Empire: Total War

I've had Empire: Total War sitting on my desk for about a month now. I couldn't play it for the first week I got it because I was so busy. The week after that was spring break, so I was fucking ecstatic. Instead of going on a trip or something like what a cool person would do, I instead decided waste the entire week with a dumb strategy game.

Not necessarily. I got a Macbook Pro a couple years ago because of my graphic design major, and I love it. I was a PC person for my entire life, but I was converted very quickly. Think of what Windows would be if it worked 100% of the time. That's what Macs are like. Well, at least the good ones, and the good ones aren't cheap. I'm not talking about those shitty rainbow colored ones we all used in junior high. If it's a real investment, then it will very rarely let you down. No maintenance, little updates, no freezing, no restarts. Omigah steve jobs.

Anyway, I have Windows installed on my Mac, but I only have 2 gigs devoted to it because I need all my memory for Mac OSX. I only have Windows installed for games, and I just put all of them on my external hard drive, which is about 250 gigs. Nope. Apparently, my external hard drive is in NTFS format. No, I don't know what that means either. Empire cannot install on a hard drive that is NTFS. It needed to be FAT32.

So I try to go through this process of converting it to FAT32, and Windows failed me once again. It wouldn't convert, no matter what I did. So I say fuck it, and decide just to reinstall Windows completely, but with enough memory on it so I wouldn't have to use the NTFS external hard drive. Then my Mac's operating system fails to partition off enough memory for it. I couldn't understand. I've done this at least three times before with absolutely no problems, but now it suddenly decides not to work. So there I was -- stuck with no Windows, and no way to play any games at all.

Fast forward to last weekend. I finally have the time to mess with it again. I had had enough of this shit, I didn't want to try to figure out why the partitioning wasn't working. So I just nuke everything and reinstall my Mac's entire operating system. So far so good, I partitioned off about 20 gigs. I insert the Windows disk, and it can't read it. I wanted to shoot myself. Eventually, I remember the toothpaste trick. This is no joke, if you spread a thin layer of toothpaste over a scratched CD and quickly wash it all off before it dries, it fixes a lot of the scratches. I have no idea why. It just works. Rubbing a banana over the surface works too. Seriously, Google it. I want to know how people figure this out. So anyway I do this to the Windows CD, and IT WORKED. Windows began to install. After about ten minutes of installing, it asks me to restart so it can install some more shit. I restart. Now it can't read the CD anymore. I spend the rest of the night crying on my bed with a gun in my mouth.

And it's not that the CD is even that scratched. My CD drive is just broken. It can barely read anything at all anymore. I'm guessing the lens is either FUBAR or just needs to be cleaned. I don't want to waste $80 on an external CD drive, especially since the only ones available in this shithole town work only on PCs. I've checked. I actually found a site with instructions on how to take apart a Macbook to get to it. But I don't trust myself enough to mess with it. My dad basically stole my PC (which would not be able to run this game), so this is the only computer I have, and I rely on it completely for school. So I didn't want to fuck with it and risk breaking the entire thing.

I'm going to keep trying to install Windows with the toothpaste and the bananas and whatnot, but if I still can't get it to work by summer, I'm just going to drop my computer off at the Apple Store back in Springfield so they can fix it. Which is probably what I should do anyway. My warranty is still good, and they'll do it for free. But seriously. It isn't fair. I was so close. I've been following this game for a year, and now that it's finally released and IN MY HANDS, I can't play it. I'm looking at it right now. It's just sitting there. Taunting me. Fuck you, Empire: Total War. Fuck you.

To help soften this pain deep inside me, I've been watching Total War videos, and lurking Total War forums. This dude on Youtube basically spends his entire life battling people online, and then watching the replays and giving strategy commentary. It's ridiculously awesome, but at the same time it's a little sad because he uploads a new video like every other day. Doesn't he have school, or a job or something? Here's a sentence from his channel: "Criticizing Alexander the Great in any way, shape or form will get you banned from my page." Serious business. Here's a good video. I've turned the HD on with the embedding, so if it loads slow, just click it in the corner and turn it off.



I haven't seen very many mods for this game yet, but there were a shitton of them for previous Total War games. My favorite for Rome was the Total Realism mod, which made the battles last longer and much more realistic. There's a Lord of the Rings one somewhere, but I've never played it. Right now some players are making a Song of Ice and Fire mod for Medeival 2. It's coming along very slowly, and they've only made a couple factions so far. I doubt it'll ever get done. Here's some Starks fighting some Lannisters (click for big).


I'm hoping for a Civil War mod for Empire. Fuck, that would amazing. A long time ago, I vowed I was going to recreate historic Revolutionary War battles with Empire, and upload the videos to Youtube. I haven't forgotten about this. It's actually the main reason I want to get it installed it so badly. I made a couple battles with Rome (links to them are in that other link), and Youtubers loved them. I HAVE FANS, OKAY? One of them's been taken down because of a song I used in it though. I'm planning on reuploading it soon with a different song.

That old post detailed some music I've found that I'll probably be using in the battles, but I've since discovered a composer named Hans Zimmer. Holy fuck.