A Review of Imperial Destroyer (Mod for Empire Total War)

In this video, I review Imperial Destroyer, a very interesting mod for Empire Total War that is still in development. It is a complete overhaul that enhances the graphics and gameplay - but can it compare to the other great overhaul mods for Empire, like Empire Realism, Darthmod, or The Rights of Man? Let's find out.

#imperialdestroyer #empiretotalwar #mod

[Manco]

Would love a review of Imperial Splendour for Empire!

[TimeTurner]

6:58, no battles in the 18th century DID NOT feature fierce melee combat outside of ambushes and storming forts. It just rarely happened in that century

[noah]

Great video! Helped me find a good mod! This deserves much more attention!

[CLWC]

this channel should not have over 900 it should have 100K subs

[heavybolter]

Interesting mod, seeing the graphics of the campaign be so heavily updated is definitely a first for me from the total war series. Never knew this upgrade would be feasible.

[Lavabear]

I wish Empire wasn't fundamentally broken :( I remember getting the demo as a wee lad in 2009, and being hyped for the final game to high heaven... just to be disappointed. Happened in 4 years again with Rome 2 :)

[shakes.dontknowwhatyergettin]

6:57 There was almost no prolonged melee combat in this period and through the Napoleonic wars. Charges yes, many charges. But the charge was either broken up by fire to the point where it was easily rejected, or it wasn't broken up by fire and succeeded. Very rarely would anyone choose to stand and actually take a charge, since it was wiser to break just before it hit, reform, reinforce and charge them back. Hence positions changing hands over and over again in so many of the battles. There was plenty melee engagements, but they were individually over very quickly, since somebody has necessarily been caught on the hop, and will be looking to run away and reform. Even on the rare occasions infantry melee was earnestly contested, these are unarmored guys with lethal but unwieldy weapons, very little skill and almost no defensive tools; there will be colossal losses instantly and one side will break. Even cavalry, who of course mostly fought melee, would be physically engaged for very short blips of time, when wheeling about against other cavalry, or before the infantry formed defensively and became near invulnerable. Cavalry chasing down the rout would be the big exception. Seems awfully hard to simulate all this in a video game

[JaM-RTR]

Ah yes, Empire Realism... my first major mod.. i might return to it and update it eventually, once i'm done with R2TR4... and yes, you are right, i mostly focused on battle mechanics, while keeping other aspects vanilla.. Empire was never easy to mod, lots of things are locked out, so fixing certain things is practically impossible (despite what many other modders claim, most of the time its a placebo effect)

[axlandgamer]

Hello Gudea!

I played several months Imperial Destroyer to the point of knowing some of the changes made to the game an the reasons behind the choices and I must say that this mod it's one the best but needs still some polishing. From the graphics point of view I guess it's the best, the map, the effects and a mid century flavor that feels right across the campaign. You can argue the "reforms" of Imperial Splendour are better, but for the simplicity of the game I think is the right choice.

The most general complaint is the lack of ammo. If you think about it is basically Gå På tactics generalized for all factions, while was not the case and mostly a situational choice that the AI seems not to be capable of. It's not until Napoleon that a single shot and charge in "colonne" was introduced and copied by European armies. Austria, as example, tended to be defensive and that needed more than a few shots, or the battles in North America which where much more related with position and firepower. I know last version of the mod tried to overcome this by increasing the lethality of firepower, but not solves the core problem.

This lack of ammo oblige the player to be always offensive which is basically wrong in my point of view.

The wars in XVIII century where a trade of blood x lands, and the diplomacy tended to be this trade at it's core. Feels a bit strange to trade regions, but that's the fault of clunky peace negotiations where the AI don't seems to react rationally. Getting rid of this diplomatic option oblige the player to get all territories by pure force, no diplomacy at all.

The simplification of the armies. All powers have the same numbers and the differences come with their stats. Here is another point of disagreement, because are some bizarre choices. The american Indians for example, are too way overpowered in melée, which is not realistic, specially knowing that by mid century they fought basically with firearms, not bows and lances. Or the problem with Sweden. Sweden is perhaps the most overpowered nation in the vanilla game, mainly because their income allows the player to build big armies from start, while their demographics never allowed this. The mod makers decided to place Sweden armies to be average, while increasing the Russian above the rest except Prussian/British. Sorry, it feels Russian bias to me. The choice of reducing British and Swedish battalion size is the correct answer to this problem.

And that brings here Darth Mod, because despite being old and dysfunctional addressed these problems with the right choices, and now i'm appreciating more than ever their work. I repeat, Darth Mod is clearly inferior in most aspects than Imperial Destroyer, but battle and army choices are far better.

Despite all this criticism, I like much Imperial Destroyer and actually I'm trying to change myself the mod to address all the problems mentioned here. And some others, like the unrealistic incomes for each region. As an example, the Caribbean Islands produced roughly the same amount of money of all North America that time because the sugar and tobacco plantations. That's why France traded Canadá for these tiny islands in 1763.

I hope that CA some day will bring us Empire II, with better mechanics and bigger battles. Meanwhile we have these wonderful mods.

Best Regards.

[youshouldknow]

Wow, the fact that they managed to put in the Khanate of Khiva is quite an amazing feat

[TheLondonhascalled]

Great review, awesome to see all these mods finally get some notice

[mostafamahmoud]

if you try this mod + VDM mod you will have the best ETW experience, the game feels way different but the issue with the VDM mod it makes the camping land battle crash the game mid camping for some reason, I'm waiting for the update to fix this issue cause honestly, the two mods together are a masterpiece in my opinion.
also, you can play VDM with vanilla ETW it won't make camping battles crash the game but yet it's not the same without imperial destroyer.

[CommanderBow]

I would love to play the original game

And then try out Darth Mod and Imperial Destroyer. As I think both developers we’re on to something with there ideas and improvements. And with Imperial Destroyer if they polish a few of the minor things like the over aggressiveness. low ammo and infantry not being able to retreat in battle and the fact you start with no money in the campaign, it would be a great play for anyone who loves strategy games as I do.

[NawaYT]

Thanks man. Great review!
It's nice to see that other people care about TWE In these times!

[GudeaTW]

What do you think of Imperial Destroyer? What is your favorite Empire Total War overhaul mod?

[kiriusview]

I would have liked to hear more specifics about how buildings/economy and tech trees has been changed. Likewise a few more descriptions of specific factions rosters and how they might change your tactics (what are some differences between playing say Prussia vs Ottomans).


I understand not wanting to make video-essays but it could be good to hear a short rundown of how a campaign went, telling us what happened and you did during the first 10-20 turns. It gives us a much better feel and understanding than to just say that the AI is more aggressive.

Does the AI send unending waves of armies or declare, and pursue, nonsensical wars from across the planet?

Those sorts of questions.

[ScaniaVikings]

Hey Gudea, thank you for your review! There are two vital submods for Imperial Destroyer:
- Starting treasury of 10 000
- Increase in ammunition

With those, the mod is just awesome!

[TheSentientsix]

This legit is my fav mod for empire. Its amazing. I use to prefer darthmod but once I found this I never looked back.

[BenjinWS]

If the additions that this mod gave (e.g. better AI, new regions) were to be merged with Absolutum Dominium (heavy visual overhaul, in line with the art style of vanilla), that would be the best mod ever.

[bc]

I've never quite understood why CA never gave an option for a Steam Workshop for Empire. It's far more awkward going to the Moddb website and getting the mods (and their patches) and manually installing them. It's so much less hassle to subscribe to mods on tge Workshop.