I had had the bug where selecting a fleet would cause my game to stick or crash. I could sort of work around it by not researching any tech that improve ship speed, but of course that meant slow fleets. Even then it could be kinda sticky. The devs had said that they had specifically fixed that bug; I’m still early in my new-ish campaign as the Netherlands, but everything seems to be running a lot more smoothly.
I just hope that the tweaks to shot types haven’t wrecked mortars.
w/r/t the “unwinnable battle” bug: I heard about that a lot on M2:TW but didn’t experience it until a couple weeks ago (and now seems to happen every other day…)
But they few times it happened to me, I exited the battle and I won, because I had already gotten the “end battle/continue” dialog box and continued to chase them down. Did you all lose the battle after you had gotten that and continued, or did it never even get to that point?
(A bigger peeve, which I knew was possible but also never experienced till a couple weeks ago, is when the opponent attacks your army and then just sits there in a defensive position waiting for you to attack. Granted, the only time it happened I had just beaten half their force and was sitting on a hill with a 3-1 advantage, but ties should go to the defender.)
Yep. Still not touching this game.
Quick question for anyone still following along in this thread…has anyone bought the elite units add on from Steam? It’s like $3.95 but I don’t know if it’s worth it. Anyone know?
-XT
I bought the elite units at the same time that the new free units became available, and I honestly don’t remember which are which.
I’ve got a Dutch campaign ongoing. I got Swiss Infantry (6 max) fairly early, which made a nice core for one of my strike forces. I then got Scots (4 max), who head up another strike force. It wasn’t until in the late-game phase that I got my Army Staff College, and I haven’t gotten many chances to field my last elite units, Holland Guard (6 max), and the ever-so illustrious Blue Guard (only 1 max). I’ve got those last seven in a strike force (protecting 10 units of mortars) and I’m pretty sure they could hold back the armies of Hell. They can use platoon firing, and have a reloading skill of like 55 so they can shoot a lot of foreigners very quickly. The Blue Guard have a melee defense of 20 before any experience, so I’m looking forward to just how much punishment they can take.
Overall I’m enjoying the latest update and DLC, especially because the game is now perfectly stable (albeit slow) on my machine.
Do you have to start a new campaign after you purchase the new units? I was playing a French campaign but don’t see any units I didn’t already have (just Imperial Guard units that I always got when I got to the highest level of infantry structure).
-XT
I had started that campaign before getting the patch and DLC. I’d gotten maybe 6 or 8 years in, then decided to put it on hold when I read about the coming improvements to being a) a republic and b) seafaring.
Well, I bought the elite units thingy and I haven’t noticed the difference yet. It says it automatically loads the DLC, but if it did I didn’t notice it. And so far I haven’t seen the new units (I’m playing the Brits and I think I’m supposed to get a Scots unit of some kind).
The game seems much more stable to me and it seems to be running a bit better as well from a performance standpoint.
-XT
Yeah, they seem to have finally fixed my major problem, where selecting naval units would freeze the game for seconds at a time and sometimes CTD.
As crappy as the game code was at release, they should be giving these extra units to us for free for putting up with their bugs for months.
Hell, I’m just happy the game seems to be working as it should have when it shipped. I didn’t mind paying $3 for new units…if I ever see them anyway. 
Now, if they will put out a Napoleonic Wars expansion (and maybe a Civil War expansion)…
-XT
The DLC units have special in-campaign requirements, so that may be an issue. You can check them here. Most of them are just a certain level of barracks in a specific province, mind you.
Still no cross-theater naval invasions though, so if you play as MC and take the Indian theater, you are essentially invincible. Pretty bad imo for this not to be corrected yet.
Heck, there’s almost never an in-theater naval invasion. I think I’ve seen troops on ships a grand total of twice in all my campaigns. 
Part of that might be because it wasn’t working until patch 1.2, IIRC.
Go to the “Fight Battle” portion of the game and you’ll see them there (make sure it’s set to “late period”). I spent several hours after installing the DLC fighting one-on-one battles to gauge the new units’ strengths.*
Incidentally, except for the Horse Guards, the Brits don’t get any new units. Do what I’m doing and start a new game as the Dutch.
I’m betting they’re saving the entire 19th Century (post-Waterloo) for Empire II: Total War.
Empire II? Pfft, give us Rome II any day!
For some reason I just couldn’t get into Empire. However, I’m still playing Rome Total Realism and loving it.
I found them. The problem was I hadn’t started a new campaign and they were in the saved games I had. I’m playing the US and I have Marine unites. There is some kind of Legion of the US unit that I haven’t managed to get yet though…it probably needs some special building or other trigger that I haven’t done yet.
I hope not…they would make perfect expansions. They usually do 2 expansions for a new game engine, and the Napoleonic Wars will definitely be one of them. I’m not sure what else they could do, unless it’s simply to allow more nations, which would be a boring expansion.
I love Rome Total Realism…was really disappointed when the Medieval II Total Realism fell through. I assume the TR for Empire is equally unlikely. The Stainless Steel mod for MII was pretty good though.
-XT
The way I see it, the options for expansion are the Napoleonic Wars, the US Civil War, or possibly the Thirty Years’ War. The Thirty Years’ War seems like an outside shot - precedes the game (though the Viking expansion from Medieval I preceded the main campagin) and requires the use of pike and musket formations that the AI is going to be utterly incapable of managing. Napoleon is just bloody obvious. The combat techniques don’t change notably, the units are mostly the same, and it’s a huge globe-spanning conflict. The Civil War would be a little trickier, as combat changes with rifled muskets and some breechloaders, but that’s basically Ferguson rifleman and Puckle guns writ large.
I don’t think the Civil War would be too difficult. Really it’s the same basic game play, just with longer ranges, more accurate gun and cannon fire, steam ships (and armored ships) and faster rates of fire. To me it’s a natural for an expansion…it doesn’t make a lot of sense to try and do a Total War Civil War at any rate. I hadn’t thought of the 30 years war (even though I just finished reading the Ring of Fire series again)…that might work, though as you said it would be going back somewhat to a much earlier time. But there are pikemen in Empire, and I suppose it would be as easy to shorten the ranges, accuracy and rates of fire as to increase them for a Civil War game. If they hold true to form we SHOULD get 2 expansions out of this before they put out a new engine in a new game (I haven’t heard anything is even under development…I suppose they could redo Rome or Shogun, or maybe a game set in China or something like that…or an Total War Ancient game set in the pre-Hellenic Greek period, or perhaps ancient Egypt/Mesopotamia).
-XT