14 DAY TRIAL // Empire: Total War has had quite a rough ride. When the game was released, because of the lack of pre-loading on Steam, the servers where overwhelmed and players had to wait in order to authenticate and play their games.
After release, the game suffered from a variety of bugs, which Creative Assembly worked pretty hard to squash. And, of course, this being a Total War game, there's a memory leak that makes the late game quite painful to play.
But it seems that players who are currently unsatisfied with what the title has to offer might get the patch that might just change their mind. Jack Lusted, who is a developer working on the game, has said that the company is on the verge of releasing the first patch which, alongside bug fixes, is set to introduce various gameplay changes designed to make the title more balanced and playable.
Lusted has said that “For multiplayer there are now separate costs for early and late era so that units better reflect the techs available, and units such as mortars and rocket ships have had big cost increases and light infantry have had their cost increased a bit as well.” Gamers will see changes in single player, with costs increased depending on the level of difficulty on which they are playing. Changes have been made to limit the amount of money that players are getting in the late game, so the long campaigns will prove more of a challenge. The A.I. has also been tweaked to perform better in battles and on the strategic map, with naval invasions set to make an appearance.
It seems that Creative Assembly is really interested in offering long term support for Empire. Lusted has said that the next patch after this one would introduce “big improvements in terms of diversification of different unit and artillery type,” while the one after that is set to address the balance of naval battles. Unfortunately, Lusted has not mentioned exactly when the patches arrive.