personally, 64 bit is the way to go. sure feels nice having 4 gb of RAM.
Ok so I come back and people actualy play this game now?
Ok before you talked about protectorcrates, and their importance... The advantage of having protectorcrates is very large in the Very Hard difficulty of the campain, but this is only true in europe, for which, you want to make those minor german nations (Bavaria, Wurtemburg, Westphalia, Hannover, Saxony) to be your protectorcrates or your allies, simply because, they are small but when they choose a region to attack they attack it in full force with everything, and they are all allied with austria at the begging of the campain, and on the very hard difficulty if you attack austria, without having good relations with the minor nations they will all jump in and help to attack you. which allows austria to have a safe western border.
And if your saying that you cant play the us in the grand campain... you can!
Just not starting in 1700, go to the road to independence and choose the very last one, its right after you become a country and the actualy state of the world, with british and french colonies in india, the french presence in canda removed, and many minor nations that had sprung up at the time such as naples, Afghanistan, and Norway, and you pick up from there with the relation they depict the States having with the world. And the way that america starts allows it to easily build a fleet, expand west and send troups across the atlantic to Europe, for me i took the african coast and expanded through asia minor and the illberian peninsula
Listen well. Everything I tell you is a lie. Every question I ask you is a trick. You will find no truth in me. Though you believe nothing else, you may rest your faith in this.
glitches and problems aside... I just think they rushed the shit out of empire total war. I think it's sad medi 2 has been around as long as it has, and it's a better game then empire Lol, and offers less problems/glitches.
the stupid map issue that zero and myself faced aside... id still get attacked all the time, would defend my settlement and the attacking army half the time wouldn't advance or come at me till I literally moved the majority of my troops outside the place.... soooo stupid....
also the citys and everything look horrible. I remember taking france 100 turns in and it was like 4 buildings... wtf is that Lol....
I dunno... I think empir was a complete waste of time and money. ill be trying the napoleonic wars cause I heard they actually are getting there shit together and trying 2 make it decent.
ill stick with medi 2 +kingdoms expansion till then.
Maynard - The WCS Guy
Actually it turns out that map issue is due to using a 1gb video card on a 32 bit os and this impacts your ram mapping and is actually a problem on your computers side that can be solved by using 64bit or reprograming your ram to allocate 2.5gb instead of just 2gb to non hardware data.
All the other crashes I had were the result of corrupt files and that was steams fault and fixed after verifying them.
I do not understand what you are saying about the buildings but will all the grafix settings maxed the game looks very good for me.
Currently I have started as england and taken France in the first 5 turns. It is now 1705 and I have 11+ territories 3 in america including Quebec that I just took (yea I still got the starting places), I also have taken the main pirate island this past turn.
Current battle fronts:
Caribbean - island hopping with a small ground army taking pirate bases and soon an old french territory that has gold and close access to Brazil currently all pirate ports are under my control. By Florida I am holding off fleets from Louisiana and plan to keep that front in a defensive position.
African - Naval force is a few turns away from removing pirates and setting up 4 trade ships
Europe - A missive military force is being built up in pairs for an attack on the heart of spain, while I am at war with them we have yet to have any conflicts. I hope to take Spain in 3-5 turns from the first move of my army thus crushing the Spanish empire. My agents are already in Spain killing gentlemen and causing economic damage to help set up the invasion.
America - An invasion force has taken all territories previously held by France except the one below Quebec. The last french based outpost will fall within 3 moves. From here the Inuit Indians and the united states will be invaded. Also the Indians are sending a small army to try to take my northern settlement in main. When they are crushed troops from that position will leave in time to meet up with forces attacking NY in 5 turns. Force will split into two divisions to take the rest of the indian and the northern territory of Louisiana within 15 turns.
Will be opening up to 5-6 fronts in the next 20 moves.