Is anyone seeing any of the following in fights over forts?

I'm just sad that it is unlikely that my iMac will run the game so that I could see this for myself.  I read it requires minimum 2.4 or 2.6Ghz Dual Core and my iMac runs a 2.16 Ghz dual core.  Still, I may download the demo to put the idea to bed forever and stop pining for this game (at least for 3 years before I likley change Macs).

Im downloading the game on steam now, ill let you know if i see any of those issues. If there are pathing issues like that then i hope they will patch it soon.

Im playing as Prussia at the moment, conquered about 15 provinces and have yet to have a battle were I either siege a fort or defended a fort, so I cant really say. Most of my battles have been in the open.

"Is anyone seeing any of the following in fights over forts?

• On defense your units have trouble firing from atop the walls regardless of the enemy being on top of the wall or down below.
• On offense your units deciding to magically scale a wall and come down the other side when going around a corner of a fort.
• The gates opening as soon as one unit gets on the wall?

Having a lot of fun with the game, but the combat in and around forts makes me always need to siege the enemy and hope they pop outside the fort so my forces don't run into pathing issues.

"

I have the same problem. I do not understand the gate mechanic. Why cant soldiers just brake it open? Or have a cannon destroy the gate. Or atleast the walls.
Taking a fort is so tedious and boring. The best tactic is just to wait outside and let the enemy rush outside and then go in the gate they used...

After playing the American campaign for a loooong time ive pretty much decided that fort battles are the spawn of satan. Defending them is a piece of cake, just put your units on the walls and wait. But there is almost no tactics involved in assaulting a fortress, its either surround the fortress from all sides and hope that you hit a weak spot or just break a single spot open and rush all your units in. Either or your going to need to outnumber your enemy or have stronger units to take over a fort. I auto-resolve at every fort battle i come across.

Snide,

Its a very very bugged game. Loads of people are having issues with its constant crashing and dodgy AI / Pathfinding.

The last total war game - Medieval 2, was also very bugged on release (though not nearly as bad as Empire), normally you need to wait a month or two and get the patches / finished game.

Actually no, what you need to do with the recent total war games is start downloading MODS that fix the game instead. Total war center is a good TW mod site.

Yup, and the sad thing is that this has always been a problem in the Total War franchise. It really bothers me that  it's almost ten years since the first Total War game and they can't solve this prolem. Also if somone can give me advice on how to command ships so is that my naval battles don't end up in frantic messes that require attention to every single individual ship, that would be appreciated.

"Yup, and the sad thing is that this has always been a problem in the Total War franchise. It really bothers me that  it's almost ten years since the first Total War game and they can't solve this prolem. Also if somone can give me advice on how to command ships so is that my naval battles don't end up in frantic messes that require attention to every single individual ship, that would be appreciated."

"Snide,Its a very very bugged game. Loads of people are having issues with its constant crashing and dodgy AI / Pathfinding.The last total war game - Medieval 2, was also very bugged on release (though not nearly as bad as Empire), normally you need to wait a month or two and get the patches / finished game. Actually no, what you need to do with the recent total war games is start downloading MODS that fix the game instead. Total war center is a good TW mod site."

Um yea it's not as buggy as killdave makes out as far as I can tell.  It hasn't crashed on me once yet.  The forts however are a pretty big problem.  My method is to take 4 units of the largest cannons I can find on every single offensive siege and blow out a large chunk of wall.  The AI tends to panic and mass all of its units in the centre of the fort leaving you take the walls and just rain fire down on them.  It is strange that a single unit can capture the fort and open the gates for everyone, it would make sense if you captured a gatehouse or something but it can be literally anywhere, I bet they fix that one quite soon 2bh.

It definitely seems that the A.I. problems are universal. All the reviews I have read so far mention it.

Not as buggy as I make out to be???
Really, serious?

From the get go it was bugged, and I do me the very start. The installation via Steam was botched. No pre-download so on launch day everyone had to fight for Steams bandwidth to download the game (15gb worth very very slow, and the download kept RESETTING TO ZERO), while others with boxed version could play straight away.

Opps, I mean those with boxes tried inserting the DVD to install, they got forced by Steam to "download the entire game" instead of installing of the physical media! Day 2 they fixed thise issue but left a bitter taste in our mouths.

As for the rest of the bugs you will need to visit a dedicated Total War site like Total War Centre. (Link to forums - http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1074) I would say them all but I dont have enough space.

Bugs range from CTD (crash to desktop) when certain "minor" factions declare war on you ... save games corrupting ... to Naval battle reinforcements cause CTD when you click on the in the game and tell them to attack ^^

Really annoying as it has great potential :(

I have just experienced a few crashes, not CTD's but total system crashes ever sense the new patch came out. Anyone else experience this?

To be fair killdave most of what your saying seems to be problems with Steam and people being impatient or installing the game wrong.  I'm sure there are dozens of people on the empire forums threatening to get their money back and veto Steam games because the download took a while too lol.

I've only had 2 CTD's so far with the game, the first happened after an 8+ hour session on the Road to Independence campaign. The 2nd happened yesterday after I patched up, I was playing the Grand Campaign mode with the U.S. and tried taking a capitol then the game CTD. I re-loaded from the auto-save and tried again and was able to continue playing. I have seen the corrupted save bug happen to my bro though, after about 40 turns into the last RTI campaign the game would just crash whenever he attacked an enemy or an enemy attacked him, he had to make a new game and create a new save just to get it to stop crashing.

Sometimes it freezes, and you need to spam AltCtrlDel. Other times the game just crashes to desktop with "game has stopped working"

As for Incrediblebulk92 saying that most issues are steam related he's wrong sadly :(

When dedicated Total War sites have over 880 separate threads/topics regarding BUGS ... less that 1 week after the game is released ... you can't kid yourself that something is seriously wrong and broken with this lastest game.

Ok it turns out that i set my graphics settings wrong, and they conflicted and crashed for some reason. It seems if you use the pre-set settings you are less likely to experience problems.

I posted the review of this just now. Thanks for the feedback guys. It was nice to know it wasn't just me seeing issues with the AI.

It not very buggy at all for me, but it seems like thats cus i have a better computer then most, all i had to do is turn the fans on my vidio cards up(cus they get hella hot) and it runs great.