Empire: Total War will be 2009 Game of the Year.

[Grooski]

Slimebeast said:

Grooski said:

Hmm, another person who doesn't remember the previous CA releases and how buggy they were at launch. After going through Shogun, Rome, MTW and M2TW, the games were buggy as hell, bland and repetitive until 2 or 3 official patches came out, followed by the sensational user created mods. It is the same everytime CA launches a game. Who played vanilla M2TW after the first 2 months? Noone. The same will be said of Empire. Playable, repetitious with lots of potential, the game will shine when mods in similar stature to Deus Lo Vult or EB are made for it.

 

 What did the patches do and how did the game become better (other than fixing obvious bugs)?

And what did the mods do (those that you like)?

 

Patches fixed a whole swathe of gameplay issues - more often than not focussed around the campaign and battle AI. The original AI in previous games, to put it nicely, sucked. Your battles would simply be an army charging your defensive positions, get slaughtered, mop up and repeat ad nauseum.

The mods change every facet of the game you can think of - map, soldier models, AI, battle variations, new playable factions. It really is amazing playing these mods compared to the vanilla game, I wouldn't go back. For example, Deus Lo Vult for M2TW made the game have pseudo-RPG elements and fleshed out how your leaders progressed through their lives. It introduced gameplay elements like army supply, special stat-enhancing items (eg Charlemagne's swords etc), civil war to the main game.

Don't get me wrong, vanilla Empire will be OK, but not GOTY. Its best will come with the mods.