empire total war: full game runs better than demo?

Hey,

I was wondering if i would see a performance increase in the full game than from the demo (specs in sig). My laptop really didnt run the demo well, with mostly low settings it still got pretty choppy when a decent number of units were on screen. Also the load times were horrible. So can you tell me if things have changed enough for me to justify a purchase, because if it ran like the demo then i definitely wont buy.

thanks.

 

That's why demos exist. They give you an idea of how games will run on your computer, without forcing you to buy them first.

The full game will not run any better or worse than the demo.

For the record, it looks like your processor is the biggest bottleneck for that game. Strategy games with lots of units tend to use up lots of CPU power.

 

Actually for me the full game runs worse then the demo did. The full game is really buggy and laggy. They need to fix the issues. The demo ran smoth for me on ( See my sig ) at 1280 x 720 medium settings. On the full version i get lots of slow down

 

Demo has extended load times for some, and worse performance in my case than the full game. In most cases, demos are based on beta code, so the refinements are not there that make it into the final game. Usually is should show you how the game plays as far as game mechanics, but frequently not representative of performance.

 

Full game runs much better than the demo.

 

are the load times any better? That was my biggest issue.... as in, multiple minute load times to do anything.... terrible. Actual game played ok otherwise though.

 

No load times is the same, though not too bad.

 

for me performance for full version is atrocious

i can run medieval 2 at 1920x1200 all settings maxed and the lowest it ever goes is 45fps, but this game at low settings at 1920x1200 the BEST i get is 45fps, mostly its around 15-20fps, regardless of zoom level..thats HORRIBLE because the graphics are NOT that much better; im using "small" or "tiny" unit sizes to minimize the slowdown but its not doing anything the fps is horrible at any setting and i cant bump the res down because it looks horrible on an LCD, and really i shouldnt have to

also im amazed you cant loot cities and ports (for $) and sell buildings in captured territories...? what's the point of raiding distant towns? can't capture slaves, can't exterminate populace, can't resettle population, also you can't convert the population to another religion without a specialized building in one of your territories which you cannot build you have to wait for a town to spawn on it's own, basically what this means is that playing as 90% Muslim Dagestan i captured neighboring Georgia, which is 90% christian, and had to put up with insane unrest because i couldnt do anything to even begin to convert the population - wow

the enemy can run into my territory, run across 3 of my properties and damage them all to 0 in 1 turn...hurray..but then it only takes 1 turn and a little gold to rebuild 3 towns? ?

rebuilding a town should take at least 3 turns and at least 1 to destroy it, not to mention you dont get any $$$ for doing it WHAT IS THE POINT OF RAIDING TOWNS IF YOU DONT GET PAID?!; sure you sabotage your enemies' facilities but then he'll just rebuild them all in 1 turn for about 500 gold and you're back at square 1..it all feels so unsatisfying, no incentive to even conquer towns

ship battles are basically Sid Meier's Pirates! with less cartoony graphics..yawn

also if i capture a port full of ships with my land army i should get command of the ships or the option to scuttle them

also the game CTDs EVERY TIME i exit it so the resolution and graphics settings have to be redone every time i load the game...fail

i could go on and on about the horrible pathetic AI, but watching 2 AI regiments trying to storm a wooden fort did it for me...one regiment climbed up the grappling hooks then started climbing back down while the second was climbing up next to them....hilarious

dragoons can dismount...FINALLY...but why not implement it for ALL cavalry? all cavalry are humans riding on horses thus should be able to dismount if the circumstances dictate it...stupid design decision..this was one of the worst aspects of medieval 2 as well, especially since the original medieval allowed you to dismount cavalry

overall id say this game was about as hyped as crysis and delivered even less

 

Another typical gaming rant by anarky, although there's little you can do about the performance issues since Empire IS supposed to be more demanding than MTW2.

As for the rest of the gameplay complaints, I'm sure a patch/mods are on the way to please many disgruntled gamers out there.

 

some more things just for kicks:

cant merge navies for some reason, even though only one has an admiral the 'ship transfer' icon comes up; one navy has 3 ships, the other 1, the 1 ship cant merge with the 3 ships...but get this...after you unload your infantry onto land the ships can merge again...?

cant transfer infantry units between ship groups and since the ships cant merge into 1 group and i cannot unload the infantry onto nearby land without starting a war this creates a huge problem

animations get bugged to the point where no soldier animations play, ie the cannon loading animation is just a guy frozen in place, the troops just flick between the different endpoints of the animations without actually...animating, kind of like the nurses in Silent Hill

alt+tab Medieval 2 and the cpu utilization falls to 1%; minimize Empire and it stays at 50%

you're right there's a patch on the way, but already 2 have come out and here we are with tons of problems that would have been obvious if any serious amount of play-testing had been done - but HAS play-testing been one? probably rushed it out the door just like the past 2 games, surprising since they made sufficient amounts of money from them to finance a proper development schedule

 

Everything you have said is true. The demo was enjoyable for me. But once i purchased the full game its unplayable

 

Um...I'm pretty sure the ship transfer thing works that way because that other navy has a Admiral already?

 

well I think ETW is a great game, took me a little while to get used to it but once I did battles started to feel like watching The Patriot lol and so far I dont have performance issues (a couple of bugs here and there yeah but nothing that a patch wont resolve)

 

@Theros: no, only one of them has an admiral and like i said as soon as you unload the infantry onto land they can merge all of a sudden which makes no sense

also imo naval battles in this game are phenomenally boring; ive been waiting for them just like everyone else but it just feels horribly tedious and oversimplified, just like Pirates! only with more realistic graphics; click the 2 broadside fire buttons and zigzag endlessly...yawn

 

uh I don´t recognize any of those problems you describe anarky. Sure I have seen some small bugs but not those you describe. The game hasn´t crashed for me either at all yet.

 

I agree with you

 

Apart from Pirates!, this is probably the only other game released recently that has replays large-scale naval battles in real time. That deserves credit in my book.

The Total War series for some reason has always had its share of technical quirks, when I was younger a PC game programmer I met during vacation told me he'd been interviewed by Creative Assembly for a post and turned it down. It seemed the developers at the time were almost rank beginners at 3D modelling and programming by his standards.

Despite the above, the Total War series has almost no serious competitors for its niche. Europa Universalis has a different emphasis on large strategic games while Cossacks also goes a different route.

 

"The Total War series for some reason has always had its share of technical quirks"

ill tell you what that reason is - they dont playtest and fine-tune their games enough before they push them out the door, and then they dont patch them enough after the games are already out because they're too busy working on the next cash cow to care

 

Somewhat harsh since the technical quirks have been a feature since the first Shogun, and that was when they weren't sure the franchise was going to take off.

They do engage in proper playtesting, but if you're expecting Blizzard-level fine tuning then stick to the bigger studios with better funding when you're ready to start your next gaming rant.

 

We need more cash cows like the Total War Series. Cash cows FTW! W00t w00t!

 

you do know that Blizzard started out as a small studio right? they got big because they released quality bug-free games that were a blast to play; thats what made them into the large well-funded studio of today

 

Creative Assembly were also unheard of as a studio when they started the Total War series, and unlike Blizzard they didn't have the luxury of developing games from the early 90s where expectations and hardware were much lower.

If I remember correctly Blizzard actually started doing freelance work by porting other studios work, nowadays this business plan is all but impossible in the high-pressure "Make it big first time or die" gaming market.

 

The full game did run better for me