Demo Impressions

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

Quote:

---

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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

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:

Did anyone try out the AI assistent?

The graphics are great.

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

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 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".

---

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.

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).

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...

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

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.

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

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?

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?

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).

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

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