out. 

Beyond just the mechanical “new and more” philosophy, Empire doubles down on Medieval II’s increased focus on diplomacy. The game desperately wants to create a living world with its own dynamic geopolitics akin to a Europa Universalis game. This is where the game fails most spectacularly, by putting a greater focus on “great power” diplomacy without overhauling the diplomacy system or AI, the game shoots itself in the foot. 

Despite the fact that many mechanics feel half baked, there is a ton of good in here as well. Lots of it is rough even after patching but the core design is still compelling. The problem is most of these features were refined to be so much better in later games, especially since 18th-century warfare was improved on in Napoleon Total War and Fall of the Samurai.

It should also be noted that many people’s experiences with the game are now colored by mods which have improved the game significantly. I’ll talk more about mods later but everything I say here assumes you aren’t using mods. 

How did Empire Total War Happen?

Empire Total Wars’ lack of polish is far easier to understand if you look at the development cycle the game had. Mike Simpson, was the director of Creative assembly at the time and detailed some of the problems the game had in his now-defunct blog. 

He noted that most of the team was “not entirely happy with the state of Empire: Total War when it went out” but worried that the fan backlash to the game could hurt CA’s chances to make future Total War games. And went on to explain that the rushed nature of the game was due to financial and commercial concerns, and on top of that, they were massive problems with the AI which only became apparent soon before release.

He says that the AI’s problems were due to it being “by far the most complex code edifice I’ve ever seen in a game”, with the main crux of the issue being that the AI often “disagrees with itself chronically and often ends up paralyzed by indecision”. This is the passivity that players often criticize the AI for in Empire Total War. 

Simpson also notes that there were several team issues during development, with critical team members having to leave during development for personal reasons. 

The Grandest Total War Campaign

The campaign map is now divided into three separate continents. In terms of geographic scale, this is the largest Total War has ever been. Covering Europe & the Middle-east, India, and the Americas, the map is expansive, allowing for a greater number of factions and cultures. 

The problem here comes from the province layout. Although the map size has increased significantly, the number of provinces has not gone up accordingly. This leaves many areas of the map feeling incredibly sparse. France, Spain, Persia, and the British Isle are the worst of the lot. This has a massive impact on gameplay, as it’s now incredibly easy to conquer the entirety of France or Spain in just one siege. 

The mighty Safavid empire of Persia feels like a backwater simply there to bridge the middle-east to India, instead of a thriving empire in its own right. 

In my France campaign, I was able to take London in the first six turns than the Netherlands and Scotland by turn 12. Going to War with Britain called in their alliance with Portugal and Austria but neither ever attacked me, only raided my shipping lanes. 

In India, the Maratha Confederacy rises to power in almost every game leaving India feeling very homogeneous. This ties into a larger problem with combat which we will get to later but let’s just say that melee units are quite powerful in this game, which I haven’t heard many people talk about. The Marathas focus heavily on melee units which makes them uniquely suited to conquer all of India. 

Part of the reason for this lack of settlement density is that city management is now entirely revamped from previous Total War games. 

Cities are now not the only settlements in a province. There are now minor villages and ports which can be upgraded to act as extra building slots. For cities, you can now no longer build any building you want. You have to keep to the set number of buildings assigned to that region. Some cities are considered minor settlements and can never build more than a few slots. 

While I don’t think the change to a building slot system is inherently bad, the way that it was implemented in Empire Total War is abysmal. 

The minor settlements are an interesting idea but they can only be managed through their own menu, unlike Shogun 2’s consolidated view, so that when you are trying to upgrade your provinces, you’ll have to click through each minor settlement to individually upgrade them. 

The other main problem with these is that it encourages the AI to send small stacks of one or two units to raid these settlements instead of forming an actual army to oppose you, which certainly doesn’t help the AI’s passivity problem. 

Alternatively, ships being able to raid supply lines is a great feature. Navies in previous Total War games were exclusively used to transport troops. Now you actually have reasons for navies to fight each other, and it forces you to think about where your trade is coming from. 

While the AI is happy to raid your trade lanes it won’t transport armies by sea, except for on a few occasions, which is a huge problem for a game with three maps separated by large oceans. 

The problem with the AI is core to Empire Total War’s sorry state, and if I tried detailing everything the AI fails to do we’d be here forever. And that’s the biggest part of the problem. CA wanted the AI to do far too much and made the game far too complex for the AI to ever handle effectively. Even with mods that improve the AI it still struggles to be a challenge.

Many of these issues were far worse on release since Empire received a series of patches that sought to fix many of these AI issues and stability problems, while these did significantly improve the game they were not enough to fully fix it before CA moved on to their next project, Napoleon Total War.  

Empire Total War is also somewhat unique for the Total War series in that it doesn’t have any sort of endgame challenge for the player to deal with. In Rome Total War you had the Roman Civil War, in Medieval II you had the Mongol and Timurid invasions, while the Empire has nothing of the sort. CA clearly recognized this was an issue as in Shogun II they implemented the Realm Divide mechanic. 

What about the People?

Characters have been drastically simplified since Medieval II Total War. They only have a few traits and attributes now and are largely aloof from the core game. Your faction leader will no longer be a general but is now represented with his ministers on the government tab. 

This along with not having characters directly govern a settlement means the only characters you’ll really be interacting with on the map are your generals and agents. Generals are still a step down from earlier games, especially since they no longer give hilarious speeches at the beginning of battles. 

Dynamic characters were something that set Total War apart from other franchises like Age of Empires, or Civilization. It was something that tied the player to these campaigns and created opportunities for emergent story moments that could occur. 

Those Damn Agents

While other Total War games are strictly worse for Agent spam, Empire Total War has the worst implementation of the series. You no longer recruit agents, now you simply receive them randomly every few turns. This is terrible, if you desperately need a new agent you can’t make the choice to build them. 

For agents, you now have Rakes, Gentlemen, and Priest. Rakes function as your assassin/spies. Gentlemen act as researchers and can duel other agents.  Priests do what priests always do which is convert people and increase public order.

Technology

Empire is the first Total War game to add a technology tree to the game, before new technologies would only be unlocked either by a certain date or when a building was built. Now Total War had a Civilization-style tech tree with a few branches of research that could be completed. 

The technology system itself is fine, but what is wrong with it is that it blocks off-key battle features like forming a square and bayonets. This makes combat extremely simplistic until you unlock these, and there was little reason to block these off. 

Besides that, there’s little reason for the tech tree outside of just getting better units and buildings which was already done in previous games through the building system. 

The Great Game, or lack thereof

The diplomacy interface is much improved even if the diplomacy AI is not. The problem is that as you expand more factions will gain negative opinion modifiers of you. So in theory you shouldn’t expand too quickly as to not start a massive coalition war. The problem here is twofold, first, the AI will declare war on you no matter what on higher difficulties. Secondly, they are so passive it doesn’t matter if they do declare war on you since you likely won’t be in any danger. 

Removing diplomats meant that each faction could not spam you with nonsense offers endlessly instead of just sometimes. 

In my Prussia campaign, I had all of Europe at war with me after I had conquered most of Germany and France, even so, the AI nations were so disorganized that I was able to pick them off one-by-one, they never attacked me proactively or joined together. 

This diplomacy system is clearly a core focus of the game. The 18th and 19th centuries are famous for their Great Power politics, and the wars they spawned. In Europa Universalis, this works because the campaign map is simple enough for the AI to handle diplomacy and warfare. But here it’s critically unable to do either. 

Road to Independence

Empire’s campaign ambitions go further than just the Grand campaign, it also features an episodic narrative campaign in the vein of the Rome Total War’s Alexander expansion.

The Road to Independence campaign follows the English settling of North America. From fighting natives to the French and Indian War, the American War of Independence, and finally a grand campaign as the newly born republic. This acts as both a tutorial and the only way to play as the United States in a grand campaign setting.

Overall the tutorial is good. Though the American revolutionary war looks nothing like the historical conflict. The Americans will first fight the battle of Bunker Hill, after which the Americans only control Boston while the British control the rest of the colonies.

Once you finish the revolutionary war you can begin to play the grand campaign as the United States

The campaign is good, if a bit too simple, and that’s really all there is to say about it. 

Battles

The core battle design of Empire Total War isn’t terrible but like the rest of the game, it’s hampered by bugginess and poor AI.

Unit movement is incredibly finicky, soldiers had to be in the exact right position to even think about firing their muskets. They’d often reshuffle themselves right before being charged which stopped them from getting a shot off.

Melee combat is broken due to the introduction of kill moves meaning only one unit can fight one other at a time, units who outnumber the enemy cannot gang up on their foes. This makes the melee infantry of the Marathas incredibly powerful as they can hold a unit in place while another flanks them to break their morale. 

AI has been a constant problem in Total War but the insane complexity introduced by 18th-century warfare was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Now positioning was incredibly important, and with the already overly complex system, the AI just broke. 

What this means is the AI will execute melee charges at you constantly usually after standing and being shot at for a few seconds without firing back. They’ll do this with all of their units, including and perhaps especially their general. 

Units won’t fire unless in formation so if a unit gets stuck they can stop the whole unit from firing. Pathfinding on the whole is buggy and the AI will sometimes also stop moving any of their units and stay in a static position even when attacked. They rarely use cavalry to flank and will generally just charge straight into your lines, even when stakes are set up. 

There are also more subtle UI changes made to simplify UI but also remove some important features, such as highlighting your own units.

Battles often feel so repetitive because of the sameness of the units, they are generally different versions of line infantry, cavalry, or cannons. With the AI using the same nonsensical tactics in each battle, they all end up feeling the same. Fighting Indian or Native American factions is far more interesting, as you’ll be facing a mix of melee and ranged units, forcing you to actually change up your tactics. 

While there is a steady increase in your troops and cannons’ effectiveness as the game progresses, there is nothing like the military revolution toward renaissance warfare which occurred towards the end of Medieval II Total War. It would have been nice to see a greater difference in the tactics used during the War of the Austrian Succession vs. the Seven Years War. 

Sieges are the worst so far in the series. Generally due to the bugginess of the AI. Sieges were always the bugginess parts of previous Total War games and here they are absolutely the worst.

Naval Battles

The naval battles are the most impressive addition to the game. They look amazing even if they don’t always play the same. Naval combat works with different types of ships countering others. Naval battles are suitably complex, you can choose different types of shot to fire at the enemy, micromanage ship movement, and manually fire broadsides. 

The problems come with how buggy the combat is overall. Ships might get stuck and refuse to fire, or try and board each other but never do. 

Conclusion

Empire Total War is the first major misstep for the series. Coming from Medieval II it was a massive shift with tons of features being changed or expanded. It’s no wonder that with all this ambition that the game was a buggy mess. 

Mods vastly improve the game and are the only way to play the game today. Mods can largely bring the experience of playing Empire in line with the rest of the series and fix many of the critical AI problems that the game has. 

The problem it seems is that CA would learn from this beautifully with the release of both Napoleon Total War and Shogun 2 which were far more condensed and scaled back than Empire but then make the same mistakes again with the launch of Rome Total War 2. 

This article is part of a series on the Total War Series you can find the other articles in the series here:

Posted on By Connor Burke Retrospectives Posted in Retrospectives, Reviews Tagged #, ,

Connor Burke