Demo Impressions

[Steppe Merc]

Right, a lot of people either have got it, and played it, or are getting it. So i thought everyone could discuss the demos, including observations, etc.
I really liked it though the unit sizes were a bit low for me (I always double my units in MTW). The elephants are to me really done well. Deadly, but defeatable (makes me wonder why they felt they needed a specific anti- elephant unit). I loved crushing the Romans as the Carthiginians, though I lost almost all of my men. I hated the tutorial, but I figured I would. So everyone, put down your impressions, likes and dislikes and anything else here.

[Kongamato]

In the advanced video options there is an option I haven't used yet called "disable syncronized animations". It has to be turned on, and might be a solution to the men walking in sync. I bet it eats the CPU and wont work in MP.

The cavalry seems to have a nice turning arc when moving. It helps when hitting the enemy rear. I wonder if it automatically hits the open end of a unit when it's engaged something else already.

The new controls make the box selector more readily available. I've used it very often in conjunction with line drags of several units and the run command, producing a quick "fan out" effect from a tight bunch of units. It seems more people are going to be using this move in the future.

[crazyviking03]

I am very happy to see the elephants as they are aswell. I also like the 'kill amoch elephants' button, as this is a good thing to have. I was happy to see that the legion advanced in proper formation in the battle, but i wonder if this was not just scripted for the demo, i hope the AI will normaly do this. Over all it was alittle short but enough to wet my appetite. My only real problem is that with Trebia, they start you with the legion so close, I feel rushed and feel like I have no time to plan and am just scrambling my units, when it is actualy us who are supposed to be surprising the Romans.

[Steppe Merc]

Agreed, Crazy, that battle was very rushed. And the unit names were very sad. Barbarian Mercanaries? Barbarian Mercanary Cavalry? Wow. And the fact that the advisor for the Carthiginians was a Roman was... odd to say the least.

[Lazul]

Just crushed the romans... and... wow, this game will be the best in years to come.
But my computer sucks like nothing ells... and im buying a new graphic card

Still, things are called Barbarian, pisses me of but i can live with it hehe.

Im going to try it now again and test the different options and stuff...

over all 4 of 5

[Lonewarrior]

Have you guys tried playing the historical battle in expert, is pretty cool and very, very challenging

[Sjakihata]

When you use high anti-aliasing it looks very good, Im glad my pc can handle it :)

And a lot of my archers have a cold.

[CBR]

I have used the "disable syncronized animations" and works fine so far. I have a gf4 TI4800 and running it at 1280x1024 with all set to max details but no AA.

I think gameplay is a bit too fast. Didnt feel like I had much time for details when the fighting starts..

Have to get used to using right click for moving and attacking. Sometimes it felt a bit difficult to hit an enemy unit because it was in a bit scattered/loose formation.

Music is great though


CBR

[frogbeastegg]

I shall copy and paste the comments I made to a few other people who asked for my opinion:

How is the demo? Well...it was very...it felt...meh, for lack of a better description. No awe, no interest, no tug, no "I've got to play this!". None of the feelings shogun inspired, not even the bewildered disappointment of the MTW demo. It wasn't bad, it just didn't make me feel anything.

The voice acting quite frankly Stinks with a capital s. I have heard worse but not much worse. The Roman advisor sounds like he has a bad fake Australian accent! The units tell you their names when you select them and that drives you crackers after a few minutes. They also repeat their orders back when you give them, if I never hear "charge!!" again I will die happy ;)

I tried customising the camera controls but the changes wouldn't work. The TW style of camera controls is far superior to the FPS set also included in the options screen. Take my advice and leave them on TW. The FPS set sounded closest to my custom binds from MTW but oh gosh, no! They made me feel sick, it was impossible to just turn on the spot, the zoom was funny...terrible. Thankfully the TW settings are good.

The graphics, I set everything to max and didn't have any slowdown but I also found the graphics to be under whelming unless zoomed right in close on a unit. Blurry is the word when looking to the distance.

General overall interface etc...not bad but could use improvement. You have to use the tool tip to find out how fatigued your units are; I hate that. Valour was much clearer as a number, working out valour feels like a maths lesson now as you count up the different coloured chevrons. The icons for weapon/armour upgrades are a bit small, the ammo bar for archers is rather indistinct. The advisor drives me crazy and is distracting but I think we will be able to turn him off. Hope so. I miss some of the information from MTW, such as what is affecting morale. I also miss the brief explanations of how a unit’s battle is going, “Winning easily” is better than “Can only lose this fight is something goes wrong”. They swapped the orders from left to right mouse button, confusing.

I won the proper battle on default difficulty without breaking a sweat; kind of easy really.

The music was boring and I tuned it out mentally within minutes. That is a devastating blow, as I still play the battle music of the other TWs in media player.

In the tutorial they made the same mistake of telling you double click charges when doesn't; it *runs*. Agh! :tears hair out: This is the third time in a row! You would think CA would get it right...

Now aside from all that complaining I will play it again and it has not discouraged me from getting the game when it comes out....but nor has it made me change my mind on my opinion that I will win a couple campaigns then shelve it. Pity.

[Steppe Merc]

Don't worry Froggy... mabye when some of the mods come out it will renew your intrest. One thing about the units is that they seemed all on speed... The triarri zipped along, and was a bit difficult to keep up with them.

[Lazul]

Playing the battle 3 times, beating the romans all the time... ok not on the most difficult level.
Now, thing is it doesnt give you the same "feeling" as shogun or mtw did. Im still buying this game but in the battle I had some trubble keeping up with what was happening, its was like all units was on Speed.
Im just hoping that a few upgrades on my computer and the real game will make me feel much happier!

and god damn it CA... stop calling them Barbarians...

[Steppe Merc]

Here here Lazul!

[frogbeastegg]

Did anyone else have trouble with thier javelin skirmishers? They kept retreating before the enemy and I don't mean in MTW 'enemy are in range so we will run' style, more 'enemy are within a mile of us, we are off!' style. I don't think they even got half way into range, but the battle was so fast they might have throw a jav or two when I wasn't looking. It resembled one of those Benny Hill farces, with my skirmishers running everywhere chased by a walking unit of Romans who were a very long way behind.

Steppe Merc, yes, I am rather relying on mods now since the demo failed to convince me RTW would last a long time on its own. :sigh: I can't even say I had high expectationswhich have been dashed and ruined my experience; I settled into mild ambivolence some time ago.

[crazyviking03]

Yes, the new speed is alittle different, will take some getting used to. I tell my elephants to walk to a point, and I am waiting for them to get there, expecting the usual TW speed, but, wait.. they are already where I told them to go! I am very pleased with how well this has worked on my current comp, which has 256 RAM and a TNT2 64mb card. It runs pretty well on this, I have no worrys about the game, because I am getting my other computer back on Tuesday, adn it has more RAM and a better graphics card!! WOO HOO!

[Monk]

Well i just played the demo, aside from the great graphics there was nothing special imho.

the tutorial battle was...well...unexciting to say the least (its a turotial i know but still...)

the backstory to trebia before the battle was a nice touch i thought, but when i saw that the Romans got to start nearly within arms reach of my lines i wasn't a very "happy hannibal". my skirmishers were far from my lines, who by the way, decided to turn tail and run for their worthless lives as soon as i unpaused. The only real action i made was moving the elephants to the far flanks just before i charged them, followed by Infantry and cavalry and well... no more romans. It felt like the battle was fought for me, which was a severe disappointment to somebody who was looking to have a small bit of fun while fighting the romans.

I'll still end up buying rtw...but as ar as demos go, this one just didn't do anything for me.

[Medieval Assassin]

I hope my 500Mhz, can handle this demo, if I get it... I don't care if everything is max, I just want to play the campain mode with all the good new stuff, and fight battles, I don't need to be so far zoomed in I can see everyones teeth.

[nightcrawlerblue]

You talked about bluriness from a distance? Try putting on some Anisotropic Filtering that might help.

[Husar]

I don´t have the demo yet, I can wait till tomorrow, but what i read here is sounds really sad...
Especially that everything is faster sounds really bad to me, combined with some other things it sounds like Rome was really thought to be one of these modern mainstream strategy games where speed is everything. Until now, Rome was about the only strategy game I was looking forward to, hoping I would get even more excitement looking at the battles than I got from MTW, sounds like I won´t get that. It always reminds me of other strategy games where you can build the strongest tank, said to be armored like a bunker, and bang, bang, two shots of the right rock-scissors-paper-unit and your "super" tank is gone -> I hate that and it´s one of the reasons I did never buy games like C&C Generals. Modern games get more and more disgusting in my eyes and I know why I didn´t preorder Rome...
Of course I will play the demo tomorrow, but I´m not 100% sure anymore if I will really buy the game, unless such things can be changed.
*going away a bit disappointed*

[DemonArchangel]

Even the DEMO is so addicting
I don't think i can handle the real game without failing every class at school.

[crazyviking03]

Ofcourse this is the semester when I take 19 credit hours!!!! ARG!!!! Ohwell, they are all history and latin, so it shouldnt be too rough. I just have to say, though it may not be realistic, when those elephants crash down hill into those romans, and 20 of them go flying, it is freaking awsome!

[CBR]

Ah now green arrows are gone

Check preferences.txt in main demo folder.


CBR

[Steppe Merc]

Which one is it under CBR? Is it splashes, or what?

[CBR]

DISABLE_ARROW_MARKERS

I removed the banners to heh: SHOW_BANNERS


CBR

[Barkhorn1x]

DISABLE_ARROW_MARKERS

I removed the banners to heh: SHOW_BANNERS


CBR

YES!!!!

[Steppe Merc]

I heard that you could change the unit size, and it does say unit size:80 in the preference change, but I tried first 120 and 160, and nothing worked.

[CBR]

Well I dont think its enough to change it in pref file. I know yuuki has been trying out hex editor to change the individual unit sizes for the the battle and got up to max 120 men (changes only happened with an increase in the pref file too)


CBR

[Steppe Merc]

BKB also said something about a hex editor... how can I get one (for free)?

[CBR]

here is one: http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delph...2.htm#download


CBR

[Steppe Merc]

Hmm... all I see is a bunch of numbers and letters, and nothing at all that makes sense to me.

[TheSilverKnight]

Well I hope you guys have fun with the demo. It barely runs on my PC. Graphics are horribly choppy, even at lowest setting. Well, enjoy you guys. I know I won't be getting RTW if my PC can't handle it. and it doesn't...