Normally I wouldn't comment on something as menial as this but ETW does take about 20 minutes or so to install on an e8400 3.6GHz system with standard 7200RPM HDD. The game comes with 2 DVD's so there is some disc swapping during installation (yuck) to produce a total size of 15.15 GB worth of HD space. The installation and your CD-Key are tied with Steam, so if you still don't have a Steam account you'll need to create one in order to play the game. After installation, Steam will automatically update your game with a patch (doh!), so after about a good 30 minutes or so I was finally able to get into the game.

I quickly sped through the tutorials and was kind of amazed with the lighting and models of the units. I didn't play the demo that was released last month and I had no idea what to expect as far as visuals go. The foliage also looked quite nice, although it definitely retains that Medieval 2 TW feel. I quickly engaged a unit and immediately saw my men raise their rifles and let off a thunderous volley followed by some thick smoke drifting upwards (AWESOME!). I checked out the Road to Independence Campaign which is kind of a re-telling of the Revolutionary War that you get to play through starting from when Great Britain first colonized America. This is a neat option since the the previous games didn't really have a historical story-centric singleplayer mode. Then there's the Grand Campaign mode, which offers the open sandbox type of gameplay the previous titles had. I didn't really delve into this singleplayer mode so I can't comment on this as of yet, I plan on going through this mode after I complete the RTI Campaign.

As I mentioned previously, I had jumped at the chance to play as the Americans in the Road to Independence Campaign. It starts off by showing a cutscene of George Washington talking about the colonization of America and what had led up to the war. Then all of a sudden your dropped into battle with John Smith's men who look like bandits fighting off a small Indian attack. I clumsily fought them back, not really shooting them like I wanted to and just went in hand-to-hand, which I found out to be very effective for some reason against the Indians, I'm not even sure if I had bayonets or anything. Anyway, I played through a small campaign conquering poor little Indian tribes and unlocked the next chapter.

Next up was America's involvement in helping Britain clear out several key French Forts, one of them involving an assault from sea. This is where I started to see some of the shortcomings of the AI on Fort Defense. The French would leave a few units outside the Fort, for whatever reason, and would promptly get steamrolled by my mass amount of troops. The first Fort I attacked had no wall defenders, leaving the canons completely unmanned and made it easy for my men to rappel up the wall and breach the gates (this wasn't always the case later on in the campaign). Also, the defenders inside made no use of buildings for cover and mostly just stood in the center waiting to be attacked. I also noticed on some occasions the AI would just stand next to my troops without attacking them. It was still satisfying watching my men storm the gates though! I also got a little taste of the Naval battle as I used some Sloops and a Brig to take down 2 French ships. It was kinda cool watching the ships fire salvos of canons at eachother but I can already tell I'm not into the sea battles, I'm more of a infantry and hot lead kind of person. Still, nice effort here.

So I finish up on the last French fort and found myself dropped into the battle of Bunker Hill against the Brits after another cutscene. With a small force of Minutemen assembled, several cannons, and mother effin George Washington, I set off to repel the Redcoats. Here, the AI did a pretty good job of kicking my ass. They took out a set of my canons within the first part of the battle, then followed up with some flank attacks. I lost alot of men and had few to reinforce my line with, forcing me to use mother effin George Washington to DO WORK!  It was a bloody mess of routing, charging, and scrambling about and I managed to take out a huge portion of their forces before all of my men finally routed. Come to find out, it actually turned out the same way in real life (I know, shame on me, it's been a long time since U.S. History people!) so I didn't feel too bad after losing the battle.

So now I'm knee deep in fighting against the Brits on the campaign map, pretty much opening up the rest of the game for me. They didn't really go into the researching tech tree or setting up your cities (other than the advisor) so I'm still learning all of that as I go, but for the most part I've already setup an alliance with France and have cleared out one British occupied fort, so far so good.

So yeah, despite the quirkyness of the AI at times, I'm still having a blast with the game and can't wait to finish off the RTI campaign so I can get lost in the Grand Campaign mode. I know the playable factions has decreased greatly which is a real bummer, but I'm definitely looking forward to the multiplayer campaign patch and hopefully some more factions (modded or official) in the future! I'll be sure to keep you posted as my campaign continues, until next time!

Normally I wouldn't comment on something as menial as this but ETW does take about 20 minutes or so to install on an e8400 3.6GHz system with standard 7200RPM HDD. The game comes with 2 DVD's so there is some disc swapping during installation (yuck) to produce a total size of 15.15 GB worth of HD space. The installation and your CD-Key are tied with Steam, so if you still don't have a Steam account you'll need to create one in order to play the game. After installation, Steam will automatically update your game with a patch (doh!), so after about a good 30 minutes or so I was finally able to get into the game.

I quickly sped through the tutorials and was kind of amazed with the lighting and models of the units. I didn't play the demo that was released last month and I had no idea what to expect as far as visuals go. The foliage also looked quite nice, although it definitely retains that Medieval 2 TW feel. I quickly engaged a unit and immediately saw my men raise their rifles and let off a thunderous volley followed by some thick smoke drifting upwards (AWESOME!). I checked out the Road to Independence Campaign which is kind of a re-telling of the Revolutionary War that you get to play through starting from when Great Britain first colonized America. This is a neat option since the the previous games didn't really have a historical story-centric singleplayer mode. Then there's the Grand Campaign mode, which offers the open sandbox type of gameplay the previous titles had. I didn't really delve into this singleplayer mode so I can't comment on this as of yet, I plan on going through this mode after I complete the RTI Campaign.

As I mentioned previously, I had jumped at the chance to play as the Americans in the Road to Independence Campaign. It starts off by showing a cutscene of George Washington talking about the colonization of America and what had led up to the war. Then all of a sudden your dropped into battle with John Smith's men who look like bandits fighting off a small Indian attack. I clumsily fought them back, not really shooting them like I wanted to and just went in hand-to-hand, which I found out to be very effective for some reason against the Indians, I'm not even sure if I had bayonets or anything. Anyway, I played through a small campaign conquering poor little Indian tribes and unlocked the next chapter.

Next up was America's involvement in helping Britain clear out several key French Forts, one of them involving an assault from sea. This is where I started to see some of the shortcomings of the AI on Fort Defense. The French would leave a few units outside the Fort, for whatever reason, and would promptly get steamrolled by my mass amount of troops. The first Fort I attacked had no wall defenders, leaving the canons completely unmanned and made it easy for my men to rappel up the wall and breach the gates (this wasn't always the case later on in the campaign). Also, the defenders inside made no use of buildings for cover and mostly just stood in the center waiting to be attacked. I also noticed on some occasions the AI would just stand next to my troops without attacking them. It was still satisfying watching my men storm the gates though! I also got a little taste of the Naval battle as I used some Sloops and a Brig to take down 2 French ships. It was kinda cool watching the ships fire salvos of canons at eachother but I can already tell I'm not into the sea battles, I'm more of a infantry and hot lead kind of person. Still, nice effort here.

So I finish up on the last French fort and found myself dropped into the battle of Bunker Hill against the Brits after another cutscene. With a small force of Minutemen assembled, several cannons, and mother effin George Washington, I set off to repel the Redcoats. Here, the AI did a pretty good job of kicking my ass. They took out a set of my canons within the first part of the battle, then followed up with some flank attacks. I lost alot of men and had few to reinforce my line with, forcing me to use mother effin George Washington to DO WORK!  It was a bloody mess of routing, charging, and scrambling about and I managed to take out a huge portion of their forces before all of my men finally routed. Come to find out, it actually turned out the same way in real life (I know, shame on me, it's been a long time since U.S. History people!) so I didn't feel too bad after losing the battle.

So now I'm knee deep in fighting against the Brits on the campaign map, pretty much opening up the rest of the game for me. They didn't really go into the researching tech tree or setting up your cities (other than the advisor) so I'm still learning all of that as I go, but for the most part I've already setup an alliance with France and have cleared out one British occupied fort, so far so good.

So yeah, despite the quirkyness of the AI at times, I'm still having a blast with the game and can't wait to finish off the RTI campaign so I can get lost in the Grand Campaign mode. I know the playable factions has decreased greatly which is a real bummer, but I'm definitely looking forward to the multiplayer campaign patch and hopefully some more factions (modded or official) in the future! I'll be sure to keep you posted as my campaign continues, until next time!