May 9th gameplay and DX11 patch feedback thread

[frogbeastegg]

Discuss away.

Lots of gameplay changes. Most of them look quite promising although there are a few I don't feel I understand, particularly "Removed passive ‘encourage friendly morale’ bonus from General’s units". Does that mean the blue circle doesn't give a boost now? Or did the general used to give a minor boost to units nearby but outside the circle as per the old days?

Those of you with posh DX11 super computers, this is your chance to show off how amazing the game now looks to those of us stuck with DX9

[TheLastDays]

I'm guessing it meanst that the blue circle doesn't give moral anymore all the time (thus passive), only when "Inspire" is on

[Dead Guy]

Inspire only affects a single unit as far as i know. Rally is a different story though.

The most positive thing I've noticed: Sieges! Assaulting a castle with a good garrisson is no longer a walk in the park. Archers reposition to return fire, though the AI is kind of bad at responding to attacks from the side he's decided to ignore. Still lost a fair amount of men taking a fully manned castle yesterday, even with archer superiority. I was also unable to destroy a tower with mangonels, which I don't know if I like really... Should one need to bring two just to take down a single tower? An improvment overall, in any case.

(note: I even Inspired the Mangonels to better hit the tower, only got it to 60% damage)

[frogbeastegg]

I have found that steam is finally awarding achievements it has owed me from my earliest days of play. I was awarded the one for using a balanced army with at least 1 unit of each type, so I tried some custom battles. I managed to get the one for having my entire army hidden for 30 seconds, and the one for having nothing but hero units as well.

Maybe now the game will admit that I've won 25 battles, and all those others I earned and didn't receive. Good thing I was never bothered about collecting them or I'd have gone crazy

[Barkhorn1x]

I have a DX11 card and I love the patch! Battles are so smooooth and everything looks so nice.

[Nelson]

I have a DX11 card and I love the patch! Battles are so smooooth and everything looks so nice.

Ditto. I invested in hardware and now the dividends have arrived.

Fires are especially vibrant.

SP improvements: check
MP improvements: check
DX11 support: check

Kudos to CA for promises kept.

[Zenicetus]

Sieges do seem a little more difficult now. Better use of the walls by defending AI archers? I started a new campaign for the patch, and my first conquest with an evenly-matched army didn't go as smoothly as I expected.

[Vulgarius]

Im actually pleased. I recently bought one of those ASUS Brick type "Cards" prior to the update. As far as performance, the game runs pretty smooth without the perpetual stuter that I had gotten used to. I seem to have not seen any more stutter particularly when everyone fires flaming arrows simultaneously. Ive also noticed the repositioning of archers in castel assaults. I have not seen my trade fleets turn into Flying Dutchmen... at least not so far. I have not seen the Missionary/Rebel hug bug.

[Prodigal]

Well main difference is that using the directX10 settings that my card is for causes instant CTD's, so I've been forced to use directX9 settings. Nice!

[Kagemusha]

Im having problems with directx10 settings as well.I get random freezeouts and CTD´s. for example there is something quirky about the sky textures.Also the firing arch of archers and the deployment zone borders tend to disappear in the terrain.

[aimlesswanderer]

I only wish I could test it... Steam claims that it'll be a mere 12.3GB and 3 hours till it's ready to play... am a downloading the entire game?

[Forward Observer]

Well main difference is that using the directX10 settings that my card is for causes instant CTD's, so I've been forced to use directX9 settings. Nice!

I have this same issue with a DX11 capable card. I just got a new GTX560Ti with the latest drivers running on an I7 CPU with Vista 64bit.

In DX 11 mode, the game always crashes upon exit and it will not write any changes to the options script file. This issue popped up right after the patch, so I re-installed the game, which of course discarded any options script files. After the re-install, I started the game in DX11 mode, and still got the game exit crash. The real issue was that because of the crash on exit, none of my options settings were being retained due to the script file not being written or re-written.

The only work around was to revert to DX9, exit once with the crash, then restart and exit again with no crash, which then creates a script file, switch back to DX11, exit with the crash, and manually edit the script file to retain the DX11 settings I want to keep.

Unfortunately, there are a lot more general option choices maintained by the script file than just graphics. Stuff like audio, advice levels, battle difficulty, battle timer choices, camera and battle control modes, to name a few, are all recorded in this file. Now if I want to make any minor option changes that will be retained, I have to jump through a lot of hoops, and it still is disconcerting to have the DEP crash screen pop up every time I exit the game.

This problem has been reported by others at the official forums, so I assume it will eventually be addressed. Still, can you imagine a casual gamer or a computer neophyte trying to deal with such issues. It's no wonder there that consoles are so popular--well, maybe not the PS3 right now--lol

By the way, in case nobody has noticed--with the latest patch the game now takes up a whopping 18 GB of space on your hard drive. I'm guessing that at 2.5 GB, the latest patch had more than just fixes plus a few new multiplayer maps, but may have also contained some of the DLC that will be unlocked eventually.

I think the first Shogun took up about a gig of hard drive space--and the Mongol expansion only increased it to about 1.5 gig. Of course that seemed like a lot since my PC at the time only had a 20 Gig hard drive.

Cheers

[TheLastDays]

Yea I have the same issues of CTDs in DX10 mode, made me use DX9 again

[Nelson]

I wonder if the OS is a big factor here. DX11 has been fine for me with a GTX460 and Win7. Is anyone with Win7 having problems?

[Forward Observer]

I wonder if the OS is a big factor here. DX11 has been fine for me with a GTX460 and Win7. Is anyone with Win7 having problems?

I think you may be correct in this assumption. One of the posts at the official forums indicated that they had tried the game on both Vista and Win 7 and only encountered the issue with Vista. However another poster who had Win 7 reported the issue, but then they had an ATI card instead of NVidia.

I bought my gaming rig in March of 09 from Cyberpower in anticipation of Empire. Unfortunately, it was just a month or two before all the retailers started selling their PC's with free upgrades to Win 7. I guess I should go ahead and take the plunge to upgrade, but after this long with the same OS, I have to really force myself to step out of my comfort zone.

Come to think of it, just about every upgrade in systems or GPU's I have made over the years has been in anticipation of the next TW game.

Cheers

[Forward Observer]

Just thought I would post that I went ahead and upgraded my OS to Windows 7. I just finished about an hour ago and the problem with Shogun2 crashing at exit seems to have gone away. In addition--an issue that I had with Empire not starting after my previous GPU upgrade has also been fixed.

I had put off going Win 7 until now, and just like i mentioned, I was really prompted to do so because of a TW game. I think this officially makes me Creative Assembly's b*tch now.

Cheers

[econ21]

...like i mentioned, I was really prompted to do so because of a TW game.

Hah, yes, I think that's the ultimate test of one's love - or is it desire? - for a game - would you upgrade your rig for it? For me in the past, it was RTW and Morrowind. (They may not have been the ultimate games, but boy were they beautiful in their day.) A new computer has greatly enhanced my view of ETW (literally and metaphorically).