http://uk.gamespot.com/total-war-rom...lWarRomeIiBatt
Gamespot released a video of the historical battle of Teutoburg Forest, around 10 minutes long.
Thoughts?
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http://uk.gamespot.com/total-war-rom...lWarRomeIiBatt
Gamespot released a video of the historical battle of Teutoburg Forest, around 10 minutes long.
Thoughts?
First thing I noticed was that he gave orders from the overhead tactical map, which they said you wouldn't be able to do.
Making allowances for the pre-alpha state - that video was absurd on a number of levels:
- Arrows are like death rays
- Roman morale was off the charts - no routing
- Tired Titus? Who me Marius? I can run - and fight - all day in heavy armor carrying a huge shield!
- Great balls of fire!!!!!!!!! (What were they?)
- Poor Varus - his rep takes another hit. Begging for his life? Really?
CA has some work to do.
When are we gonna see some darned Parthians? Darn Carthage, darn Rome, darn them all. I want to see what they have done with Parthia!
The balls of fire were the boulders that were shoved down by the warbands :grin2:
Agreed on the arrows, I thought they were abit over the top.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barkhorn1x
Agreed on the morale OTOH, they are disciplined legions with nowhere else to go...
Agreed on endurance lol
The inspiration for using that strikes me as coming straight off the movie, "Troy" when Hector attacks the beach. There is no historical record that they used such tactics and in fact the historical record mentions an earthen wall so archers could freely rein arrows.
Not going to comment on balance. Alpha is alpha.
Hope the flaming arrow visuals are place holders since they looked a bit more like lasers to me.
Love the tactical map, glad to see they listened to the feedback that said we wanted to issue orders from that. That's a huge improvement right there.
The rest is way too scripted to say much about, other than it looks pretty cool. The flexibility of the camera is a big plus too.
Good:
The engine looks fluid, crisp, well scaled and there are great animations and physics. The shoving between infantry lines and the way they remade cavalry into effective shock troops who's primary goal is to disrupt enemy formations, rather than kill everything.
Concerning:
The voicework is sometimes a bit corny. The red colour on the shields - I know Hollywood conditioned us to think that Romans were Red and violets were blue, but seriously. Too much red in those uniforms. Red dye was bloody expensive as far as I know.
The kill rate for archers and flaming arrows is much too high.
No fatigue and morale to speak of.
Cav charges from 10 meters are effective.
I'd like to see who blows all these war horns all the time.
Horrible:
"Set phasers to arrow trails!" - overuse of flaming arrows. Facepalm inducing arrow trail animations.
Dogs that charge at a formed line of romans. Since when did dogs charge head on like trained destriers? I'd expect them to circle around in packs and try to hamstring and bring down individual fighters or horses, but not this.
The Romans still don't fight like Romans should. Although it seems more realistic and organized than RTW, they are a long way off from solid lines, falling back trough the ranks, cenutrions directing their cohorts etc. Perhaps this is due to the scenario... We will see.
I don't object to the kill rate of the archers. When their shields were being used, the archers inflicted almost no casualties. When their shields were down and the archers were firing over them from the ridge, they inflicted a lot more. You can argue all you want that that may or may not be realistic, but as long as they have units run too fast (which they do, and which means archers cannot get off nearly as many volleys as would be realistic), and melee combat inflict casualties too fast, they will need to have the ranged units kill at a faster rate as well in order to both keep the game ballanced and to make sure that archers retain their historical importance. So quit whining. ~;)
As far as the fire arrow trails, I agree that it looks ridiculous, but I am afraid that we are in an age of over the top lighting and particle effects, and that they believe the game will not sell without them. Not sure they will change that, as they probably think that it will make the game not look sufficiently cool enough to attract new gamers.
I'm a bit worried about how easy that super flexible camera is going to be to control.
Good to see the game in action from a real gameplay perspective, even if it's so heavily scripted. But hard to judge certain aspects because it was such a presentation.
I just hope it isn't another month wait for more info.
Of course I am excited with the appearance of fireballs, lasers and Worgs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Myth
I was really not impressed with this at all. How much strategy was actually used or needed? None. He just attack moved his units around.
And I have the same complaints about the fire arrows and graphics. Finally, it wasn't historical at all, the Romans were not outnumbered, they were caught off guard. Frankly, as a historical battle this would be better represented with the player controlling the Germans and lining up his ambush and timing it just right. Playing as the Romans is fruitless, as there is no strategy to be used, you just get hammered and hope your units hold.
If the game plays out like this, I think I'll be sticking to EB.
They definitely tweaked moral and such for the video.Quote:
Originally Posted by fallen851
Here's a quote from Jack Lusted:
SourceQuote:
Additionally, I should point out that the Teutoberg video certainly showed barbarian units breaking earlier and Roman units surviving longer than they will do in the final game. We tweaked this for the video so that the guy demoing it could actually get through the battle to the end without dying horribly halfway through. It can be hilarious when that happens for the fifth time in a row, but maybe not so much when we are trying to record a video to show you….
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...-Greek-Shields
I wouldn't put too much weight on a heavily scripted scenario like this one.