There's a huge patch now available for Empire: Total War, the epic strategy game from Creative Assembly. The conventional wisdom for the Total War games is that you should wait until they're patched. Well, consider this one patched. For those of us who were dismayed at the pathetic state of the AI when the game was released, it's moderately encouraging to read the AI section of the patch notes. Peruse away here.

However, keep in mind that Creative Assembly still seems flummoxed by the historical reality of armies being carried overseas by ships, something that was kind of a big deal in the 18th century. If I'm not mistaken, the British were quite fond of that particular tactic. I'm astonished that it flat-out didn't work when the game was released. And I'm still surprised that they're claiming it's too hard to do right. "The technology...is actually really rather heavy," is the precise wording. From an April 24th update by Creative Assembly community manager Kieran Brigden, commenting on this latest patch:

I'd also like to take this opportunity to talk about Naval invasions if I may. The technology behind naval invasions is actually really rather heavy and is still causing some issues. The gameplay upgrade will make naval invasions possible but they will be rare. The AI now has a proper mechanism for the planning involved and can execute that mechanism when required, however increasing its frequency is a balance issue we haven't been able to get fixed in time for this upgrade. So in short, naval invasions are now possible and may occur, but they will not be frequent, which means we have to up that likelihood.