Empire: Total War -- Part 3: Oh Austria! How I Love to Shoot You!

Austria has been the most annoying major nation so far, mainly because they keep invading me. First they offer to "have me sell them my provinces" in exchange for "infinite military access" AKA "please die." I refuse to die, and they attack! They take EVERYTHING north of Greece and Istanbul, which is my capital (at least, I think it's my capital; I guess being the leader I should know where my capital is). Anyways they take the provinces and ravage the lands just west of what is definitely my capital Istanbul for years. But they don't attack Istanbul for some reason. I'm guessing they're confused. Or maybe they're so at war with Prussia and Poland that they forget I exist. Or maybe the strategic AI is dumb.

Near the end of defeating the bastard evil minor nations in the previous post, I attack Austria-controlled Bulgaria with melee troops and lots of musket, chainmail men. They win! Against peasants! (literally, peasants) And then Austria responds with three armies of linemen (these are the typical, European, white, 18th century, triangle hat-wearing troops; they have muskets and are better than my chainmail men; just think NFL). My army, personally commanded in realtime by me, utterly destroys the first army. But then I retreat, because my 1,200 unprofessional, casualty-ridden army is no match for the oncoming, fresh, 3,200, triangle hat army. I retreat to Istanbul, and they attack! And I hold it, killing 2,700 troops! Then I train the few new elite troops I can afford for a counter-attack.

Elite Ottoman troops in the early 18th century! Yes! They look like pornstars! Exclamation mark! These men are half-naked! They're dressed in funny, Turkish sultan hats! They look like genies in their green, revealing jackets, that surround washboard abs and pectoral muscles! And they have a perfect tan and a mustache that would make any woman blush! Or hell, any man blush. Oh, those mustaches!

Also they do lots of damage with their big rifles, and, in the case of the grenadiers, with their exploding balls. Although somehow they can't do the square formation, which my scientists spent years on!

Oh yeah! The Austrians! So they kick me back to Istanbul and fail to defeat me there. I have already fought one of my two epic battles (in the last thirty hours of gameplay!) with them; seriously, they're army seems bigger than what their budget can afford, and also this game needs to produce more epic battles because 30-hours is a long time!

I attack Bulgaria again. Waiting for me are three armies, two Austrian and one Venetian. And we fight the 2nd epic battle of the last thirty hours. With my 1,800 troops versus their 3,000, I win the battle with 350 troops remaining. O' it was epic. I saved the replay because...I like to save replays. My pornstar grenadiers threw so many of their exploding balls onto men.

And then the Austrians died. Their seven province nation was overwhelmed by all their enemies in a mere two years after that battle.

Empire: Total War -- Part 1

Hey Kids! This is the first in a fifteen thousand part series on the turn-based, real-time strategy game Empire: Total War (I knew you always wanted this! And it's here!! :) I've been playing Empire: Total War as the last of my addictive, 'vacation'-only games, with the purpose being to write a review. And one of the things I've noticed about the game, and I want to point out right now, is: I have no idea how any game critic managed to play this game and write a video review and write a written review, in only a week. Although I suppose they could play it constantly, minus food and sleep (and maybe poo poo and pee pee). And I suppose they could just play a short, 100-turn campaign (1700-1750). Unlike me, who's doing the 200-turn "long campaign" (1700-1799) on Hard Campaign and Medium Battle difficulty.

Now that I've established that I'm special, I should actually talk about what you're going to read. I'm going to review the game in parts. I just want to see what it's like to review a long game this way. And the last part will be a verdict.

Now that you understand what's going on, let's begin, with a description of what the game is:

Empire: Total War is a turn-based, risk-like strategy game with real-time battles, on land and at sea, that can involve thousands of men manning it out in beautiful 3D! It is set in the 18th century, and you can play a fifty or hundred-"year" campaign as any of the major players of the century, like Germany or Antartica (just kidding, Germany didn't exist back then). You essentially play as the god of the nation you lead, and you can end up fighting in the plains of Texas to the tundras of India.

Right now I am playing as the Ottomans in a "long campaign" (i.e. 200 turn, 100 year campaign). The winning conditions: to own 30 provinces, including eleven particular ones, before the 18th century. Loss of all provinces equals death.

The first thing I noticed upon starting was that I began with a lot more provinces than most. I had Baghdad to Egypt to Bulgaria, and what today is Turkey and Greece. And in the next few "years," (again, each turn you take by clicking the next-turn button equals half a year) and perhaps due to the skills I had developed in previous Total War titles, I managed to lose a third of my provinces. But just so you remember that I'm amazing, the Internet people told me that this would happen on anything harder than medium difficulty. One guy wrote something like, "Just give your provinces, that are too Christian, to the Austrians; this way you'll get a few more turns before they attack you." I didn't do this and the game made me feel like a loser. Later on, to prove to myself that I had learned this diplomacy thing, I gave a province, via the diplomacy menu, to the French! -- just to see what it was like -- so that they would like me more. Then they declared war on me. The Internet people say that, on hard campaign difficulty, the AI, for the most part, hates you and also builds stuff and trains troops faster, AKA cheats.

Another thing the Internet people said was that, upon beginning an Ottoman campaign, I had to fire my government. Not the entire government, of course (the game doesn't give you the ability to fire your entire government :(

No, fire the secretaries. So I went to see who my secretary of the treasury and whatnot were, and yep, their personal descriptions included things like "everyone hates him" and "sucks" and "Please! Fire me!" So I fired everyone! Except the sultan. You can't fire sultans for some reason. Anyways, the fired men disappeared forever, and they were replaced by younger, less corrupt men, half of whom I fired.

The Internet people also advised that Ottoman players should immediately inspect their army and realize that, until late in the game, the European troops are going to be better. So I inspected my army, and I noticed two things:

1) I didn't really have an army.

2) One of the few units looked like a bunch of peasants with pitchforks.

3) It turns out they were.

4) Their unit description said something very similar to: "Why?!"

5) The turn after I inspected my clown army, Austria invaded me (my empire, that is).