Star Wars - Empire at War (Official Thread)

A heads up for the Galactic Conquest game. If you're going to invade the planet Tyferra(The Bacta Planet)... or whatever, bring LOTS of reinforcements.


The bonus for that planet is that all defending units recieve free "bacta heals". But it is much more then the heals you recieve from the Bacta tanks you build on build pads. Pretty much every 10 seconds the defending units get 25% of their life back. Which, makes it impossible to take them out with anything other then a Bomber strike.


Seems pretty silly to me.

 

Great, I just played a land battle for a half hour, only to blow it right at the end because "Auto-Resolve" actually means, all your units suddenly blow up and you lose.


The ground games just drag on and on in this. Especially in Galactic conquest while you are fighting the Pirate planets. In this example I was attacking Wayland, I blew up all of the enemies buildings, but now I have to track down each and every last unit before the game will consider me the "victor". Of course the AI is either an extremely bad sport, or just stupid, and it sends its units off to the far corners of the map. So I figured, Hey, i've already won, why don't I just click auto resolve, and the game will calcualte the rest of the battle. Because really, spending 15 minutes trying to kill 3 remaining guys is NOT fun.

So I click auto Resolve, and I get the notice that the Rebellion is retreating. BUT ALSO, all my units suddenly die as well.

SO FRUSTRATING.

 

I actually had something funny happen with that. I hit auto-resolve and all my units exploded, said I was retreating. I canceled, and now I don't know if it's always like this or if this is a fluke, first time I did this experiment, they all came back, still there. So I hit auto-resolve again, and I won. Weird.

Usually it doesn't make me hunt after pirates if I'm on a pirate planet (Like Twi'leks or Hutts). Though I'm playing Rebellion. I know on alot of Imperial planets have prisons on them, and if you (as teh Rebels) destroy those prisons, you'll gain some allies but also alot of pirates will come out and attack you. Maybe if you're playing Empire, since you are the Galactic Government (whoa, Bad Religion ) you have to clean up pirate scum?

I dunno, when I play as Empire I'll find out I guess.

 

Is that stupid reinforcement limit from the demo in the full game? I hated not being able to use overwhelming force.

 

hope they come out with a patch soon... that auto resolve thing is just plain silly... Also, sometimes some of the units get stuck in open areas. dont know why that is... I wonder if they even ran this game through balancing and bug checks. the ATST sucks bigtime against infantry even stormtroopers suck against infantry. Dont like the fact that acclamators are said to be strong against corellian corvettes yet seem to take forever to destroy unlike lancers versus snub squadrons.

 

Yikes! You got me on that one..I'm surprised that's not how it went down with me!

On my third try, i was COMPLETELY dominating, and then VADER got shot down. I didn't think that was possible! So i failed AGAIN! Grrr.. First mission that has given me trouble, and i'm getting sick of Tarkin acting so SMUG after the defeat!

I've figured out that you just have to sneak in the back way behind the nebulae, and just don't get close to the asteroids.. Probably have to send your TIEs in to take out the base.

Still seems unecessarily annoying, though.

 

Didn't I read in the recent patch notes that your whole (ground) army doesn't blow up anymore when you auto-resolve?

 

Got it yesterday, damn good buy it was (only 1 store stocked it in a whole shopping centre, just happend to be the one that is part of the company I work for, Staff Discount is always good).

Started the Imp Campaign, and have been blowing up lots of stuff, nearly not surviving Mon Calamari (Haven't sorted out Kashyyyk just yet).

But I do ask, has anyone yet encourntered this situation:

I send my fleet to Naboo, via Eriadu. (Battle fleet of 1 Vic-star, 2 Acclamators, 4 Tartans, and 1 Broadside)

I begin the battle, and low and behold the only defence is a few corvettes and about a dozen or so transports. My thinking, invasion fleet - no chance in hell that they are going to invade my planets. They retreat. Okay cool. I leave a small fleet behind and jump to Dagobah, only to face similar opposition - again they retreat.

So I jump to Bespin, where i get big surprise. Defences are a Neb-B, half a dozen Corvettes and a space station (Decent enough). But the map shows 1/4 of the space map chockers with alliance craft - Transports! Over 100 of them. As soon as I lay waste to a corvette and a few transports - the AI issues the retreat order.

Being the 3rd time this has happend, and this time they have adequate ships to counter my forces. I wasnt going to let them away without creating havoc.

I order all ships to increase weapons power, and I watched the fury unleased. All I saw where the transports were was a wave of explosions. By the time the 10 seconds were up their loses were:

1 Class 2 Station
3 Corvettes
55 Transports of various troops

Now I have to do the Kashyyyk mission and then some for my next chance to do that.

 

I'm new to RTS PC games - I never really play games on my laptop.
What's the best option for controlling EAW?
Mouse? Keyboard? Controller?

thx!

 

So what's the general opinion of the game? Never played an RTS in my life. Is it worth buying just now? Or wait until the price comes down?

 

Mouse+Keyboard

Mouse is needed, because you need to drag 'n' drop stuff, and you can use hotkeys for most things (details hotkeys in the game manual

It's worth buying now, probably the best SW RTS available. Rocks all over Rebellion and ForceCom.

Explain a bit more, From what I've seen there is no limit on how many ships can be in the re-inforcement pool. Restrictions on ships in the game - but you dont need much more than what i detailed in my above post to take out a decent fleet. I cleaned up all the rebel and pirate systems, only losing a handful of tartan cruisers (And with the fund I had, replacing them ain't too difficult).

 

So would you be considered a bad strategist if you lose a couple of tartans per battle?

 

Well I tend to pwn a few per battle, but thats the AI using them as distractions.

The great thing is, four corevettes, and three fighter squadrons of each type (X-Wing and Y-Wing) and maybe a B-Frigate can usually, for me anyway, take out like four tartans and a Star Destroyer (Damn Piett, he won't freaking die! ) Plus the occasional broadside (or whatever the hell it's called ) or space station. Trick is to just concentrate everything's fire power on one thing, destroy it, and move on. Tartans are easy to blow up, so they go quickly. Go from smallest to largest. I imagine tartans are like corvettes, just keep four or five in a tight group and have they take the same target with fighter support, and you're good.

 

...see, i save my Tartans for my first wave of reinforcements. Usually go in with Acclimators and Victorys first...Go toe-to-toe, fighter to fighter, and the like.. Then, if/when i lose either of the above, i hyper in as many Tartans as i can, and sic'em on the fighter cover...

 

On the Demo's land battle I could only land a certain amount of troops at a time, depending upon how many reinforcement points I control (the max was 10). I found it really annoying, since it became difficult to do anything productive.

 

Yes the limit does still apply in the same way as it did in the demo.

So no really massive land battles.

 

Just took me a couple of hours to finish the geonosis mission. Just had to conquer all those planets first... so far the only weakness in the game is the land battles. to repetative. I usually just build a lot of atst and stormtroopers then auto resolve. Those space battles are really close to becoming annoying though. Acclamators cant do crap against corvettes I have to pull out my tartans from massacaring their fighter cover just to catch the damn corvettes. Love the Tartans Vs Snubfighters though, one mission saw 7 tartans against 50 squadrons of Z-95 and XWings was just to fun. I didnt move a muscle they just came in wave after wave didnt lose a single tartan.

 

I've had a few adventures so far. Several good battles, including a campaign where I systematically took a pair of Tartan squadrons and hunted down over 100 points of transports in 5 systems, until Home One put a stop to that adventure.

Ground Battles of Note:
Geonosis, Defending.
I have a shield, full set of barracks and factories, an ATAT, and the typical garrisons. The Rebels send in some speeders, some infiltrators, and some infantry. I lose badly, not to the Rebels, but the hundreds of Geonosians that swarm my defenses and take down any troops or walkers I send out, while the Rebels take the Shield Generator down. Ouch.

Shola (I believe). I start strong, and capture a few reinforcement points. I get the full 10 points, so I have Veers, Vader, Palpatine, and 7 more AT-ATs, with their garrisons of troopers. I split the Walkers into 2 groups of 4, and send Veers north, and the others east. It's going well, only encountering the occasional squad of troops or tank, until Veers' group makes it to the top of the map, a T-junction. The group is suddenly hit with missiles from both sides, from MPTLs and T4s, and around 2 dozen tanks (mainly hovers, but 2 squads of T4s) close in from either side and surround my walkers. Veers takes out a concentration with his main guns, but it's too late, and the entire AT-AT group is worn down and destroyed. Several Rebel Tanks come down to assault my landing area, but run into Palpatine, who promptly sends them back up to attack the surviving tanks. Meanwhile, The second AT-At group has made it's way around and is advancing, but runs into a heavy turbolaser about the same time the tanks descend, and half that group is lost before the resistance is broken. VAder, Palpatine, some Artillery units, and 2 badly beat up AT-Ats finish the operation and take the planet.

 

I haven't tried it yet but there is supposed to be a mod already out that allows you to change the unit cap.

 

I hate the second Rebellion mission! Is there anyway to beat it easily? My men manage to kill the first turret and both AT-ST's, but then the second turret kills them and then 3P0 and R2

 

Don't know what difficulty you're on (I played it on Easy because I suck), but I had a mix of troopers, plex troopers, and T2-B tanks. Use the Take Cover ability whenever you're under fire (especially against anti-infantry turrets), as it increases your defensive capability. You'd be surprised at how much longer you can last by using it. You can also use Artoo to hack the turret (special ability) and turn it to your side. When I reached the panel with Threepio and Artoo, I kept half my force some distance to the east/southeast, and the other half some distance to the west. If you keep them too close to the droids, the enemy will target the droids and they'll die even though your troops are in between.

Hope that helps.

 

Much appreciated.

 

This was the most expensive game I've ever purchased. It cost me 750 USD to play this game. $50 for the game, and $700 for the new computer I had to purchase in order to play it. (old one only had 192 MB of RAM) Okay, so I had been meaning to get a new computer for a while anyway, but still...