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Not sure if this one is new or not.
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http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=186580
http://www.totalwar-zone.de/index2.php?g=etw&id=5
Those are looking pretty good, can't wait to see that myself. :2thumbsup:
Thats a very nice UI, I like the portraits as well.
Ichi is god! :bow:
Everyone join his fan club now! :clown:
edit: and now I finally understand how they're weird map layout works, and I have to say it looks better than America in M2
Austria and Poland look a bit...funny. I'm pretty sure Poland is quite a bit off.
Still, it looks like they did pretty well. I note that the Duchy of Courland is present and correct, for example :P
Hm, the map seems more simplistic and lower in quality than m2tw.~:confused: I hope CA will work on it more and not get them selves lost in "age of sail". I remember that early screen shots from m2tw later turned out better so maybe it happens again.
Great with ability to appoint governors, if so. I really like the minimap too. Strange though, is the lands of England and Spain only one region?:candle:
G
I think the map looks better honestly.
Me too.
Gustav II Adolf, I think the provinces are "merged" on the mini-map. Not separated, that is. And it looks better that way, IMO.
It looks really good and I'm kinda glad they dumbed down the campaign map so we don't have to deal with annoying terrain.
I'm not sure about the provinces being merged considering you can see lines in the Ottoman turk empire. I guess they represent nations of the era (Potential egypt and greek rebellion against the Turks?)
Well, this is not major for me but i just think there is an emty feel with less detail. The colors are a bit more cartoonish and cities seem not to be well integrated with their environment. I would love to get drawn into a vibrating alive environment also in the campignmap not just in battles. However, playability overrides everything. I don´t want clutter.
G
I just hope the empty province will provide less sieges and more field battles.
Discoman, I think those lines represent lakes and bodies of water.
I am impressed. I like the idea of instead of having a province for easch city you kind of get more of a region province. Like London being the capital and smaller cities areound it. I like the new government system and hopefully a new trade system. I think there will be less armies so we don't have 20 stacks attacking a country. So now we might have 1 or 2 armies per region by the looks of it. I love the graphics and art style of the map. Hate the building pictures though.
Might be interesting. They DID say that diplomacy would be more complex, so those lines might represent protectorates or something similar.Quote:
Originally Posted by Discoman
It'd be cool if you could annex nations while letting them retain a semi-seperate government.
Looks nice, but there is one thing missing from the map of Europe, Iceland :furious3:.
Well, it looks like most of the small German States got lumped together too, so don't feel TOO left out.Quote:
Originally Posted by hundurinn
Actually, it's very difficult to see, but every nation has those lines on it. It's the most clear for the Ottomans, but I can definitely see province border-lines on the mini-map for Russia, Austria, Poland, and Sweden in particular. It may be difficult to see borders in England, France, and Spain because their faction colors are much brighter. I can just make out lines separating Britain into 4 territories.
Looks beautiful to me!
I see two pictures with India in it, and it makes me happy to see that they've done a good job with the provinces in there.
Edit;
I might be wrong, but it seems that we won't be able to take the overland route to India. Europe and the Indian subcontinent seem to exist on different maps, perhaps they're making the map in parts, Europe one, India two, American continents three and so on......
Marvelous find, Ichigo! Kudos. :2thumbsup:
Personally, I find no real faults with the map's appearance. For what it's worth, IMHO it does look somewhat better than in Medieval 2, although it doesn't really matter to me either way. (Also, it sounds as if the main differences with ETW's map will be functional, not visual.) I definitely applaud a return to the Shogun/MTW-style mini-map -- I've always found the RTW/M2TW-style mini-map (where you can see separate provinces) somewhat clunky & inelegant in appearance. :2thumbsup:
I agree that Poland-Lithuania appears to be somewhat off. Specifically, most of Lithuania looks like it's Russian territory for some reason. :inquisitive: Austria actually looks about right, aside from perhaps Silesia having been ceded to P-L in the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sheogorath
I'm rather sympathetic to your feelings here -- I too wish cities and ports looked a little more natural instead of just plunked down onto the map -- but I also agree with you in that gameplay is an overriding concern in this regard. Better to able to clearly see stuff on the campaign map than having to search for it because it blends in too well with its surroundings. ~:)Quote:
Originally Posted by Gustav II Adolf
I sincerely hope that's not the case, as separating the regions like that would almost certainly partially nullify the usefulness & relevance of the game's naval aspect. If you can't interdict/destroy enemy shipping when it's en route from one continent to another, then what's the point of having vessels in the first place? :gah: The only thing I can think of that might work would be if a fleet leaves the "edge" of one map, that then it appears at the edge of the next one.Quote:
Originally Posted by india
Of course, how that would work when sailing to India, I have no idea. Unless of course CA is including a map of the coast of Africa, but they've given absolutely no indication they're doing that. ~:confused:
Found a map of Europe for 1700:
http://www.euratlas.net/PHA/history_...e_map_1700.jpg
Poland is very definitely looking a bit odd.
I guess Austria looking odd is mostly just due to its being a bit stretched out...perspective, rather than actual fault.
I'd HOPE there would be an overland route to India. The period towards the end of the game was the start of the 'Great Game' period between Russia and the UK.
Besides, it looks like Persia is split between the two maps. It'd be sort of inconvenient if they had two separate 'sides' to their empire that couldn't interact despite being right next to each other.
I just don't get it, what is it whit the bloom effect? I thought that trend was gone. Most unrealistic graphical effect ever. It is ridiculous, even black color glows. That screenshot of battle almost hurts my eyes.
Needs more brown ;)
Map looks great. I may sound like a history buff (very knowledgeable), but my readings are actually very superficial and shallow. I only know in-depth on a few topics, and my overall history is rather ignorant. So I wish I could make some complex comments about geography like some of the posters here did, but I actually don't know much about the time era. I do know a little about Poland Lithuania and my impression was that its geographical shape was more like France (i.e. one chunk) rather than the letter "Y". The other countries look great (and many that I can't even name).
Some comments about the campaign map, not the overall continental map, but the clickable map. The map landscape looks great, though the cities look like they were drawn by crayon, so does the water.
The possibilities are:
-The developers are trying to go for a Renaissance Rembrandt/Renoir style of painting, and different from the previous games in the series to show a completely new way of game design, including the map interface's look.
-The developers are making a lot more regions this time, and rendering the map in the same way as RTW/M2TW would make the campaign map lag.
Probably the former, and perhaps a combination of both. The cities on the campaign map probably look better if they were more like in the last screenshot. Either way, RTW had 103 regions, and maximum was 200 regions, because of the 255 RGB values possible with a type of image file. I actually don't understand how (but probably would with a little bit of explanation). Perhaps it goes by base 2 factorial, so the next RGB value would be 512. It'd be great if ETW had 500 maximum available regions. And this is not indirectly asking for any in-campaign regions, the developers decide on that with the best use of limited time and resources, I am merely asking for the maximum number of available regions be raised from the previous engine. In other words, it'd be great if the developers used a different kind of image file with higher RGB value, so the maximum regions could be more. Teams like EB and RTR would be ecstatic.
I find the Victorian/Renaissance (there are many centuries of difference between these eras, and my history is more or less rather blurred because I didn't read much in this time period, nor know that much about it) graphic design of the building/recruiting interface to be very well made, very attractive. Perhaps slight bit more graphics. Or perhaps it varies a bit depending on the form of government. If aristocratic then very baroque. If republic then very Greek/Roman. Again, that's just eye candy and would detract from game mechanics. If there is time, then perhaps different styles of user interface depending on government type (or even culture type). Otherwise, just one user interface.
That'll have to happen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Martok;
The maps are most certainly separate, I checked the other forum thread, and that is what I've understood from there.
I remember CA saying right since the begining that the sea-route to India would be something different; Not what might be expected......Quote:
Originally Posted by Martok;
My first thoughts:
I can see what people mean that the campaign map looks a bit empty. All in all though, that's not surprising since people complained that the M2TW map was too cluttered with agents, and there were too many sieges. The lower number of provinces will increase the number of field battles and will free up more provinces to use on the new world and India, as ThePianist says. It certainly looks to me as though Spain is a single province, England and Scotland are the only two province in mainland Britain; I guess the faint lines on Russia and the Ottoman Empire mean they get more provinces. I suppose it makes some sense having one province per faction (at least for Spain, France etc) since my understanding of warfare in this period is that if you lost your capital, you lost the war (except Russia of course).
I must say I'm pleasantly surprised at sheer number of factions, I count 27 just in Europe. Looks like those hoping to play as some of the smaller factions like Switzerland will get their wish. EDIT: Make that 28, am I right in thinking Malta is there?
I note the screenshot in which England has two ports, makes sense I suppose since it would be a bit odd for one-province Spain to just have one port in the Med and none on the Atlantic.
Interesting to see the separate Europe and India maps. Regarding the overland route, if you can sail your ships to the edge of the map and have them appear in the Indian Ocean, I wonder if you can march to the edge of Persia on the map and have your army appear in Persia on the Indian map?
Graphics look fine to me, maybe a bit simpler than M2TW but that's fine with me. Not expecting the campaign map to provide eyecandy, it's supposed to be the more cerebral part of the game.
I wonder who the non-soldier guys hanging around on the map are, given that diplomacy, espionage etc will supposedly be handled by menu rather than agents? Great figures, perhaps?
Interesting that there are separate tabs for "construction" and "infrastructure". Infrastructure would be what, roads, farms, mines and ports? Maybe canals and railways also, this being Empire.
I had forgotten that, aside from being the Age of Sail, this was also the Age of Silly Wigs. Tee hee. Maybe a "wigmaker" ancillary? That shot of the "government" screen is intriguing though.
pevergreen dances with excitement
I love it. That's all.
pevergreen has stopped dancing and is now waving a massive fanboy flag
Maybe that odd Polish province is Saxony? If you think about it, the colours of Switzerland and Poland are very similar, so maybe they forgot to distinguish the colours? I can't for the life of me understand why they'd give Saxony to Poland.
At that time the elector of Saxony was also king of Poland.
CBR
Provincial outlines seem to have been done away with on the minimap making it look a lot better - much easier to see the expanse of domains and empires now. The entire map seems to have been cleaned up and uncluttered from M2TW's - I like it. There's plenty of space between cities now which means much more field battles, and more opportunities for CA's new AI to shine (hopefully) and less sieges which I found fun in M2, but could also get very boring if that was all you were doing.
I agree. Something about having no provincial lines just makes your map look so much more... I can't think of a better word, so i'll use "authentic".Quote:
Originally Posted by Martok
It's hard being a mud-slinging cynic sometimes. ~:(
I'l be the bad one so lol...I kinda think it...Well...lol. it looks a bit cheesy! At least thats my opinion. The Citys, look tiny, And I guess i just expected it to look diff. Certainly a lot of detail though, And i wont let this stop me from buying it lol...but does anyone else think, it kinda looks just a little weird?
Certainly, I agree it looks a little odd. I'm not decided yet as to whether I like it or not. It's just that so long as it looks more or less OK, I don't really mind, since the campaign map isn't the part of the game that is supposed to look spectacular.
From reading the TWcenter thread linked in the OP, I get the impression that these screenies were leaked rather than deliberately released (other previews at the moment seem to be saying the campaign map isn't being shown as it isn't finished), so this might not be the final version.
But they were in personal union, which doesn't mean one state. At the same time king of GB was also elector of Hanover (the same personal union), but we can clearly see that GB and Hanover are seperate states in map.Quote:
Originally Posted by CBR
fyi, you can get rid of provincial boundaries in Rome and M2 with about 3 minutes of modding. You just have to change the factions "secondary colour" to the same as it's "primary colour" in one of the descr files.
I think this is an early version of the map because there is a lack of objects on the map and CA said there would be a fair amount of them to give us objectives in a province outside of the main city.
I personally like the style and feel of the map.
edit: what's with the trophy symbol?
Not until 1714, actually. Assuming the game starts in 1700, Poland and Saxony have the same leader.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herkus
I'm just stating the possible reason as to why CA would make them as one faction. Maybe there will be some limitations for the player.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herkus
George I (House of Hanover) became king of Great Britain in 1714. In 1700 the ruler would be William who was also Stadtholder of a major part of the Dutch republic.
CBR
Actually one more thing, I forgot to mention lol...hopefully someone can answer his for me. It was noted a while back, by one poster, that there exists no mention of official campaign map info, on the TW site, or on the Sega one...therefore we assume this was leaked, rather than released. However lets assume it is official...or at least quite close, to what the finished product will look like. Look on the map of Britian. Do you see what I see? To me, them two characters look like Agents. I thought there would'nt be any Agents..such as diplomats in this game.That it was part of the effect of not ''clustering'' up the map? And that all Diplomatic engagments were brought up, in some seperate menu...Anyone know anything? I Could be wrong, but this is what, we were told...I am certain
Well I have a strong hunch that the figures with flags over their heads are generals. I'm not sure who the figures in black are, however.
Inquisitors of course ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Martok
From the third screen shot they look like generals just kinda shaded. Maybe because they don't have any troops?Quote:
Originally Posted by Martok
Yes, I agree. But it will be wrong to not include personal union feature, otherwise Great Britain will own large chunk of Germany (Hannover) or whole Netherlands just because they have the same ruler. MEH!:no:Quote:
Originally Posted by CBR
I really like it. Its recognisably TW, but also has the right "era" feel of a game like EUII
Obviously I recognise, the Flag bearing units, as commanders...I was talking about the Black ones. And Ha-ha, they do actually look like the Inquisitors
Plus Did anyone notice the Walled Citys??(Of course you did) I thought these were other things, which were to be done away with in Empire.
maybe these characters are spies or governers who arent Generals Ca said they would reduce not eliminate agents.
Walls were still around they would offer at least a little protection against the enemy.Quote:
Originally Posted by darrin42
That's my thoughts too. The unit cards and buidlings, and everything else gives me the feeling that this game is actually older than M2TW. But, hopefully, as you point out, the final product will look better. :yes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Gustav II Adolf
Is it just me or does everything seem "brighter" too. Maybe they turned on some HDR effects :laugh4:
I agree with the point on building portraits, needs a little work there. Hopefully they are just placeholders.
On the other hand, I gotta say I prefer the new unit portrait design. The design of the display bar that is. This might sound trivial but one of the reasons I didn't check out the Total War series for the longest time was because I saw some screenshots with the rectangular bland looking unit portraits. I still remember that moment because for some reason, it didn't really leave a good impression of the game on me. So it wasn't until recently that I decided to try out M2TW and I'm glad I finally did. The rounded portraits in ETW seem to improve that in my eyes.
The one thing I have missed since the original MTW is the ability to reward generals with governorships and titles – it gives you the ability to build up favorites and adds a RP element to the game. I am glad to see it here in the screen shots, hopefully this functionality will be in the game.
I agree whole heartedly with this! I would love to be able to reward my best generals for doing so well. At the moment all a good general has to look forward to is being constantly used in battle until eventually somebody gets lucky and skewers him. It would be nice if we could reward them with titles, land and eventually retirement.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Godfrey
Yes! I hadn't thought of that: Granting land to generals/ministers, what an excellent (if implemented correctly) concept! Having to "purchase" the loyalty of an important person that has vices that reduce state income strikes me as good fun. :2thumbsup:
/KotR
Dunno how I'm gonna get an army from essex to india via sea...
https://img176.imageshack.us/img176/...tegrossav3.jpg
I imagine you'll do so by sailing around Africa. ~;p
Although how *that* will work has yet to be revealed. It's been speculated that perhaps ships will simply "disappear" off the map for a number of turns before "reappearing" in the Indian Ocean, but no details on that have been released thus far.
woot. At least Portuguese Goa is in. :D
Let's hope Portugal is playable.
Uh?:sweatdrop:
As far as I can tell, there seems to be a need to sail between Iceland and that strangely formed landmass streching out from Africa and into the atlantic ocean, somewhat disrupting trade links??? But the Spanish has their land bridge back from MTW - which is nice enough. The shiny thing in South Africa could represent the diamond mines, but I can't remember if they were discovered in this timeframe?
The atlantic ocean ridge is also clearly marked, perhaps as a string of small island empires?!?
I'm glad CA finally dropped the "we must stick to history" approach in the campaign map!
:clown:
/KotR
I hope you change the colour of the sea in the campaign minimap... I cannot see france.
The Diamond deposits were found in 1867. South African Diamond rush occurred in 1880, in the Oranje and Transvaal Boer Republics (Now part of South Africa). This valuable resource, along with Gold, and the fear of increasing Portuguese influence in Transvaal were behind the Boer Wars between the Boer Republics and Britain. Since the game end date is seemingly 1800, it goes far off the Diamond Rush which caracterized South Africa.Quote:
Originally Posted by Knight of the Rose
I think it is good for what it is. I mean clearly it's not done, if you look at that first one you can see one of the buildings isn't even completed. There is a long span between now and Feburary so plenty of time to wrap things up like the mini map. I think for a bare bones look at the map it is just fine.
I to would like to know more, see more, and in general just understand a bit better what the final product looks at. Hopefully come Dec or so we can get a better look at the campaign map, or maybe even in the next dev diary, who knows.
Where there's life, there's hope.Quote:
Originally Posted by Polemists
-Latin proverb
I dont want to be overly critical, because there is still plenty of time for edits to be made, but these screenshots give the overall feeling that i would be buying just an updated and slightly more complicated game than something like Imperial Glory.
I really liked the whole rumor about having multiple cities or settlements per province, but i guess these screenshots pretty much shot that one down.
We will see what they do. If anything, i am highly intrigued.
Id certainly like to see the map on a more global, or atleast partially global scale, Civ 4 world maps come to mind....
And yeah i agree, Poland is TOTALLY messed up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aemilianus the Younger
Poland has one region taken by Russia in those screens. CA commented on that somwhere. Otherwise I think the campign map looks better and more alive after seeing the land battle video.:2thumbsup: Still, I wish that some day CA will move away from the over all cartoonish style in TW games.
G
Not really sure what you mean by this. Compared to games like Warcraft I never viewed TW games as Cartoonish. I mean they are probably not going to be crysis graphics in battles, but then again they are probably not going to turn the campaign map into some overly done design like google earth.Quote:
move away from the over all cartoonish style in TW games
I always viewed TW games as very realistic, espically when I consider the other games out there.
Though maybe that's just me.:juggle2:
Now that i think about it, there are only two things that upset me about looking the screenies.
Firstly, the whole seperate maps for each continent/region, really bothers me. It just doesnt seem right. I thout they did a decent to good job in MTW2 when the integrated the Americas. Why not build on that concept and add africa asia and maybe south america? beats me.
Secondly, there is a total emptiness feel to the campaign map. I really feel as though there needs to be more cities. A major concept in this era is the industrialization of Europe and the eastern coast of America, there should be more cities(especially when i look at the map of england), the entire Manchester/Liverpool/Sheffield/Leeds region is totally barren. I felt sure there would be atleast one if not two or three cities there. Same thing goes for the Ruhr in Germany. Just having two cities/provinces on the entirety of Mainland Britain baffles me.
What do you guys think? Was i just expecting the totally wrong thing from the new game?
Well I think they said in a interview that thier goal was less micromanaging and more focus on overall decisions and battles. Which would lead you to imply you would spend less time going through every single city throughout all of England, but rather just focus on the major ones, and make Empire decisions.
In practice I'm pretty sure this will work like MTW2, where you are not controlling every minor village throughout Spain but rather major provinces, this time it's probably controlling central economic hubs.
Just my theory anyhoo, they are going for the less is more thing, to attract new players with less micromanaging.
I believe those cities didn't really become significant settlements until the Industrial Revolution, so perhaps when you build a Factory, it'll pop up in the region of Manchester or Birmingham.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aemilianus the Younger
Thats a good point(both of you).
I hadnt thought of it so much as micormanaging.
Thanks for that.
Yeah you are probably right about the industrial revolution thing. I never really understood why they always make the end of the campaign so soon. They did the same thing in Medieval, you get a shot at the Americas, and then the campaign ends like 20 or 30 turns later.
I wish they just let the campaign continue for maybe an extra 20 or 30 years.
If they expand the campaign up to 1850 for example, there are many new things that they could integrate into the game. Manifest Destiny for the 13 colonies comes to mind, and Industrialization is another huge thing.
wow they look good!
while were going on about how things look andscreenies why not enter a competition to show off your profile
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...02#post2041102
(woo shameless advertisement rulez :clown:)
I for one love the simplified maps. Camera glare should be a thing in the past, though. As long as there is enough variety in battle maps, it should be ok.
In Medieval II and Rome, when the country grew to medium-large size, the strategic element was swamped under micromanagement. And if you made a mistake (clicked your agent to walk to a wrong place), you couldn't correct it without reloading (movement points...). With less agents, less cities and less clutter on the screen, things should work pretty well. Independent, non-controllable village units (a la Civ 4) that could be pillaged for income and used as battlegrounds might be interesting, but not that important.
Forest battles could be fun, if there was an option to clearly see your forces deployed among the woods. I don't mind the enemy being consealed (that's what light cavalry is for), but I really want to know where my own forces are and to which direction they are deployed. Maybe not "realistic", but that's the most annoying thing about forest battles.
More field battles is a good thing. Although, this is actually THE period I really want to play sieges. I hope it won't be the same ol' Bash The City Walls, but that they'll have an abundance of the period's fortifications. The old style castles should still play their part, as not every castle was modernized, or at least not completely.
Then again, the "siege engine" (lol) has gotten better and better with every game.
I wonder if they have anything like coastal fortress vs. fleet battles planned... That kind of thing can be moddable (fortresses as immobile "ships") though, if they don't incorporate it directly to the game.
The four seasons would have a direct strategic impact, especially if there would be income only in the beginning of the year or end of the summer or something. (Sir! The harvest is poor! The Takeda will finally take your lands, as this is the 5th year in the row, lol! I will be honoured to be your second if you want to cut open your belly!)