Demo Discussion Thread

[Sir Beane]

This is a thread for the discussin' of the demo, hence the name. It isn't out yet but it will be soon and we'll need a thread to contain the excitement/crushing disappointment/indifference of those who have played it.

Let us hope it is good, demo legion.

The demo is being released on Friday 20th, 4pm via Steam. Be there or be a four-sided equilateral geometric construction :tongue:.

[Monk]

Maybe a few of the "demo this" and "demo that" threads could get merged with this one? There's an awful lot of discussion going on but it's sorta spread out among a number of threads.

[Sir Beane]

I'd prefer if this thread was free from discussion speculating on when the demo will be released, which is what most of the other threads are full of. I'll close the irrelevant ones and then hopefully the rest will die a natural death as people begin posting in this thread. :2thumbsup:

[Monk]

I'd prefer if this thread was free from discussion speculating on when the demo will be released, which is what most of the other threads are full of. I'll close the irrelevant ones and then hopefully the rest will die a natural death as people begin posting in this thread. :2thumbsup:

That works too. :bow:

[Hosakawa Tito]

I just perused the Steam news page and found no mention of the soon to be released demo. Kinda odd isn't it? I've never used Steam before so maybe I'm looking in the wrong place...

[Monk]

I just perused the Steam news page and found no mention of the soon to be released demo. Kinda odd isn't it? I've never used Steam before so maybe I'm looking in the wrong place...

Nah. They are just likely trying to prevent people accessing it earlier than CA would like, like what happened a few weeks ago. They probably won't announce it until the moment CA gives the O.K.

[miniwally]

This is a thread for the discussin' of the demo, hence the name. It isn't out yet but it will be soon and we'll need a thread to contain the excitement/crushing disappointment/indifference of those who have played it.

Let us hope it is good, demo legion.

The demo is being released on Friday 20th, 4pm via Steam. Be there or be a four-sided equilateral geometric construction :tongue:.

4pm GMT?

[Monsieur Alphonse]

4pm GMT? = 16.00 hours in England.

[Barkhorn1x]

4PM GMT - so that's like 11am EST. Which means I will have to slog through another 5 hours of work before I can leave and get home to d/l.

Crap. :furious3:

I'm leaving early.

...and can someone be so kind as to post some screens this afternoon/evening to whet the appetite? :2thumbsup:

[TenkiSoratoti_]

As a British Empire fan I am heartedly excited about charging my brave Redcoats up that hill to attack yet another US army camping like big girls blouses. Brandywine should be a British battle honour in my opinion, for all regiments involved.

And Lagos? Superb.

British triumphs all around; huuuuuzaaaah!

[Greyblades]

This is going to be the longest 2 hours & 6 minutes of this year.

[ToeAndno]

You think the next 2 hours are gonna be long?

You wait until you click Download, now that is gonna be a long wait.

[Greyblades]

Point taken :bow:

[pyradyn]

It is almost here and now we will see what Polemist does with his power. Should the demo legion not disband....we know the true intent!

On topic I will post everything about it. I am American and have no problem playing the British, in fact I think Prussia should have won the war of Independence

"How are we doing on the field Lt?" General
"Sir the Prussians just announced victory" Lt
"Wait what the Prussians do not even have troops here?" General
"They are just that good sir" Lt
"Well blasts, lets go home...." General


That is how it should of gone down ^_^ :clown:

[Fisherking]

For those who would like to know what they are fighting.


This is a good account of the battle and goes into better detail than most.

http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/ppet/brandywine/page1.asp


This is the best account of a rather lack luster event that has gone down as a decive British Victory.
I was a bit disappointed to see how one sided it actualy was.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lagos

Only an hour to go!

[Haxorsist]

I checked my clock and saw it was 4 and almost peed my pants. After 10 seconds of joy, I remembered I live in a GMT +1 zone. =/

[pyradyn]

Ya sadly we have 38 more minutes left lol but soon we will have it soon!

[Rhyfelwyr]

31 more minutes of PAIN :embarassed:

[Wausser]

I'll kill those last 30 mins by bringing a book back to the library

[Rhyfelwyr]

I'll kill those last 30 mins by bringing a book back to the library

I'll pass the remaining 26 minutes by sitting curled up in the corner, shaking and crying.

[The Fuzz]

Okay, now I'm getting a little excited...

Pity I've got class in an hour and a half, which means that I won't be able to play it until the afternoon. :(

[Zoring]

1am! Who on Earth releases a Demo at 1 in the morning :D Gar. Going to be tired tommorw.

[NagatsukaShumi]

Ugh, this annoying.

I have to set off for work, I clock in at 4pm and my mother hasn't a clue when it comes to PCs, so I can't even leave it to download whilst I am out! I am going to have to contend the servers being gridlocked. Gah.

[ETWUnofficial]

I think they're surely much more likely to be gridlocked for the first couple of hours than when you clock off work?

Right now the official Sega site is practically buckling under pressure, I'm guessing from hits since they announced the demo is gonna be out in like... 12 minutes now...

I am actually dizzy with excitement :2thumbsup:

[Sir Beane]

10 minutes to go! :2thumbsup:

This is terribly exciting. :laugh4:

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Can't wait!

[Monk]

I think they're surely much more likely to be gridlocked for the first couple of hours than when you clock off work?

Right now the official Sega site is practically buckling under pressure, I'm guessing from hits since they announced the demo is gonna be out in like... 12 minutes now...

I am actually dizzy with excitement :2thumbsup:

I have to agree. While Steam is usually pretty good (really good) about having high download speeds, I can only imagine how many people are just sitting, waiting, with their finger on the proverbial button. :dizzy2:

10 (+/- 5 min) to go. God help steam if they aren't right on time, just think of all the "OH GOD ITS NOT THERE" posts that will happen. :laugh4:

[Wausser]

the demo is allready in the list, but I can't seem to download it

[ToeAndno]

Because it's not available yet

[Monk]

Because it's not available yet

Yup. The link is up but it doesn't lead to anything, they are still in the process of setting up the actual download page.

Patience all!

[Ibn-Khaldun]

I'll go and play EB until someone posts their first impressions about E:TW! :beam:

My clock says: 2 minutes to go!

[Wausser]

I'm going nuts right now :smash::whip::2thumbsup::sweatdrop:

[ToeAndno]

I'm downloading now....yeaaaaaah

[Rhyfelwyr]

Wait... I need 2GB RAM to play this on Vista???

EDIT: How come mind wont install yet, you click 'Install Demo' right?

[Greyblades]

One minute to go according to my pc.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

I am downloading with 500 KB per second !!

[Wausser]

my computer says it's time, but no not yet




patience .....

[ToeAndno]

It's up now, we're already downloading it

[Monk]

Wait... I need 2GB RAM to play this on Vista???

EDIT: How come mind wont install yet, you click 'Install Demo' right?

Try restarting steam.

[Meneldil]

Can't download it.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

I have now 4%. It is huge!!

Click on install to download it.

[CBR]

This is gonna take hours to dl...


CBR

[pyradyn]

I believe steam is lagging :P who would have thunk it

[Rhyfelwyr]

Try restarting steam.

:2thumbsup:

I only have 1GB RAM though with Vista... should I be worried? My graphics card etc are all good, its just my PC came with 2GB but one of them caused a crash

EDIT: Got up to 900 KB/s there, 5% complete!

[Monsieur Alphonse]

This is gonna take hours to dl...


CBR

11% in 5 minutes. Not hours.

[Wausser]

Downloading, it's making speed right now

[Monk]

If you get caught in an endless refresh of the demo page while trying to click on Install then restarting steam will(should) fix the problem. I was stuck unable to begin the download as well but a restart of the program fixed it.

[Greyblades]

I'm getting around 200kb/s and still on 1%... this is going to be painfull.
[Edit] Dagnabit it just dropped to 30KBs

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

completely restarting Steam fixed it for me.

[CBR]

11% in 5 minutes. Not hours.
I'm looking at ~120 kb/s


CBR

[Monk]

:2thumbsup:

I only have 1GB RAM though with Vista... should I be worried? My graphics card etc are all good, its just my PC came with 2GB but one of them caused a crash

EDIT: Got up to 900 KB/s there, 5% complete!

That is what the demo is for IMO. One, getting a taste of a game's full product and two finding out if you can run the darn thing. Gauge your PC's performance in the demo but start out with most of the eye-candy turned down.

[timski]

For anyone who finds themselves with an "Install Demo" button that doesn't do anything, I suggest exiting Steam and restarting it. That worked for me.

[knoddy]

urgh stupid steam, still sorting it out cant even download the demo without installing it LE SIGH

[Hosakawa Tito]

I just got the dreaded "Steam server is too busy, try again later" message. Shouldn't you people be at work or in school?~;p

[Zatoichi]

Thanks - restarting Steam did it for me too. Currently getting 225KB/s download speed, which is nice.

2%...

Time for another cup of tea or 3 I think...

[Rhyfelwyr]

I'm at one MB a second!!!

14%!

[Greyblades]

...The KB/s has just dissappeared... I'm downloading at a rate less than 1kb/s:wall:

[pyradyn]

15% at 600 kb/s

[Wausser]

I have no downloading speed atm

[Rhyfelwyr]

You know what they say about how a watched kettle never boils...but this demo is steamin'!

EDIT: Not meaning to rub it in, you can all laugh at me when my 1GB RAM fails to cope...

[The Fuzz]

:gah:

[Wausser]

lol I had a short moment @ 350kb/s but now it's back at 3,1 kb/s

[Monk]

You guys blew up the server.

Smooth.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I'm at around 400 KB/s

There's 91 people viewing the Parliament now!

[Zoring]

So the question i always end up asking around these points, why oh why do i pay for 8mbit ADSL when i get at most 50kb/s ho hum :P

[Fisherking]

For anyone who finds themselves with an "Install Demo" button that doesn't do anything, I suggest exiting Steam and restarting it. That worked for me.


Thanks!

That worked. Now the wait is 2 hrs and 18 min.

Not that anyone else is on the site right now of course…

Beefed up the servers huh?

Easy download no huge crowd huh?


I think some one was wrong!:smash:


:yes:


there were 94 viewing when I came in...it will be more!

[Wausser]

currently at 150 which makes me sad cause I downloaded other demo's at 800kb/s

[Rhyfelwyr]

Wait.. now its says 'Download starting...' instead of a percentage, and the steam icon in the bottom of the screen doesn't show the downloading sign? :help:

[Zatoichi]

Gah! Just went from 14% to 'Download starting...'

Gah I say! Gah!

[Monk]

Wait.. now its says 'Download starting...' instead of a percentage, and the steam icon in the bottom of the screen doesn't show the downloading sign? :help:

Right click the file and click on "pause update"

Wait a few moments.

Right click again, click on resume update.

What's likely happened is that you got knocked down to 0 kb/s for whatever reason and have been continually downloading but the GUI has not updated. This should force it to update.

edit: this will not restart your download. It will resume it.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Right click the file and click on "pause update"

Wait a few moments.

Right click again, click on resume update.

What's likely happened is that you got knocked down to 0 kb/s for whatever reason and have been continually downloading but the GUI has not updated. This should force it to update.

You just saved an ambulance crew from taking a trip... I think someone unplugged the cable to the rooter than gives me my connection because they needed to plug a hoover in. :sweatdrop:

[ToeAndno]

right click and pause, then right click and resume

[Monk]

You just saved an ambulance crew from taking a trip... I think someone unplugged the cable to the rooter than gives me my connection because they needed to plug a hoover in.

:laugh4:

You guys are crazy. Take it easy! Deep slow breathes. Go make a sandwich or something.

[Wausser]

I'll make my diner before I freak out


500 kb/s at 16%

[Monsieur Alphonse]

My dl speed has dropped to between 40% en 100%. It is going to be a long download. I am at 33% right now.

[ToeAndno]

See you guys later, off to kick some yankee ass.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Whooah, were half way there
Livin on a prayer
Take my hand and well make it - I swear
Livin on a prayer

:thrasher:

[Fisherking]

I would say the pause helped after a while…went from 3.1 Kbs to 278...now I am all the way up to 2% complete…


:laugh4:

[Divine Wind]

Download speeds are rather up and down for me. Goes from around 210kb/s to 350kb/s.

At 5% now...:sweatdrop:

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

I was getting 15-80kB/s then i switched to east coast servers from the default scandinavian ones and now its stable at 600kB/s

[Haxorsist]

You bastards! Stop downloading, I'm only getting 40 kb/s!:laugh4:

[ULC]

I have no idea why any of you are having trouble at all! I'm coming into this late with a continuous speed of around 450-520kb/s, with spikes into 600 or dips into 340, but that's it :inquisitive:

Currently 35% btw :2thumbsup:

[Monk]

I was getting 15-80kB/s then i switched to east coast servers from the default scandinavian ones and now its stable at 600kB/s

I just did the same thing and am now enjoying 800 kb/s rates where i was only getting 300 before.

To all curious, if you want to change your download serve rto see if you can get a better rate, go up to file, click on settings. Go to the download tab. Then change your download region.

You will need to restart steam for this to take effect.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Almost done, at a steady ~600 KB/s. Thanks, nerd college internet! :2thumbsup:

[Rhyfelwyr]

79%, averaging around 500 MB/s

[Vuk]

It has installed, I am starting it now. I will post my impressions in 15-30 mins.

[Monk]

70% here. Logging off to enjoy the demo and not have my impressions biased by reading what others thought before I play it. If anyone has problems read what I and others have posted in this thread for fixes to the most common things!

[InsaneApache]

Thanks Monk, it's a lot faster. :2thumbsup:

[Haxorsist]

I'm trying different servers now. UK was better than Scandinavia. I'm trying some more, but I think I'll stay with UK.

[Fisherking]

I just did the same thing and am now enjoying 800 kb/s rates where i was only getting 300 before.

To all curious, if you want to change your download serve rto see if you can get a better rate, go up to file, click on settings. Go to the download tab. Then change your download region.

You will need to restart steam for this to take effect.


That didn’t work so well…

Steam had to restart and guess what happened…

Now It Won’t Start The Download!

[pyradyn]

96% just finished my breakfast and I am ready to kick my own nations ass woot! I do not care I will be a traitor for ETW! Plus I get to send the French to Davey Jones locker

[InsaneApache]

Give it a minute or two, it will.

[pyradyn]

91 posts in 5 hours.....wow lol

[MK_MadMick]

Mines all over the shop regarding speed, but at least its at 6%. I'm off out tonight so I'll be playing tomorrow methinks. :(

[Don Esteban]

I have a tough decision...:help:

Empire Demo or night out drinking with the boys?

I think going out has to win but I suspect a drunken attempt to play at 2am is on the cards :laugh4:

[Zatoichi]

Oh rude words! It's happened to me again - this time I got to 52% before it reverted back to 'Download starting'. GAH! The innernets hate me!

Still, third time's a charm.

[Greyblades]

Hmm... I went to the dentist for an hour and it went form 2% with no kb/s showing to 40% at average 100kb/s :2thumbsup:

[Zatoichi]

Hey, maybe that'll work for me too - I'm off to the dentist! Any dentist will do!

[Terraforce]

2.5 MB/s 67%

[Rhyfelwyr]

I played through the full land tutorial and half the naval tutorial but I got a blue screen crash?!?!

Anyway, it looked good so far, but the camera seems a little awkward compared to the previous titles. Still the graphics are astounding!

[Greyblades]

Hey, maybe that'll work for me too - I'm off to the dentist! Any dentist will do!

Its amazing what having clean(ish) teeth will do.:laugh4:
[edit] woo 50% through... ok I'm going to stop posting percentages before it gets silly.

[Divine Wind]

My UK & Ireland steam server went to around 30kb/s 5 minutes ago. Changed to East Coast server, and its now very steady at 600 kb/s with 36% downloaded. Thanks! :balloon2:

[pyradyn]

So just played land battle and decided well lets just test how good this AI is. I did what not General would have done I marched on the Heavy American position fortified by 3 Artillery divisions. I sent my Cavalry around to flank. In most Tw this would sadly work. Well We marched and engaged kept them busy was going to be all over when my Cav met the rear. To my amazement the AI too 2 line infantry in reserve and their cavalry to meet my flanking force. My cavalry took out theirs but was routed by the Line infantry volleys. It was not to bad I can still try to take the ground except not only did the AI counter my Flank they followed with one of their own. The American flanked me and I was fighting 2 fronts. I Finlay ordered a charge and pushed the Americans across the river where they regrouped and came back at me in full force exchanging volleys before charging my forces. I am happy I lost ^_^ because I knowingly did something stupid and the AI took advantage of it. YAY! now to go back and really right that battle :P

[Gregoshi]

I was at about 2 MB/s during the download with my FiOS (fiber optic) service. The download went pretty fast.

Alas, for me, that was the only thing that was fast. My computer meets minimum spec but the demo was pretty much unplayable. Load screens were over 5 minutes (I know because I was microwaving some food). Even changing screen resolutions took nearly 5 minutes the first time - the second time the demo hung (not responding). I did have the tutorial up for a few minutes - looked great but it was at higher display setting and was a slide show with screen updates in the 1-3 second per frame range. I'll give it a shot later on when I have some more time and see if I can get anything reasonable acceptable at the lowest settings, but I guess I'm probably going to have to wait until I can get a new machine. ~:(

BTW, my specs:

P4 2.53mHz
1 mb RAM (max my motherboard supports)
Radeon X1300 (512mb RAM)
Window XP SP3

[Relic]

Forgive me for this fellas but...
"OMG! WOOT! WOOT!"

It's finally out! :dizzy2:

[Fisherking]

After finely getting the download to restart I got a result of half the previous time…it is now below 14 min. But my wife and kids are all home now…so I don’t know about reports.

Odd thing though, I didn’t get a download screen this time, only a bar and I can’t shop servers…what is up with that?

[Monk]

:daisy:

What a horribly optimized demo you've decided to give the masses, CA. I'd have rathered listened to the complaints of everyone who wanted one than played this. My experience is the same as Greg's, however my specs are much better than his.

3ghz CPU
GeForce 9600 GT
4gb RAM
Windows Vista

With these specs I was experiencing load times of 5 min. The battles ran great, but the load times were horrid. Loading into battle, loading out of battle, changing graphics options, getting to the main menu. It didn't matter, it all took a solid 5 min.

I finished the download around 12pm and have been wrestling with it for the passed 45 min. I didn't play the land battle to it's finish because quite frankly by the time I got into the battle I didn't care anymore. getting out of battle is just as much of a fiasco. If anyone knows what's causing this and how to fix it, i'm all ears. If its simply the game... :no:

What about battles, you may be asking. Well, combat animations are really sloppy. Cavalry charge into a unit, but if the cavalry charges and envelopes the unit, sometimes the horsemen who didnt hit the line just keep riding instead of stopping to fight. As if they are chasing a ghost they'll go on for a long time. Melee animations look unfinished. Artillery crews get stuck in animations while they move back around the cannon to get out of the way, gliding around. Were these things seen in M2? Maybe. But not to this extent.

I couldn't tell you how the AI performed, i was too distracted by the buggy animations.

I really hope this was some sort of earlier build, CA. This was ridiculous.

[pyradyn]

The animations I have to say yes were sloppy, as for long load times I am having lag which is really sad because my computer is not some little rinky dink,

Specs:
AMD 64 Duel Core Processor 3.2 GH 6000+
Geforce 9800
2 GB RAM
Windows XP Pro

[Discoman]

I have 2.8ghz and a double core
Nvidia XFX 8600 GTS (512mb)
2 gigs of Ram

The loading screens were too damn long! I got 5 minutes the first time and later it took around 2 minutes. I was a bit annoyed at the camera controls as When I zoomed it then got horribly slow and my constant zooming in and out didn't help. I didn't really notice the animations mainly because I was too preoccupied looking for a way to flank those bloody yanks. The AI seems all there.... except when my men decided to go in one straight line by accident.

I really loved the Ship Battle, except for the sudden turning of the ship...

[ToeAndno]

Quick reminder:

These are historic battles and so the AI is scripted mostly. This will not give a clear view on how the AI will be in the full game

[Vuk]

Quick reminder:

These are historic battles and so the AI is scripted mostly. This will not give a clear view on how the AI will be in the full game

BS, things like fighting animations, the way that soldiers switch formations, etc is not scripted. I am very disappointed.

[ToeAndno]

I wasn't talking about animations

[scipiosgoblin]

THIS SUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!

I get all the wat to the battle tutorial load screen. I got up to answer the phone. I hear the demo start talking. I come back and look at the screen. It's stuck on the load screen. I can hear the demo. I can move units (God knows where) and shoot. But I can't see anything but the blasted Load screen which is stuck with a tiny bit left to load.

I guess my computer can't handle it. I guess I won't be playing ETW for a year.

Crap!

[The Fuzz]

Well, my computer barely meets minimum specs, so...

*cancels download*

Gonna play me some Broken Crescent.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Hm, not quite what I was expecting. I'm reporting the same problems as everyone else regarding load screens and the like. Framerate on the land battle map (haven't tried sea yet) and even the opening movie was pretty low. The battle itself was somewhat enjoyable although, again, the framerate dampened. I turned the graphic settings down pretty low, too.

That said, I'd like to remind everybody that it's just a demo and that CA has been working on this for a number of years, even pushing the release date back a few times. Have faith, guys. :2thumbsup:

[Monk]

Hm, not quite what I was expecting. I'm reporting the same problems as everyone else regarding load screens and the like. Framerate on the land battle map (haven't tried sea yet) and even the opening movie was pretty low. The battle itself was somewhat enjoyable although, again, the framerate dampened. I turned the graphic settings down pretty low, too.

That said, I'd like to remind everybody that it's just a demo and that CA has been working on this for a number of years, even pushing the release date back a few times. Have faith, guys. :2thumbsup:

The demo was reportedly pulled back into studio to recieve more work to "make it ready and releasable". I'm afraid there's not much that can make me optimistic about the game as a whole if I have to suffer through wait times anywhere close to these. Unless CA comes on these forums and specifically tells me those problems are not in the main game, or other members report that, I highly doubt I will be purchasing the game.

The demo of any game has one main purpose which is to sell you on the full product, whatever that may be. This demo did everything but that.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

OK, my impressions.

Loading times were bad, which is a bad way to earn a first impression.

Played the land tutorial - piece of cake, but fairly well made. It might have skimped a bit on the tactics part of the fight - it mentioned nothing of flanking. It did illustrate how effective cover could be though. Nice introduction to land battles.

Then the naval tutorial - also very little meat in the "how to win" department. There should be something that skips the camera controls if you've played the other tutorial (and vice versa).

Then the naval battle - I felt like I wasn't doing a lot to affecte the battle. If my ships were faster (stupid battleship slugfest :/) I could've crossed the T's of the two french navies right off the bat. Lost 2 ships of 6, sunk or forced to surrender all 7 French ships. Graphics look great. I'd prefer frigates. ~:P

Then finally the land battle. I figured I'd do what I was supposed to and flank the Americans using the other ford to the left. Marched out, no problems started taking fire from American skirmishers, but my light infantry put them away. (Sidenote, there's a "skirmish" button for them but it didn't seem to make them spread out or do anything). Then ran into the main force of infantry (I think the AI shifted them over after it saw I moved to the other ford, which may or may not be scripted). Put my line up against theirs while I worked their flank with my grenadiers and light infantry, eventually forced them back.

Some time during this point the enemy arty took out all my horse artillery (which seem useless) and my general (guess I shouldn't have left him in the open). My cavalry was also pretty beat up.

With my British and Hessian line infantry shot ragged but the Americans essentially done, I sent my cav and light infantry against the remaining American dragoons and arty. Mopping up took some time but was just annoying.

didn't like:
>hand to hand animations seem weak. When a line of infantry crashes into another, it doesn't seem to do much - I would imagine the defender would lose many at the onset, when stuck by a whole bunch of bayonets. The defender doesn't. :/
>the light infantry of both sides can deploy anti-cav stakes. That's all fine and good, but it will apparently kill cavalry that walks through it, even if they're fully aware of it. Lost most of a hussars unit this way (though only realized a while after when I zoomed in on the stakes for chuckles. :/)
> useless tissue-paper horse arty

did like
> AI doesn't seem awful, though it's hard to tell in scripted fights.
> It's cool lining up infantry to fire at each other, though expensive really quickly.
> small crackling skirmishes between a few units

[Sheogorath]

And now the server issues begin.

I got to %30 before my download stopped. Now it says it's 'updating' and went down to %0 :sadg:

My friend over in Scotland reported a similar thing happening at almost exactly the same time.

ITS AS IF A MILLION FANBOYS SUDDENLY CRIED OUT IN PAIN

[Vuk]

I have cancelled my preorder. The game does not run correctly and stinks. That is why I said CA should have spent more time developing it. I could tell by what the reviews said that it was an unfinished product. I realise that I posted the thread pretty late, but I think that they should have made the decision and delayed it a month or two more. It is not close to complete.

[peacemaker]

gah. i warned myself not to visit this thread till ive played the demo since i want to try and get this thing all by myself before seeing your strategies...the demo is SO SLOW!!! or maybe it's just my internet connection...Steam said there was a demo and a big button "play now!" but i just closed that and am hopefully resuming the original demo from this morning. 29% so far after a few hours...hopefully it'll be done by tonight.

[Rhyfelwyr]

What tactics did you use for this battle?

I deployed one unit of horse artillery at the central hill, where the gap in the forest is. The other one was deployed at the near end of the main valley, using a hill for elevation. I sent my light infantry forward first, straight up the central valley. My Hessian Infantry followed them, while the Line Infantry marched into the woods on the central hill, since I thought that might give them cover while they wait for the others to cross the river.

Meanwhile, I sent my Highlanders, Granadiers, and a unit of Line Infantry round the 'alternate' route, with the Hussars right behind them. I let the main opposing forces exchange artillery fire while this group crossed the undefended river crossing point, and took out a couple of units of US infantry. A few more came at my men, but they were sent one at a time (slightly disappointing AI there), and were routed quickly. Just when I was marching this force to take out George Washington, he went forward to join his main force. To my shock, the main US force crossed the main river crossing at this point. I had some men on the central hill and quickly formed my Hessians into a line in the valley, and they mopped up the US fairly comfortably. Soon after, my Hessians crossed the river and engaged the remaining forces with their melee attack. By this point I was rushing the Hussars and Dragoons right round that bit in the river that sticks out, smacking right into the rear of the remaining US forces.

In the end, it was a fairly comfortable win, but great fun nonetheless! :2thumbsup:

[Sir Beane]

And now the server issues begin.

I got to %30 before my download stopped. Now it says it's 'updating' and went down to %0 :sadg:

My friend over in Scotland reported a similar thing happening at almost exactly the same time.

ITS AS IF A MILLION FANBOYS SUDDENLY CRIED OUT IN PAIN

Same problem on my end. How can it be updating if it hasn't even downloaded? Anyone got any ideas on what's going on?

[ToeAndno]

Pause the download and then resume

[Meneldil]

First comments make me feel like a sad panda.

Furthermore, I'm not really found of the battle aspect of the TW serie, and this demo apparently only offer a few battle tutorials. Too bad.

[Sheogorath]

Pause the download and then resume

Yup, that starts the download again.

Still doesn't bring the % back, though. Eh, oh well. It's going at a decent rate.

I'm thinking Steam assumed the download finished normally and is counting the rest of the demo as an 'update' to the partial download. I recall this happened to me once before...so it should be alright.

[peacemaker]

GAH 47.8 kb/s download speed...Im dying with excitement but am also worried about what some comments have been said....:wall:

[Sir Beane]

GAH 47.8 kb/s download speed...Im dying with excitement but am also worried about what some comments have been said....:wall:

You aren't the only one who is worried. The fact that the demo is taking ages to download only makes things worse. :no:

[Rhyfelwyr]

I've had similar problems with the time loading screens take, and the battles have been a bit laggy, even on Low settings. Also, has anyone else gotten crashes playing naval battles?

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Just had a quick go at both battles.
Controls were unfamiliar, so I struggled more with that then the enemy. No giving orders when paused? That can't be right! The AI didn't seem to suck, which is nice.

The naval game was a huge let down. I expected an arcadish approach but wasn't prepared for what I saw. Overly manoeuvrable ships (and not a little, think handbreak turn manoeuvring) and the French sailed dead into the wind at a fair pace while my man o war were crawling along at what should have been the ideal angle (just to the side of the wind direction) Hope the modders can fix this because it's a mess.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Forgot to say that the Naval battle froze up on me too. Also, menus are choppy.
Smooth gameplay though, even if I had to turn stuff down a notch more then expected.

[Brighdaasa]

lol, benelux servers: ~30 k, US east coast servers ~700k, go figure...

[Daimon]

GAH 47.8 kb/s download speed...Im dying with excitement but am also worried about what some comments have been said....:wall:

Try switching to a other region, I switched from Holland (Benelux) to USA East Coast and it boosted my download bij 300 kb/s (I was downloading around the 150 kb/s before)

[Hosakawa Tito]

Both battles played smoothly for me. Load times were no different than COH, under a minute. Melee animations were a bit weird as Monk stated, but my system handled it just fine. My specs:

Processor: IntelCore 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz 12 MB Cache 1333MHz FSB
Power Supply: 750 Watt Multi-GPU
Graphics Processor: Dual 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT
Memory: 4GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHZ - 2 x 2048MB
Motherboard: NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
System Drive: 500 GB SATA 3Gb/s 7,200 16MB Cache
Dual Optical Drives: 20x Dual Layer Burner, 4x Dual Layer Blu-ray Burner
Killer K1 Gaming Network Interface Card

[Darklife]

Your Killer NIC card made my day.:beam:

I wonder whether there's a significant difference between a quad and a dual.
E8400
2GB RAM(the other two is being serviced)
GTX 280
Judging by the rig above I should be fine, although my RAM will probably hold the game back somewhat.

[Monk]

Both battles played smoothly for me. Load times were no different than COH, under a minute. Melee animations were a bit weird as Monk stated, but my system handled it just fine. My specs:

Processor: IntelCore 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz 12 MB Cache 1333MHz FSB
Power Supply: 750 Watt Multi-GPU
Graphics Processor: Dual 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT
Memory: 4GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHZ - 2 x 2048MB
Motherboard: NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
System Drive: 500 GB SATA 3Gb/s 7,200 16MB Cache
Dual Optical Drives: 20x Dual Layer Burner, 4x Dual Layer Blu-ray Burner
Killer K1 Gaming Network Interface Card

~:(

Single core here and the demo runs horrible on it. The actual battle phase is fine but load times are insane, i've never seen a game optimized so poorly. The only one that comes close was The Witcher before they completely re-tooled and optimized it with the "Enhanced Edition."

[Monsieur Alphonse]

First impressions

- As other have stated loading times are very slow. Not five minutes but slow enough to make a campaign taking a lot of time. When I chanced the resolution the screen went blank for more then a minute.
- At first there was something wrong, because my keyboard didn't function properly. Instead of someone out with the W key, my artillery unit started to withdraw. restarting the game solved the problem.
- I set the units on ultra large but there were still 80 men per unit of infantry. Does this only apply to the demo or is this the new unit size?
- Played the battle and defeated the Americans. I let the three Hessians and one light skirmisher unit defend the ford and moved the rest of the army to the other. The AI started to attack me with single units which were easy routed. I ordered my there Hessians to charge the artillery and the AI counter attacked with some line units. One AI unit formed a square when attacked by infantry (not very smart). In the end only an average victory because I didn't see the AI move more units to the other front and my Hessians were routed.
- graphics look nice, not that Private Ryan like gloomy.
- Sound is soft. I had to increase the volume.

I hope this all will improve.

[Fisherking]

I started it up and it was a bit slow but nothing like 5 min. It was roughly 2min. The intro started well but became jittery and unstable after the ships.

When I got to the user screen I went to options and checked. It was on custom and had read the machine pretty well, but not wanting to take chances from what was said before I turned them down a bit.

When I left the options however it CTDed. I restarted the demo and skipped the intro…was still a bit jittery though. I went through the two tutorials ok with a load time of about 1min 15sec. For each. Leaving the battles took as long as getting in however.

I tried the naval battle first but was a bit frustrated by the new interface and quit to come here and see how thing were for everyone else.

my rig is a dell XPS M1710 with a few upgrades.

[Greyblades]

OK I finished downloading about 15 mins ago and I have to say the loading screens are a little longwinded but for me it has been more of a minor wait not the five minute strain the others have been experiencing.
I have done the naval tutorial and tried the land tutorial. Well I say tried the land one but
I ended up staring at a flickering loading screen while the instructor said... something I wasn’t really listening.
My first thought on the naval tutorial... holysheeshkebabthatshipandsealookscool!!! Ahem... :sweatdrop: well the camera is unfamiliar and a little sluggish and I have to say the sails do clip a bit and why is the sea clipping through the deck? It looks like its taken in water.

[Monk]

You guys who are experiencing "Not bad" load times:

What do your specs look like?

Single-core systems? Dual core?

I need some info! :laugh4:

[Sisco Americanus]

My expectations were a bit more muted than many of yours, it seems, but I found it rather enjoyable. I was worried at first that my computer couldn't hack it as it performed horrendously during the land tutorial, even when I turned down the visual settings. I shut down a few processes and loaded her back up to play Brandywine Creek, and it ran pretty well at high settings (although I could see throttling back to medium being necessary for the full game. For the record, my computer specks:

2.4 ghz quad-core
2 gig ram
GeForce 8500 GT 512 MB
Vista 32

If figure the processor is probably fine, but I'm getting some bottlenecking at high settings with the graphics card and the ram, given the demands of Vista. The load times were a bit long, but under 1.5 minutes, usually about a minute.

Anyway, I didn't play through the whole thing as I wanted to just get a feel for it and then try the naval battle before I went back to working on my thesis (taking a coffee break now :juggle2: ), but It's about what I expected. It's not a terribly realistic representation of 18th century warfare, and it definitely feels like a total war game... but neither is it Imperial Glory or whatever that horrid game was called. Overall, I thought it was fun, and it fulfills a desire I've had since I first played the first MTW-- a Total war game set in the age of the musket. The animations may have been a bit sloppy, but I rarely zoom in close enough to tell; I have a hard enough time keeping track of all my units as it is, especially when I split my force as I did in the Brandywine Creek battle.

As for the battle itself, I began by attempting to place my artillery, which I attempted to position in the exact same locations described by Rhyfelwyr, above. Unfortunately, just as one of my batteries moved atop the hill overlooking the clearing directly in front of the main crossing, it came under fire by the U.S. artillery which scored a direct hit within the first few shots: a blow right down the front of one of my still-limbered pieces, taking out the entire team and the piece itself. The other team (there are only two pieces per horse arty battery-- don't know if that's just how things are or if that's specific to the demo) got spooked and took off, reforming some time later in the woods behind my general. After that I just sort of screwed around to see what I could see. I sent the light infantry into the woods directly across the creek from the main U.S. force with orders to skirmish (as someone else said, this didn't spread them out at all, which surprised me; maybe I was doing something wrong), and sent the Hessiens up behind them to occupy the main force while I sent the rest of my units around the other side. Watched the fireworks for a bit before exiting out. I'll play more later.

I will say that I can tell I will enjoy placing my artillery and watching it tear up enemy ranks; I can't wait untill I have more substantial field pieces at my disposal than four 6-pndrs of horse arty! CA seems to have managed to implement the use of formations well while still retaining the Total War feel and customizability; you can still spread your line out thin or give them more depth. I'll give it another play later tonight and see how it goes.

[Greyblades]

Monk my system specs are: Intel dual core 6320 1.86ghz, 2gigs of ram and a Gforce 8800GT
And somehow I managed to play the sea battle on ultra and it was only a little jittery. I have no clue how. ~:confused:

[Sheogorath]

Monk my system specs are: Intel dual core 6320 1.86ghz, 2gigs of ram and a Gforce 8800GT
And somehow I managed to play the sea battle on ultra and it was only a little jittery. I have no clue how. ~:confused:

Computers are mysterious things sometimes. I think it's a conspiracy, myself.
I bet the elephants are behind it. :hairpin3:

[Ibn-Khaldun]

I wonder .. will my pc allow me at least see the main loading screen? :book:
CPU: 2-Intel Pentium 4, 2992MHz
RAM:512MB
Video:RADEON X300/X550 Series Secondary
OS: Windows XP Home Edition, Service Pack 3
:juggle2:

[ConnMon]

I wonder .. will my pc allow me at least see the main loading screen? :book:
CPU: 2-Intel Pentium 4, 2992MHz
RAM:512MB
Video:RADEON X300/X550 Series Secondary
OS: Windows XP Home Edition, Service Pack 3
:juggle2:

I wouldn't bet on that. You need more RAM, among other things.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

oh well.. since I'm a lazy upgrader then I guess I'll have to buy a new computer then..:idea2:

[Zatoichi]

Finally got the demo downloaded and installed after 4 attempts. I didn't have long load times - pretty much a minute at most. I was able to run most stuff on High at 1680 x 1050. I've got a Core 2 Duo 6700 (2.67Ghz), 2 Gigs of RAM and an ATI 4850 graphics card on XP SP3.

The battles were pretty smooth, with a 0.5 second pause every 20 seconds or so. One thing I couldn't get working were the horse drawn guns - they'd deploy but never fire - half the time the horses seemed to be in front of the guns. I guess I was just unlucky with my placement. I had to increase the mouse movement speed because the default scroll speed was like wading through treacle - even holding down shift didn't get the camera moving as fast as default on M2TW. But it was fine after I altered it.

I'm going to go back and try the land battle again to improve on my initial close victory (handy tip - when splitting your forces, don't completely forget about the other half of your army).

I've not tried the ship battle yet, only the tutorial, but that was hectic enough for me with one ship, so I'm not sure how I'll cope with 6, let alone 20 in the full game...

It's definitely whetted my appetite for the full game, which is pretty much what a demo is supposed to do.

[pyradyn]

I went into my CPU usage and Steam is using a lot of it, I downloaded FEAR 2 Demo and I am having the same problems constant lagging FPS is horrible however the Normal game from CD is working just fine no lag at all. Thus my experience with steam has not changed since the beginning. I only wish I could run with out steam. Since ETW does not require steam to play if on hard disk I think I should be fine. I ended somethings and my load times are about a min.

[Divine Wind]

I've just completed the tutorials for land & sea, and won a victory at Brandywine.

System specs:

2.33 Ghz duo core.
2GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce 8600GS
Vista 32

1. Main menu screen has horrible lag (the background cinematic seems to have this problem too, intended?). The menus take a couple of clicks to register where you are trying to go.

2. Loading times for the tutorials and the Brandywine battle are not that bad. I waited a maximum time of 2 minutes tops with my PC.

3. Land tutorial is horribly laggy, and makes things a click fest. No mention of formations, or anything...nothing about squares, stakes, grenades, ammunition etc. You fight a couple of formations of militia and thats it.

4. Naval tutorial is nicely done, albiet a little too lacking in detail as above (nothing about wind advantage). No lag what so ever on the map itself, and the water looks absolutely fantastic. The crewmen climb around on the ropes and rigging, and the ship design is magnificent.

5. Brandywine battle loaded pretty fast, and for some reason did not have the horrible lag like the land tutorial had.

I won't go into too much detail to spoil it for you but here are a few things that I picked up on with the AI.

a. AI seemed to use skirmishers pretty well. They kept engaging any of my units that became seperated from the main army, as well as stay at a distance where they could shoot me, and my chaps could not return fire. Thumbs up!

b. Enemy artillery, did not move for the entire scenario, even though they were completely flanked, and did have cavalry to transport them. Thumbs down.

c. Enemy general did not stay with the main army, but ended up standing next to the cannons for the entire duration. Thumbs down.

d. As I flanked the enemy, their entire infantry force gathered together in good lines, along the only route I could reach the guns. Unfortunately the majority of the enemy cavalry did not join them. Thumbs up and down.

e. I moved both my 6 pd cannons onto a small hill in front of the main force and continued to fire for about 10 minutes with no enemy AI reaction. They just stood there and took it. Thumbs down.

f. I advanced my line infantry (5 units in total) towards the bulk of their lines in good order. Unfortunately the enemy did not match my armies good order, and came at me in pretty piecemeal fashion. This allowed me to bring up my elite infantry (grenadiers, highlanders) and flank the enemy from a small wood on the right flank, which was also elavated and brought the battle on the right to a quick end. The AI left was a bit more organised and they did put up a decent fight, until my right came with the hammer blow. Thumbs up, and down.

g. The AI had a townhouse right in the middle of their position, and they did not fortify it. Thumbs down.

h. When approached at short range the enemy cannons used canister to good effect, and the effect on morale was huge. Thumbs up.

Thats it for now. Time for the navy battle! If anyone has anything they want me to test or try, let me know.

[NagatsukaShumi]

Its going to take forever to be frank, may be leaving it overnight.

EDIT - A point to consider, the demo shouldn't be seen as representative of the game, unless they've specified its a very recent build.

If lagging etc was a huge issue, a prevewi/review somewhere would have picked it up surely?

[Rhyfelwyr]

Forgot to say that the Naval battle froze up on me too.

Do you mean went really laggy, or actually crash?

Because if this is happening to several people, it may be an issue worth looking into. I've had two crashes in just a few minutes play on naval battles, but I've never crashed on the land battles...

[peacemaker]

man, this demo is killing me. I don't know anything about steam, I just went on "demos" then clicked on Empire, then "Install". I'm sitting at 46 kbps....I'm feeling like the game will be out by the time I get the demo working:wall:

[Mailman653]

CPU:Intel Pent 4 3.40GHz
RAM: 3GB
Vid: Nividia 6800
XP 32, SP3

I think I had similiar experiences as everyone else, I tried to change the resolution a few times but ended either with it looking like it froze or just hangs so I just gave up and put all my settings on low plus upgraded my Direct X with the one that came with the demo.

But that aside, I did enjoy it, just have to get used to the controls, which seem identical to M2TW, but I'm still learning all those formation buttons and their functions. At times it seemed it was easier to click a unit and drag it then to click, double line and watch them form somewhere where I don't want them to go.

[Sir Beane]

Just finished the last battle! Execellent! Lost 128 men and killed 780 of the enemy :2thumbsup:.

To be honest the graphics are fantastic, and so is the feel of the battle. Cavalry are a little too fast and have some odd animations but apart from that it was excellent. :laugh4:

[Mithridates VI Eupator]

Okay, this thing has got me utterly perplexed. I seem to have the same problem as Sir Beane et. al. had but with a twist.

I started downloading at the moment it was in the list, and it seemd to go at a rate of ca 1%/min. When it had gotten to 10% I decided to watch some TV while waiting, and when I got back an hour later, it appeared as if the download was finished and it was updating, flashing "download starting" and "updating 0%" in the status column. Figuring that it was ok, I pressed launch, but was horrified when it said "ready to play in aproximately 7 hours 50 minutes". First I thought it was my comp being to crappy, but apart from my processor being a bit too slow, all other thigs are equal to or above the specs.

When the update had gone to 3%, I tried to pause and restart, but that just pushed the percentage back to 0.
I have been waiting all afternoon, and it still says 3 hours and 59 minutes. Is there anything I can do, or will I just have to sit back and wait? It makes no sense that it should be this slow, as the first 10% took an equal amount of minutes.

[Belgolas]

I am running it at max settings with 8XAA at 1920 x 1200. This game runs smoother then M2TW. Load times are about 20 seconds longer then M2TW. This is one amazing demo. The AI as far as I can tell is improved and I took heavy loses in both battles. The land battle I lost half my men and the navy I lost more then half my ships. Although I spent most of my time in awe of the graphics for naval battles watching my men board. I am dissapointed that you can't have a ship board on each side though.

You can dissable the huge flags or have the flag shown when the mouse is over the unit. That is right in the options menu.

Animations need a lot of work though. Mainly calvary charges but infantry is fine. Boarding animations still need work and it is hard to see whos men are fighting who because both sailers have the same look.

One ship while boarding went partly into another ship.

Water sometimes goes through the ship.

The sound is messed up.

Anyways this is one sweet game so far. I am loving that it runs so smooth compaired to last toal war games.

[Belgolas]

To help download the game double click on the game

[Crazed Rabbit]

Hmm. Mixed impressions, but definitely more promising than RTW's demo.

The graphics - I had almost everything set ultra high and it ran smooth. Also, the unit design is so much better than RTW. The battle maps are also more detailed, which I like.

Fighting the land battle;
It seems the AI is somewhat likely to come in piecemeal fashion.

I was moving my main force (minus my hessians and dragoons, which stayed behind as cannon bait) across the side ford. The Americans moved nearly all their infantry over to the town and set up a goodly ordered line. Their dragoons remained with the cannons, which continued to pound fruitlessly at my hidden-behind-a-hill-Hessians. I sent some skirmishers up ahead to deal with the hidden American infantry in the woods. As I finished dealing with them, my three line infantry units are perhaps halfway between my main force and the main American force. Then the whole American force started to move towards me.

I was worried. I immediately began running my main forces up. But the whole American force stopped moving, and only two units continued. These two units continued the assault alone, but my vanguard force was able to deal with them easily.

That was an unfortunate move by the AI.

So I moved my main army up, including my cannons, and pounded the main AI infantry force for a while. The AI didn't move their cannons or cavalry. Nor did they move their infantry force at all. They just sat their and got pounded on by my cannons.

After I while I got bored and ordered my soldiers in. They fought off the Americans. One unit garrisoned in the town hall. So I brought up my cannons and leveled it, killing all the soldiers inside. They made no attempt to escape.

After that, I moved the Hessians against the main ford, still defended by the cannons. I moved my Hussars against the cannons farther from the ford. As I charged my Hessians into the teeth of the cannons, the AI didn't real do anything with the two dragoon units they had with the cannons - they simply stood around, instead of trying to flank my Hessians.

Anyway, the brave charge of the Hessians drove back the American cannoneers and dragoons.

Overall, it felt like a good TW battle, but the AI needs to avoid piecemeal commitment of its forces.

CR

[Mithridates VI Eupator]

To help download the game double click on the game

What do you mean? Double click on it in the "my games" list in steam? Will that speed it up?

[Greyblades]

I have to say i dont realy like how my ships automatically veer away from eachother even when i am trying to get my ship to board another. It is especially annoying when I try to see what happens when the ships collide. :beam:

[ULC]

Yes, I have noticed that the load times are long, so long as Steam is in the background - disabling steam improves the demo's performance considerably.

The controls, although similar to M2TW, took sometime getting used too and I was eventually forced to simply setting them up the old fashioned way. I was able to grasp quickly how to use unit abilities, although there was some minor frustration. Also, although pathfinding seems to be "better", the units really do not seem keen on holding formations well or going somewhere predictable - I had my cavalry all over the place for some reason :freak2:

I found the AI to not be that wonderful at all really. It now responds well to your moves, and is a lot more active, however, it still reeks of stupidity when it has clear tactical advantage - however, at one point I was pleasantly surprised to see the AI use two tactics that caught me utterly off guard.

The first was that after a volley, the US Line, especially the minutemen, would pull back about 30 yards and in good order. This allowed them to hammer me with the riflemen from range, forcing me to walk forward and take the first volley, and quickly falling back again. This may be scripted however, so my hopes are not too high.

The second was pulling troops away from one Flank and covering it with cavalry or riflemen, while using the moved unit to create a inverted star point to hammer one of my flanks. I was surprised to see it quickly move to high ground to take even better advantage of this, and it held it - I could not force them, it would simply morph the formation (ripe for cavalry :evilgrin:) to keep the effect and advantage. Again, this may be scripted, but if it's not then THANK GOD CA GOT THIS RIGHT :2thumbsup:! However, I see possible players trying to exploit the AI's newfound stubbornness to their advantage, time will tell....

Needless to say, I lost at Brandywine :smash:

I found the Sea Battles merely fluff really. I barely commanded them coherently, watched them pull powerslides, and for the most part look pretty. In fact, the main reason I say it was fluff is that I was able to watch as I took my First Rate and plow right through them to their Admiral, get close for a boarding action (while hammering them with a volley of grapeshot) and watched for almost five minutes as the rest of my fleet went about their business and simply handed the French their :daisy: back to them, losing only 2 ships to their 5.

However, I do note that the AI did use encircling and dividing techniques to rip apart my ships - I did suffer heavy casualties. In fact, the battles are so pretty I really did not care if I won or lost, I just wanted to watch :laugh4:

No comments on the tutorials - I skipped them entirely.

[Belgolas]

You guys who are experiencing "Not bad" load times:

What do your specs look like?

Single-core systems? Dual core?

I need some info! :laugh4:

Running smooth no crashes max settings load time under a minute. Everything sett to max. 8 x AA 16xAF 1920 x 1200 (got a 30" monitor on the way:2thumbsup:)

My settings are...
Core i7 920 at 3.6 ghz (stable at 4ghz but am waiting for a better cooler)
Tri SLI GTX 260 core 216 overclocked to the "FTW" settings
12GB of DDR3 at 1600mhz
1TB western digital black (why is black considered performance is wierd, AMD has black edition processors, western digital has black edition hard drive, and XFX has black edition graphics cards)
EVGA X58 (waiting for the EVGA classified)

[knoddy]

yes ima agree with others about the load times, very very long, will try disabling steam next time

very impressed with the game other than that, graphics looked good even on med, i managed to garrison my units in a building hehe fun fun. only major gripe was the load times and just the massive hog it seemed to be for system memory, but that coulda been steam.

Cheers Knoddy

[WarHawk]

very impressed with AI. load times are slow, but hopefully that is steam. everything is smooth once in battlefield, and graphics look very impressive.

one problem i faced was positioning artillery, once unlimbered. couldn't figure it out and my arty was firing into the ground next to it.

[Zenicetus]

The naval game was a huge let down. I expected an arcadish approach but wasn't prepared for what I saw. Overly manoeuvrable ships (and not a little, think handbreak turn manoeuvring) and the French sailed dead into the wind at a fair pace while my man o war were crawling along at what should have been the ideal angle (just to the side of the wind direction) Hope the modders can fix this because it's a mess.

Ugh, that's exactly what I've been afraid of, and griping about, for months. I'm not even downloading the demo until I hear more about the naval battles. So far, it doesn't sound good at all.

[Sisco Americanus]

.

The battles were pretty smooth, with a 0.5 second pause every 20 seconds or so. One thing I couldn't get working were the horse drawn guns - they'd deploy but never fire - half the time the horses seemed to be in front of the guns. I guess I was just unlucky with my placement.



Did you click the Limber/Unlimber icon on the HUD? They won't be able to fire unless you unlimber them; conversely, they won't really be able to move unless you limber them again.

[Rhyfelwyr]

If you try to unlimber them near trees sometimes they just sit there with maybe the guys getting off their horse and getting stuck walking into something.

[Zatoichi]

Yeah I unlimbered them with the button, but they wouldn't fire - first time I did it the horses on one team ran in front of the cannon, the other set of horses correctly ran behind the other cannon, but they wouldn't fire.

I guess what may have happened is that I got the range wrong - maybe their target was too far away, and they couldn't move to it as they were unlimbered?

I'll give it another go tomorrow.

[pyradyn]

Wait wait wait wait wait wait......Where is Polemist? Did he vanish or something?

[Hosakawa Tito]

I tried a different tactic with the land battle. Instead of splitting my force I took my entire army to the undefended ford. The Americans did move their cannon from the main crossing, but did not set up in an advantageous spot. They chose a placement with thick forest, the wooded hill on my right flank but too far back to be effective, moving those 24 pounders to either flank would have been deadly for me. My Highlanders, Light Infantry & Dragoons routed them advancing through the trees for cover to get close for a volley & bayonet charge. My main force just steamrolled their infantry after softening them up with the horse-arty. The husars chased down and eliminated General Washington and the rout was complete.

[Greyblades]

I think Polemist either died of shock or he's too engrossed in the demo to post.

[Necceh]

Played the first land battle, was okay, i'll be honest in that i'm more interested in the whole campaign affair, theres some nice improvements although i think i need to adjust to the tactics for this time period somewhat, i ended up just getting fustrated with my forces not firing and swithcing to a melee charge. Won the battle no problem though.

Gonna go back to Europa Unversails III while i await the release of the game, cheers for the demo CA :).

[Chloe]

Played the land tutorial so far, and I was impressed, The only small thing was that the Spanish did not react when I outflanked them with my general and made a spectacular charge.:2thumbsup:
No lag for me, runs fine and is a great game.:idea2:

[Sir Beane]

Played the land tutorial so far, and I was impressed, The only small thing was that the Spanish did not react when I outflanked them with my general and made a spectacular charge.:2thumbsup:
No lag for me, runs fine and is a great game.:idea2:

I think the Spaniards in the Tutorial are purposefully programmed to act stupid to make it easier.

[Mailman653]

Has anyone tried unpacking the files yet?:laugh4: I think M2TW uses the same .pack format, but I might be wrong. I'd love to take a peek inside the files. :yes:

[TB666]

I usually get 1,4 MB/sec on Steam even when a "hot" game has just been released.
Now it's struggling with 100kb/sec.
What the hell steam ??

[Chloe]

I think the Spaniards in the Tutorial are purposefully programmed to act stupid to make it easier.

Oh, yeah, the scripts!:D
Also, did anyone else notice the building? There were actual soldiers moving around inside it.

[Sir Beane]

Oh, yeah, the scripts!:D
Also, did anyone else notice the building? There were actual soldiers moving around inside it.

I blew it up :2thumbsup:. There were no soldiers after that :laugh4:. Buildings are garrisonable now (or atleast some seem to be) look out for it in the Battle of Brandywine Creek as well.

[Chloe]

I blew it up :2thumbsup:. There were no soldiers after that :laugh4:. Buildings are garrisonable now (or atleast some seem to be) look out for it in the Battle of Brandywine Creek as well.

I'm trying it first thing tomorrow morning:2thumbsup:
And then I will replay the tutorial just so I can blow up the farmhouse:beam:

[Ziem]

Oh goodie! Dual screen mode (I have a matrox triple head 2x 24" and 1 x 19" ). Runs smooth on highest settings but I have to say that I'm not that impressed by the graphics itself. Sharper graphs then MTWII, yes , but I dunno...probably I have to get used to it. MTWII battlefields are gloomy and cold just the way I like it...this is too shiney..too arcade...and ofcourse as usual, high speed movement. But hey, its only a demo and I'm sure that the modders will take care of these thingies once the full version is released.

Z.

[ULC]

That's kind of a harsh judgment since all battles available take place in favorable weather conditions.

I will pity the fool who decides to fight the Ruskies in the rain :mellow:

I just wish it was modifiable - I would soooo setup some battles without scripts to truly test the AI.

[Belgolas]

I replayed the land battle 2 more times. Ist I bunched up all my men including my cannon infantry(by dismounting and then putting them in melee mode). Then charged at the enemy in one be melee ball of men. I got owned :). (this was just for fun)

Second time I sent all my men to the left side. Eventually met there entire force by the town hall building and had a good fire fight. Although the stupid AI didn't move their cannons so I had all my cavalry flant and take out the cannons one by one. In the end I only lost 300 men and only 1 unit routed. The AI did place spikes infront of my cavalry at one point killing a bunch.

[Barkhorn1x]

What a PAINFULL download process!!!! Really, why do I go away and everything looks good at 30% and I come back after 90 more minutes to "updating" and no % at all??

I restart and now I am "updating" at 1%. This is my first experience with Steam and guess what,

I pre-ordered a digital d/l - a taste of things to come? NOT HAPPY!!

[Greyblades]

MTWII battlefields are gloomy and cold just the way I like it...this is too shiney..too arcade
Im just thankfull that CA didnt use next-gen "Realistic" colours in this.

[TB666]

Im just thankfull that CA didnt use next-gen "Realistic" colours in this.
Yeah, it's nice to see color these days instead of the grayish/brown that you see in games these days.

Anyway played the demo and loved it.
The new engine is beautiful on both land and see.
The battles were a bit easy but they were scripted so not a good indication of anything really.
But the land battles were the most fun I thought.
Seeing men march into a shower of cannon balls and musket fire and then unload a volley into the peasants was a lovely thing to see.
Did notice the AI pointing out stakes and setting up ambushes(not sure if that was scripted or not).
Oh and don't use your general as a fighting unit.
He could hardly handle a arty crew.

[jumpyg1258]

Hi everyone, decided to register today after watching this board for a while now waiting for the game to come out. The reason why I am posting is to display my huge disappointment in the demo for this game. You would think that after the delays in the release date for this game, that they could at least release a demo that was somewhat playable. I've never seen a game with a longer load screen in my life. You can your screen res, thats a 2 minute wait. Want V-Sync off, thats another 2 minutes. Then when you get into the game you get a screen like this...
http://jumpyg1258.com/images/etw.jpg
And yes after getting this the first time I decided to update my drivers and that made no difference. It is not like I have a crappy machine either since the game recommended the Ultra settings.

Intel C2D 6750
ATI Radeon 4850 Toxic
2gb DDR2 1066Mhz

Anywho this demo gave me the worst first impression I think I have ever had with a game and I am right now regretting pre-ordering this game big time! :furious3:

[TB666]

The demo is playable, easily.
However the problem isn't with the demo but with your hardware.

[jumpyg1258]

The demo is playable, easily.
However the problem isn't with the demo but with your hardware.

Sure, thats why I have no problems with any other games...

[Greyblades]

huh i havent seen that happen before in a RTS/TBS.
Maybe the download/install messed up?

[TB666]

Sure, thats why I have no problems with any other games...
It's only a game problem if it happens on everyone, it does not happen on my computer and I have seen screenshots that are fine also.
And your screenshot clearly indicates a graphical card problem since I have seen that type of thing happen on my older computers with other games and the problem was always traced back to my graphic card.
So you have to wait and see if ATI will fix it with a update or get a card that don't have the problem.

[ConnMon]

Sure, thats why I have no problems with any other games...

That depends on which games you play. Your computer might be able to handle WoW, but that doesnt mean that Empire will run smoothly. You might also be skimming bare minimum or something of that sort. I'd check all of your computer stats and compare that with Empire's minimum requirements. Good luck. :2thumbsup:

[NagatsukaShumi]

MASSIVELY disappointed by the demo, I just cannot play it on my PC, it takes an age to load, even on low graphics its sluggish and obviously the soldiers then just look terrible.

Looks like its time to look into the possibility of a new computer if I have a chance of playing ETW, gutting really. 2GB Ram and other decent enough specs I presumed would be enough to get it onto medium but evidently not unless the actual game is alot more PC friendly!

I say this as a TW vet, I honestly may have to miss the release date for the first time ever, which is gutting.

[Greyblades]

Mayby its overheating. Has your computer been running quieter recently?

[scipiosgoblin]

I have to say i dont realy like how my ships automatically veer away from eachother even when i am trying to get my ship to board another. It is especially annoying when I try to see what happens when the ships collide. :beam:


I'll tell you what happens. My First Rate T-bones the French Flagship. It gets stuck and repeatedly raked by the French until it sinks.

Meanwhile the rest of my force is routed by the French fleet. I was still learning the controls. The second time I won, losing only two ships, and one of those right at the end before the last French ship surrendered.

[NagatsukaShumi]

Mayby its overheating. Has your computer been running quieter recently?

Mine?

Well it runs EUIII and Footy Manager (with numerous nations selected) fine enough, and MTWII on full with no problems. If anything its been louder!

I was planning on paying off the rest of what I ower for this one and getting another, but heard a new Microsoft OS is in the works and figured I should wait for that.

[Greyblades]

Hmm I still think I would appreciate it better if i saw it in person.
Oh and i won without losing any ships second try beat that! ~D
^^And no i was talking to the new guy.

[jumpyg1258]

Mayby its overheating. Has your computer been running quieter recently?

I have the fan set to 100% and I even tried under clocking the video card to see if heat was the issue. Still had the same problem with this demo.

[Ziem]

Im just thankfull that CA didnt use next-gen "Realistic" colours in this.

Heheheh...colours would splash out of your screen right into your face!! :) :) Anyways I find it too unrealistic. But as I said before, this only the demo.

Z.

[ConnMon]

I'm not even bothering with the demo. I need to upgrade my computer, and I think that's why a lot of people are having bad experiences. That and the load time.
Steam --> :download:

[jumpyg1258]

Another curious thing about this demo is that this graphical glitch only occurs down near the battlefield and not when I am looking from above.

[pevergreen]

Bad luck I guess.

On another note, 14% done in a few minutes :beam:

[scipiosgoblin]

I disabled Steam. That helped a lot. Meaning that I could run the game. For some reason the Land battle tutorial will not run, but the sea battle tutorial and both of the battles run just fine.

I played Brandywine first. I decided that I had no respect for the upstart American Army so I would frontal assault over the primary ford. I sent one unit of Guards and all of the cavalry to overwatch the other ford, just in case they got sneaky.

I moved all of my remaining infantry up to the ford in two ranks per unit. I set the light infantry to skirmish and edged them to the river. The horse artillery flanked the infantry on either side. I pushed the highlanders across first. The Americans tried their best to push them back with a unit of line infantry and two of minutemen. I reinforced with guards and line infantry and pushed the rebels back to make a beach head for the rest of my army.

I moved everyone over creating a large crescent. My light infantry and two line units attacked the cannon to my left and routed them. I then moved my infantry into column and adavnced into the hill overlooking the town hall. I brought the cavalry and overwatch guard unit across the other ford to encircle the rebels.

They had garrisoned the town hall. I began to move forward on a broad front when for some reason my general just had to see what was going on at the town hall. (clicked in the wrong place and didn't realize it.) Some long riflemen ended his career quite rapidly.

Even with this tragic blow, I was able to break the flank of the rebel force. At the same time I sent two units of infantry to take the town hall. (one in either door.) I soon got a message that the town hall was captured. My cavalry arrived and charged the rear of the rebel force and routed the last two remaining units.

All in all a good fight.

The AI performed pretty well, though it could have more vigorously defended the crossing with some reserves. With the frontal assault I expected to get beaten, but Highlanders are good shock troops and will take a pounding and keep on fighting.

By the time I reached the town hall, I had defeated all of the AI's cannon and all but 4 units of its infantry. It did the best it could under the circumstances.

I was just happy to be able to play on the lowest settings. :jumping:

SG

[Ziem]

Intel C2D 6750
ATI Radeon 4850 Toxic
2gb DDR2 1066Mhz

Anywho this demo gave me the worst first impression I think I have ever had with a game and I am right now regretting pre-ordering this game big time! :furious3:


Ah, the infamous ATI cards. I Never ever saw a game where people didn't complain about their ATI graph card. So, toptip, get rid of that ATI thingie and get an NVIDIA card. Personally I've always had NVIDIA cards and never had problems.

Hope it helps....


Z.

[Haxorsist]

I've found out that I'm a terrible Admiral. I tried the naval battle three times and never won. I kept sending my ships in the wrong direction and letting the French cross the T.

I did spank the Americans at the Brandywine though, so it's not all bad. I only used half my force. I just sent them the alternative route over the undefended ford, and killed off their reserve. Then I attacked them from the back taking out the artillery first. The AI didn't respond to my attacking the arty, which was disappointing.

[Mongoose]

Sure, thats why I have no problems with any other games...

I also have a Radeon card, though not the same version, and the demo doesn't work for me either. I've seen people on other forums with Radeon cars having issues too, so I'm pretty certain that it is the card.

[Belgolas]

Hi everyone, decided to register today after watching this board for a while now waiting for the game to come out. The reason why I am posting is to display my huge disappointment in the demo for this game. You would think that after the delays in the release date for this game, that they could at least release a demo that was somewhat playable. I've never seen a game with a longer load screen in my life. You can your screen res, thats a 2 minute wait. Want V-Sync off, thats another 2 minutes. Then when you get into the game you get a screen like this...
http://jumpyg1258.com/images/etw.jpg
And yes after getting this the first time I decided to update my drivers and that made no difference. It is not like I have a crappy machine either since the game recommended the Ultra settings.

Intel C2D 6750
ATI Radeon 4850 Toxic
2gb DDR2 1066Mhz

Anywho this demo gave me the worst first impression I think I have ever had with a game and I am right now regretting pre-ordering this game big time! :furious3:

This is most definitely not the games fault. This is called artifacting and is usually due to heat. Although sometimes it is when you do a bad driver install. You said that you tried the latest drivers. Try uninstalling all the drivers then use a driver cleaning app like CCleaner. Then install the latest drivers. If you still have a problem then do that process again and revert to an older driver. I noticed I would get that a lot on my old 4870 X2. It can also mean a bad overclock on the CPU or Ram.

Anyways welcome to PC gaming where artifacting is common.

[Nelson]

Smoke trails on bullets and cannon shots were altogether nonexistent. I find them distracting and annoying. M:TW2 got them right. I guess they are there to remind players who is shooting at what but I would rather do without them. I hope we can turn them off somehow just like the big flags and green arrows.

[Greyblades]

Ooh the ai are sneaky.
In the brandywine battle I had a arty duel going on, to decide wherther i was going to attack from the front or the rear, over the clearing west(i think) of the main ford and I had sent 2 guard units and one grenadier to the "back passage". Next thing I know a bunch of minute men has ambushed my troops, and thats not the sneaky part, while I was beating off the ambush 2 units of dragoons tore away form the ford while I was preoccupied went through a gap in my battle line and wiped out my artillery. Without battery support I quickly lost the battle in a near defeat.
I have to say i am starting to warm to the AI's abilities.

[ThePianist]

First Impression of the Demo:

It is really fantastic. The land battle is what Imperial Glory should have been. Land battle is good with plenty of good terrain features and hills, valleys and gullies to position soldiers, hiding them from enemy fire and using the terrain for surprise ambushes, especially in wooded areas, which should be abundant in all battle fields of Europe and the United States. However it's also a demo so probably only a portion of the features are shown. The thrill of having soldiers go on a bayonet charge is exhilarating, though I wish it was as dramatic as in Glory (the movie). Since all soldiers can fire, to do a successful cavalry charge without any rider dying feels like quite an accomplishment, and the cavalry looks all the more fearsome when they do arrive. Maybe it's because the uniform look so much more familiar compared to medieval and antique ones. It is much closer to the "real people" of present times, whereas the ancient and medieval world feels more distant. Even with max graphics set at Medium, it is possible to tell that the graphics are very refined.

A drummer beats drums when soldiers go on marching, that is exceedingly good. I wish there were fifes, but drums is a background sound that you can listen to over and over again, but a fife melody would perhaps sound repetitive after a thousand listenings. Still it would be great if there were fife sounds when you zoom in on the unit (but not audible when you are not zoomed it). I like the charge trumpet when a bayonet charge is ordered.

Some distinguishing features are the extra flag beneath the national flag, which makes it really exciting. It means there can be regimental flags. Also the little flag is square for infantry, triangular for cavalry and concave pentagonal for artillery. That is so awesome. The artillery also has exceedingly great range and that is something very exciting as well. I am glad it is compensated by being inaccurate, however repeated firing would definitely take down whatever you are firing at. I hid a unit of horse-drawn artillery behind a hill and some enemy artillery kept firing at it and eventually destroyed the unit. Another great feature is the ability to do indirect fire. I put the other horse-drawn artillery on the reverse side of the hill and had them fire upslope. Some shots hit the ground but others were able to make it over the hilltop and then unto the target. That is very exciting.

In land battle each unit has a drawn field-of-fire in the shape of a section of a circle deployed in front of them. When ordered to move, each unit also has an arrow pointing to where they are going. Overall this make everything look precise like the map diagrams seen in the intro video.

I am also so glad the intro video did not have a speech about "control" and "power", etc.

For some reason I think the devs spent more time and energy on the sea battle aspect since much of the European empires from 1700+ were made by naval power, so the sea battle is exceptionally good: the interface of curved arrows, the ability to fire broadsides from left and right, the ability to disable sails and to board the enemy ship. The water is beautiful, such that I wish I was on that ship sailing (but not in combat).

Now, compared to the intro video, which is how I imagine the game, the sea battles (even with max graphics set on Medium, definitely live out to the expectation, every bit of it. Every bit. It's utterly éblouissant.) The land battles lack one thing: the land does not crater when cannonballs hit the ground, the way the water would burst upon the sea when cannonballs hit the water. I suppose the difference would be that the land needs a crater to stay there afterwards whereas the sea doesn't. Maybe it's visible on graphics higher than Medium? Another odd thing is, the British line infantry, even when deployed in two lines, only the first line would fire, the second line stands idle. In comparison, even the Spanish militia can fire from all ranks and file, not just the most forward line. Maybe because it's before Napoleon invented the "first line fire, second line aim, third line reload, and then cycle"? Or maybe they acquire that skill after leveling up? Other than that cratering and the line infantry detail, every other detail is well-done. The soldiers have so many different postures that it does not look like a game unit, but like a snapshot of real life. The smoke caused by the firing of muskets is impressive. The difficulty of the cavalry in charging into the forest as opposed to on the open plain, is realistically portrayed. Actually one more request: the building in the tutorial scenario, after collapsing due to artillery fire, it just became a mound of earth (as if it was pulverized into powder). Could the collapsed buildings graphic look more like the ones on Company of Heroes?

And the atmosphere is really well made. The menu has breathtaking view of background animation, huge armies moving on the field and lining up to fire. The menu music is so much better done than, say, that Vegas game. It is cinematic and gracious and epic and idyllic at the same time, evoking the life during the time/era when people were expected to be gentlemen, even with the imperial wars going on. The user interface look like the hardcover of 18th century textbooks or perhaps wooden furniture from the Victorian era, and that is exceedingly good. It is not a major detail like the actions on screen, but cumulative little details like that (plus music) actually contribute more than major details. The menu selection of the unit, especially the munition-category buttons of the artillery and the ships look like buttons made of cast metal, and that is also excellent design. I enjoy reading the unit descriptions as always (would help the preservation of vision if font was a bit larger).

My computer might be falling behind in speed, because it takes 10 second just to make the main menu appear after a battle is won. It also takes 20-30 or 30+ seconds to load a battle. Even the EB mod, with lots of extra scripting, loads faster than that. I might have difficulty campaigning at that speed.

Overall, I expect this to be the best RTS game of 2009. I have seen nothing of the campaign map yet, but I can't think of anyone else who can make something this good with this epic of a scale.

[scipiosgoblin]

Smoke trails on bullets and cannon shots were altogether nonexistent. I find them distracting and annoying. M:TW2 got them right. I guess they are there to remind players who is shooting at what but I would rather do without them. I hope we can turn them off somehow just like the big flags and green arrows.


You could always play the game on the lowest settings. I don't see smoke trails at all. ;P

Just kidding. I'm really envious of everyone who can play this on the high settings. At least I'll have something to look forward to.

SG

[seireikhaan]

Erh...

Seems a tad wonky...

[Greyblades]

My computer might be falling behind in speed, because it takes 10 second just to make the main menu appear after a battle is won. It also takes 20-30 or 30+ seconds to load a battle. Even the EB mod, with lots of extra scripting, loads faster than that. I might have difficulty campaigning at that speed.

No thats happening to everyone, heck Monk (I think) was complaining about waiting more than 5 minutes to load a tutorial.

[Gregoshi]

Update: I had some time this evening so took the time (5+ minute loads) to drop the graphics to "low" and the resolution to near the bottom end (1280x720 I think). This made a big difference. Load times were more along the lines of 2-3 minutes with the load bar moving more often than not. The land tutorial and Brandywine battle (a close victory) weren't too bad from a playability standpoint. There was one noticable slow down as several units engaged at the secondary ford. The graphics, while not drop dead gorgeous on low, were acceptable (this from someone who remembers Pong) if you kept your elevation up high. Down low and close, men turned to smeared rectangles with arms and legs whole glided along the ground anywhere beyond close range. However, since I prefer controlling things from on high, this was no real inconvenience. I haven't tried the naval battle yet, so I can't comment on it.

The experience so far once I got the demo to perform at a passable level, wasn't too bad. However, I don't see me getting ETW until I get a new computer.

[pevergreen]

Smoke trails on bullets and cannon shots were altogether nonexistent. I find them distracting and annoying. M:TW2 got them right. I guess they are there to remind players who is shooting at what but I would rather do without them. I hope we can turn them off somehow just like the big flags and green arrows.

Much easier to turn those arrows and flags off now, from the options menu!

edit: impressions timeu!

I've played the Land battle tutorial and the Land battle.

Graphics were set to medium by the game, looks great. Units respond well, perform how they should and just look sooo cuuuute.

AI ambushed me and ran back a bit when it didnt look good. If I didn't have my general just behind my line of troops, I would have routed.

I ended up losing my general but I had about 300 infantry flank their artillery and melee them out. I lost about 150 to canister shot. Wow...so good. I saw one cannon shoot out and it ripped through 4 charging units. Killed about 15-20 per unit.

experience for melee units (only ones i checked) gives +1 to a few stats, like it used to.

My only issue at the moment is that when you zoom in, the game doesnt scroll fast enough.

For those of you who complain about poor performance, just think back to the M2TW demo. That was choppy as hell, must have been about 5 fps. The game came out and it was fine.

As for load times, the longest load ive had was about 50 seconds, and that was from tabbing out and in. Battles load and go back to menu in about 40 seconds, my computer aint no beast either, its a laptop.

[peacemaker]

argh. The demo died on me as soon as I tried to launch it, I guess I'll try to re-download it....

[Belgolas]

To get rid of the banners go into the options menu.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I've figured out what "skirmish" does. When enabled, the unit will avoid physical contact (turning and running automatically). Used it to finish off some brave but foolish American rifles once. They chased my skirmishing light infantry back into some Hessian line.

The AI is gutsy but not (usually) suicidal with charging infantry. I like it. If you aren't paying attention and they sneak up a long rifle on an outnumbered unit (light infantry seem to be targeted particularly) they'll run them right over.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Only got through the land tutorial so far. My load times were alright, but my graphics were ranging from passable to terrible, so I'll have to readjust them slightly.

[Polemists]

Greetings all :), I'm not usually on during a friday, but it was a pleasant surprise to return to so much demo activity...and of course...the demo.

To the demo legion.


Know that much like liberty, we have fought and prevailed. We had our opponents in the monarchy (mods), the forces of oppression (slow ca devs) and even our countrymen (fellow orgahs). We prevailed.

Much like the legions of the past though, we have won our battle. It is time to disperse. To enjoy the fruits of our labor.

There shall be other demos though, other foreign fronts. When that time comes we shall rise up again. To fight tyrranny (Slow demo updates) wherever they may appear.

Vive le Liberty, Vive Le Demo :laugh4::laugh4::laugh4:


Well i'm still downloading it but tonight I shall be playing it :). I think it was well worth the effort.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Right. I'm now getting an error saying that


The game is currently unavailable. Please try again at a later time.

...whenever I try to launch it. I have already tried redownloading. What gives?

[pevergreen]

Restart steam? If that doesn't work, reboot?

Also you could try launching the actual .exe

Go to your steam folder, steamapps, common, empire total war demo.

[Greyblades]

Greetings all :), I'm not usually on during a friday, but it was a pleasant surprise to return to so much demo activity...and of course...the demo.

To the demo legion.


Know that much like liberty, we have fought and prevailed. We had our opponents in the monarchy (mods), the forces of oppression (slow ca devs) and even our countrymen (fellow orgahs). We prevailed.

Much like the legions of the past though, we have won our battle. It is time to disperse. To enjoy the fruits of our labor.

There shall be other demos though, other foreign fronts. When that time comes we shall rise up again. To fight tyrranny (Slow demo updates) wherever they may appear.

Vive le Liberty, Vive Le Demo :laugh4::laugh4::laugh4:


Well i'm still downloading it but tonight I shall be playing it :). I think it was well worth the effort.

Who are you and what have you done with polemists. :P
Huh... i was kinda expecting some thing more... freak out-y

So what are you going to obsess about now the demos out?

[Megas Methuselah]

You're a deserter, Polemists. All you did today was enjoy RL while the rest of us played the demo to death and beyond. :clown:

Anyways, after winning my first go at the battle (losses, 471; kills, 800 and some), I decided to go again. Being a big fan of bayonet and cavalry charges, I decided to go for a thorough full-frontal assault across the first ford with all my troops in a charge.

God, it was bloody chaos. I slowly gained ground, and finally advanced to the town hall, fighting in melee the whole way. Me and the AI would just send routed units right back into the fray. Eventually, though, the AI brought in fresh units of Long Riflemen and Minutemen and won the battle through sheer force of numbers.

But it was sooo fun. And like pever said, the soldiers were soooo cuuute! :yes:




As for the graphics, I turned off shadows, bloom, grass. Everything else I set to high. The loads were long, but the battles were not laggy. It was ok. I'm going to hope that pever is right, in that the actual game will play out better in terms of performance.

[hoom]

Its fairly common for demos to be using older engine code with debugging code still in place = poor performance.
Also I think the way that CA scripts battles can sometimes have a negative impact on speed.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Alright, turned out it was my firewall - I'd only allowed Empire to connect once, instead of forever. My opinion of the demo is that it is alright - but never try to CTRL + ALT + DEL out of it. Ever. The menu lag is immense.

[Swoosh So]

So i came here looking for info from peeps who have played the demo, so i click the sticky after seeing a mod post that theyre shutting down demo threads, and i find this completely stupid and useless sticky post... joy.

[Megas Methuselah]

... What?

Whatever. The mods are only against the people (i.e. Polemists) who would continually make posts about how much they wanted the demo. Those kinds of posters are patriots, IMHO.

[quadalpha]

Anyone else have a problem with limbering the horse arty? Once the horses/men/gun got stuck on each other and refuse to do anything.

Your Hessians will be under cannon fire from the very beginning, though moving them forward a bit onto the reverse slope seems to solve that problem. They will still be fired upon, but to no effect, and your horse arty can then get into position on your left. I haven't tried, but it seems that if you don't make a move to either ford, the Americans will quite happily take a pounding while trying to bombard your Hessians.

For those who haven't been to TWC's thread, Jack Lusted says:

- Use groups in the naval battle to make your ships follow the leader.
- Regarding scripts: Brandywine - Main force of AI is under AI control but only held in position, is then released to AI control after different times based on which ford you go to. Lagos - not scriped at all.

Edit:

From the official forums -

c:\Documents and Settings\**your name **\Application Data\The Creative Assembly\EmpireDemo2\scripts\preferences.empire_script.txt

and change the value:

battle_difficulty

I just checked mine, and it seems that the default setting for the demo is "normal" (there's also "easy", "hard", and "vhard").

[Mailman653]

ThePianist
Some distinguishing features are the extra flag beneath the national flag, which makes it really exciting. It means there can be regimental flags. Also the little flag is square for infantry, triangular for cavalry and concave pentagonal for artillery.

Which are the secondary flags your talking about? Cause I've only see the one flag the model carries and then the big marker flag which I turned off. I'd love to see regimental flags, been talking about that for ages. Even if its not with the "right" regiment just the fact of having that second flag there would be awesome.

[Polemists]

Well I guess I could have done a gaint spam post that just did Demo Demo Demo for a page, but really i'm just to ecastatic at having demo to do that. Plus it's 8 am in the morning and i'm sleepy.

Well other then waiting for the demo to download i'll probably get geared up about etw release in a week ro so :)

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Thanks for the headsup re Jack, quadalpha. I'm a bit disappointed that the AI doesn't always shift the cannons if you go through the unprotected ford. I guess it figures that the cannons can shoot at (though not hit) targets almost the entire time, so it doesn't "think" that they need to be moved.

[knoddy]

played the naval battle, got my ass handed to me, but it was really good, the only thing i didnt like was the men jumping onto the enemy ship, not because they were jumping just cos they were jumping like 10 feet in the air lol. looked a bit weird, to all the people who thought it was arcady i dunno wot there problem is, YES it is a little unrealistic, but i found the turning circles not all that small. i dunno i liked it, im quite excited to get the full version and give it a whirl!

Cheers Knoddy

[Polemists]

For those of you having download problems, though I think more people over at Total War forum center are having problems rather then here

Steam Settings > Downloads > Download region and change it

Seems to be the only real advice over there, they have a 21 page and counting thread going for download issues and speeds but that seems to be the only relevant advice.

I look forward to testing it out in a few min when I head home :)

[Sisco Americanus]

In case there's anyone else out there like me who hasn't played a total war game in a while, let me assure you that There IS friendly fire in the naval battles. I took out the masts of three of my own ships with an accidental broadside down the front of the column.... :oops:

[Marten]

Good morning gentleman,

after downloading, cursing steam, installing the game and watching ... here are the results from the german jury:

After chanching the server to east coast, speed increased from average 52 KB/s on german, italian and dutch servers to 580 KB/s. I will keep that in mind for future downloads ... :yes:


I started the pc anew after finished download. Then to the demo! First i disabled Steam. Nice Intro - think i've seen that before in some vid - the automatic settings for hardware say "High" on all options.


My System: 2.4 Dual Core, XP32 and SP3, 2 GB RAM, 9600 GT with 1024 MB RAM. Resolution in game 1440 x 900, 4x anti-aliasing, shadows on medium, depth on. Average of 38 - 40 fps. I changed later to 1280 x 800 - result was smoother scrolling and faster camera action.


Load times are similar to Med2 - maybe 5-10 sec longer. I played the land tutorial first - and i loved what i saw. Graphics are good, i had a bit "crackle" in sound- so i changed the sound options from "windows default" to "stereo headphones" - did it for me.


I played the whole demo 2 times, got frightened first time when the screen seems to freeze after "victory" - but just 3 seconds or so. I won "Lagos" on first time with capturing 3 french ships and loosing 1 of my own. I missed a "follow" button like it was in imp glory. But grouping seems to force the ships to follow the leader. I think i will never play battles with more then 8-10 ships in my fleet ... :sweatdrop:


To remove the markers and flags: i had to do it every time again when i started the demo. Anyone some resolution for that?

My conclusion: I like it! :yes: Can't wait for the retail version. And i will buy 1 GB of RAM to be sure ...

Edit: Wooooooooooooooooooooot! I'm a member Baby! ;)

[Skullheadhq]

Argh... The demo is not available...all the waiting for nothing

Edit: Verify the Integrity of the game cache

[Polemists]

The demo is avaliable, dunno why your upset.

Anyhoo, hey guys when your downloading if it does updating or goes back to 0% just ignore it, if you go into your steam folder and search for Empire total war folder, right click on properties and you should see the number increase.

Mine was still saying 0% even when it went from 0-91mb and then to 138 mb.

So just watch the folder and not the little 0%, I switched my region to another region and it helped alot to, went from like 3kbps to 50 kbps.

Good luck downloading all :)

[Wausser]

Hmm just played the tutorials, pretty good load time(around 1-1.5 min), only the game crashed during the land battle..


My system: Intel Q8200 @2,33 Ghz, 4 GB Ram, Asus EAH4850 1GB @ Vista Ultimate

[InsaneApache]

I got it and ran it. It took about 10 minutes loading the opening, it still hadn't finished so I dropped out, turn off all the background programs and tried again. Same result.

So I havn't had chance to play it but, as I suspected, like Greg I'll have to fork out on a new system to run it. Admittedly I'm on an ancient machine but I'm still disapointed.

Another thing that hacked me off was being only able to play it whist online. My connex is a bit dodgy ATM so not a happy chappy here.

[hoom]

Well I had little issue downloading it in NZ.
No problem with the intro movie.
Auto settings were ok, set most stuff to high for my C2D e6600 @2.9ghz with 2GB DDR2 & Radeon 4870.

Weird flickering of the UI in both tutorials & the Naval Battle (haven't played the land battle), goes away after you change a graphics setting that forces the game to reload the scene.
Could be related to having forced AA & AF in Catalyst Control Centre or maybe being on Win7 x64 Beta?

Game runs ok otherwise even after I bumped everything to max settings.

Lost the naval battle trying to dismast & capture the frenchies :no:
I think I lost a couple of my own ships in there :oops:

I believe the delays in loading after changing settings is because they are presumably using dynamically compiled shaders.
There are so many variables that affect shaders (resolution/texture detail/unit detail etc) that it can be best to recompile the code any time that its changed rather than to pre-compile for every possible option.
It means that you have to wait around when you change stuff but enables more effects to be used.
Other games do the same thing eg Battlefield2 takes ages to recompile the shaders when you make minor graphic changes too.

Also its re-loading the scene with the new settings.
In earlier games you couldn't change all settings from within a battle, had to go out to the main menu to make the changes & it would then load the changed effects next battle etc.

[Polemists]

Another thing that hacked me off was being only able to play it whist online. My connex is a bit dodgy ATM so not a happy chappy here.

Steam does have a offline mode, and empire total war full game can run in the offline mode.

Not sure about demo, but I assume it can run with steam in offline mode, since most demos can.

[Wausser]

Yeah just beat the crap out of the yanks :smash:

[MK_MadMick]

Not played demo properly yet. Just messed about and admired the graphics which are superb.
I do have a decent PC.
XP32
4 gig of ram
ATI HD 4800
Intel Quad Core CPU.

I think many peeps will need to do some sort of upgrade to make it run smoothly.
Cant wait for game to come out. I just hope and pray it runs smoothly in multiplayer.

[Monk]

No thats happening to everyone, heck Monk (I think) was complaining about waiting more than 5 minutes to load a tutorial.

Indeed.

I did what greg did and decided to struggle through the constant reloads (and long load times) to try and turn down the options, despite meeting all the requirements. :dizzy2:

The result was a bit surprising. Load times are down by two min. Main menu loading takes about 1 min-1.30 and battle loading takes about 1.30 to 2 min. Crazy stuff. It's still a bit of a hassle but not nearly as bad as the 5 min snore-fest I was dealing with when I first installed. Once I actually got to play the demo and enjoy it, it wasn't so bad. Animations are still bugging the crap outta me though. :laugh4:

I'll tinker around some more with options to see if I can find a balance later. It's probably my single-core that's doing it, all you guys reporting nice load times seem to be running dual/quad cores. :no: Ah well. The battles run great and I can live with 1-3 min loads.

[Sir Beane]

Which animations in paticular bothered you Monk? Personally I thought that infantry seemed to do quite well (they certainly responded to orders faster). It was cavalry that annoyed me, they seemed to move much, much too quickly for my tastes.

The mount/dismount animation worked well I thought. And the cannon loading and firing animations weren't too bad either.

I'm glad you got the demo to run more smoothly. If you play it on a high - power machine you can really appreciate it a lot more I think. It's a shame CA didn't optimise it very well. :no:

[Wausser]

hmm I keep getting close defeats on the naval battle, anyone gut suggestions to beat those wine drinking lads?

[Sir Beane]

hmm I keep getting close defeats on the naval battle, anyone gut suggestions to beat those wine drinking lads?

Try splitting your line in two and attempting to get a ship on either side of each French ship. Taking two full broadsides on eitehr side should demoralise them nice and quickly. :2thumbsup:

ps. This tactic is theoretical, I haven't yet tried it in the naval battle.

[Husar]

Well, I played it on my notebook with the following specs:

Core 2 Duo 2GHz
2GB DDR2
256MB 8600M GT
1920*1200 24"

and it works, on medium without AA or anything like that.
It looks a bit worse than M2TW does on the same machine IIRC and it's not completely fluid on these settings, but it works. May buy a new desktop PC sometime this year but we will see.

I wasn't too impressed by the americans, they kept sending single units to intercept my forces so I easily overwhelmed them, they got my artillery but then I didn't really need it anyway.
Got a bit confused by the two fronts(I scroll around less when the game lags a little bit) so that helped them. In the end they had only a few units around that farmhouse while I had not lost much more than most of the light infantry, most of my hussars and some dragoons, then I just went there and shot them dead with half my infantry, not really needing the rest.
Well, it was just one battle, I'd expect a bit more in the campaign though.

The sea battle I lost the first time around, then won the second time, I'm sort of missing a follow feature that makes one ship follow the other in the same path, similar to the convoy they start out in.
That ships can almost turn on the spot is also quite weird, you cannot even plan a course around another ship or anything like that and the curved direction arrows are useless because the ships never follow the curve, they turn really tight and the curve becomes straight...
Doesn't mean it can't be fun, but it could be better, if ships actually followed those nice curves for example.

Oh and what I really like is the detail on the ships and how they sink, they seem to sink more realistic than they move.

[Monk]

Which animations in paticular bothered you Monk? Personally I thought that infantry seemed to do quite well (they certainly responded to orders faster). It was cavalry that annoyed me, they seemed to move much, much too quickly for my tastes.

The mount/dismount animation worked well I thought. And the cannon loading and firing animations weren't too bad either.

I'm glad you got the demo to run more smoothly. If you play it on a high - power machine you can really appreciate it a lot more I think. It's a shame CA didn't optimise it very well. :no:

Melee animations are the biggest cringe factor for me. While some render beautifully (it's amazing to see two soldiers lock in combat, slamming their rifles together, trying to stab each other with a bayonet) half the time they don't engage properly and you'll get soldiers gliding about. The charge animations get hung up for a long time on impact too (a problem from m2 and R), and I find it hard to believe that zero troops would die on impact if Hessian line troops charged into them at full speed with their bayonets drawn.

Cavalry troops will sometimes charge right passed a unit they were sent to attack, sometimes continuing to charge into the wild blue yonder for a long time before realizing "Oh wait. I missed by target thirty yards back.

The rest isn't bad, it's really the charge and melee animations that just feel... unfinished. Maybe hoom is right and this is a debug version of the code and we'll see improvements in the final game. I dunno.



I'm glad you got the demo to run more smoothly. If you play it on a high - power machine you can really appreciate it a lot more I think. It's a shame CA didn't optimise it very well. :no:

Indeed.

I'm not as frustrated as I was earlier because I actually got the blasted thing to work. They likely didn't give much time to optimize because they were too busy just getting it to work right. :no: The AI is heavily scripted so I couldn't really get a good look at its capabilities, but I really loved the naval battles. Yeah they are arcadey, but i found them insanely satisfying (double-broadside ftw :smash:)

[hoom]

So my flickering UI was either because of the forced AA or AF, much more sensibly behaving with them off.

I well beat the French in Lagos MkII :D

Swept along their line with all my ships in a group following the lead ship in line astern.
The last in line sank the French lead ship as she was turning to double back, 2 surrendered as we went past & I dove the Namur between the 2nd to last & last French ships, giving them both a good raking broadside with solid shot.
Doubled back with the Namur between the two lines, engaging both & with the rest of the squadron coming round the back of the French line.
The French 2nd line all surrendered pretty quick.
I did get the Namur alongside one but it seems to have managed to surrender before there was any boarding.
That left only one of the first French line in the fight (heading away with full sail) but all my ships were facing the wrong way & I had a good muddle to get them around (the automated pathfinding did pretty well here, it does manage to allow collisions but generally seems to maneuvre the ships out of each others way without looking forced)
A lucky long range broadside with chain shot from the Namur dropped the foes mast in the water & the mere sight of my squadron approaching from various directions caused a surrender.

[Argent Usher]

I have only played the tut and the land battle (had some probs with my new steam account and then the european servers were all :furious3: but my thanx goes to the east coast).

I can only play with 1200x800 (my TFT screen max) but the autodetect decided ultra settings could be easy handled (:inquisitive: Dual Core; 2 gig; MSI GeForce 7900 GTO; XP) so i tried it out and it was Ok.

Contra:

Scripts or AI (there were some weird things as i moved my troops to the spanish enemy (hidden in the wood) nothing happens no reaction of the AI but i can't make damage)

the lightsources still over saturate colors as in MII (especially red and white)

high variance in the quality of the environment (as example the building are barely ok but the scrambled house :thumbsdown:, the grass vegetation goes from really good -> lousy, same with the pieces of damage)

The units moving all as under Amphetamine maybe I'm just too old.

The demo doesn't includes an unpacker Or ???


Pro:

The game is defintiv an improvement in the TW serie an there is the hope to change again all bugs by the dev teams (CA and modders).



Regards A.U.