2 new Gameplay Movies

[Duke Dick]

The game is looking damn hot; the first one gives a good idea of the detail on the soldier when the guy zooms in as they are running across the battlefield.

Enjoy!!

http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/medieval2totalwar/media.html

[Rodion Romanovich]

Pros:
+archer and cannon animations looked good
+music was good
+general overall graphics were pretty good
+first part of the official video 1 was cool, reminded of Agincourt

Cons:
-still trees aren't in the same class as those I've seen that NTW2 will be able to implement
-melee animations still look stiff, but then I seldom have time to zoom in melee, mostly only archer and cannon duels allow me to zoom, and those animations were good
-units still run too fast!
-trebuchets in field battles! And they still have the unrealistic overpowered flaming mode! Will flaming trebuchets be more powerful in battle than cannons? If not, then cannons will be vastly overpowered if the trebuchets are this powerful!

[Joshwa]

i can see that "chaaaarge!" sound effect getting tiresome!

[Duke John]

"Funny" to see how the player was struggling to charge an unit with his cavalry. It seems that whenever you order a charge, they halt, lower their lances and spur their horses. In the video you see:

1. player orders a charge
2. cavalry halts
3. cavalry lowers lances and moves again
4. player thinks those cavalry needs to charge faster
5. loop back to 1.
:laugh4:

I really hope that the CA programmers know that these kind of things happen and that when the new charge order has the same target as the current charge target then the unit will just continue instead of halting.


till trees aren't in the same class as those I've seen that NTW2 will be able to implement
Thank you! :grin:

[edyzmedieval]

Can't wait to see em. :grin:

[Furious Mental]

Interesting tid bits from the interview with the lead programmer

- Mid November release
- Tuetonic knights are back and are "really brutal"
- Pikemen kneel and brace themselves when facing a charge
- There are rocket launchers
- There are cannons on elephants. This last one seems dubious.

[Lord Adherbal]

"Funny" to see how the player was struggling to charge an unit with his cavalry. It seems that whenever you order a charge, they halt, lower their lances and spur their horses.

that kinda annoyed me aswell. But mostly the stupidity of the person who played the game (and the way he handled the camera was pretty noobish aswell).

In fact I think this might be a good thing. If you order a cav unit to charge, then change your mind and want to let them charge another unit that should have a negative effect. In fact I wouldn't mind if once a unit switches to the charge animation it is (near) impossible to stop them or change target. That'd add to the realism, and make you think twice before ordering a charge.

[econ21]

Adherbal']That'd add to the realism, and make you think twice before ordering a charge.

Exactly. In RTW, part of the reason cavalry is so powerful is not (just) its stats, but its its speed and flexibility[1]. You can rampage around the AI's rear, micromanaging it to cause havoc - opportunistically picking on weak spots and avoiding threats. In real life, especially in the middle ages, cavalry was probably more used with more deliberation and harder to control once unleashed. Almost like a "fire and forget" missile. Heck, even in the Napoleonic period, there was typically little close cooperation between cavalry and other arms. Games often allow players to pull off nifty tactical coordination that real life generals just did not have the means to achieve.

[1]You can see that in mods where cavalry is nerfed - EB and RTR - but still extremely powerful when deployed correctly.

[Lord Adherbal]

I even manage to dodge arrows with my cavalry. For example if I'm pulling back, and the enemy archers fire at my cav, I immediatly order them to turn 180 degrees (sending them back in the direction of the archers). The arrows were aimed at were the cav would have been if they had continued their current course, so they now all miss their target.
I seriously doubt that was ever pulled off on a real battlefield :)

[Furious Mental]

I can see how the feature would frustrate people at first, but I think it's a good idea. I cannot imagine that a cavalry charge would have been possible to organise in a split second, at least not without ending in disaster.

[edyzmedieval]

The movies look really good. :grin:

I hope we get many new features and a better AI. :help:

[Templar Knight]

Release in mid November he said

[Puzz3D]

I can see how the feature would frustrate people at first, but I think it's a good idea. I cannot imagine that a cavalry charge would have been possible to organise in a split second, at least not without ending in disaster.
That's fine, but it causes a problem for the player who tries to react to the charge. The distances that all this stuff happenes at is shorter than in a real battle. You can get from one battleline to the other in seconds. That means this delay puts the reacting player at an unfair disadvantage because in a real situation his units would have more time to react than they do in the game. The consequence of introducing these delays into a fast game is that they destroy the dynamic balance between attack and defense. I thought Creative Assembly was making M2TW more balanced.

[Puzz3D]

In RTW, part of the reason cavalry is so powerful is not (just) its stats, but its its speed and flexibility[1]. You can rampage around the AI's rear, micromanaging it to cause havoc - opportunistically picking on weak spots and avoiding threats.
The movement speed is too fast, and the AI doesn't know how to protect it's flanks and rear. Those are the things that should be addressed not reducing a players control because that will unnecessarily damage multiplayer gameplay. The fast speed is also increasing the ability to dodge arrows. The speed should be fixed.

[x-dANGEr]

To be honest, I'm happy with everything's speed in RTW/BI, and wouldn't like all my cavalry to halt each time I tell them to attack a unit. No, thanks. If we are to make the battle act as how it would've, the whole battle system would have been wrong.

[lancelot]

- There are cannons on elephants. This last one seems dubious.

There were plans to have small cannon on camels in MTW1. Some of the info is still in the game files.

Im not sure to what extent that either were historically plausible, although the elephant one does ring a bell...

[Justicion]

Well there is somthing wrong with playing the videos from GameSpot..
they even got a 19 pages long thread on their forum about that problem, whith no solution on the end...i guess it just doesn't work for some mortals
So if anybody knows some other site where i can see these videos
LET ME KNOW, cause i would really like to see those

[Furious Mental]

Small cannons were put on camels historically. I don't know about elephants though. I think it would depend on the size of cannon they are thinking about. In any case I doubt that said guns could fire in an arc, at least not if they wanted to hit something.

[Mooks]

Cannons? On elephants? What a waste of cannons and elephants, both which were expensive back then. Other then that, and how that guy had that realllly annoying voice. I saw that they didnt even talk about The AI's ability to fight battles. But then agian, they were probaly looking to flash the cool graphics then get in depth about it :juggle2:

[Rodion Romanovich]

@Furious Mental: wouldn't that just be transportation for cannons? I doubt any cannon would be animal-mounted in combat. Would make it difficult to reload with a moving animal, and the animal would be scared (considering that even humans who could clearly see that the early cannons had a limited ability of inflicting actual casualties got more scared by them by more dangerous troops in the battlefield), not to mention how the recoil would hurt it. I guess it's a repetition of the carroballistae from BI - ballistae were traditionally transported on mule carts to battle, but hardly possible to move around the battlefield like chariots, as BI has depicted it. Similarly longbowmen often had horses for transportation, but never fired longbows from the horseback. A unit's transportation method should not be used as a battle mount!

[Furious Mental]

As unlikely as it seems small cannons were fired from the backs of camels. Whether or not the camel had to sit down and the riders dismount I do not know. Like I said, I think they would be used more used like a big musket than true artillery.As far as elephants go I do not know. Interestingly ballistae were fired from the backs of elephants in south east Asia.

[hoom]

There is definitely at least one real historic battle that involved Elephants with Cannon.
It was in India I'm pretty sure though & later than the MTW time frame.

Also I think it was more that the elephants were towing carts that had the cannon on them.

[Goalie]

do u have to register at the site to watch the movie?

[screwtype]

Well the thing I noticed most about these movies - no more day-glo soldiers. Hooray! I hated that feature in RTW.

I also thought movement looked very smooth. Those running soldiers looked very authentic! - and I don't think they were running at an unrealistic speed, except for the armour they were wearing. It certainly looked slower than in RTW.

But the cav charge looked a bit odd. They didn't lower their lances when ordered to charge. But then, the controller kept re-ordering them, so it's hard to know why he was doing that or how the cav will behave when under your control.

[screwtype]

do u have to register at the site to watch the movie?

No you don't.

[Peasant Phill]

But the cav charge looked a bit odd. They didn't lower their lances when ordered to charge. But then, the controller kept re-ordering them, so it's hard to know why he was doing that or how the cav will behave when under your control.

They did lower their lances. When ordered to charge the cav forms up lowers their lances and then moves forward. The player was dumb as he repeatedly ordered to charge and thus the cav repeatedly stopped and prepared to charge. There is nothing wrong with the animation just a dumb player.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Why would cav need to stop and then lower their lances? Can they not even rudimentally multitask?

Otherwise
Good
-No more day glow troops
-Better terrain

Bad-
-Those same hideous green things when you select a unit
-Repetitive 'charge' yell

Crazed Rabbit

[screwtype]

Bad-
-Those same hideous green things when you select a unit
Crazed Rabbit

Yeah but you could mod them out in RTW, so hopefully you can mod them out in this one too.

You couldn't mod out the day-glo soldiers though... ~:mad