Demo Impressions

[Steppe Merc]

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

[Kongamato]

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

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

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

[crazyviking03]

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


:knight:

[Steppe Merc]

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

[Lazul]

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

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

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

over all 4 of 5

[Lonewarrior]

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

[Sjakihata]

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

And a lot of my archers have a cold.

[CBR]

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

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

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

Music is great though ~:)


CBR

[frogbeastegg]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Steppe Merc]

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

[Lazul]

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

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

[Steppe Merc]

Here here Lazul!

[frogbeastegg]

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

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

[crazyviking03]

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

[Monk]

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

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

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

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

[Medieval Assassin]

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

[nightcrawlerblue]

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

[Husar]

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

[DemonArchangel]

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

[crazyviking03]

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

~:joker:

[CBR]

Ah now green arrows are gone ~D

Check preferences.txt in main demo folder.


CBR

[Steppe Merc]

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

[CBR]

DISABLE_ARROW_MARKERS

I removed the banners to heh: SHOW_BANNERS


CBR

[Barkhorn1x]

DISABLE_ARROW_MARKERS

I removed the banners to heh: SHOW_BANNERS


CBR

YES!!!!
~:)

[Steppe Merc]

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

[CBR]

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


CBR

[Steppe Merc]

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

[CBR]

here is one: http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/freeware/xvi32/xvi32.htm#download


CBR

[Steppe Merc]

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

[TheSilverKnight]

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

[Barkhorn1x]

I gotta say that CA did a VERY good job of optimization AFIAK. Not to brag or anything - but it is super smooth at 1600x1200 32bit w/ all settings at High or Very High (units at Super High), no AA (don't need it at that setting) and all goodies turned on except for "super unit shadows" or some such.

The only thing I get is a bit of "blinking" from the water graphics - anyone know what would cause that? It is minor annoyance in any case.

System specs;
AMD XP 2100+
768 Megs DDR2100 RAM
G4 Ti4600 gfx card w/ 128 Megs of RAM

Barkhorn.

[CBR]

yeah I tried 1600x1200 with all set to max including AA and worked fine but my mouse moved a bit slowish so I went down to 1280 again..maybe I could do something with windows mouse setting but who cares.

So we got super graphics and clickfest gameplay..

Edit: 2400+ AMD, and GF4 TI4800 and 1 GB ram.


CBR

[afrit]

The new minimap is a mixed bag. ~:( I am bummed that CA did not improve on it more. I like its unobtrusive location, the fact that it can be zoomed, the fact that the selected unit shows up green on it, and the general is a star. I don't like the fact that we lost the ability to select from the minimap, to wave the cursor over units and know what they are and to make it bigger.

I hate to admit the MTW minimap was more useful.

~:handball:

[CBR]

Ok one thing I noticed: The amount of info from a mouseover depends on range. From far away all you see is what faction the unit belongs to. Then what type of unit, then if its moving and finally what state of morale and fatigue it has.

Now that is very good and I remember we discussed it in a thread last year.

Thx LongJohn ~;)


CBR

[oblivious maximus]

Like it, its beautiful and just amazing. Good job CA !!!!!!

[Hurin_Rules]

Anyone know the exact size of the demo? I'm trying to download it of Kazaa but there are lots of files that seem like fakes.

Cheers

[CBR]

141 MB. But no need to bother with Kazaa now..IGN will have it in 2 hours and 20 minutes.


CBR

[MiniKiller]

! thats 3 am here im not leaving with my girl on vacation till like noon and hell its a 6 hour drive i could sleep then!!!!!

*drools* lmao

[discovery1]

I was impressed by the demo, until I got the Romans to work. After I pulled back into a defensive position, Hannibal and his troops just marched up and down infrom of my army. Then again, I believe that the ai for Carthage is less than optimized for the demo, so there is hope.

[The Witch-King]

Hmmmm, for those complaining about the high speed and arcade look. Didn't CA mention something about arcade battles? Maybe the demo only has arcade settings and the realistic settings will be in the main game. Just a thought. :)

[Sir Toma of Spain]

Where can i get the demo from please help me i am almost dying here

[Aelwyn]

You can get it in about 42 minutes from fileplanet, iirc.

[frogbeastegg]

Here's a few more points that struck me:

-The map. It's hard to tell what is where when all those big, fat arrows get close together. Even worse it is not accurate! It told me there was a unit of Romans in the middle of my Carthaginian army. There was most definitely not. There were no Romans within 2 miles of my army, in fact there was only one unit left unrouted and it was huddling at the map edge while I was still in the middle. This inaccuracy was really very bad and if it makes it into the full game I shall be one peed frog.

-The pause thing. Anyone found a way to hide that massive, white pause box? It really ruins the view when you pause to gawp at the units in close up.

-The interface. Ditto, any way to hide it?

-Screenshots. I can't find an in-built screenie key. Also the interface and pause blob really block of huge areas of the screen.

-Routing units flags turn white. Now on the surface this is a really great idea and I love it, as it makes it easy to identify routing enemy to ignore or run down. Problem is the effect is so badly done I thought it was a graphics glitch.

-Red 'explosions', anyone else seen them? As in you are looking around checking the battlefield with the camera fairly high up, then your view is filled with reddish, transparent lines like rays of light? It's not the sun getting in your eyes, or if it is it looks nothing like the sun getting in your eyes. I think it may be a glitch?




I had all the graphics options set to full and it was still blurry. Now I shall try messing with settings in my cards config, which will stuff it up when I want to play thief 3.

Arcade; I wonder if by 'arcade' they really meant 'must put on pause every two seconds to keep up'?. If so then I hate arcade.

I shall see if I can wring something a little better out of the normal demo, then go to modding.

[Gregoshi]

I'm too tired to play with the control settings any more, but it seems like the camera controls are goofed up. In the TW setting, left/4 and right/6 should be "camera rotate left" and "camera rotate right", but in Trebia they do "strafe" rather than rotate. I'm too tired to see if the controls labeled "strafe" actually do "rotate".

All in all, not too bad. I want to play with some of settings and try to adjust a few things that didn't feel quite right, like camera speed (too slow). It is definitely a bigger change from MTW to RTW than it was from STW to MTW, so a little more time for adaptation is in order, at least for me.

A few quick comments before I head off to bed:

1) I liked the music, but didn't care so much for it playing throughout the whole battle. At this point, I prefer the STW/MTW method of playing a short tune for first movement and battle commencing.

2) The little cut scenes that pop up, like a general dying, when you are trying to survey the battle and issue orders are rather startling when they appear.

3) Very late in the last battle I fought, I noticed that at least some of the units have a "special function". Very nice (I think) and I'll have to play around with them to see how they work and how to use them. Same with the "guard" button.

4) Still haven't figured out how to rally routed units. I guess it is a nice touch that their banner goes white, but the routing enemy units go white too. The shape of the banner must be key to identifying friend from foe.

Now off to dreamland...

Edit: Doh! Froggie posted while I was composing. Yes Miss Froglein, I saw those rays of light too, but only in the first battle now that I think of it. It appeared to coincide with the archers that were shooting the fire arrows.

[frogbeastegg]

Music plays throughout the battle? It stopped halfway through in mine...

I had forgotten about the cutscenes and popup messages on general's death etc. Hope there is a toggle to make them less....big, flash and distracting. Something like the old voice over only announcement without the square message box blocking your view down the left side.

You know so far there is more for me to complain about with this demo than to like. ~:( Damn, I still remember the euphoria of the STW demo, a demo I played over and over for days.

EDIT: d'oh, Greg replied while I was :tongueg: if the rays came from the archers then at some points they must have been aiming straight up and away from the enemy. Odd. I shall investigate more later.

[Leet Eriksson]

I played the demo, here are some of my impressions:

-The Poeni Infantry Spears are missing, i can't see them, they also brandished swords when the enemy closed in, might be a small graphical glitch or something.

-Cheeseball arab accent for Carthaginians.

-Cheeseball arab sorta message when a unit routs(look at the message, even the spearman has his face wrapped arabic style) are these supposed to be numidians?

-No localised languages, Romans don't talk latin, Carthaginians talk like cheeseball arabs and barbarians sound like a bunch of guys on crack PLEASE CA fix this ~:(

-Speed seemed perfectly fine the controls are a bit non-responsive though, the units required several clicks to move to the location i tell them to.

-Roman Republican Legions rock muchly, especially the triarii, they wade through units like a knife through butter.

-Are elephants useless or what? so long for my dreams for an elephant only server... ~:p

-Hannibal was a unit on its own, it beat down a unit of velites and routed a triarii engaged with the peoni. ~:dizzy:

-Battling over the bridge is nice ~:) when units fall over i hear a water splash sound, the water didn't animate sadly, nontheless it was pretty good!

-Walking over a bridge is another story though, NEVER EVER put a general unit first with an archer unit supporting it, the archers are more likely to kill the general off, while it didn't kill mine, the archers helped reduce my generals cavalry to half strength (10 men)

Ok enough nitpicking, This Demo is very good, i'll start modding it just for kicks, i need to figure a way to play the romans in trebia.

EDIT:Updated impressions.

[Lucius Lucullus]

Im kind disapointed by the demo, its to short, and it actually lessens my apetite rather then increasing it. In the MTW demo you had a full fledge tutorial and even a couple of sieges, this demo feels more or less as they hastily patched together a demo in an attempt to maintain the schedule.

Hell I almost feel cheated ~:( , anyhow, of to twiddle with the game files :saint:

[Armchair Athlete]

I thought it was very good, didn't think camera controls were too bad at all (but then again I was preparing for the worst, so no let down factor) can't wait for the full release!

[Brighdaasa]

i had that red glare too, it's actually from burning soldiers hit by flaming arrows, i got rid of it by setting all graphics options to the highest

you can rally your units through the general's special ability, which is.. Rally your troops...

[Bob the Insane]

I am going to save my real impressions until I have played this at home, but on my work PC with it's crapy graphics card the battle really did not feel all that different to playing a MTW historical battle... A bit more cinematic at the start maybe and the battle was presented more dramatically (perhapes they picked that trick up from the TV program associations..)

Got to agree with the comments on the big whit boxes appearing in the middle of the screen but it is really not that different to MTW..

Personally I didn't really like the way a units flag changed when routing, it seems a bit unnecessary, and unsubtle compared to the audio clues in MTW... It also made it hard to local the enemy units in the big battle as your banners are white anyway so when a roman unit routs in amoungst your men and their banner switched from red to white it made the routing romans hard to find...

All in all I am not disappointed so far, the battle seemed as much fun as MTW and that is with a really crappy Gfx card...

[Degtyarev14.5]

4) Still haven't figured out how to rally routed units. I guess it is a nice touch that their banner goes white, but the routing enemy units go white too. The shape of the banner must be key to identifying friend from foe.

I don't think they can be rallied, unless the general happens to be nearby.

I quite like this. I never really understood why in MTW, there was a button to rally troops. I mean, if they're gonna rally when you press the button why couldn't they just have rallied themselves, which no doubt they were gonna do anyway? To me, the MTW rally button seems reduntant, and just frustrated the player when the troops decided they weren't looking back.

I like that it is gone, and that troops now rally when they're ready. Again, the proximity of the general creates an exception to this rule, which greatly increases his value and usefulness: I think this is a great move by CA.

A.

[Husar]

Ok, now I played Trebia 3 times and it was not as bad as I expected. ~;)

- You are right that the fatigue would better be shown for all units at the same time, and valour should be a number

- the triarii in the tutorial have a lot of flags, so no wonder they kill everything

- the battles are not that fast(not too fast for me), although I had the feeling that the Poeni Infantry is close to useless without cavalry help, even from the front they get overrun.

- the sacred band cavalry is cool, they can fight well and a charge not only looks very well it´s also effective. ~;) ~D

- the elephants are not my favourites, one time I lost nearly all in close combat(they can be stopped), another time they mowed everyone down on their own. I once let them charge into the rear of the enemy and they went on even though parts of my Poeni infantry. ~:rolleyes:

- when I heard fleeing romans shout "retreat" in a forest, there was a hall-effect. ~:cool:

- units don´t always follow my commands like I want, no way to make them move when the enemy is close and they prepare for battle(that they prepare with shields up and so looks good, though), chasing down enemies still takes a long time sometimes, because the cav seems to miss the enemies. ~:rolleyes:

- the graphics look very good, IMO

All in all I think I will buy the game and I think only in this battle the lines are so close, in normal campaign battles your general makes a speech, without a scripted intro, so I think the enemy won´t start within archery range then.

[frogbeastegg]

This is the red glow I am talking about:
https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v298/frogbeastegg/screenshot1.jpg
It comes from any unit being hit with arrows, flaming or otherwise, on the field. As long as the target unit is somewhere on my screen I am blinded by this glare, even if the unit is so fo off in the distance I can't see it, or is hidden behind a mountain or other terrain feature. It makes it very hard to see what I am doing. I beleive it must be a glitch because it is too stupid and hampering to be a real feature. BTW I have all graphics setting to the max already.

Played the demo again, my issue with reassigning hotkeys has fixed itself. Strange but I'm not complaining as it makes life significantly easier. Once again the music cut out half way throguh the battle. I turned off speech and I still had the units gabbering away inanly in their terrible voice acting. I turned battlefield advice off and that improved the pester factor quite nicely. So overall some improvements but not many, time to get modding.

As for all these boxes being the same as MTW no it isn't, not at all. They are much bigger, and so far I have found no toggle to turn them off - a feature all other TW games have had. I really hope that toggle will be in the final game, it only really matter for screenshots and idle gawping but I like taking screenshots.

Speaking of screenshots if any of the CA guys are reading, can we have an in-built screenshot button again, please? Print screen and alt tabbing to paint shop pro is rather inelegant and slow.

Damn it - I want to love this game, it's in a great series and it's trying to do something I have wanted in a game ever since I found computer games exist over 10 years ago. I really want to love this game, but it's proving so hard. ~:(

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Anyone tried modding the game to play at night yet? It's quite beautiful. All in all, I'm loving the demo (apart from a few niggly controls), and eagerly await the game.

[Leet Eriksson]

Frog whats your 3d card may i ask?

I have a GF FX 5950 ultra, and i don't get any of the ray effects you mentioned.

[frogbeastegg]

Radeon 9800 pro, driver version 6.14.10.6436. It's an older driver but I had much better performance with it; also newer drivers cause graphics glitches in thief 3 which I am slowly plodding my way throguh.

[The_Emperor]

Isn't there an option to disable the flaming arrows? (either in the demo or in the preferences.txt file) That'd probably help u out.

[Brighdaasa]

hmmm, i had those red glares again this battle, i thought i was rid of them :(

i also have a Radeon 9800pro 128MB, catalyst 4.7 drivers


and once again, you can rally routing units by moving your general close and use his special attack option, which is rally your troops


Isn't there an option to disable the flaming arrows? (either in the demo or in the preferences.txt file) That'd probably help u out.

you can disable the special attack "use flaming arrows" in-game, and they shoot normal arrows, it did seem to stop the glare

[Meneldil]

How can I mod the game so I can play during the night ??
/me didn't even know that we could play during the night ~:eek:

[Leet Eriksson]

You can disable the flaming arrows in the archers special abilities located near the loose/tight formation.

You might wanna update the graphics driver, or there might be a problem with the game not running well on the graphics card.hopefully CA would notice and fix this problem.

And btw.. i noticed this in the tutorial:

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v344/Fizzil/loricasegmentata.jpg

Legionnairy cavalry, in lorica segmentata... what are they doing in 218 BC i wonder.... ~:p

[SeveredSoul]

I have an NiVidia GForce 4200Ti and I don't see any of those red things like in your screenshot Froggy. It's looks so wierd and would honestly piss me off ~:pissed: Is that red glow on the screen the whole time or just when you are moving the camera around??

And you have a better card than I do.....odd.


-Soul

[The Wizard]

Hehe... I guess the Romans had time-travel...

Anyways, downloading the demo now... my esteemed self shall let you know how I find it ~D



~Wiz

[Barkhorn1x]

Legionnairy cavalry, in lorica segmentata... what are they doing in 218 BC i wonder.... ~:p

Actually, if you look at the Tutorial Start screen it reads 329BC !!! ~:eek:

Barkhorn.

[frogbeastegg]

The red glare is not linked to flaming arrows; as I said before I turned them off and it made no difference at all. The glare is present whenever any unit that is being hit by arrows of any variety is on screen, even if it is hidden behind a hill or something. The screenshot doesn't do the effect justice; the red lights flicker and move like strobe lighting, they aren't stationary.

Updating the drivers is not really an option right now; newer drivers cause big lighting errors in thief 3. Thief relies on lighting, so it is unplayable with the glitches. I have to finish thief before I can update, and I am playing very slowly indeed because I'm busy writing assorted stuff.

Lorica segmentata on mounted units ~:mecry: hundreds of years before it was invented ~:mecry:

[Yoritomo]

Well, my 2 cents

I found the demo to be a little unpolished.

My comp had no probs running everything on high, Hopefully you will be able to look at some really cool replays in the full game, I can't wait for that. The music was ok, nothing startling, My opinion it didnt really set the mood.

I hate the cheesy accents of the Carthaginians. For all its worth, I loved Shogun for the way it stayed very close to the units actually speaking Japanese.(Even the voiceover was a Japanese bloke speaking english, but it gave the game authentic flavour) I for one would like to see units speaking Latin Aramaic, Greek etc, Instead of speaking English, It kinda tarnished the game a little for me.

As for the unit saying its name everytime you clicked it, THIS WAS VERY ANNOYING, and I only played it for 20 minutes, CA you have some work to do on the voiceovers for the units..

Its fine saying you have engineered a better engine and revoluionised the Brand, but please stick to having authenticity to the period. (Thats why Shogun made the grade)

I would of liked a Hans Zimmer approach to the music, with Lisa Gerard type vocals, but I was wishfully thinking.

Maybe this is in the full game?

All in all a 7.5/10 from me

[Leet Eriksson]

Actually, if you look at the Tutorial Start screen it reads 329BC !!! ~:eek:

Barkhorn.

Woops mixed it up with Trebia date ~:p

but wow 300 years before it even got invented, thats even worse ~:eek:

[Sjakihata]

one thing that is neat though, is the 'view from generals position' have yet to test it, but I sure will like it.

[Cruelsader]

Just finished my first battles. Overall not too bad. I hope that I will like the battles better when I get used to the new feel of the game.

Red Glare: I have it also. My graphic card is Radeon 9100.

Rallying: not only the general but also the Sacred Band has the rally button

Units saying their names: I found it mildly irritating but also useful for locating units. The voice comes from the direction of the unit and its strength depends on the distance from the camera .By clicking on the card I could pinpoint the respective unit even when it was not on the screen. (I have Creative surround system)

[Lucius Lucullus]

Units saying their names: I found it mildly irritating but also useful for locating units. The voice comes from the direction of the unit and its strength depends on the distance from the camera .By clicking on the card I could pinpoint the respective unit even when it was not on the screen. (I have Creative surround system)
It is soooo annoying when they keep saying what unit they are, would be better if they said something like "Ready" or "Yes Sir". Even better if they said it in Latin/Greek/Pheonician/Pidgin/Mandarin/Eutruscian/whatever

[Sjakihata]

omg, how many do you think speak pheonican?

[Steppe Merc]

I wonder if you can slow down the units? If this was MTW (which it isn't, I know), I'd probably chop in half all of there walk/run/charge speeds. I can't figure out whats going on half the time. ~:dizzy:

[BDC]

But the cavalry charges are about a hundred times better than MTW's...

The English words and American accents bug the hell out of me though.

[SeveredSoul]

Yeah it is a bit faster now compared to M:TW. But I would imagine that battles in ancient times were about that fast moving. I mean just look at how fast mechanized warfare is today.

This whole game is gonna' take a bit of getting used to. Granted this is the demo but I'd say this is the game speed we'll all have to live with.
'Till it get modded of course :saint:


-Soul

[Steppe Merc]

Sorry soul, but ancient battles with infantry tended to be slow, hours or even day long affairs, with infantry lines walking, not running and just pushing against each other. Now cavalry did speed up the battles, but the heavy infantry were slow, and couldn't manuever well at all.

[Sinner]

So far I'm feeling quite underwhelmed ~:( for reasons already mentioned by others: the units seem too fast as they dash around the battlefield; some of the standard graphical effects, while maybe switchable, are very annoying, with the flaming arrows in particular being rather irritating - somebody at CA seems too enamoured with the opening battle in Gladiator ~:( ; finally, the interface just doesn't feel as comfortable.

Too often I found myself just staring blankly at the screen as the battle played out, unable to recapture the eagerness to get involved and influence the outcome as I felt with STW & MTW.

I really hope the actual release improves upon the demo, else I can't see me playing many tactical battles, instead limiting myself to the campaign map, which in itself will limit how long the game stays on my PC. Just like Civ3 & MOO3 a long awaited sequel proves less than I hoped, maybe not unplayable, but frsutrating and disappointing all the same. Maybe it'll grow on me over time, but I'm not very hopeful right now. ~:(

[nightcrawlerblue]

I have one word to describe this demo:

WOW

The cavalry charges are awesome and do a lot more damage on the initial charge than in MTW (MTWs charges sucked).

The graphics are kind of dissapointing because of the way they chose to do them. If you zoom out enough to actually be able to see more than 1 unit all of the units get blurry and the graphics become about the same as MTWs (for infantry anyway). This might just be my cruddy graphics card though. I'll change the settings a bit and see if I can find something that helps.

The Game performance is surprisingly nice as I had barely any lag with most settings on high (No AA and no shadows because of my graphics card but the rest were at high).

Finally, the thing that was gonna make or break the game for me... Elephants. In my first battle I immediately charged my elephants into a huge group of enemy infantry and my face lighted up with glee as the elephant charged into a group a 100+ infantry, immediately shooting 10 of them up in the air and wiping out another 30. I was dissapointed when the elephant then routed but soon the routing had stopped and another charge was set up. Oh it was sooooooo cool! Damn just posting this is making my slobber on my keyboard.

[GFX707]

It is soooo annoying when they keep saying what unit they are, would be better if they said something like "Ready" or "Yes Sir". Even better if they said it in Latin/Greek/Pheonician/Pidgin/Mandarin/Eutruscian/whatever



I think rather than the unit "saying what it is" it's the unit commander or even the general addressing his unit....

"triarii....CHARGE!!!!" etc.


doesn't bother me.

[Sjakihata]

good point!

However, it still feels like red alert / C&C generals, if you click a unit it responds

[frogbeastegg]

I think rather than the unit "saying what it is" it's the unit commander or even the general addressing his unit....

"triarii....CHARGE!!!!" etc.


doesn't bother me.
Good theory, however when you select the barbarian units in Trebia they answer with a different voiceset. Either the general swaps cultures when he addresses different units or it's the units themselves talking. If just the accent changed we could say it represents the general speaking the unit's language, but the actual voice changes too.

[fenir]

Well I have been thrashing the demo, and also watching and learning, I have come across a few horrible things.

1. The Music, not bad.....certianly not as enticing as MTW, but it is in a sense, a classical peice which can at a stretch can be invovling.

2. Everytime you click on a unit, it gives you it's name. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NO! It will make me a very violent person in no time at all. I like the charge!! Call, nice touch. But repeating orders back to me? I don't like at all.

3. The camera, seems stuck. The camera controls actually made me feel sick.
I do not like the tilt when pushing the arrow key on the Keyboard, it really does not need to tilt!, we had a + & - keys for that if we need the.
I have to say, the MTW camera was far surperior. I like how you can zoom in zoom out, and lock on unit. But the camera is really bad.
They are certianly not game play controls.
The reverse clicking from MTW had me totally annoyed. It was as though someone had replaced the British made car, with an American made car, Simply put, CA, the steering wheel is on the wrong side.

4. The units tend to move very fast. I have had some thoughts about this, one being the area is quite large, and in a time factor they needed to be speed up to cover the distances involved.
The second, being that time react within a given set of circumstances. But still, they are to fast imho.

5. I hate that I had to hex the demo just to play the Romanus.

6. There not does seem to be enough time to control your units once battle has been joined. I have read, that someone else had a simlar feeling about this also. I found that as Cathage, I only truely had control over a few of my units. Sure I beat the be-jeppers outa the legions. But that is only because of my experiance i would say from previous TW series.

7. The pause, why 'p'........Why not Pause? with the pause button? 'P' is to hard to find with out looking at the keyboard. 'Pause' is far easier, and makes more sense.

8. I found the Advisor to be quite helpful. Thank goodness we can turn them off.

9. The green higlight for selected units, a much improved way of seeing who we have "under mouse". But the Big green Arrow go here thing?? To micro-c**p and still annoyes the bee's and the jeepers outa me.

10. When fighting, the units tend to vapourise, that is they do not look like fighting men at all. You lose men, you can see it after a while, but not in the same sense of game immerision as MTW or STW.
Their is, I suppose, a lack of urgentancy about the fighting? There is certianly not the lack of peneration of cavalry as in MTW first release. There is however a lack of developed fighting involvement by the units man to man.
The pole Armed units tended to singlely fight it out, when they technically use the phalanx system, where multiple rows could fight.
This however didn't look to be the case. I don't know whether they where actually fighting as row upon row, or whether i just didn't see it.

anyway just some food for thought

fenir
have a nice day ~:cheers:

[Orda Khan]

One thing we don't need is a click fest

.......Orda

[GFX707]

Good theory, however when you select the barbarian units in Trebia they answer with a different voiceset. Either the general swaps cultures when he addresses different units or it's the units themselves talking. If just the accent changed we could say it represents the general speaking the unit's language, but the actual voice changes too.


Then perhaps it's the unit commander talking to his men, like I said.


Few other things - the map size seems pretty much the same as in MTW, and when I clicked on "assume AI command" or something for my skirmishers the game froze!

[Sjakihata]

1. Agreed, definately not the worst music for a game, but not as classy as the Shogun one. We have yet to hear the music for other factions as well, though, and a lot of different tracks.

2. See GFX's post, it is in fact the general ordering.

3. The camera is far superior to the MTW one, imo, but just enable 'general camera view'. The tilting doesnt annoy me at all, and I can better control the camera here.

4. Agreed, units are fast. What I have thought is this: we only experienced one battlefield, with set units, so too early to say how this works in the actual game, however, for the demo it is too fast. Also, a simple mod can just reduce speed for all units by two or something suitable.

5. Well, it is a DEMO (demostration) it is not supposed to be a full game, be glad that it COULD be hexed ~;)

6. Again, you are correct. But untill proper testing in the actual game, it is too early to say.

7. Does it really matter? You can use your mouse if it is too hard to locate the p.

8. Well, he is o k for utterly new players to the game, but it is nice he can go away.

9. Arrows, be gone!

10. I like the fighting, try zooming in and you will see fighting like you've never seen before!

Good input fenir ~:)

[fenir]

Just a few quick questions i forgot to enter..........

1. Is there someone new in charge of the developement of the game?

2. Are they American, no offence intended just asking.

3. Mr R.T (godlike) Smith, i would hazard a guess is not working on this game?

IF any CA person can answer these, i would be most grateful.

thank you in advance,

fenir ~:)

[fenir]

thank you Sjakihata,

I should have mentioned, this is only pre look, as it is only a take off the Demo itself.
I do expect the full game, to be a .....perhaps more polished affair. For want of a better way to put it.

But then again, a demo is what is released to sell the game.


fenir

[GFX707]

As for the camera, put it on total war and it's great....

[nightcrawlerblue]

Wow I just found a really cool thing.

Zoom in on one of your units or on any enemy unit as they charge into battle and follow them. It sorta looks like you're looking over their shoulder as they charge into battle. Looks really awesome with horses because of the awesome charge effect.

I have come to the conclusion that I want a pet elephant... with armor...

My only problem with elephants is that they must have super-low morale. After the initial charge into a battalion of infantry my elephants immediately rout. then again that might be realistic (I've never seen an elephant attacking people before...).

[Steppe Merc]

I'm pretty sure that's real Nightcrawler. You'd be pretty ticked off if a bunch of little guys were stabbing you and shooting you. Besides, they can't be invincible, than that would be no good (for obvious reasons, I'd think).

[Ellesthyan]

Although I too experienced a few things Im not really comfortable with (stupid arrows!), Im FAR more impressed by all the thousands of little changes they put in. For example:

Cavalry charges. They look a lot more realistic, charge _through_ the unit and recharge again. They have tons of new animations (I even had a running unit of Numidians JUMPING over my triarii! The result was 6 dead horses, but 2 guys made it to the line), and are very effective. Sacred band is overpowered, though.

And so on. The new animations (MTW only had 5 or so per unit) are great and the special abilities the strawberies on the cake. The music is all right. I usually put on some of my own anyway. The unit repeating orders is actually useful to locate it. The accents are horrible (which goover decided to give the Romans an Australian accent??), I hope they can be changed before the release. All in all, I really like the demo however limited it is. It promises great gameplay, and Im dying to try out the testudo!

And in answer of Fenir:

1. No, I doubt it. They've planned this game from the start of STW, and I assume they've worked on it with the same crew for years.

2. They have an office in Brittain and one in Australia, so no, they are absolutely no Americans.

3. Dunno :undecided:

[frogbeastegg]

Then perhaps it's the unit commander talking to his men, like I said.


Few other things - the map size seems pretty much the same as in MTW, and when I clicked on "assume AI command" or something for my skirmishers the game froze!
You said unit commander or general; I was replying to the general part (as in it can't be him so it'd have to be the unit's officer). Sorry for any confusion. ~:)

[Gregoshi]

Regarding the red/orange rays that flash when a unit is hit by arrow fire, it may be an ATI graphics problem. I have an ATI 9700 TX with the 4.9 (beta) drivers and DirectX9c that I installed to (try to) address some issues with Doom 3. So far, only people with ATI cards have complained about those nasty rays.

About the music, it may well have ended half way through the battle, it just seemed to play on for a long time. Maybe I just didn't notice it had stopped. It was about 4am when I was playing it.

Whether for good or ill, I think it is too quick to make any kind of final judgement on the demo or the game. Give yourself a couple of days to get used to the changes before giving a :thumbsup: or :thumbsdown: . There is quite a bit to take in with just a few plays of the demo.

[GFX707]

You said unit commander or general; I was replying to the general part (as in it can't be him so it'd have to be the unit's officer). Sorry for any confusion. ~:)

lol, don't worry about it! I was just trying to clear it up....

I also get those orange bursts of light (look like lots of stretchy polygons, exactly like in that screenshot you posted) Radeon 8500 here.

I think if we all frantically bitch at CA they will slow the speed down a little in time for release! You have no time to enjoy the battle because you have to constantly pause the game so your entire army doesn't disappear in the time it takes for you to order them!

If they could slow it down to just a tad above MTW I think we would all be happy....speed seems to be the number one complaint!

[ICantSpellDawg]

the best thing is that i never played battles in MTW, so i wont be dissapointed by battles in this game - i am wierd for the strategy map aspect

also - i just bought a new dell pc with the specs (i starred the importnat stuff) i was wondering how the game will run in an experts opinion:
---Dimension 8400
Pentium® 4 Processor 530 with HT Technology (3GHz, 800 FSB), Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition Qty: 1
Unit Price: $1,268.00
Dimension 8400 -----

***Pentium® 4 Processor 530 with HT Technology (3GHz, 800 FSB)

***Memory 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz (2x512M)


Keyboard Dell ® Quietkey ® Keyboard

Monitor 17 in (16 in viewable,.27dp) E773c CRT Monitor

***Video Card 128MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon™ X300 SE


Hard Drive 160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)

Floppy Drive and Additional Storage Devices 3.5 in Floppy Drive and 64MB Dell USB Memory Key

Operating System Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition

Mouse Dell® 2-button scroll mouse]

Network Interface Integrated Gigabit Ethernet

Modem 56K PCI Data/Fax Modem

CD ROM/DVD ROM Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x DVD+RW/+R w/ dbl layer write capable

Sound Card Sound Blaster® Live! 24-bit ADVANCED HD™ Audio

Speakers No Speaker Option

Productivity Software Productivity Pack including WordPerfect®

Security Software Norton Internet Security™, 90 day trial

Digital Music Dell Jukebox - easy-to-use music player and CD burning software

Digital Photography Paint Shop™ Pro® Trial plus Photo Album™ Starter Edition

Limited Warranty, Services and Support Options 1 Year Limited Warranty plus 1 Year At-Home Service

Dial-up Internet Access 6 Months of America Online Membership Included

Personal Finance Software Microsoft® Money 2004 Standard

Dell Media Experience Dell Media Experience

FREE Dell 720 Color Printer with 1 Yr Advanced Exchange Service Qty: 1
Unit Price: $0.00

[spacecadet]

Overall its ok, well it looks good at least. The important stuff for me is online and theres still no way to know if CA will program out the simple problems we have now in MTW.

3 points however:

- Is it so hard for CA to leave the basic controls the same/implement a choice to use the same basic Totalwar control options i.e use left mouse button, dragging out lines, swivelling the grouped units direction around???(Please fix this before this goes gold!)

- is there no rally button?? is this automatic now?

- selecting different grouped units - the old system of having a bar over the icons of the grouped units was intuitive. The new icons size and odd way of having 2 rows makes it irritating to select them in the middle of battle.

[Steppe Merc]

For those lost on the Rally button, it's the special ability of your General. You can only do it sometimes, though.

[A.Saturnus]

The charge is really awesome, that has to be said. I also liked how elephants are done. Not that we could really judge it by now, but they aren´t invincible. You still have to use them wisely.
Overall I really liked the fighting. People beat each other, some fall to the ground and stand up again, units celebrating when they win. Cool. At least when the soldiers were more than grey squares. On lowest setting, the graphic isn´t impressive at all. Though I have to say, I just have the minimum requirement and the game played smoothly.
Saying the unit´s name seems useless and annoying to me, however, repeating commands make sense. The unit commander has to address his men after all. In MTW you heard orders too.
The camera will simply be a matter of practice.
I found the battle to be extremely easy. I send in my elephants without any sense, practically wasting them and still won. Though general camera might be a challenge.

Over all, I liked the demo. I hope that RTW will be more polished than that, but it was definitely fun.

[The_Emperor]

Ok first up, the criticisms.

I didn't like the camera control or the interface... In my humble opinion CA have messed with a winning formula there and i do sincerely hope they have a "classic TW" option regarding all of this. it all seemed a bit unwieldy to me.

Secondly, it did move wayy too fast for my liking. You cannot marvel at the graphics and see your men grind the enemy down like you could in MTW... Constantly moving along the field to try to make sense of the mess was not good.

Thirdly, units repeating their names is not a very good touch... "I know what you bloody well are, just obey my orders!"

Then there's the skirmishing range for the javs, but I just took them off skirmish to counter that one.

Now for the good stuff.

Elephants are good, but as some have said they needs to be used carefully. The main reason my armoured elephants routed in a game was because they charged into some Hastasii... (the velites pelting them probably didn't help matters)

However when I played again I managed to draw out the poeni infantry in a much longer line and draw most of the Roman army into the middle, then my elephants came in and charged right through the Triarii!! It was carnage, Romans flew everywhere!

The graphics were superb and I loved them, the little cutscene when the enemy general died was great fun... Hannibal pinned him in combat when some war elephants came in on a flanking charge, it was a brutal way to die!

As for the units the Carthaginian cavalry and the Numidians did impress me. Their missiles were good when they came behind the enemy lines pelting them, then when the rout was udnerway they truly earned their keep mopping up.

But all in all it was fun.

[Plaxx]

TuffStuff,

I used to work at Dell, and I have built my last two computers. Based on the demo, your rig should be able to run the game with all the eye candy turned on, no problem. Just make sure you have all the newest drivers, especially for your Radeon card. ~:cheers:

[Beirut]

Hmmm, kind of look like an RPG screen. And I'm not crazy about the green highlighting of the chosen units. Also, I don't like the button setup. I liked the old way better.

But... the graphics are pretty good and I can see some monumental battles happening once the controls are gotten used too.

Mind you, with the graphics turned up a notch, this thing slowed down my XP2000/512 RAM/9800 Pro quite a bit. Must be quite the CPU pig when things get really heavy.

Can't wait for the demo mods to really get the feel of it. :knight:

[historycaesar]

I turned all my graphic setting up and the demo is amazing, too short but amazing!

[mambaman]

yup IMHO a fab improvement on MTW-like a few b4 my only query: why the switch betw left and right mouse functions?

Music i thought was fab and actually helped me enjoy the game more

Camera controls i thought better than both MTW and RTW once u get used to them

Like others thought demo a little on the fast side

Units repeating orders-a bit strange-maybe they'll sort that b4 game release

all in all a massive improvement on MTW-really takes the game to new level as CA promised

one last thing guys....remem this is just a demo-games developers often will make final adjustments on the basis of the feedback they get from ppl playing the demos-have faith ~;)

[alioven]

For the people with ray glitches, have you tried disabling advanced shadowing?

For routing units: if you choose your general, its special function (F key iirc) is to rally troops nearby him. So... rallying will be so clumsy and hard to do now...

Cav charges are too powerful, you send a cav behind routing units and they die in... 1-2 seconds? Swiping was a joke compared with this. You back-charge cav against a unit of spears (specially if they are already engaged with another unit) and they simply get destroyed at once. I hope this has more to do with the obvious valour and energy differences btw the two armies (romans are clearly weaker in this demo).

[Longasc]

Hello!

I returned to the .org after quite some time, having played Civ3: Conquests in the meantime.

About the RTW demo:

I think the strategic map looks more promising than this. Now we see how great the graphics are in truth, plus how streamlined the gameplay became.

1.) The graphics: Not as impressive as the handpicked and well-animated graphics of .avis before. Even if you activate the option of the units not doing everything synchronous.

You either see the units from afar as tiny icons or up close where you have little control. They do not look much better than MTWs bitmaps from afar.

2.) Formations? Plz someone tell me, how can i spread out a line of Infantry in MTW-style, by dragging them into shape?

3.) Facing? What must I press to change the facing of my troops?

4.) I see some improvements, the rally feature of the General and some troops makes sense, the right click interface, too

5.) Camera controls are now horrible. Could not get use to any setting. :(

6.) AAAH!-Effect. Some people already complained, I do so, too, because...

7.) ... the battle in the demo was more arcady and showed little depth. Okay, it was a simple and biased demo battle, but besides the standard TW-series "elevation kills" it looked more like a streamlined MTW.


I still hope the campaign feature / strategy map turns out to be much better than MTW, but the battles are only mediocre.

They are not up to the standards they wanted us to believe through several videos before they released that demo. Especially graphically, this is not "gorgeous", you need to work hard to get such great graphics with the camera controls. The far away graphics are not impressive, not even with all options set to HIGH.


But well, may be it is like Joint Operations, I did not like the Final Demo while the Beta Demo was cool, the Full Version was again cool :)

[Steppe Merc]

Longasc, to change depth you right click and drag it out. So not alt, not control, just right click and drag. It took me a while to. ~;)

[Tamur]

...my only query: why the switch betw left and right mouse functions?

It makes the painful misordered unit problem a non-issue. Use left to select, right to direct, and everything is OK.

This was a big problem for most human beings playing MTW, who had a unit selected already, attempted to select a different unit, and ended up mistakenly ordering the unit already selected to march somewhere entirely different from where they ought to be.

Tamur

[GFX707]

After playing a few more times this is pretty amazing! Especially the animations, for instance when troops come to a halt after running and the flying guys tossed by charging elephants!

I think if the speed was fixed I would be pretty happy! The demo is pretty amazing when you get used to the differences. The only thing I still don't like are the flame arrows (where is the big pot of firey stuff they are lighting the arrows with as someone said? impossible) and on mine some of the grass is missing but on the whole I still can't wait!

[Longasc]

Longasc, to change depth you right click and drag it out. So not alt, not control, just right click and drag. It took me a while to. ~;)

Hey thanks, just found it out on my own - tried it again and voila. But I must agree with you, it is not mentioned in the tutorial and well, formations used to be a key element in MTW, so I really wondered what happened to them.

Well, at least *one* gripe less to worry about. :)

[Lord of the Isles]

I'll give it a few days before deciding for sure, but after a few hours I've mixed feelings about the demo.

On the good side, I was impressed how well my Geforce 4 MX 440 (64 Mb) performed, even with most settings turned up to medium or high. I agree with longasc's point about far away graphics not being much of an improvement but I can live with that.

On the other hand: the speed is a real pain (slow it down CA, please). And there's an arcade-game feel to it that's hard to describe exactly but it's there nonetheless. Maybe more familiarity with the new controls will ease the feeling but I worry that I might end up feeling as pessimistic as Darkmoor Dragon (on a .com thread) about the game. To paraphrase, he sees RTW as CA selling out to a wider C+C market and spoiling the great tradition of the TW series by putting eye candy before gameplay. Harsh but if the changes to the campaign map, diplomacy, seiges etc don't live up to my expectations I might start to agree with him.

We'll see.

[Hurin_Rules]

Just played the tutorial, here are my thoughts:

Interface takes a bit to get used too, but after a few minutes it was fine.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the way the cavalry rides down infantry. Far more realistic than MTW. In fact, it had me thinking I wish I could do a medieval mod for RTW-- I'd love to see some Teutonic Knights charge into some Ghazis with the new physics. Well done, CA.

Had a cool little moment when the barbarians were coming over the bridge: my Triarii spotted them and all turned their spears towards the enemy. Fantastic.

I'll try the Battle tonight. But first impressions are, pretty darn good. The gameplay is not really very different from MTW, but the graphics and sound are better, and everything is new. yaay.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

pretty good demo on the whole, way too easy of course but so was the medieval demo.

speed much too fast
camera jerks whenever you select a unit
annoying repeating name of unit
don't like the green arrows under the units

graphics were very good I thought, especially since my card is under minimum specs
loved the cavalry and elephant charge
unit flags turn white when routed, very nice
intro was really good as well
being able to zoom in underneath the trees and move along with my cavalry as they charged was awesome.

[andrewt]

The funniest thing in the demo was when the Gauls attacked my Triarii across the bridge. Some of them were actually facing in the wrong direction. They were facing away from my Triarii while throwing javelins in their direction.

Now, on to comments. The speed is way too fast. Walk/run speed is already fast and killing speed is even worse. Cavalry takes 2-3 seconds to kill an equal number of fleeing soldiers. Even one of my elephants started fleeing before I knew they were already engaged. Sound effects are almost nonexistent. I had sound effects cranked all the way up and could barely hear the arrows firing and traveling. I couldn't hear the weapons being used either. I suspect that this is just for the demo and the real game wwill have the proper sound effects. What I heard all the time is the units saying their name when they are clicked which really got annoying.

Also, does anybody knkow the button to make a unit face a certain way. It used to be Ctrl + Shift, IIRC.

[Husar]

Ok, some more answers and thoughts from me:

- the camera can be changed to the MTW-style one, please look into the options before you complain about that. ~;)

- I could bet that most graphic bugs are only on ATI-cards.... ~:p ~:rolleyes:

- The sound is cool, I don´t know to who the units say their names, but with EAX 2 I get a hall-effect in the forests and I´m sure that the orders are not repeated to the player but given to the unit by the commander, try giving an order to a unit on the other side of the map, I don´t hear anything then and the closer I am, the louder I hear it.

- the unit speed is simply realistic in my oppinion

- only bad thing about the units is that sometimes they are very friendly, they just stand there and don´t attack, while their comrades are heavily engaged, I ´ve also seen my cavalry following routed enemies, but instead of killing them they ride besides them, like an escort, or as if they couldn´t see them.(maybe they have a V&V that they are drunk? ~;) ~D )

- btw: if you don´t like flaming arrows, why don´t you just turn them off? ~:rolleyes: they are a special ability of archers and you can turn them off in the lower right corner when you have the archers selected. ~;)

[MadKow]

Just played it twice so why not give my two cents (as unoriginal as they may be).

I also feel everything happens one bit too fast... This is, in my view, inconsistent with the obviously well achieved attention to graphic detail:
If you want to win your battles you are never going to take time to watch the nice animations and textures of your troops.

You freeze the game to look at things (no animations)
You zoom in the middle of battle (and the somewhat clutered interface makes you loose sight of the overall action, risking unnecessary losses)
Or you keep your birds eye view (and you couldnt care less for the animations and detail)

having the ability to go half normal speed, might have been a good idea.

Unit formation look looser than in MTW. Means when you are looking at the tightest unit be it a cohort or phalanx, you still see a lot of ground in between individual soldiers. This coupled with the richly detaild terrain creates a sort of visual noise that was not present in MTW.

These are factors that impacted directly my "situation awareness" something i have trouble with, by default ~:dizzy: , but i'm ready to agree that with time i can get used to the new Total War.

One reason why i wasnt really excited about this, is directly related with the reason i play campaigns and not MP or Historical Battles. I like to "grow" into my armies and vice versa. Call it silly but when i play a campaign i get an attachment to my units i just dont get in "quick action" sort of games.

Verdict: Will take some time to get used to, but looks good.

PS: THANK YOU THANK YOU!! To the person that discovered how to disable the green arrows.

[mambaman]

all good points by Husar-lets be positive guys-its a massive improvement on MTW-great graphics u just have to get used to the slightly diff controls-i for one am really looking fwd to finished product

[GFX707]

Sound effects are almost nonexistent. I had sound effects cranked all the way up and could barely hear the arrows firing and traveling. I couldn't hear the weapons being used either. I suspect that this is just for the demo and the real game wwill have the proper sound effects. What I heard all the time is the units saying their name when they are clicked which really got annoying.


No offense but I think you're alone there....

[afrit]

It makes the painful misordered unit problem a non-issue. Use left to select, right to direct, and everything is OK.

This was a big problem for most human beings playing MTW, who had a unit selected already, attempted to select a different unit, and ended up mistakenly ordering the unit already selected to march somewhere entirely different from where they ought to be.

Tamur

Hellelujah! They fixed that one. About time! ~:cheers: :jumping: :thumbsup:

[fenir]

Ashantiwarrior
I don't think anyone is being negative about the game/demo.

What is happenning, like myself there is a lot of people here who have played the TW series from day one, and we feel we have an interest in the game and CA.
What we are trying to do, is give feed back, if not just between ourselves, but also CA if they are watching, and they usually are.

We are simply trying to desect the game in a way that we have come to enjoy the games, and from our collective experiances.
I know quite a few of the older members of this website, and from experiance they and myself would not 'bagout' CA or the series of games, we just want to see the best game produced that possibly can be.

And if our input can help in anyway, then we are helping produce what we all are going to buy.

Hurin_Rules
I think you have not only read the minds of most of us, but you have certianly read mine.
I have ever since they started giving us details of the game, I thought it would be good for MTW mod.
After i thrash the game for a month or so, i will be trying to get a MTW mod going, with out a shadow of doubt.
I even posted as such several months ago in the modders forum.

fenir

[wasaaabi]

One thing that seems to be missing that I'm NOT happy about - the casualty ratio bar thing from the STW and MTW minimap. I need that thing...

[Trousermonkey]

my turn,

The good:
I like the graphics both for the units and the map.
I like that they kept many of the customizable options - even though it supposedly alienates newbie players

the okay:
the right click/left click thing is odd but I think I could get used to it and it resolves some of the issues I had with STW and MTW.
I don't mind the green highlighting when selecting units but make it more indiscrete.

the bad:
I turned off the advisor and any other 'helpful' hints the game would try to give me so I didn't have a chance to be annoyed by this

Even so, I was annoyed by units shouting their names every time I clicked them. Also the accent of the generals and units is atrocious. It would be infinitely better to have them speak in their native tongue.

I couldn't get the game to recognize my audigy gamer X soundcard. Funny, it works fine in MTW and every other game I own.

Dragging a line of soldiers seems broken. Maybe I just don't know enough about the controls yet...?

Pressing space to show where your units are heading has changed to show little arrows instead of the actual units. I can see how this will get really confusing when lining up troops in the real game. "Was that front line of little pink triangles my infantry or my missile units? Wait...where were my calvary heading again?"

The unit hotkey assignment rules have changed. No, I'm not talking about the Ctrl+1 instead of Ctrl+Shift+1 change (this is a good thing) You can no longer have subsets. A single unit can no longer be a member of two different groups. This is lame.
Even worse, and this is a terrible thing, when a unit routs, it automatically loses it's hotkey designation. So if you have a unit of elephants that temporarily routes and then rallies a short time later, you'll have to pause the game and re-designate them. This is a killer for MP play and pausing to reassign numbers pretty much destroys any chance of immersion in SP.

I couldn't get the camera to work like I wanted. In MTW I start each battle by zooming up and then using the right mouse key to tilt the camera down. In RTW I could never zoom out far enough and tilting is bound to a key that I have to reach across the keyboard for. It's awkward.

Another thing with the camera movement is it now always rotates when I drag the mouse to the edge of the screen. I prefer MTW's method of only rotating when I drag near the top of the screen - otherwise strafe.

The HUD is way too big. It gives the sense of peering through a periscope. Please give me the option of hiding the overview map and the thoroughly useless 'little window with commands' with some keys...please!? Even better would be to do this and follow unreal tournament 2004's lead and give the option to make the hud partially transparent and scaled.

The fact that the camera can't zoom out enough or be controlled easily, the giant HUD hiding 1/4 of the battlefield, the speed of some of the units, and the de-hotkeying of routing units goes a long way towards reducing the immersion of the game.

Hopefully (though I should know better) these things will be addressed before the final release.

[Plaxx]

Great points, Fenir.

And an MTW mod will make the game stay on our hard drives just that much longer! ~D

[Tomisama]

Would prefer music at least “trying” to be true to the period. Maybe based on some semi-authentic instruments of the period (flute, drums, trumpets, lairs). Voices too, in the language of their origin. Must have! Atmosphere is “everything” in a period game…

The “extra” graphics, the arrows on the ground under the selected troops; dead! Hope is only for the demo, like the gold halos in the MTW demo (if I remember right). And the white flag routine is moronic (I’m sorry, but had to say it). I hope that also is only in the demo.

On the other side, this is a beautiful game. Once the controls are mastered, the ability to take a close look at the fighting may be one of the best things about this game. Not just because it’s a great view, but because (it at least seemed to me) that I could see in a glance what I had to read before. That is, who was winning, and who was loosing. Important stuff :knight:

Overall I am personally pleased with the direction that RTW is going. We are only a few patches away from heaven :wings:

Salute!

[Nerouin]

Frog- I don't have that problem at all. I play on medium settings, low anti-aliasing.

[GFX707]

Also I wish there was some way to order your troops not to pursue fleeing enemies....or some kind of built in common sense that would make a cavalry unit chase routers a certain distance or something like that. With the speed of the demo your cavalry is off the map before you know it....

[Papewaio]

One thing that seems to be missing that I'm NOT happy about - the casualty ratio bar thing from the STW and MTW minimap. I need that thing...

Its there on the bottom left box near the speed/pause buttons. Hover your cursor over it and it will give % for yourself, allies and enemies...

[LordKhaine]

The main problem I had with this demo, is that it was a demo and not a full game.

I want to take over europe ~:(

[bhutavarna]

i want to be able to move the damn PAUSE like in MTW. it's very annoying. at least we should be able to turn it off.

[Kommodus]

Ok, some of my impressions...

1. The graphics are definitely better, but when viewing the action from a distance, it doesn't make much of a difference. I'll be upgrading my hardware soon, so I'll then be able to perceive the full impact of this improvement.

2. For some reason, it seems a bit harder to keep track of what's going on. This is probably just because I'm just not used to the changes.

3. I happen to like the musical score. The voice acting is average in quality and out of place at times. For example, selecting a unit causes that unit to announce its type, and soldiers scream "we're under attack!" when attacked. These features seem like attempts to mimic other strategy games, and are out of place in the Total War series.

4. The Battle of Trebia is quite easy; I won a "heroic victory" the first time. As has been noted, skirmishers run away too soon when on skirmish mode and the Poeni infantry are missing their spears.

5. The green triangles beneath selected troops really are too intrusive. Banners turning white for routed units also look rather silly; such measures weren't necessary in prior TW games.

6. I agree that the fights seemed rushed. I had hoped for longer melees, rather than shorter ones. When combined with the inherent difficulty in keeping track of everything that's going on, this is less than ideal.

That's about it for now. I enjoyed the demo overall, but wish some things were different. Oh well.

[Gregoshi]

I know what you all are talking about with regards to the speed of the game, BUT could it be "rushed" only when the units are running? At the beginning of Trebia, when the Romans are just walking towards you, the movement seems almost painfully slow. Same with giving your units (even the cavalry) movement orders - they take their good old time about it. Give them running orders and the afterburners kick in. After playing Trebia a couple of more times, I'm beginning to think that the speed issue is that the speed between walking and running is greater than it was in STW/MTW. When you are playing the battle, it seems very fast, but when you look at the scale of things and then the speed at which the units are running (fast!), it doesn't really look unnatural - at least to me. Maybe STW & MTW coddled us too much with a reduced running speed. Well, that is my impressions on the speed issue.

I don't believe I've read any comments here about the Numedian Cavalry's special "circle" attack. I gave that a try and it is a very neat attack to watch. I don't know how effective it is, but visually it is impressive. I wonder what other cool special attacks this game has in store for us.~:smoking:

About the music, the piece that I really fell in love with today was the one that plays over the menu. There is a part where the music has a sweeping and almost majestic feel to it - but in a very subdued way. That isn't a very good way to describe it, but there it is.

I messed some more with the camera controls. I do believe there is a bug in there. The "rotate" controls don't rotate, they strafe. So we have two ways to strafe with keys and none to rotate. Unfortunately, I'm more comfortable rotating with the left/right keys rather than using the mouse, so changing my view is a bit awkward for me.

Does anyone else notice the odd behaviour of some of the units, the light barbarian infantry (sorry to those of you who cringe at that name). At the beginning of the battle, more often than not, some of the barbarians (maybe 8-10) start walking towards the rear, like they are leaving the unit. This is as the Romans are still approaching and I haven't given the barbarians any orders yet. Could CA have added deserters or something like that?

[Papewaio]

The Barbs walking towards the rear... I would say that is a discipline rank thing... something that has been toyed with in the TW series but not fully fleshed out... would be far more important to a Phalanx if people decide to open up the ranks...

[andrewt]

The speed problem for me is not so much as how fast they walk/run but how fast they kill. The cavalry charges in particular are ridiculous but even the infantry charges look like they kill too much. Even the melee when it is supposed to be a long meat grinding thing is resolved too quickly. I charged a 30+ (already suffered a few casualties) sacred band into 100+ hastati and princeps units and they kill more than 50% in 2-3 seconds when charged at the back and around 33% when charged at the front. It's also way too easy to disengage and charge again. That part is actually fine if not for the damage charges do.

I played a game controlling the Sacred Band Cavalry almost all the time and I had 10:1 kill ratios with all 3 of them. They had more than 200 kills each and one had almost 400.

[Nerouin]

The elephants are insane!!! I LOVE THEM!!!

Also the cav is great. It always used to anger me in MTW and STV how HEAVY, HEAVY cav like Lancers or Golden Horde Heavy would simply hit a unit of anything, no matter how weak, i.e. peasants, and just STOP. The point of heavy cavalry is that they RAN YOU OVER. In melee, though they were proficient, they could be unseated by someone with a stick.

[Yoritomo]

I found the speed to be spot on, It may need to be reduced a smidgen (one hair of a bees dick) But I think the new speed is good...

I have an Radeon 9600XT and have only had the light show a couple of times, not everytime I play Trebia

Strange but true ~:dizzy:

[Papewaio]

I think the speed looks like the guys are gliding over the terrain... watching the Roman Heavy Infantry run at a very fast speed over half the map chasing skirmishers and looking like they never tire... it may be no fatigue... but the sheer speed looks silly... might have to report steroid abuse at those rates ~;)

[Ser Clegane]

I know what you all are talking about with regards to the speed of the game, BUT could it be "rushed" only when the units are running? At the beginning of Trebia, when the Romans are just walking towards you, the movement seems almost painfully slow.

That's a very good point, Gregoshi. At first the speed was also my major gripe about the demo - at the first try things evolved so quickly that the battle was over before I even fully realized what was going on (and funny enough I was victorious without even doing much :dizzy: ) - but when I player the tutorial afterwards it seemed to be slower.

Overall I was very happy with how things looked and felt in the demo. Graphics and overall "feeling of reality" were very good.
The cavalry charges sometimes seemed indeed overpowered but I think it's hard to really judge this without having played more balanced units.

The green arrows and the unit replies after giving orders were quite annoying (but at least the units did not give annoyed comments or started burping or something like that when you clicked them several times) but these are very minor things that (as well as the speed setiings) can hopefully be easily changed or made optional in the final version - so I'm quite optimistic that these things will turn out well.

I also experienced the "arrow-flare" but luckily it stopped after the archers shot their first two volleys.

I am eagerly awaiting the final version.

[Midnj]

First off, graphics, wonderful. I have a Raedon 9600 pro and I ran high detail and high res with no slow downs. AA caused it to choke of course, but AA always does that.

Interface, I thought could have been much better. I'd go into details but most of what I would want to say has been mentioned.

I will certainly buy Rome for the single player campaign, but I'm more into multiplayer. Just from the demo I don't think it will make for a good multiplayer game (given how little CA seems to care about that I'm not too hopeful). I will have to wait to see how the full game and full unit roster pans out, but this thread is called demo impressions afterall.

My main concern is that RTW is going to be an infantry-centric slug-fest. It's like those boring MTW multiplayer games where you get two wimps who take mostly infantry and run them into each other. What the hell is the fun in that? At least RTW has much larger maps, so aforementioned wimps can't take map flank positions and remove flanking options.

I'd have to echo that I don't think the demo did the hype justice. I was really excited loading up the demo and after playing it 10-12 times I'm much less so. Still, the strategic aspect of the game looks like great fun.

Oh and the war elephants were cool, if overpowered. I liked seeing them slice right through a Roman unit or three. Reminds me of the old swiping trick in MTW.

[Rosacrux]

First impressions (played an hour last night, couldn't devote more, since wife is out of town I went out for the 4th night with some ladies - beats RTW, actually would beat it even without pharaos, dogs, cats and bitches):

- Not bad, not bad at all. The voice acting is terrible (can live with it - just turn it off, actually) there are some glitches and chokes (I already received my new super graphic card and I'll install it when I got some time) and some features are just awful (green arrows anyone?). But overall it looks impressive and plays nicely.

- I managed to play the tutorial once (upped speed too) and Trebia once (again, with upped speed - CTDed while I was trying to finish off ze Romans... maybe due to the increased speed?) and I will try them tonite once more. I don't think I'll play them any more after that, that is if I won't get some MODification for the demo.

- Overall I can't wait for RTW to come out. I'll ban dogz, catz and pharaos (until I manage to get a hold on modding) and play the heck out of it!!!

[TCon88]

Ok now its my turn, firstly i think the cursor moves to slow in response to the mouse but i know some of you others have already said that. And i dont like the green arrows when you click a unit, it just gets it my way. Apart from that i cant find anything majorly wrong with it, maybe the voice acting but i can live with that.

[YAKOBU]

Hi everyone ~:wave:

I must admit being initially very disappointed by the demo but after playing the battle a 2nd time felt a little better.

Just a couple of points:

- Did anyone else end up with the camera view under the bridge in the tutorial? Good job I only had control of 3 units!

- Has anyone let AI control a group for them? I took control of the elephants and cavalry while grouping the skirmishers in 1 group and the infantry and archers in another. The AI then altered the group formation and angled the group at about 45 degrees which was not sensible!

- I am also struggling to get a view where I can see the battle and also make out individual units. close-ups are great but not practical for full battles.

[Bob the Insane]

Played it on my home system last night (AthlonXP 2600+, 1GB RAM, Geforce 6800GT), config was 1280x960, no AA, all options set to high or higest and all turned on except advanced shadows... Runs smooth most of the time but you can sense the frame rate dropping when it's busy on screen, no stuttering though... Looks fantastic IMO, no funny light or dodgy colours for me luckily...

Game play, I don't know what people mean about it being too fast, the speeds people move at do not seem unrealistic and the historical battle starts with the sides very close together so the batle starts very quicky which is probaly why it seems so quick... Personally I am not a strong fan of the historical battles in MTW as I perfer a battle to be part of a campaign and have some context and consquences, so for me this demo is only showing part of the game.. It looks good and plays well and the landscapes look a little more realistic this time... This is still total war in style and content but with additonal features too... The special abilities of units in cool and I like the way rallying your troops has been implimented... Nothing in the demo seems to be overpowering and yet nothing appeared uselessly weak, ever the skirmishers have their place and their uses..

Personally I think the tutorial is a bit poor, but I have an idea about that... I reckon the tutorial in the full game is tied to the campaign map and as that is not in the demo they could only use an actual battle portion of the tutorial...

[Bob the Insane]

Additionally, anyone else think that the scale in RTW is sightly larger? I don't think you can zoom out as far as in MTW... Might be mistaken though...

[jimmyM]

well, first impressions of playing the demo? grinning like a FOOL ~D (yes, like that) the graphics and system work well and the cavalry charges are most amazing :jumping:
the map does seem larger, definitely more interesting and fun to play on as it doesn't just cut off...
yes, i had that bug with the worrying dissapearingunder the bridge act...takes me back to using VIZ and disappearin into the ground - possibly direct x needs updating? i think the battles were rediculously easy...the romans at trebia broke very easily, so maybe i'll see what the mods can do :knight:

[Sjakihata]

the rtw camera can go further out than the mtw one

[MadKow]

Just adding to my impressions the fact that i also had that weird glare attributed to ATI card (X800 pro), but i fiddled a bit with the graphic settings, mainly getting higher quality, and i must have done something that works.

[The Wizard]

I played the demo a couple of times, and to me it seems this is an old version of the game which is soon to go gold... stuff like the Poeni holding invisible spears is a real pity to me.

The graphics are great - after a bit of messing around I got my GeForce 4 MX to run the game like a jewel, and I like the animations and action of the units in battle. I might try that 'disable synchronizing' option just to see what it does.

Trebia is pretty good - although I kept the impression that the terrain isn't all that pretty, even with details on full for terrain.The fighting, thanks to the engine, looks somehow more realistic - instead of two pretty immobile lines duking it out, it turns into a pretty big morass of men which can get confusing - something that happened to me the first time I played it (subsequently I lost). The elephants seem pretty useless to me - I ran them in just prior to my cavalry's charge, but nothing much was achieved and the formation of the oh so dangerous triarii (to my cavalry) was not disrupted very much.

The music is good, but is it my impression alone that TC's music was better?

Also, the skirmishers were pretty useless also... they ran while a good 200-300 meters away from the velites, something I didn't see the Numidians do... I think they're gonna need a lot more microing than ol' MTW to be effective, at least if this stays in.

I like the control groups and their easier accessibility. It means it's much easier for me to micromanage my troops and therefore be a more effective commander than before - although I did see that the game doesn't react immediately to my pressing the '1' button, which also goes for 'Esc' and 'P'.

Now the voices and reactions of your units are pretty bad, imo. I'd much, much rather have had barbarians screaming in Welsh, for all it matters, rather than in some hoarse idiotic voice. The voice of the Roman units suck too, and I do not like the constant standard RTS-like things that are said when you select them. I much preffered the voices of STW and MTW, which were pretty indescernible but probably in the real language (at least they sounded like they were... not this crap english, it does not help the immersion one bit)...

Overall, a pretty good go at the game, and it's actually looking to be pretty good, save for some important problems do not help the immersion CA seems to be going for at all.

I won't be going into historical details because I'm too lazy at the moment ~;)



~Wiz

[Stuie]

Game play, I don't know what people mean about it being too fast, the speeds people move at do not seem unrealistic and the historical battle starts with the sides very close together so the batle starts very quicky which is probaly why it seems so quick...
Apparently people want the battles to last for hours like in real life. :sleeping: Forget the fact that this would completely turn off 99% of the people that will buy the game, and therefore the game wouldn't have been developed....

Personally I am not a strong fan of the historical battles in MTW as I perfer a battle to be part of a campaign and have some context and consquences, so for me this demo is only showing part of the game..
Same here. I've played maybe one or two historical battles outside of the demos for STW and MTW. I care about the campaign battles, and if you look at how far apart the starting positions are in the tutorial, that gives more of a feel for how the campaign battles will play out. LOTS of room for manuever prior to contact. Should be good. ~:)

[monkian]

I subscribed to Fileplanet so I could download it quickly and was rather underwhelmed- but then it was only a 100MB demo so I guess expecting lavish music and Tutorials was a little optimistic of me.

The speed is alot quicker and took some getting used to - and my skirmishers were pants too

[GFX707]

I think the demo music is beautiful and the battle music is very energetic and doesn't need to be changed....

[GFX707]

Ok, some of my impressions...

3. I happen to like the musical score. The voice acting is average in quality and out of place at times. For example, selecting a unit causes that unit to announce its type, and soldiers scream "we're under attack!" when attacked. These features seem like attempts to mimic other strategy games, and are out of place in the Total War series.

Particularly a few horn type noises that seem to have come directly from Warrior Kings!


6. I agree that the fights seemed rushed. I had hoped for longer melees, rather than shorter ones. When combined with the inherent difficulty in keeping track of everything that's going on, this is less than ideal.


See my petition thread....

[GFX707]

About the music, the piece that I really fell in love with today was the one that plays over the menu. There is a part where the music has a sweeping and almost majestic feel to it - but in a very subdued way. That isn't a very good way to describe it, but there it is.


I couldn't agree more!




I messed some more with the camera controls. I do believe there is a bug in there. The "rotate" controls don't rotate, they strafe. So we have two ways to strafe with keys and none to rotate. Unfortunately, I'm more comfortable rotating with the left/right keys rather than using the mouse, so changing my view is a bit awkward for me.



The camera controls in the tutorial are set to the new ones and you can't change them but during trebia you can press escape and look through the menus, find the part that says "RTS mode" and change it to "Total War" and you have your old MTW camera back....

[UglyandHasty]

Well overall i am not too disapointed about that demo, keeping in mind its just a demo. Gameplay its just a question of being use to it. Maps look good.

I have just one wish, I hope the game will be easily modable.

[King Azzole]

I think the demo was perfect. Loved the music, loved the voice acting, nice fight scenes. Just everything was sweet. Some of you guys are really REALLY spoiled or unrealistic... ~:(

[nightcrawlerblue]

I'm learning to master the elephants quite quickly.

In my last game I used the armored elephants to charge through the entire Roman army, crushing every formation. Once their formations had fallen the massed into one big clump. Using the war elephants I easily ripped through that, distorting them even further. Finally, I charged every unit I had in and ripped the Romans apart from every side.

The demo rules. ~D

I am kinda worried about the lack of tactics the Roman army seems to use usually. Most of the time they just charge every unit into my infantry.

[Gregoshi]

The camera controls in the tutorial are set to the new ones and you can't change them but during trebia you can press escape and look through the menus, find the part that says "RTS mode" and change it to "Total War" and you have your old MTW camera back....
I set the camera controls to "Total War" before fighting Trebia. Are you saying I need to do the in-battle by pressing the escape key? Aside from changing the control in-battle rather than pre-battle, I tried everything I could think of and I still couldn't get the camera to rotate with the keyboard. Since no one else seems to be complaining about this, I've got to conclude I'm being a complete dunderhead about this. Oh well, once more into the breech!

[Orange]

@ Gregoshi

Rotate the camera with your keypad. Numbers 4 and 6 for rotating, 1,2,3,5 for moving. - and + for tilting. / and * for altitude.

Just try a battle where you use just your keypad for the camera. I did, and it worked wonders. You can use the camera far more easy with the keypad, ánd next to that, you can do two things at once. Steering the camera, and using your mouse to hover over units, clicking and directing. It needs some adaption and getting-used-to, but it works wonders for me!

~:dizzy: Just a shame I'm righthanded. Keypads are on the right too you know... ~:wacko:

[GFX707]

I set the camera controls to "Total War" before fighting Trebia. Are you saying I need to do the in-battle by pressing the escape key? Aside from changing the control in-battle rather than pre-battle, I tried everything I could think of and I still couldn't get the camera to rotate with the keyboard. Since no one else seems to be complaining about this, I've got to conclude I'm being a complete dunderhead about this. Oh well, once more into the breech!

Yeah, try that.

[Gregoshi]

Bingo! Thanks folks! Changing it in-battle did the trick. It felt much more like MTW with the old controls back. I'm a happy boy now. ~:)

[Chimpyang]

Well this demo has made me do summat i;ve never had to do in a defensive SP battle to date - i had to throw hannibal into holding the line. I decided to play on normal because on easy the elephants just ran amok. all was gonig fins until I made a misguided decision about how to hold the line till the cav came. I decided that my barbarian swordsmen woulkd go to the flank and help the cav beat back any roman inf that may attempt to slow tehm, when battle started i ended up dawing a couple of units away with my Numidians and the rest just hit my battleline. My barbarians were too far away to help and were mobving towards the cav who were fighting a roadblock in the form of a unit of principles.

Running out of units i had to throw my cretian archers and skirmishers into the melee and about 10 s after that my elephants. The link was buckling as there were so many romans haking at it but someone with the help of my Gen the line held until the cav arrived in spectacualr fashion and roued the enitre army.

WOW...... i wish the demo was longer though.

[Sjakihata]

that's cool, almost sounds like the real battle, except your middle should have broken ~:p

[The_Emperor]

that's cool, almost sounds like the real battle, except your middle should have broken ~:p

Mine didn't... ~;)

[The Wizard]

I think the demo was perfect. Loved the music, loved the voice acting, nice fight scenes. Just everything was sweet. Some of you guys are really REALLY spoiled or unrealistic... ~:(

Look, when I compare the voice acting of WarCraft III with the voice acting of this demo, I get the distinct urge to cry...

Anyway, I just managed to kill approx. 1350 Romans in turn for 250 Carthaginians... felt pretty good. In essence I tried a Cannae, but this time with a stationary center. My elephants broke apart the triarii on the left (my left) and kept them busy on the right, while my heavy cavalry (including Hannibal) charged into the rear of any Roman formation engaged with my mercenaries or poeni.

However, it went a bit quickly, and I got the impression that keeping the full view is quite hard, but I guess that's just plain a fact that I need to get used to it again (last time I played a battle in a TW game was 4-5 months ago ~D ), but it still seems to me that the pace is faster than in previous games. However, it's not so much so that it'll turn into a frustation, because for a general it was very hard to keep the overview intact in those days. At one point I feared my frontline would be swept away because masses of Romans had engaged my poeni and barbarians, but a few charges in wedge formation helped that. Even going to the triarii didn't help the Romans ~D

I think this game is shaping up very nicely. Pair this to the ton of new stragetical options and the trusted quality of a TW campaign, and I think we have a new classic in the make. Fixing the voice-acting and other stuff that does not help immersion (historical stuff, mainly...), and we would have the greatest game since Pac-Man! ~:0



~Wiz

[Crazed Rabbit]

Well, after staying up to midnight to DL it, then waiting up while it DLed, and then playing it at 1:30 in the morning on Monday, here are my thoughts:

The Good:
I was pleasantly surprised at how well the demo ran. It ran good at 1024x768 with all settings on high except for relections/glints.
Specs:
1.3 Ghz P4
256 Mb RAM
32 Mb Geforce 2

The units looked good, and the battle also looked nice. But there weren't that many units, so I am left to wonder how well my comp would work in big army games.

The Bad:
The voices of the units (i.e. barbarian mercenaries shouting "barbarian mercenaries" ). This is one of the stupidest things to put in here, and VERY HIGHLY ANNOYING. If this is in the final game, then I certainly won't buy it.

The battle went by very quickly, so you had to pause every two seconds. Also, sometimes I had to pound the pause key before the game would recognize it. If it could be slowed down somewhat, it would be great.

All the infantry moved way to fast. In the end, when some routing velites were running from my heavy cav, the cav could barely catch them. How can "winded and exhausted" men run so darn fast?

And when the fps were low, the mouse wouldn't react instantly, it would kind of drift onward in the direction it had been going for a while.

The interface during the battles. I don't want any part of my view of battles blocked. The bottom right part takes up a huge amount of space and has tiny little buttons that are a pain in the butt to hunt around for. The old minimap from MTW is better, because you can adjust it, it clearly showed the casualty bar, and it used colored pixels to represent units instead of those big dumb arrows.

Overall:
Well, the demo hasn't made me think "I must have this game." The graphics are nice, but everything else was pretty disappointing.

And, as in my sig, I will most certainly not buy it if we still have to unlock factions. I wonder waht moron came up with that?

Crazed Rabbit

[ShadesPanther]

All the infantry moved way to fast. In the end, when some routing velites were running from my heavy cav, the cav could barely catch them. How can "winded and exhausted" men run so darn fast?


If you are running for your life, You would run that fast ~;)


And about unlocking factions. I sure hope there will be a cheat if you do have to unlock factions. I badly want to play the Greeks and Carthaginians before the Romans.

[Nelson]

Here’s what I think of the demo, as played at 1024x768 on an Athlon 2000XP with 512ram and a Radeon 9800 pro 128, details to the max except for shadows:

The detailed graphics are spectacular. I gawked at the triarii in the tutorial for the longest time.

The unit animations are very good. I was astounded when the triarii doubled up the files to permit archers to move through and then closed up, all without an order from me to open the ranks. I had to do it three more times just to watch! Cav slamming into them and knocking them back was also very cool. It’s great to rotate the view around the men and not see the shields switch hands! Turning off the synchronized units makes then much more realistic.

I haven’t tried the view from the general yet but that might be fun and I’m glad it’s there.

The music is good. I like it a lot. It may get old after a time but what music doesn’t.

The audio feedback when you click on a unit doesn’t bother me much but it would be nice to be able to turn it off. Who knows, one day it might bug me.

I wasn’t sure what I would think of the big trees in the forest but now I like them. You feel like the men are in a forest without having them get so lost and jumbled up as they have heretofore.

Infantry runs too damn fast. Especially heavy infantry. These guys are too burdened to jog on like Marathon runners over the uneven fields that any unpaved surface represents. I have marched in close order while encumbered with arms through tall grass and I can testify that it is not done at a pace that approaches what we see in the demo.

I can’t decide if I think casualties happen too quickly or not. Sometimes I do but on other occasions combat seems OK. Playing one side in one historic battle isn’t conclusive. I guess the full game will tell the tale. This issue MIGHT be troublesome for me if the pace of combat has been accelerated too much.

I had no serious problems with the interface. Once I turned on the TW settings I was downtown. The left click select/right click move setup is worth getting used to in order to prevent the unintentional commands we have all issued many times. The unit boxes at the bottom of the screen need to be more obvious when a unit is selected. I would also like to turn off the info displays when I want.

I did get to turn off some things I knew I wouldn’t like: the green arrows, the huge gaudy banners and the flaming archery. I can’t say enough about removing the banners. It really adds to the immersion.

My frame rates are not satin smooth as the Romans cross the Trebia. Once they get in position I can pan around very smoothly so long as nothing is going on. The game is playable at all times but does not become smooth enough to suit me until casualties mount. Consequently I do feel the need to upgrade to an Athlon 2800 XP (the fastest cpu my mainboard will accommodate). I should add that I have never experienced the strange radiation effects that froggy has posted.

All told, I like the demo and can’t wait to get my hands on the whole enchalada.

[Dead Moroz]

I have mixed emotions. At last we have demo. It's good. But it doesn't impress me as much as MTW's demo. Too short and too much of negative things.

The graphics looks great! But till you try to play. It needs too much resources. My 2 years old computer (Pentium 4 CPU 1,7GHz; 384Mb RAM; GeForce4 MX 440 64Mb; monitor ViewSonic PF775) worked perfect with MTW. But now it seems I have to buy new PC. Playing RTW on my comp is just a headache! It works too slow and abruptly and sometimes almost freezing. I played demo on my brother's newer comp (Pentium 4 CPU 2,0GHz; 512Mb DDR RAM; GeForce FX 5200 128Mb; monitor NEC MultiSync FE791SB) and it worked better! But not very much...

I suspect that ingame cursor may be the problem. It moves slowly and can make game to run abruptly. I had the same problem with the game "Blitzkrieg". With it's default ingame cursor the game runs terribly. But when you choose the standart Windows cursor everything is ok. I think RTW must have the option to turn off that ingame cursor.

It's great that you can zoom in and see each fighting soldier looking much more realistically than in previous TW games. Great job, CA! But have to say that this feature is almost useless. Because you just have no time for it! Everything is going on so quickly. Why!? I'm not a speed maniac. I just want to enjoy my game. And I don't want to play "Need4Speed: Total war".

Another bad thing - the mini-map became useless. Blurry picture with mass of strange triangles. Absolutely uninformative and un-Roman. Looks like piece taken from some flight simulator.

That strange green triangles when you select a unit looks un-Roman too. Thanks gods, we can get rid of them.

Another annoying thing is jumping from unit to unit during review of battle stats. What is it for???

As many of us said before the "Pause" inscription is too big. I vote for it to be changed (I mean: became transparent and smaller). Also I wish to use "Pause" key instead of "P". And it will be good if we can hide interface during the battle.

I don't like the new system of showing moral status. I'm sure the old system of dynamic numbers is better. With new system you just cannot see the current state of your units.

It's bad that we can see the stamina status of unit only from pop-up description. It must be shown on unit's icon like in previos TW games.

There are some bugs I noticed (or maybe features I didn't understand):

1. Spears of Poeni Infantry are not visible when using GeForce4 MX440 video card. With GeForce FX5200 it works right.

2. When I group some units in some groups skirmishers began to behave strange. They go somewhere when I don't give them any orders (skirmish mode is disabled - so they must stand where they are).

3. When units of Sacred Band Cav are grouped in one squad and I select this group and give the order to go somewhere they sometimes go opposite side!

4. Cretan Archers may not shoot when I order them to. Enemies are at the required distance and there are enough missiles and no any barriers but those archers just doesn't shoot. Maybe they want more money for service?

5. "P" and "Esc" buttons doesn't respond when I push them. Usually I have to push them several times before they work.

6. During pause I change "walk mode" to "run mode" by clicking on button on interface panel. But when I continue the battle there is still "walk mode".

[tombom]

I want to play the carthiginans first. Then I'll play the romans.

And is the voice-acting really terrible? I hate cinematic voice acting.

[Sir Robin]

Stuck visiting in-laws and did not get the chance to download until last night.

Then only got the chance to play it once.

Overall I would have to say I am impressed.

Memory a little fuzzy, hooray bronchitus, but I think this is what I have.

Athlon 2800+ 2.08GHz
512MB Ram
128MB Radeon 9600SE AGP
80GB Hardrive

Did not run a FPS test but it seemed to be pretty smooth with everything on highest settings, turned on, and at 1024x768x32.

Odd strobe effect every now and then when flaming arrows hit Velites.

Overall I do really like this demo. I'll have to try some mod's but it quite alot of fun.

Will definately take some getting used to but I still highly recommend it.

Also noticed the pursuit bug for cavalry.

[Dramicus]

I dont know why you people are complaining about the game not performing well while running on your 2-5 year old computers, maybe its time to get a new computer or atleast upgrade your old one...

Those complaining about the game being too fast, it is simply a result of the single battle that you are playing, there are already mods which make the trebia battle much better and much more like what a standard battle would be like

here are some mods (http://www.totalwarcenter.com/downloads/db/?act=mods&cat_id=10)

One allows you to play as the Gauls in the tutorial battle and the other makes the Trebia battle 100% better, you actually get to see the AI working on the higher difficulties...

The Barbarian mod is fun but is too easy to win, the updated Trebia battle is great on the other hand... It takes full use of the map, the armies start several km apart, really allows you to formulate a strategy and execute it... :knight:

[A.Saturnus]

Did anyone try out the AI assistent?

[Shahed]

The graphics are great.

The AI assist is great, you can just sit back and enjoy the graphics.

[son of spam]

I have mixed emotions. At last we have demo. It's good. But it doesn't impress me as much as MTW's demo. Too short and too much of negative things.

The graphics looks great! But till you try to play. It needs too much resources. My 2 years old computer (Pentium 4 CPU 1,7GHz; 384Mb RAM; GeForce4 MX 440 64Mb; monitor ViewSonic PF775) worked perfect with MTW. But now it seems I have to buy new PC. Playing RTW on my comp is just a headache! It works too slow and abruptly and sometimes almost freezing. I played demo on my brother's newer comp (Pentium 4 CPU 2,0GHz; 512Mb DDR RAM; GeForce FX 5200 128Mb; monitor NEC MultiSync FE791SB) and it worked better! But not very much...

I suspect that ingame cursor may be the problem. It moves slowly and can make game to run abruptly. I had the same problem with the game "Blitzkrieg". With it's default ingame cursor the game runs terribly. But when you choose the standart Windows cursor everything is ok. I think RTW must have the option to turn off that ingame cursor.

It's great that you can zoom in and see each fighting soldier looking much more realistically than in previous TW games. Great job, CA! But have to say that this feature is almost useless. Because you just have no time for it! Everything is going on so quickly. Why!? I'm not a speed maniac. I just want to enjoy my game. And I don't want to play "Need4Speed: Total war".

Another bad thing - the mini-map became useless. Blurry picture with mass of strange triangles. Absolutely uninformative and un-Roman. Looks like piece taken from some flight simulator.

That strange green triangles when you select a unit looks un-Roman too. Thanks gods, we can get rid of them.

Another annoying thing is jumping from unit to unit during review of battle stats. What is it for???

As many of us said before the "Pause" inscription is too big. I vote for it to be changed (I mean: became transparent and smaller). Also I wish to use "Pause" key instead of "P". And it will be good if we can hide interface during the battle.

I don't like the new system of showing moral status. I'm sure the old system of dynamic numbers is better. With new system you just cannot see the current state of your units.

It's bad that we can see the stamina status of unit only from pop-up description. It must be shown on unit's icon like in previos TW games.

There are some bugs I noticed (or maybe features I didn't understand):

1. Spears of Poeni Infantry are not visible when using GeForce4 MX440 video card. With GeForce FX5200 it works right.

2. When I group some units in some groups skirmishers began to behave strange. They go somewhere when I don't give them any orders (skirmish mode is disabled - so they must stand where they are).

3. When units of Sacred Band Cav are grouped in one squad and I select this group and give the order to go somewhere they sometimes go opposite side!

4. Cretan Archers may not shoot when I order them to. Enemies are at the required distance and there are enough missiles and no any barriers but those archers just doesn't shoot. Maybe they want more money for service?

5. "P" and "Esc" buttons doesn't respond when I push them. Usually I have to push them several times before they work.

6. During pause I change "walk mode" to "run mode" by clicking on button on interface panel. But when I continue the battle there is still "walk mode".

For number four, I think the Cretan archers only display an arrow icon when they are actually firing, and not when they are reloading, which takes quite a long time.

[SpencerH]

I've only played the demo once on normal. I crushed the romans without really controlling anything beyond my initial orders to each unit. As many have said, it's too fast and feels more like a RTS game than TW. That wont sour the game for me but I'd rather have the control I had with MTW and Shogun.

Annoyances:

green triangles
units shouting names

So long as we can turn em off I dont care.

Graphics look great for the most part, but as others have said, its kinda hard to see em since while you're admiring the view half of your army has been heading for the boonies chasing a couple o romans.

Big Problem:

Strobe lights (radeon 9800 128). I dont recall seeing them in the demo and I'll try playing with the settings to up the performance but I wont buy RTW if it doesnt work right (and that would be a major disappointment for me).

[Medieval Assassin]

I can see that the units shouting thier names is okay, it really depends on the unit wouldn't it, like the fancy names like "tatari" or whatever it is, (Forgive me...) Wouldn't be nearly as bad as someone yelling
"BARBARIAN MERCENARY CALVARY!" that just sounds wrong...

[Skomatth]

Ironic that in MTW units shouted things in Latin but in RTW they shout things in English.

[SpencerH]

Hey where did my reply go?

The problem with the shouting is that it'll get irritating pretty quickly. Anyone who's played an RTS can testify to the irritation factor that 'yes m'lord' gives after the 1000th time you've heard it.

[Longasc]

As Gregoshi, I want to say thank you for the hint with the camera controls, thx. :)

[Lazul]

my wish list:
*get new voices!
*dont let the units scream in english... but in the correct (or as correct as possible) language
*and #¤&/% i dont want my orders repeated EVERY time and the units shouldnt say BÄRBÄRIAAN MÖRCINÄÄRIS!.... when i click em! ~:wacko:
*no more "i love the movie gladiator" style in the battles
* archers are overpowered in one way... the AI ignores them for some reason and they kill like a gattling gun
*Skirmishers sucks... they just run around like scared little girls... ~:dizzy:
*and at last... the melee sounds and so on should be more brutal... soldiers should scream in Latin, instead of the boring CHAAAARGE.... let them scream: ROMA VICTOR!!... or what ever they say... Brava victor? ehr, im confused i need to studie some latin ~:dizzy:

anyway, what you think?

[Sir Robin]

Something I figured I should ask...

We have seen the option to have Battles Arcade style in the full game.

Does anyone know if the battles in the tutorial are regular or arcade mode?

[SpencerH]

I turned up the graphics to the highest levels and the strobing disappeared :thumbsup: That seems to be the solution.

Whats TNL? and should I use it?

On the other hand the 'Russel Crowe' imitation and the unit announcements are already annoying.

The really sad part is that I lost the battle (on the hardest level).

[ShadesPanther]

Te carthaginian guy sounds like the short man in gladiator (sells the slaves) and was also in The Mummy. It is soooo annoying.

[Cloudkill]

I don't mind the voice acting. It's not that bad. Besides, it's probably a placeholder for better voice acting when the full game arrives.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

The only voice I hate is that really whiney annoying American guy who does the Roman voices!