Initial impressions spin-off thread: discussion and questions here

Moderator edit: this thread is a spin-off to the official impressions thread:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=71631

All discussion and questions arising from the above thread should be posted here, NOT in the above.

This thread was inspired by the following original post by Phalaxar:

"Hey,
now that some people have actually got their hands on the game, and everyone will be getting it tomorrow, thursday and friday latest (:beam: ), they're gonna want to review it, right? Was it worth it? Better than RTW? Better than MTW? The graphics work for you? The campaign improved? The battle mechanics play well?
I know I'll want to review it :2thumbsup:

So basically, if you've got your lucky hands on it and played it for a few hours, let's hear it!"

Let's make this the forum "initial impressions" thread. Post reviews of the full game here. To make it easy to read, no other posts should be made here. If people want to discuss specific issues, they should make separate threads.

Here's a link to Subedei's initial impressions in another thread:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...9&postcount=29

Ok, played M2TW till 4am this morning, am quite hung-over in work now and may as well do something useful:

First Impressions :

Got it yesterday afternoon, decided for the English (just like finishing my enemi9es with the fancy longbows before they can even enter into hand-to-hand). Inital strategy was:

Military
1. Secure York before the Scots have a chance to seize it
2. Take Rennes to bolster my presence on the continent
3. Crush the Scots as long as they have only one province

Diplomacy
1. Anyone playing RTW knows what to do: secure Trade Rights, trade Maps, check who hates who and exploit it.
2. Marry off my Princess to get a fourth general
3. Send out those greedy merchants
4. Recruit an assassin before enemy priests, diplomats and generals are too high-level to hit right away.

Cities
1. Encourage trade with roads, markets and harbors.
2. Turn Nottingham into a strong castle for bowmen, Caen for Infantery.

Battle-Impressions
First few battles were over quite fast. As units moving faster than in RTW (my impression), battles tend to be shorter and more fierce. Also, as pointed out by CA-staff, cavalery will no longer charge through enemy lines that easily, which led to some precarious situations when taking York with only my general, four spear militas and one unit of bowmen. This led to some fierce fighting in the streets of York and even after charging an enemy unit of bowmen in the rear, they didn't even think about routing, but turned and killed of some of my horses. To fully harness the power of the cavallery, you have to be quite disciplined in charging, withdrawing, charging. No more sending your horses in to crush the flanks of an infantery unit, lean back and watch the carnage.

With faster battles, it is more important than ever to press "p" during the most heated phases, look around if any of your units is in trouble. It happened to me several times that I was telling my bowmen who to shoot and seeing that my Panzerritter were harrassed by spearmen. Fortunatly it seems easier to withdraw from battle, even with low morale troops (happened sometimes in RTW that when I tried to withdraw them, they routed).

In later battles, especially when meeting the Scots outside Edinburgh, I encountered the problem some of the CA-staffers pointed out: Bringing more men to the battle than the Scots, especially bowmen, the AI waited until I shot down most of his spearmen. They didn't try to braveheart their ways out, just stood there and were XP-Point generators for my archers.

On some other occasion, trying to crush some rebel troops outside of Wales, I had some map problems: Entering the battle, I found my army set up on some veeery steep hills. When letting them stay there, I couldn't move them around after the battle started (due to rocks and general lack of moving space), setting them up in the valley below always led to the same situation: the rebels up in the mountains, unable to move, me down in the vallye, unable to reach them or shoot them. Finally had to let the AI do the fighting, which I dread, because I tend to lose a significant larger amount of my men.


Strategy Map:

Looks lavish. Trees moving in the breeze, more movement options in key areas like the Pyrenaes (?) and the alps.

Princesses
Married mine off in the third turn, after turning another prospector down in the second (he was 41. Can't marry my beautiful 26-year old daughter to some forty-something hack, can I?), worked smoothley.

Assassins & Spies
They advance faster than in RTW, spies climbing in rank even if they only ever take 100% missions. Assassins, though I had them quite early had a hard time finding their first targets, are more powerful than in RTW: after some training, I managed to take out two cardinals (Milan and France) without any problems.

Diplomacy
Yeah, it is easier to see what the other side is thinking of you and your offers, though after killing off the Scots my reputation with other factions, it was quite hard to even get them to give me trade rights.

Two minor problems, more out of a lack of understanding than anything else:
Priests
It is fun to hunt down heretics and watch your priests climb in rank, yet not quite sure what raises their piety level besides killing heretics. The priests and cardinals of other factions seem to advance rapidly, while my guys preach in the wilderness.

Traders
Not quite sure what to do with them. Place them on ONE ressource in a far away land and leave them there. Or move around trying to visit as many diffrent ressources as possible. First thought the latter, but AI-traders stayed on one specific ressource for years, without moving away. So I think you have to find one good ressource, place your trader on it and leave him there, but I am not sure. The manual wasn'T very helpful either, due to the fact, that it is in German and translated very sloppily.

Which brings me to the main criticism:
German translation. I never played any Total War game in German, now I know why. Some translations of on screen texts are done literally, not taking the context into account. This leads to some downright ridicoulus sentences and phrasings (Especially the "Woodmen", which they translated with "Waldbewohner" meaning "People who live in the forest") Also I find the voice acting not that great, especially for the princesses, which sound like being account . The tutor on the battle map sounds like he is constantly annoyed by something. The option to install the English version is given upon installation, yet no English language or menues so far :no: Which is understandable from the CA point of view, but for me a small let-down.

Sooo, after 30 turns I am surpreme ruler of the English Isles, the French and Spaniards are occupied with the moors and rebel provinces on the peninnsula. After taking Rennes one turn before the French army reached it, left the French rather weak in their core provinces and they turned south for expansion.
The Moors brought two large armies over the strait of Gibralta, hope they will cuase some problems for Spain and France there.
The HRE is occupied with wars against Venice and Milan, while their standing with the pope steadily deteriorates. I am massing armies in Caen to take the rebel province of Brugge and hope that the HRE is excommunicated rather sooner than later. Me killing off most of their priests, which leads to declining catholicism and heretcis springing up in their provinces, will hgelp this cause.
Prince Rufus is currently on his way to Jerusalem, yet a small army of Venice will probably beat me on the race there, due to the fact that they had a two
turn headstart.



Puhhh, a little bit longer than planned, not that structured (sorry for that). Excuse my bad English I am no native speaker.

The reviews seem very promising so far.

thanks Barny for the feedback! much appreciated as I won't be able to play the game for quite a while :2thumbsup: Hope some of the other lucky people follow your lead (and soon!). I'm just dying to get some solid info on AI, diplomacy, battles, etc...

One thing I'd like to ask you to elaborate on a bit (perhaps when you've played more) are the battles. You mention units move even faster than they did in RTW, and battles are over sooner? I find that dissapointing to hear, to be honest, and a bit contradictory to the reports of the demo-battles. Do you stil find the battles enjoyable?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shifty157

The reviews seem very promising so far.

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Apart from the 'battle impressions'.
Faster than RTW!!!???!!!
I have always had reservations about 'impassable' areas on the tactical map. I made loads of maps and always steered clear of models and impassable tiles because they all too often end in bug ridden battles and/or poor unit pathfinding

.......Orda

Battles are not faster than RTw, i can assure you of that.

The ai pathfinding is much improved in M2TW so it has no problems dealing with impassable objects/terrain.

Hmmm, faster battle speed is just my impression. I killed time until the M2TW release with playing another RTW campaign, and even with my largest armies never had any problems with losing overview during huge battles. During the M2TW battles it happened often, that the enemy was upon me before I my archers fired their second volley. Trying to run down enemy archers who ventured to far away from their battlelines proved more difficult than in RTW, as they nearly outran my Hobilars on the first few meters.

Maybe I was just tired after nine hours of playing and my reaction time was suffering under sleep deprevation :dizzy2:

Will do some test battles tonight for you guys an be back tomorrow with test results.

Just wondering whether the grouping command of Ctrl+Shift+number still working in the finished product? It seems that this grouping comand (available in MTW & RTW) is missing in the Gold Demo.

Quote:

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As units moving faster than in RTW

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****.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Big King Sanctaphrax

****.

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Read Lusted's report :2thumbsup:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Barny Bangs

Hmmm, faster battle speed is just my impression.

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That may be due to the AI being aggressive and charging immediately when it can't out shoot you.

I don't understand why the designers think it's good that archers can only get off one volley on charging infantry or that light cavalry has trouble catching skirmishing infantry. In STW, it takes about 30 seconds for fast infantry and 35 seconds for standard speed infantry to charge across no man's land. In that time, archers can fire 6 or 7 volleys and the gameplay is fine. In STW, cavalry moves at twice the speed of infantry and again it works well in the gameplay.

I agree with Puzz3D. STW has some simply yet very effective balancing.

Now that I think of it, didn't STW have similar cavalry as MTWII seems to have; i.e. vulnerable when bogged down in melee and strong when charging, but only if the charge was initiated from the right distance (i.e. not too close, not too far)?

Quote:

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I don't understand why the designers think it's good that archers can only get off one volley on charging infantry

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In STW and MTW I could win most battles by shooting the crap out of the AI before they could engage my battle line, i.e. Too easy. Perhaps the slow rate of fire is intentional to put the emphasis on melee. Intentional or not, I much prefer melee battles over turkey shoots.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Puzz3D

That may be due to the AI being aggressive and charging immediately when it can't out shoot you.

I don't understand why the designers think it's good that archers can only get off one volley on charging infantry or that light cavalry has trouble catching skirmishing infantry. In STW, it takes about 30 seconds for fast infantry and 35 seconds for standard speed infantry to charge across no man's land. In that time, archers can fire 6 or 7 volleys and the gameplay is fine. In STW, cavalry moves at twice the speed of infantry and again it works well in the gameplay.

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Hmm.. YOu're quite correct there.. Imagine an armored man running/sprinting a 160 metres distance, through that, wouldn't an opposing archer be able to fire off more than one volley.. ?!

I think I read somewhere that even against horse mounted knights (who are slow for cavalry) archers could get off 3 shots before the knights could close to melee....of course the real question is whether those first couple volleys of arrows would have any effect at the longer ranges against an armored foe...


I think one thing that would make sense would be for archers to reload quickly but there attack rating drops as the distance increases (maybe this does happen, but they should lose both accuracy and damage). This way you could even consider pinning enemy troops and then using archers from the side to devastate the stuck enemy in the cross fire...

Hey, I thought this thread was supposed to be for initial impressions and reviews only? Speaking of which, a mod can delete this post! ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jambo

Hey, I thought this thread was supposed to be for initial impressions and reviews only?

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I know, that was my intention. But we have only one such post here so far. On the other hand it is hard to stiffle all discussion arising, and probably contrary to the spirit of a discussion forum. Maybe I'll try copying this thread to make a spin-off with discussion and questions, then leave the pruned original?

Ok I thought I'd take a pause before my first attack on the Frenchies (playing as English) to make a initial impression.

I've not played enough to really review. But I must say it seems like very good so far. Scots are already amassing on my northern border and French have taken surrounding rebel towns, agressive play, and I'm only on medium difficulty.

I've found the battle a nice speed, I underestimated rebel province at Rennes and got beat back (they had more levy spearmen whilst I was just using a peasant army that you get at the start) however I took York.

I really need more generals though, I'm having to move one general around in order to get my cities going. My princees is currently out in Europe scouting the talent, oh and a sneaky Danish merchent bribed my own merchent to leave the resources I had him on.

Overall I'm liking the direction M2 is giving me. The council of nobles give an ealry mission, and its not "take this.." its "send a diplomat to..". Also castles/cities is genius. Very interesting, liek a prvious poster I'm gonig for caen/nottingham as castles and York/London as cities early on.

Anyway, top game.

Here's a link to some other initial impression at the .com:

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...cID=5795.topic

Sounds like a lot of fun! :2thumbsup:

Yet, upon reading carefully some issues seem to pop up:
1. Crusades over land having extreme desertion rates (could be realistic but is it fun?) Could possibly be avoided by travelling by boat.
2. Missions to conquer other catholic's provinces --> you either fail the mission or get in trouble with the pope. Not sure, could be intended this way, forcing you to make though choices.
3. Sieges.... the AI still using only one ram (while it had built four)... :no:
4. AI diplomacy.... in this particular description the Danish AI doesn't seem to have a clue... first it marries off their princesses and offers and alliance, later it suddenly attacks.
5. Big enemy army turning rebel (while seiging your town). This was reported in another report as well. Surely we may expect the AI to not assign its largest stacks to low-loyalty generals? :wall:
6. Something I also never quite understood in MTW: if you attack a catholic faction, the pope will go mad immediately. However, it seems here the French (in a sneaky alliance with the Scots, I did like that!!) attacked the English and maintained their 10/10 standing with the pope!! Is the AI getting favourable treatment?
7. Some bus, apparentely already well-known, so might all be fixed in first patch, regarding battle AI (won't move) and units (non-charging cavalry).

@ #6.

Maybe the French have been donating super sums to the pope and done all missions (if ai even get missions lol) etc.

I sieged Edinburgh and got told to stop, but dm because Scotland brought reinforcements down from Inverness (I think theres another city up there right?) and booted me out anyway lol, I'm now in a mad dash to reinforce York.

Ok I think I've played 20-30 turns now. I have York, The Welsh town, Rennes, Angiers, Caen, London. I think thats it. Trying to take my steady time to take it all in.

Some notes, the pope while his mentions are better than the senate, is annoying! I'm playing English, and he's threatened to excommuincate me if I didn't stop attacking French, so I turned around and went for Scots, he did the same thing.

So I'm going for I think its a Belgian town now, Brugge maybe. I have Nobles mission to take dublin. So i'm trying to muster armies in UK and on the contient atm.

I know my initial impressions are more of a campaign report lol, but I didn't play much mtw at all and no stw, so I can't really compare.

Ok, some updates:

Battle speed has not changed, seems like I have been FUI (fighting under the influence). Yet, when not outnumbered and having no bowmen superiority, the AI attacks quite aggressively and rushes in for the fight fast. While being outnumbered, they just stand there waiting to be slaughtered most of the time (known "bug", fixed very soon with the first update, or so I read).


AI campaign map:

I can't see any papal favouritism for AI factions. HRE declared war on Venice and Milan, which led them to having one point left on the pope-o-meter. France had a skirmish with Milan, which took Metz, making them also not the pope favorites. Myself, the English, having wiped out the Scots in one single turn (attacked their borderguard, sieged Edinburgh, during the AI turn his remaining forces attacked me, while the beseiged army sallied forth) and contributing to the first crusade didn't have any problems with the pope so far. Yet other factions like Spain, Venice and Milan are advancing fast on the pope-o-meter, their cardinals becoming holier than thou, while my cardinal while preaching, converting and killing of heretics didn't become any more pious.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Barny Bangs

the pope-o-meter.

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:laugh4:


Nice one!!!! You just gave me a word for that thing....one actually looks pretty often on it, right? "Poland ahead...damm it....Oh, let´s have a crusade on France, Popey don´t like them, easy prey...well maybe"

Sorry it is me again, but I read in a couple of fori, that there were no General´s speeches....THERE ARE SPEECHES...Just wait until the camera zooms in 2 the General and there U go....at least in the German version. One of them was cursing, bragging & even asking who drank all his beer...~:cheers: