Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom

[Redbirdy]

Thanks a lot Keith, I got the file...I'll give it a whirl. No way I'd try downloading a 55mb file, and hearing that most of that is taken up in blurbs and ads is (sadly) no surprise.

Well I guess I won't be printing out the PDF manual either. Hopefully a strategy guide will be forthcoming and I'll blow some extra money on that, to make up for what should have been in the box to start with. I'm strictly Old School when it comes to what I think should be included in the price of a game...basically a printed manual that has ALL the info you need to know. Unfortunately you're right: that seems to be a thing of the past <sigh>.

[[Nataliia]]

Samsung DvD drive, SD-616F

JWin, if you are still having issues with the Sony SecuRom (the same as NOLF2 and LOTR, right Keith?) then Samsung has released a firmware update to deal with that. It's for the SD-616T, but many "F" users have used it with no issues. I dunno as I have an ancient 606 that reads the new SecuRom fine.

"[Samsung] made a solution with SD-616T which has some problems in recognizing game cds. If you have some problems with SD-616T, please go to this site and download this firmware at a below site. -http://www.samsungodd.com/eng/LiveUpdate/FWDownload/FWDownload.asp and click SD-616T/COM F305

[Keith Heitmann]

Yea, a lot of folks are having problems getting their CD or DVD drives to read the the SecuRom app on the game CD.

Morstaf from Multiplayer Services mentioned that in some cases where the computer is a P4 Dell it may have a faulty ATA controller driver. In this a new controller driver needs to be obtained from Dell.

One of the game developers said to visit the Blizzard website. They have a excellent tech help section there on dealing with SecuRom issues:

www.blizzard.com/support/?id=awr0648p

[[Nataliia]]

Yes, Morstaf mentioned on the NOLF end that he was questioning Sony about it, but that was a few weeks ago, so who knows if anything will come of it At least you guys didn't have the T&L issue like NOLF and LOTR did. *sigh*

As for Emperor, I've just about worn a hole thru the demo (if it were possible) and am eagerly awaiting a "real" copy of it. Since I've played the regular campaign so much, I've now started going thru the multiplayer one (alone) while ticking thru the different cities.

[Keith Heitmann]

Some people have found the multiplayer portion of Emperor disappointing. They don't like the fact that the game will slow everyone down if one player falls more than 2 months behind the rest.

I never thought that MP was a good thing for citybuilders. I've played a dozen games online but much prefer the single player games myself. I just don't think that this particular genre is well suited to MP.

As of late there have been a few posts on the board wondering why no one is playing online.

There are a number of bugs that slipped through or were not fixed prior to the game's release schedule, but a patch is not in the works as we speak. So many of them should be addressed in short order.

[[Nataliia]]

I doubt I would play it much in MP other than with the hubster over LAN. I like using LAN to play alternate scenarios alone, however, so that to me gives the game more playability. Unfortunately, I got Casino Empire when I should have gotten Emperor so I'll have to wait a bit.

I pop over to the forums every now and again, in a non-purple sort of way, and keep abreast of the game's problems and nice bits. This is one that I'm really looking forward to having the full game of.

[Keith Heitmann]

I don't think you will be disappointed. I took a look at the screenshots from Casino Empire when it was first announced and was immediately disappointed. I'm spoiled by the graphic style of the citybuilders.

[Redbirdy]

Thanks for the tips you two... I'll check into it