Serious Issues Regarding Playability and System Specs

[salty mud]

I downloaded the Empire: Total War demo and was... underwhelmed by my computer's performance. The naval battle worked fine, slightly laggy when busy and up close to the action, but certainly playable on the lowest settings. The land battle on the other hand was a nightmare. Laggy, poor graphics, jittery and slow. I'm hoping that other players experience similar problems, so I can retain some optimism for the final product. Also, I seem to remember that Medieval II's demo played laggy and slow on my computer, but the final game was much faster and smooth.

Also, will this battle lag pass over into the campaign mode? These sections aren't as graphically strenuous as the battles, so I'm hoping I can at least derive some playability from the campaign map (which, IMHO, is the more fun of the two game modes.) If I can play campaign map with small skirmish battles I will be happy and buy this game.

System Specs:

Geforce 6600GT
4GB RAM
Intel 3.16 Dual Core Processor

Ancient I know, but I would like to hear your contributions.

 

[Maniacal]

Your graphics card is rediculously outdated. YOu can pick up an 8800 GT or GTX or something for $100+ now and they are really good cards. (The 9800s are pretty much exactly the same).

 

[salty mud]

Your graphics card is rediculously outdated.

You don't need to tell me that mate. Looking on the NVIDEA website... Geforce 9600GT 512MB GDDR3 for ~£50. I'd buy it tommorow if I could, but I'm weary of comaptibility issues, as I've seen people buy graphics cards and unable to use them because of their motherboard or something of that matter. Will I have this problem? That seems like a damn good deal to me.

If you need any extra information, tell me and I'll get it for you as soon as I can. (With a guide on how to get it of course. )

 

[Maniacal]

Sent via PM. Just check to see if your motherboard is PCI-E or AGP for the x16 card slots.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Empire may not be made for dual-core processors. That is probably most of your problem.

 

[Maniacal]

It is not a problem unless you have a crap processor. Very few programs are multithreaded anyways and at least with my Q6600 (quad) my comptuer does use one core mostly just for the game/program and the others for vbarious background tasks if at all. Hell it mostly uses my RAM, 36% with Opera, Steam ,X-Fire, Trillian, Windows XP and whatever other things are running.

 

[Macha]

The total war games system requirements are always a little.. optimistic. Just my personal experience.

 

[BrendanM]

Dual Core Process T8100 @ 2.1 Ghz
4 Gigs RAM
NVIDIA 8800m GTS, 512MB

I can play it on high gfx smoothly enough until I zoom, then it will start to get choppy, Not that big a deal when focusing on winning the battle at hand. Cities are smooth to fight in, though I was really underwhelmed when fighting over Paris... it was a small hamlet.

Game crashes occasionally. Something they can fix in a patch.

 

[Dachs]

Cities are smooth to fight in, though I was really underwhelmed when fighting over Paris... it was a small hamlet.

You typically don't fight in the city itself IIRC, but instead in the countryside surrounding the city. I was surprised, in my Prussia outing, to find that Vienna was made up a church and a few buildings, but looked at the horizon and in one direction it was covered in houses; they were just off the map.

 

[negZero]

You typically don't fight in the city itself IIRC, but instead in the countryside surrounding the city. I was surprised, in my Prussia outing, to find that Vienna was made up a church and a few buildings, but looked at the horizon and in one direction it was covered in houses; they were just off the map.

However it would have been better and funnier to fight within the city. Frankly this is one of those times that realism should have been thrown out to make a better game.

 

[Maniacal]

No it's good you're not fighting in the cities, the AI is bad enough. Plus cities are very very very large in the 1700s.

 

[negZero]

No it's good you're not fighting in the cities, the AI is bad enough. Plus cities are very very very large in the 1700s.

True the AI does suck and needs improvement anyways. On city size this is a video game not a history textbook there is some leeway with reality here.

 

[BrendanM]

However it would have been better and funnier to fight within the city. Frankly this is one of those times that realism should have been thrown out to make better game.

Exactly. If I want to defend my city from within shouldn't I be able to do that even it were to my own detriment?

 

[Dachs]

Exactly. If I want to defend my city from within shouldn't I be able to do that even it were to my own detriment?

Because cities are so big that it would probably break your computer? I don't think the Volkerschlacht, for example, is even remotely possible to run.

 

[negZero]

Because cities are so big that it would probably break your computer? I don't think the Volkerschlacht, for example, is even remotely possible to run.

You do realize that they don't have to put full realistic sized city for the battle

 

[BrendanM]

As Prussia I can't fight within the main Netherlands capitol without my game crashing due to memory loss.

 

[Dachs]

You do realize that they don't have to put full realistic sized city for the battle

So they put a town in, which is what they actually did? I don't really understand what the problem is.

As Prussia I can't fight within the main Netherlands capitol without my game crashing due to memory loss.

Probably a bug.

 

[negZero]

So they put a town in, which is what they actually did? I don't really understand what the problem is.

I doubt that they would needed to make it that small.

 

[Maniacal]

The city battles take place on the outskirts, in the surrounding villages and outlying industry.

Also you might want ot clean up your save files manually yb going into the folder and deleting them, apparently save files are upwards of 80 megabytes EACH! People have quickly accumulated a few GIGABYTES already!