Anything positive to say about the patch?

[AlanH_30]

Can anyone offer any positive feedback on the patch?

After reading most of the patch related posts, I don't know if I'll bother installing it

[MonkeyMan]

It make SP work much better and solves and tweaks a few balancing issues.

I think its great, but if you dreamed of playable multiplayer i wouldn't bother.

[cart6566]

I would say that the SP campaign is much more challenging, the AI is better in real-time battles, valor/building bug is fixed, which gives more of a challenge (I felt like I was cheating, getting all those V2 Feudal Sgts.), no crashes yet after patch installed, GA points are displayed numerically.

All in all, a definite improvement in almost every way. My one complaint is that my frame-rate has dropped significantly in real-time battles.

[Kraxis]

Sieges are much better

------------------
BTW, Danish Crusades are true to history.

You may not care about war, but war cares about you!

[MonkeyMan]

Quote Originally posted by cart6566:
My one complaint is that my frame-rate has dropped significantly in real-time battles.[/QUOTE]

have you checked your settings, installing the patch resets them, you might want to (re) take off fauna and smoke etc. and change the resolution.

Just a thought, i noticed no diff.

[Jagger]

Single player is much better.

I started an English early, normal campaign last night. I was attacked much earlier than normal by the French strategic AI. The French troop selection was better. The tactical AI was using tactics from the hard level. The enemy general didn't lead the attack. I saw a couple crusades that seemed to be working correctly.

From the mod side, the projectile file is now available for adjustment. Which means my arbalests, handguns and arqubusiers have all been tweaked. I noticed two available slots which means I could add a minimum of two more missile types or improvements.

From the Single player side, I am happy.

[Wolfgrin]

I agree with Monkey Man. SP is much better. In fact, the ebb and flow of events seems to have changed, too. It's 1234 and no single power has steamrolled over half the board yet. Nice.

Also, the AI armies are composed of better units and very few artillery pieces.

Rebellions are a real sight to behold. The troops aren't that good, but there are LOTS of them.

Crusading pathfinding actually works!!!

Trade route traffic light is awesome.

Many new factions playable, including Russians and Swiss/Teutons.

Can't wait to see the Golden Horde arrive!

[Heinrich VI]

im a bit dissapointed that they did not fix the rebels. they still show up with elite units in a province without a single building.

the framerate drop is terrible. im using exactly the same settings i used in 1.0 and my tactical battles are now slow and sluggish - very bad!

highlighted heirs (next to become king) and agents on a mission - nice.

crusades working - great!

trade routes higlighted - nice!

valor bug fixed + units showing up in their specific timeframe - great.

byzantines unable to build VGs in the late period (bug?) i dont like it and it seems stupid to me.

[Puzz3D]

Multiplayer is playable now. The few people who have recently posted very negative comments are all online playing. I think some of them are getting CTD which doesn't happen to me. Big 4v4 games are the ones most likely not to launch, but I played a bunch of 4v4's last night which went fine.

If a player drops before deploying, the battle cannot be started. This can be viewed as a problem, but the battle is compromised even if it did launch. More time is allowed now for all player machines to sync up, but what can you do if someone has a poor connection. Two 4v4 battles that failed to initialized for me had one machine that was having obvious trouble getting to 100% connectivity.

Unlike STW and WE/MI, a player who drops or escs during the battle has to be fully defeated before the game will end. It is tedious to mop up these dropped player's units if they are all over the battlefield. You can always end the game by agreement once the outcome is no longer in doubt.

I'm getting the disconnect from server every time after hosting a game. However, I have to relog after every battle anyway to get the player list to refresh.

So there are still problems with MP, but the game is much more playable now.

[This message has been edited by Puzz3D (edited 11-07-2002).]

[HopAlongBunny]

Rebellions are a real sight to behold. The troops aren't that good, but there are LOTS of them

We playing the same game?

Just had a rebellion in Tuscany; huge pile of halbadiers; not so bad but the silver shields make me nervous.
The other stack is royal knights http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif

[MonkeyMan]

Quote Originally posted by HopAlongBunny:
Rebellions are a real sight to behold. The troops aren't that good, but there are LOTS of them

We playing the same game?

Just had a rebellion in Tuscany; huge pile of halbadiers; not so bad but the silver shields make me nervous.
The other stack is royal knights http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif[/QUOTE]


Heh, i set rebeliousness in scotland to 5 before i started my latest game. I have to fight 5000+ peasants, clansmen and hobliers every turn, by right i should have de-populated the whole country by now, while my evil, butcher heir sits there bathing in blood.

[goscho]

Quote
byzantines unable to build VGs in the late period (bug?) i dont like it and it seems stupid to me.[/QUOTE]

It is historically correct. The VGs were almost viking mercenaries and in the late period the vikings are almost dissapears. => there musn't be more VGs

[tootee]

So far I have only time to play 2 games MP, but I like the improvement in the UI, as well as logon/off process. Main focus of patch is to resolve SP bugs and MP technical hiccups (which hopefully are addressed), and they did a little? touchup on MP unit stats (which I think is really nice of them, since CA has no obligation to do so for us customers, no matter how much we complain.. but that do not include the technical issues the majority is/maybe facing).

Keep up the good work CA.. you've got my money remember http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

------------------
tootee the goldfish,
headmaster of Shogun-Academy (http://shogun-academy.tripod.com)
loyal roach of Clan S.G. (http://thesilvergazwa.tripod.com)
'Pa Si Buay Chao! Si Liao Ka Song!'
------------------

[Dionysus9]

Well, there are some nice MP improvements which I address in some of my "negative" posts.

All in all, if you play MP you are going to have to use the patch since everyone online is using it. If you play SP you might as well use the patch since it seems to improve SP a lot.

The patch is the future, it cannot be avoided.

[Nelson]

The patch has been great in SP even with my old saves.

------------------
COGITOERGOVINCO

[Richard I Coeur de Lion]

While major parts of the SP game have improved no end, I'm still a bit peeved with certain things that are going wrong.

I've been playing as England on normal, everything starts off fine but I noticed I was loosing ships (in battles and storms) big time so I decided to do a count. After 32 sea battle (attacking & defending) I won 2.........a poxy 2!!! every storm that appeared only ever sank my ships, and to top it all off I've been chucked out of the catholic club for defending my land from attack!!!!

Don't get me wrong the patch has improved things, but this game still needs a bit of work on it.

[Kraellin]

as well as the stuff mentioned above, you can now use the z, x, and c keys to temporarily remove units and buildings so you can get at your agents hidden behind things.

mp is an improvement for me. i dont get any logon/logoff crashes now.

private chat works now, except for the bug where you come back from a game and are still greyed out; then private chat doesnt work.

sea battles seem better.

i love the Y key in multi to chat with team only.

missile units are now getting a break in costs in multi.

the faction colors thing is great. not only can you pick your faction and pick your color, but the faction colors determine where you are deployed, so a clan team can set up for who plays better as a flanker and who as a strong middle man.

the AI seems to be a bit more aggressive and a bit smarter, as someone else already mentioned, but as an example of this, i was playing egypt with the byzantines on one side and the spanish on the other (they'd already wiped out the almohads). i had uneasy truces with both sides, but when i saw an opportunity against the byzantines to seriously drive them out of the middle east, i did so, and the spanish sat there on the other side of me, just waiting for their opportunity. the war with the byzantines was nasty, but i managed to secure constantiople and everything east and secure that bottleneck province east of the black sea. but, this forced me to spend a lot of money on LARGE garrison armies in those provinces. meanwhile the spanish began moving troops down to border on egypt and when my income was low, and i was pretty much out of mercenaries to beef up my western lands, the spanish attacked, and attacked big time. with most of my main troops facing the byzantines i was forced to give up province after province in the southwest and the spanish did not relent. i was finally forced to retire.

now, in that game above, i was admittedly playing a bit recklessly on purpose, but still, the AI was smart enough to recognize my weakness and take advantage of it. good job on that one. i've seen other examples of this as well and it does seem better now.

the trade route stuff still needs some work. the italians were building ships, but they kept stacking them all in the same sea zone. the byzantines seemed to do it right though.

the auto-tax routine is MUCH improved. i now feel confident letting the computer handle my taxes. it now seems to base the taxation on the REAL loyalty level of 120% rather than 100% and will alter your taxation correctly now, unless of course it cant go lower than the lowest taxation level. but it's now mostly safe to let the computer handle your taxation.

i also let the computer handle the title assignments. seems to work well.

i'm not quite sure about the auto-build of building and auto-build of units and agents though. gotta test this one more. doesnt ..seem.. to work right, but i'm taking a look at it.

havent seen any screwy ai crusade wanderings, going back and forth to the same provinces. this is VERY good.

bribing two or more stacks of rebel armies at the same time in the same province still doesnt work.

were the graphics tweaked at all on the campaign map? mine seem a bit better now, a bit brighter and crisper.

jihads markers correctly disappear if the province they are in is lost.

some costs for some units in multi were adjusted. seems good.

cav could stand to be a bit faster. i've had infantry units almost catch, or at least keep up with some cav.

i ..think.. the editor is still broken for castles, but i'll have to check that specifically. it was able to create castles just fine, but when you played them in custom games the walls wouldnt show as falling down. same with towers. you could 'destroy' the walls, but they would SHOW as destroyed; the animations for falling down wouldnt occur. in a way it was kind of cute, because you could walk through walls. but, i'd prefer it fixed.

K.


------------------
http://home.domaindlx.com/takiyama/kraellin/icons-1.gif

[Negative]

So far so good for me. I really like how the cav break away and charge in again. They seem quite a bit smarter now. I got them to charge into the front of my spear formation and they imediatly broke off swung around and hit the flank. Nice!

------------------
It's not the size of the army that matters. It's how you use it.