Empire total war demo thread

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ray245
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Empire total war demo thread

Post by ray245 »

Has anyone downloaded the demo yet? From what I could see on people's screenshots, the graphics doesn't look too good on medium. You can download it from Steam.

I'll post a more in depth review of the Demo, after I've settled all my exams stuff.

Here's the details in regards to the Demo.
Battle of Brandywine Creek

After landing from his transport ships on the American coast, Major-General Sir William Howe led the British troops eastwards, with the intention of capturing Philadelphia.

In preparation, American General George Washington readied most of his units to defend from this frontal assault around the narrow crossing of Chad's Ford on the Brandywine. The Creek flows through the countryside of Pennsylvania, enveloped by sheer cliffs and heavily wooded hills on both sides. Knowing that much of the fast-flowing creek could not be crossed, Washington was confident of holding his position.

However, more detailed surveillance of the terrain would suggest that alternative routes could turn the battle in the favor of the British.

Battle of Lagos

As so often in 18th Century warfare, French plans to invade England during the Seven Years War were reliant on ships from the naval base at Toulon joining ships from Brest. The British had both ports blockaded, and the French had to wait for one of the blockading fleets to withdraw for re-supply before attempting any rendezvous.

The opportunity came when the British fleet under Admiral Boscawen at Toulon withdrew to Gibraltar. The French under Jean-François de la Clue-Sabran left Toulon, and began to make their way towards Brest. Passing the Straits of Gibraltar, the French were spotted by Boscawen's lookout ships.

Giving chase, Boscawen's fleet was only slightly larger than the French force, and caught up with them off the coast of Portugal where battle was joined.

Take control of the British and defeat the French to end the invasion threat to Britain.

Note: This demo is presented in English language only. However, the full game contains French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Czech and Polish languages.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by Dartzap »

Is it Steam only?
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by ray245 »

Dartzap wrote:Is it Steam only?
Seems like it, given that the full game would require Steam as well. Moreover, I have yet to encounter any other download sites for Demo.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by Darth Tanner »

Seems like it, given that the full game would require Steam as well
What? Since when?

Downloading now anyway... Two hours to go. Or at least two hours to go until I learn my computer inst powerful enough to get more than a stutter and I must race to cancel my pre order off of Amazon.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by Brother-Captain Gaius »

Half-assedly played the naval demo (million other things to do at the moment)

Seems cool. Not a lot of depth, but then I wasn't expecting much. Pew pew.

No frigates or sloops to play with in the demo battle, which made me a sad panda, but the line ships were fun enough. Ammo and general cannon fire is pretty simplistically modeled, and the sailing model is very arcadey - boats can sail directly upwind and maneuverability is pretty silly. I was swinging my 1st rate to and fro to fire both broadsides at the same target. That might be neat in a frigate but it's pretty silly on a 1st rate. I was turning through the wind, too.

Sails seem pretty buggy - no matter what I tried to get my ships to do, they pretty much ignored my sail orders and went from battle sails to full sails to furled sails and all between at what seemed like total random.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by Psychic_Sandwich »

What? Since when?
Dunno when it was announced, but it's true. I scanned the back of a pre-order box when I was in a GAME the other day, and it says, quite clearly in a brightly coloured, eye attracting orange box, that you 'require an internet connection and the free Steam client to activate'.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

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Psychic_Sandwich wrote:
What? Since when?
Dunno when it was announced, but it's true. I scanned the back of a pre-order box when I was in a GAME the other day, and it says, quite clearly in a brightly coloured, eye attracting orange box, that you 'require an internet connection and the free Steam client to activate'.
And now I know that I certainly will not buy that game.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by ray245 »

Thanas wrote:
Psychic_Sandwich wrote:
What? Since when?
Dunno when it was announced, but it's true. I scanned the back of a pre-order box when I was in a GAME the other day, and it says, quite clearly in a brightly coloured, eye attracting orange box, that you 'require an internet connection and the free Steam client to activate'.
And now I know that I certainly will not buy that game.
To be fair, steam is quite a stable platform. Once you have activated it, you don't need any further access to the internet in order to play it.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

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I am not concerend about instability. I am concerned about the fact that Valve will have an account made by me with data of me in it. I have never bought a Valve product in my life, why would I want that company to have data of me?
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by InnocentBystander »

Thanas wrote:I am not concerend about instability. I am concerned about the fact that Valve will have an account made by me with data of me in it. I have never bought a Valve product in my life, why would I want that company to have data of me?
And everyone knows once you're in their system, they own your soul. Wouldn't want that. :roll:


I only had time to try out the naval battle this morning, and it seemed pretty good. I will echo Gaius about the wind, I never felt its impact one bit. I didn't have a whole lot of time, so I never really tried anything more complex then ordering the ships around. I'm very interested to try using grapeshot and boarding. My only other comment is about the camera, which I had a bit of trouble maneuvering into the right position.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

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InnocentBystander wrote:
Thanas wrote:I am not concerend about instability. I am concerned about the fact that Valve will have an account made by me with data of me in it. I have never bought a Valve product in my life, why would I want that company to have data of me?
And everyone knows once you're in their system, they own your soul. Wouldn't want that. :roll:
Do you actually have anything of substance to say or are you just trolling?
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by weemadando »

Thanas wrote:
InnocentBystander wrote:
Thanas wrote:I am not concerend about instability. I am concerned about the fact that Valve will have an account made by me with data of me in it. I have never bought a Valve product in my life, why would I want that company to have data of me?
And everyone knows once you're in their system, they own your soul. Wouldn't want that. :roll:
Do you actually have anything of substance to say or are you just trolling?
The same might go for you my friend. Name, e-mail address (use a goddamn throwaway if you want) and DoB. Unless you are going to be purchasing off Steam (and believe me - you will eventually, not matter how great your initial hate) then you don't need many more details than that.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

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weemadando wrote:The same might go for you my friend. Name, e-mail address (use a goddamn throwaway if you want) and DoB. Unless you are going to be purchasing off Steam (and believe me - you will eventually, not matter how great your initial hate) then you don't need many more details than that.
Doesn't steam also anonymously collect data from you?
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by Stark »

weemadando wrote:The same might go for you my friend. Name, e-mail address (use a goddamn throwaway if you want) and DoB. Unless you are going to be purchasing off Steam (and believe me - you will eventually, not matter how great your initial hate) then you don't need many more details than that.
How is this even relevant? He's not going to buy anything because everything except Audiosurf on Steam is shit, but he's concerned about playing his game being directly linked to privacy issues. People can rant all they want, but Steam is pretty serious DRM and if that's a concern a list of terrible games won't change his attitude.

It's frankly hilarious that you'd link to your own list of purchased games to 'prove' that 'you will' buy stuff.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

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To what degree of privacy are you concerned about? They ask you for the things which Ando said, and your Steam account records what you play and how much you play it for those freaks who care for some reason, but you can set your profile to private if you wish.

Starker is right, Steam is pretty heavy DRM, and while I personally don't mind so much it can make itself a pretty big issue to those whom it does fundamentally get in the way of.
Last edited by Zablorg on 2009-02-21 08:56pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by MKSheppard »

I won't be buying Empire Total War either; fuck Steam.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by atg »

Thanas wrote:
weemadando wrote:The same might go for you my friend. Name, e-mail address (use a goddamn throwaway if you want) and DoB. Unless you are going to be purchasing off Steam (and believe me - you will eventually, not matter how great your initial hate) then you don't need many more details than that.
Doesn't steam also anonymously collect data from you?
It checks what hardware you have and how much you play - thats it from what I've heard.

The playtime data is used for the community page that each user has, which allows friends to see what games your playing and enables them to automatically join you in a multiplayer game if your both on at the same time.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

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Zablorg wrote:To what degree of privacy are you concerned about? They ask you for the things which Ando said, and your Steam account records what you play and how much you play it for those freaks who care for some reason, but you can set your profile to private if you wish.
That is a big concern to me. Like I said, I do not buy a game from Valve. I buy it from Sega/The Creative Assembly. It is no business of Valve to know anything about me. The only guy who even remotely has any business to know is the guy I buy the game from and that only goes as far as payment is concerned, not when it comes to knowing what and how much I play a product I purchased.

What freaking right does a third party have to know what I do in the privacy of my home, on my private computer ...and to boot, they want to use my private internet connection to gather data on me, without telling me what exactly it is they are gathering and for what purposes they are using that data?
Starker is right, Steam is pretty heavy DRM, and while I personally don't mind so much it can make itself a pretty big issue to those whom it does fundamentally get in the way of.
It is a big issue for me, as I do not tend to give away any information I do not want to give away. Anonymously gathering data from me without telling me what exactly it is they are gathering and without asking for my consent...nope, no sell here.


I'm with MKSheppard here - Steam can bugger off.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by Fire Fly »

I tried getting the demo but I ran into problem after problem with the Steam program. After an agonizing hour, I finally got the Steam program to work properly to just being the download. And then after slow downloading issues and additional Steam problems, I finally finished the download. I tried initiating the ETW demo only to have further issues: when the program launches, my computer freezes up. I finally just gave up on it. If this is the bullshit that Sega/CA is making me go through, I won't be bothered with it then. My taste for games has been slowly on the decline anyways as my real life responsibilities mount. I may get ETW when the price drops from the usual $50 USD to $30 USD and only if Steam is no longer involved.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by ray245 »

On the bright side, you don't need a DVD to play that game. Once you have installed and activated the product on steam, you can login to your account on any computer and play Empire total war.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

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ray245 wrote:On the bright side, you don't need a DVD to play that game. Once you have installed and activated the product on steam, you can login to your account on any computer and play Empire total war.
That's a stupid plus side. It's only convenient if,

a): You've installed the game on any computer you wish from the disc, which you could do without DRM anyway except you need steam on that computer.

b): You feel like downloading the game onto any computer you play on directly from the internet, which is useful if you don't have the disc but is still a total bitch. Also you need to download steam on that computer.

Suffice to say, the "Play on any computer" thing falls short on several levels.


Fire Fly, what issues did you encounter while trying to download/run the game? I don't think I've ever experienced any issues with installation before.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by Shogoki »

1. You don't have to put any personal information if you don't want to, you can use everything throwaway.
2. You can make an account with fake information for each game, if your deranged mind wishes so, and never buy online, retail only.
2. If you want to buy anything online, you can use Paypal, and keep all your real information there.
3. The hardware survey is opt in, there's no reason to participate if you don't want to, and there's nothing secret about it, Valve made it's existence publicly known, the whole deal about Steam it's that it's as transparent as possible for the user, it's been probed countless times, and there's no foul play known to it.
4. "TEHY STEEL MY GAIMING HABBITSES!" it's hilarious. You have 2382 posts, your last post was made on Sat Feb 21, 2009 9:07 pm, and you joined on Sat Jun 26, 2004, 6:49 pm. I hope you're ready to leave now. Also, stop using email and any IM service, people can track back your location from there, the time when you sent the message, and usually when you were last online, and it's harder to keep that from happening than setting your profile to private on Steam is.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by Commander 598 »

I bet that banner ad at the bottom of the page knows a few bytes too.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by Shogoki »

Also, to those wondering about the reason the demo it's only available on Steam, it's because the game has been developed to make use of the Steamworks framework that all Valve games use, achievements and all that, it's never going to be available separately.
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Re: Empire total war demo thread

Post by Shogoki »

Zablorg wrote: b): You feel like downloading the game onto any computer you play on directly from the internet, which is useful if you don't have the disc but is still a total bitch. Also you need to download steam on that computer.
Steam can make CD or DVD sized backups of any game you own, you know? You don't have to download the full game more than once if you buy it online if you don't want to.

Also, the client itself is just a few MB's worth, a little more once decompressed, you don't have to "install" it either, just copy and paste the folder into a new computer and run the program, and when minimized or with just the friends list open it only uses up about as much ram as messenger.
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