I have that too, Dell XPS right?

The battle load times are just fine for me (I don't do too many anyways) but the AI turn takes FOREVER!!! It drives me insane!!

Meh... I can't belive anyone but a Tw n00b get ETW before it's been out a year or two. Creative Assembly have proven that they don't care much for updates or customers. If you like TW gaming, don't get the game untill you see a mod you like.

If you go into options you can turn off CPU movement which greatly increases the AI turn time.

Special Forces gets only the units listed (I think there are SIX of them).  The other special units like Death's Head Hussars or USS Constitution are special pre-order units a person will get ONE of them at RANDOM depending on which RETAILER they pre-ordered through.

For example the Prussian Deaths Head Hussars are with a pre-order from GAME and I believe the USS Constitution is with a pre-order through some European Distributor and the Amazon unit is with a pre-order through AMAZON!

In short, the PRE-ORDER special units have NOTHING to do with the 6 special units in the SPECIAL FORCES pack.

thanks,

the Monk

 Hehe, we can't complain to much about AI turns though. After all, it should be the AI complaining about our crazy long turns!

On another note, does anyone know if the Steam downloaded ETW comes with a manual?

Yes, there's a manual. Just right click the game on Steam and select View Player Manual and it'll give you a pdf download.

Great game so far. Miffed about the constitution. Txt seems a bit small in the game though.  Really enjoying my game so far. No problems either.

Last night I was getting random crashes on the Road to Independence campaign. A few were when hitting End Turn, but thankfully it autosaves so I didn't lose much. But the last one was 40 minutes into a long siege..

Ya, I would have to agree with the text being to small. That and in many cases there is just to much of it! I for one feel very compelled to read any text which appears on my screen... Which means I spend half my time reading the description text on units and buildings! The three paragraph building descriptions are nice for learing some interesting tidbits, but IMO they are just to distracting when put in the game itself.

What makes the small text even more problematic is the fact that I have a 19" screen with a resolution of 1680x1050, while most 19" screens are 1440x900. This makes text even smaller than it normally would be since my pixels are smaller.

I saved this replay of a battle I had during the grand campaign. The odds were against me and I ended up winning the battle by a good margin.

So I fired up the replay and I noticed that my units did the same thing they did in the battle... but then I thought "Hmm, I don't remember the AI doing that!" And then at the end I LOST THE BATTLE.

So why do the AI do different moves than they did? The replay obviously wasn't a replay because the end result was so dramatically different (they won by a good margin that time)

Ever hear of "offline mode" for STEAM?   hehe    

The sieges are nice, but I gotta admit I miss the TW2 sieges with ladders, towers, catapults and trebuchets. Bit more variery! Here you sort of just tech up different cannon shells for your cannons, and infantry come equipped with ropes to scale walls.

I wish that too, or soften up a city before the invasion. Like one of the options next to Demand Surrender. Naval Bombardment.  But this would require it's own ship with a mortar or a ship such as the Rocket Ship or whatever it's called.

Have they ever heard of the National Anthem? That's when the British were bombarding the US Fort of Fort McHenry (which I visited a few years ago lol).