14 DAY TRIAL // I love Total War games. I did so from the moment I first saw Shogun and understood the beauty of marrying tactical battles, which looked and moved gorgeous for the time when the game was released, with the management options of the strategic level.
I questioned the move to 3D strategic maps in Rome, but eventually I understood the possibilities it opened. I have come to expect Creative Assembly releases to have some bugs, poor tactical A.I. and to all get better with patches and mods. What I can't understand is why people are saying that the strategic Artificial Intelligence is passive in Empire: Total War. Because I have a string of games that ended in defeat to prove that it can destroy empires and take names.
Case number 1: I play as Sweden. After initial skirmishes with the Germanic minors around me, I take out Saxony and wait for a counterattack. Instead of getting hammered from Austria's direction, which I was prepared for, Russia chooses this moment to strike at lightly defended Sankt Petersburg, which falls. Before I can react coherently, Finland also falls as I barely hold Denmark back from the games of my capital. I haven't played since and although the situation is salvageable, Russia is very aggressive, with full stacks of Line Infantry deep in my territory and two cities taken in a few turns.
Case number 2: I play as Austria. I build up for a few years and then I take on the Ottomans. While I try to take the Adriatic coast, they counterattack in Transylvania, taking that territory and threatening Hungary. I react there only to be backstabbed by Poland-Lithuania, with which I had a trade agreement and, I thought, a secure flank. I lose two capital regions before I rage quit my campaign and start a new one.
I should probably mention that I played on the Very Hard campaign difficulty and on the Hard battle difficulty. I should also add that since the A.I. proved to be unable to make an amphibious landing playing as England should make people complain that they steamroll everyone from the protection of the shores of the Albion. But the two cases presented above have shown me that the strategic A.I. is not as brain dead as a lot of forum posters would have you believe. The computer-controlled enemy is not as smart as a human but at least Creative Assembly is moving into the right direction.