View Full Version : The Legions of Rome
DemonArchangel
11-13-2003, 01:11
If a line of legionaries discharge their pilums, will it lessen the effect of the shields on the recieving end?
Nice idea - the engine currently tracks individual soldier's stats and updates their experience, no reason they could not make some hit by pila shieldless for the duration of the battle.
Ahhh... I hadn't thought of it that way Simon.
That would be great. Naturally we can't expect CA to make it so the troops drop the shield. It could be made so that some of the non-deadly hits produce that effect.
Of course other types of javelins could do this as well.
SgtAndrew
11-14-2003, 08:11
The stats of individual soldiers are taken? I didn't know that. Cool.
Yes the game remembers what each man has in terms of kills and calculates each individual fight to find the outcome.
Look up you logfile for MTW and if you open it with excel you can see all soldiers, how many they killed (FFs too if they are ranged), how they exited the battle (killed, captured, routed, withdrawn or victorious) and various other things. Quite interesting, as you will normally notice it is a small number of troops that pulls up the rest of the unit's Valour (but in a fight they still determine Valour on an individual basis). It is not unusual to find about 10 men have killed about 90% of the enemies killed by that unit.
Jacque Schtrapp
11-17-2003, 21:09
Interesting idea. I think it would be neat if they could incorporate that into the game. Tossing pila was more effective at rendering shields useless than it was about killing enemy soldiers.
Quote[/b] (Jacque Schtrapp @ Nov. 17 2003,15:09)]Tossing pila was more effective at rendering shields useless than it was about killing enemy soldiers.
I bet it was a lucky man who took a pilum on his shield. My guess is that the pila killed and wounded a lot of men. It had to be quite heavy. When hurled into a mass of troops I expect pila tore up everything they hit. Shields, helmets, arms, legs, faces, shoulders, chests, everything.
I doubt CA is going to track whether a man's shield has been rendered useless or not. Realistically this would also require CA to create shieldless soldier graphics for every shield bearing unit in the game A rather unneccessary drain on system resources don't you think? I think the pilum is simply going to be treated as a heavy throwing spear (like the one thrown by the Bonnachts) and that's that.
I had no idea the engine tracked the performance of every man in a unit I only thought it tracked their individual morale during combat. Good incentive to take a look at the log file after a particularly bloody battle.
Quote[/b] (Spino @ Nov. 18 2003,09:30)]Realistically this would also require CA to create shieldless soldier graphics for every shield bearing unit in the game A rather unneccessary drain on system resources don't you think?
Well, if you notice my point here.
Quote[/b] ]Naturally we can't expect CA to make it so the troops drop the shield.
Why should we demand that they drop the shields? Yes it would be cool, but the effects are what matters.
Besides even if we did demand they dropped the shields it would most likely not be that hard. Most units with shields are going to be like in MTW where there is just added a shield to the figure (for instance the Vikings are just Peasants with a shield).
Quote[/b] ]Why should we demand that they drop the shields? Yes it would be cool, but the effects are what matters.
Besides even if we did demand they dropped the shields it would most likely not be that hard.
So what do you propose? Forgoing all graphic representation of a non-lethal pilum hit while applying a defense/armor penalty for shield bearing troops who have been struck by a thrown pilum but not killed? I guess I'm ok with that.
Quote[/b] ]Most units with shields are going to be like in MTW where there is just added a shield to the figure (for instance the Vikings are just Peasants with a shield).
I think you're assuming that the soldier graphics in RTW are going to be handled in the same fashion as they were in MTW. Keep in mind MTW was a mixture of 3D terrain and 2D animated sprites, a far cry from the purely 3D environment of RTW. I'm simply saying it might be a huge hassle for the developers to implement shieldless soldiers, let alone soldiers with shields who have a pilum or two sticking out of them. That may require them to generate more variations of existing soldiers which would suck up more system resources or worse; utilizing state of the art 3D features like skeletal deformation and the like which would could really increase the burden on the cpu and 3d card. Keep in mind this game has to be playable on relatively old, pre-DirectX8 compatible 3d cards.
Unless a developer states otherwise (and I really do wish one of them would clarify this) it is my belief that each individual soldier or mounted soldier/horse 'entity' is a single 3d object (shield & weapon included) and is incapable of being altered on the fly to reflect battle damage (regardless of whether this is via altering the actual model itself or by changing textures (i.e. 'pain skins' )).
Quote[/b] (Spino @ Nov. 18 2003,13:30)]Unless a developer states otherwise (and I really do wish one of them would clarify this) it is my belief that each individual soldier or mounted soldier/horse 'entity' is a single 3d object (shield & weapon included) and is incapable of being altered on the fly to reflect battle damage (regardless of whether this is via altering the actual model itself or by changing textures (i.e. 'pain skins' )).
Given that CA, has mentioned we can mod our units all we want, I'm inclined to believe that the shields are different objects from the men.
Hurin_Rules
11-20-2003, 07:59
Not to be pedantic, but:
The singular is pilum.
The plural is pila.
Same as phenomenon/phenomena, colloquium/colloquia, datum/data, etc.
chilling
11-20-2003, 15:29
I can't see system resources being a problem. RTW isn't due for another year. By then if you still only have a DX8 card you can probably count yourself out. I would expect DX10 to be out before RTW.
Also from the TC I've seen the battle engine is pretty much sorted. The horses don't seem to float anymore, everything looks really tight, zooming works really well. I can only assume that it's the new campaign map and stuff that is stopping us having the game now. To do some more annimations and unit models between now and projected release date shouldn't be too much of a strain.
I hope they do some more death annimations too, it's a bit stupid that every unit that is killed seems to die in exactly the same way. It spoils the imersive experience, much like the horses tails all waving in the wind in exact unison.
Quote[/b] ]Not to be pedantic, but:
The singular is pilum.
The plural is pila.
Same as phenomenon/phenomena, colloquium/colloquia, datum/data, etc.
Yikes, the grammar patrol is on the loose I know the plural of pilum is pilae. Where did I err?
Quote[/b] ]I can't see system resources being a problem. RTW isn't due for another year. By then if you still only have a DX8 card you can probably count yourself out. I would expect DX10 to be out before RTW.
Yes but there's no way that the minimum spec 3D card is going to be greater than a 32meg 3D card. Too many people still have older TNT2, GeForce1 and GeForce2 level cards in their rigs for CA to ignore. A 32meg DX6/7 card is a pretty low end spec for a modern 3D game if you ask me. Unless CA provides users with a luxury of graphic options so that people with powerful gaming rigs can get the most out of their gear then sacrifices are going to have to be made in order to not alienate the low end crowd. This is why I say CA is going to strive to keep the 3D & cpu requirements down as much as they can.
Quote[/b] (Spino @ Nov. 20 2003,19:58)]Unless CA provides users with a luxury of graphic options so that people with powerful gaming rigs can get the most out of their gear then sacrifices are going to have to be made in order to not alienate the low end crowd.
I don’t know that I’d call the options luxurious but this is what CA has done in the past. Many folks will have to run R:TW at low resolutions with small unit sizes just as they must with Medieval.
Even if the polygonal soldiers in Rome are handled more efficiently by the GPU than the current sprites (as some have suggested) we will still need a fast CPU for the AI. People with old video cards have old CPUs too. They suffer now and will continue to suffer until they upgrade. The low end is always alienated unless they have very modest performance expectations. And everyone becomes low end sooner or later if they don’t keep up. That’s the bane of our hobby.
Running Rome at high res with huge units will require a first rate machine. Just wait and see. If I’m wrong I’ll be delighted to admit it.
chilling
11-21-2003, 17:00
Well RTW's battle engine must be running on a high end P4 with a top end gfx card. Give it a year and they will both be counted as entry level kit.
Seeing as sprites are 2D and the new engien is all 3D I can't see how switching to all polygonal units is going to reduce the overhead.
The much larger size of map is going to increase the load on the gfx hardware / CPU too.
I personally can't see anything worse than a geforce3 being recommended.
Hurin_Rules
11-21-2003, 20:18
Quote[/b] (Spino @ Nov. 20 2003,18:58)]
Quote[/b] ]Not to be pedantic, but:
The singular is pilum.
The plural is pila.
Same as phenomenon/phenomena, colloquium/colloquia, datum/data, etc.
Yikes, the grammar patrol is on the loose I know the plural of pilum is pilae. Where did I err?
I hope I didn't come off as too snotty. Just thought you might like to know.
The plural of most latin based words ending in -um is -a. So Pilum is singular, pila is plural.
For words ending in -a, the plural is -ae.
Isn't Latin fun?
God, I need to get out more. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif
Sir Moody
11-21-2003, 21:06
Quote[/b] ]God, I need to get out more. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif there there http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
i must be seing things cause I swear Sir MOODY is cheering someone up http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif
Quote[/b] ]I hope I didn't come off as too snotty. Just thought you might like to know.
No problem Hurin It's just that your grammar lesson gave me flashbacks of grade school
Quote[/b] ]God, I need to get out more.
ROTFLMAO There, there. Prescription medication works just as well... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif
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