Anon12/01/25, 23:39No.2273972
Empire was the first game on a new engine. The new engine was necessary for a couple of reasons, there was a generational shift in happening around that time and everybody needed to make sure their shit would be compatible with the new standard, which ultimately became a very expensive endeavor that sank a lot of companies.CA had to find a lot of partnerships to get their new engine made, which also meant a lot of factors complicating the process, and ultimately ran out of production money with a half-baked product on a half-baked engine and had to rush the game out the door just to avoid bankruptcy. They ended up lucky that the good will from Rome and Medieval 2 carried Empire to a successful launch despite the many issues, but then they thought it would be cool to rush out Napoleon with a much smaller (yet no more detailed for it) campaign and paywall all the bugfixes and improvements behind it.They're still on the same engine, by the way. It's been updated so much you'd hardly recognize it but they haven't moved on in the intervening 16 years.