A thinking man's strategy game...when it functions properly.
For those of you that don't know, E:TW follows the American Revolution and the years after the war's completion. Players spend half of their time examining a large interactive map, constructing buildings, researching technologies, keeping up diplomatic relations, and moving armies from point A to point B.This portion of the game is handled in a turn-based format. Armies can only move so far per turn.
When one of the player's armies encounters an enemy force, a fort, a region capitol, etc., they can choose to fight. This is my favorite part of the game. The battles give the player a bird's eye view of the action, as thousands of troops clash in organized...err, mostly organized skirmishes. I have to say though, the difference between a plan of attack/defense and a clusterf*** is mostly up the the player. Don't expect the AI to do any of the work for you. This isn't that kind of game. And, in the time period the game represents, troops really wouldn't turn and fire at the enemy unless ordered to do so. None of the moving, positioning, turning, and organizing of my troops irritates me. Being able to do these things makes a good battlefield commander, even in today's wars. Its the situations where they don't follow your orders that make you want to pull your hair out.
For the most part, the battlefields explode with action as cannons roar, cavalry charges, and hundreds of muskets fire simultaneously. I often enjoy telling all my infantry to hold fire until I line them up just the way I want them. I position the fields of fire of my regiments towards the enemy. When the enemy is within range, or, perhaps just a little too close, I turn off hold fire for all of my regiments. I get a thrill every time I see the front line of 8-10 regiments firing all at once. If you zoom down far enough, you really can see every member of each 120 man regiment.
Castle sieges are thrilling, no matter which side of the walls you are on. Using my cannons to make a hole in the fort for my troops to enter sounded like an easy plan the first time I tried it. But after I created the hole, I moved my troops forward. The enemy cavalry flanked my forces and assaulted my defenseless cannons. Since then, I have always left a regiment with my artillery. Getting into the breach I caused was no easier. The enemy was able to hold me back for a time, bottle necking my troops as they attempted to force their way into the courtyard. Oh, and there was also the small matter of my troops acting like morons.
The battles are tense and exciting, until something that is entirely beyond your control works against you. Telling a regiment to climb over a wall and move into position can be a pain, since every single member of the regiment must be in formation before anyone can fire at the enemy. When Fred gets hung up on the aforementioned wall as the enemy fires into your ranks, you'll begin to get a little annoyed. Or, when you tell your troops to scale the walls of a fort, and they spend six minutes deciding on which portion of the wall they should do this, you'll grumble a little. These kinds of things detract from the overall enjoyment and immersion.
And yet...I keep coming back. When I found out that the enemy can bring in nearby reinforcements during a large scale battle, and I was outnumbered 2 to 1, I thought I would lose for sure. But quick thinking, good formations and fields of fire, and a little cover allowed me to send them packing. That battle as a whole is in my top 20 gaming moments of all time.
Ultimately, you have to be able to do some micro-management and look past some bugs in order to enjoy this game. This isn't Command and Conquer, where you spam a certain type of unit and click in the general direction of the enemy and watch your forces overwhelm them by sheer number and luck alone. Those games do have their place, don't misunderstand me. Some thought is required. In between battles, do you build a theater to keep the population happy, or do you upgrade your steel mills and make more money? If the locals become unhappy because you're taxing them too hard, they will go on strike, or revolt even. No one wants to deal with a revolt within their own country while half the British army is marching towards your capitol.
Naval battles are pretty cool. Choosing the right cannonball types and maneuvering your ships can be fun...as long as the battle is just the right size. Watching two brigs (small ass ships) open up on each other for ten minutes isn't really interesting. And managing a dozen ships in a large battle is more cumbersome than the land battles. There is always the auto-resolve for all the battles, but auto-resolve implies that the game's AI will intelligently plot how a battle would play out. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I prefer to play the battles myself, because I frankly know whether or not I should win said battle. The game obviously does not. If the enemy has little or no artillery, and they are assaulting an undamaged fort that I am occupying, even being outnumbered 3 to 1, I can often give them a good schelacking. Having the game decide that you have lost an obviously winnable battle will cause you to grind your teeth, I promise you.
Technical issues sometimes occur as well. The interactive world map and the battles themselves can often take a heavy toll on even the heartiest of gaming PC's. I thought my system was going to poop its pants on more than one occasion as the various countries decided what to do during their turn on the campaign map. I would recommend at least two gigs of ram (for XP), and at least a 512mb 8 series NVidia card.
A lot of these issues would be excusable if they had been fixed in the five major patches that Creative Assembly has released for the game. Na, not really. Some decent balance changes to be sure, but balance means nothing when your troops can't figure out how to climb over a three foot tall stone wall as they're being shot at. And Creative Assembly has stated that there will be no more major patches for the game. They're already working on the next installment. Napoleon: Total War. But...but...I want my troops to function properly in THIS game...f***.
Play the game if you have a little patience, a lot of time, and a keen interest in historical battles that require micromanagement.