FAQ --- (Frequently Asked Questions)

this is not a manual or a replacement for the empires wikipedia which is a detailed manual, for those that don't know. I welcome suggestions of questions to add to this page.


Where can I learn how to play?

There's the manual, the Empires Mod Wikipedia, and if you want to know the absolute basics really quickly and you want to just jump into the game: read this. The entire empires community will help you out if you want to ask a question ingame on on the forums, and there will always be people on the IRC channel #empiresmod provided by gamesurge.


A lot of your features are just stolen from other games you like, right?

The truth is that empires mod got there before a lot of these games did. Empires has been in development since 2002, way back on the Battlefield 1942 engine, and a lot of the features that you can now use were being worked on since then. Unlike commercial games such as the battlefield series, empires has only had one coder and so has only been able to sit and watch as larger developement teams were able to pump out games with our desired features.


I want this feature included: "Blah Blah Blah"... how can i make it known? Is it likely that the developement team will even care?

Post a suggestion in the "suggestions" section of the forum, though it is worth using the search ability at the top of the forum to check if it has already been discussed. Even if you think you have something new to add to an idea already put forward, or think that an idea is worth bringing up again, feel free to post a new topic, there's real limit on it and nobody is going to insult you for it. Or if they do, i'll find them and kick them in the crotch. Also, unlike many other mods, the developement team DOES care, and several suggestions on these forums have made it into the game. What else can I say? the dev team are great people.


My download speed seems slow, what can I do to increase it?

downloading from a mirror (a download provider), especially directly after release may be quite slow. If you know how to use torrents, you can torrent the file from this link: http://www.alluvion.org/download.php?info_hash=ae45f27c15f176e5b6f342a379b7b58c97691da5


Empires is running slowly, what's up?

There's a great guide here http://www.wiki.empiresmod.com/index.php?title=Client_Optimization. Turning off HDR in the video section of the options menu is also said to help a great deal, both with the speed your game runs at in game, and the time it takes to load the next map.


I got stuck in the map, help!!!

Press the ` key, to the left of the number 1 on your keyboard, and this will bring up the developers console. Type: Emp_unstuck into this and you will almost certainly be free. Open the console and put: bind "k" "emp_unstuck", and then when playing you only need to press K to unstick yourself from situations.


What should I research?

Something I get asked very often; look here http://wiki.empiresmod.com/index.php?title=Research. Includes printable versions of the research tree. Surprise Suprise, it's on the Empires Mod Wikipedia. All your questions to do with the game can be answered on that page. The only reason I'm including this here is as it's a perfect example of something everyone asks when they could just look on the wiki.