Demo Discussion Thread

[Monk]

You guys who are experiencing "Not bad" load times:

What do your specs look like?

Single-core systems? Dual core?

I need some info!

[Greyblades]

Monk my system specs are: Intel dual core 6320 1.86ghz, 2gigs of ram and a Gforce 8800GT
And somehow I managed to play the sea battle on ultra and it was only a little jittery. I have no clue how.

[Sheogorath]

Monk my system specs are: Intel dual core 6320 1.86ghz, 2gigs of ram and a Gforce 8800GT
And somehow I managed to play the sea battle on ultra and it was only a little jittery. I have no clue how.

Computers are mysterious things sometimes. I think it's a conspiracy, myself.
I bet the elephants are behind it.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

I wonder .. will my pc allow me at least see the main loading screen?
CPU: 2-Intel Pentium 4, 2992MHz
RAM:512MB
Video:RADEON X300/X550 Series Secondary
OS: Windows XP Home Edition, Service Pack 3

[ConnMon]

I wonder .. will my pc allow me at least see the main loading screen?
CPU: 2-Intel Pentium 4, 2992MHz
RAM:512MB
Video:RADEON X300/X550 Series Secondary
OS: Windows XP Home Edition, Service Pack 3

I wouldn't bet on that. You need more RAM, among other things.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

oh well.. since I'm a lazy upgrader then I guess I'll have to buy a new computer then..

[pyradyn]

I went into my CPU usage and Steam is using a lot of it, I downloaded FEAR 2 Demo and I am having the same problems constant lagging FPS is horrible however the Normal game from CD is working just fine no lag at all. Thus my experience with steam has not changed since the beginning. I only wish I could run with out steam. Since ETW does not require steam to play if on hard disk I think I should be fine. I ended somethings and my load times are about a min.

[NagatsukaShumi]

Its going to take forever to be frank, may be leaving it overnight.

EDIT - A point to consider, the demo shouldn't be seen as representative of the game, unless they've specified its a very recent build.

If lagging etc was a huge issue, a prevewi/review somewhere would have picked it up surely?

[Mithridates VI Eupator]

Okay, this thing has got me utterly perplexed. I seem to have the same problem as Sir Beane et. al. had but with a twist.

I started downloading at the moment it was in the list, and it seemd to go at a rate of ca 1%/min. When it had gotten to 10% I decided to watch some TV while waiting, and when I got back an hour later, it appeared as if the download was finished and it was updating, flashing "download starting" and "updating 0%" in the status column. Figuring that it was ok, I pressed launch, but was horrified when it said "ready to play in aproximately 7 hours 50 minutes". First I thought it was my comp being to crappy, but apart from my processor being a bit too slow, all other thigs are equal to or above the specs.

When the update had gone to 3%, I tried to pause and restart, but that just pushed the percentage back to 0.
I have been waiting all afternoon, and it still says 3 hours and 59 minutes. Is there anything I can do, or will I just have to sit back and wait? It makes no sense that it should be this slow, as the first 10% took an equal amount of minutes.

[Zatoichi]

Finally got the demo downloaded and installed after 4 attempts. I didn't have long load times - pretty much a minute at most. I was able to run most stuff on High at 1680 x 1050. I've got a Core 2 Duo 6700 (2.67Ghz), 2 Gigs of RAM and an ATI 4850 graphics card on XP SP3.

The battles were pretty smooth, with a 0.5 second pause every 20 seconds or so. One thing I couldn't get working were the horse drawn guns - they'd deploy but never fire - half the time the horses seemed to be in front of the guns. I guess I was just unlucky with my placement. I had to increase the mouse movement speed because the default scroll speed was like wading through treacle - even holding down shift didn't get the camera moving as fast as default on M2TW. But it was fine after I altered it.

I'm going to go back and try the land battle again to improve on my initial close victory (handy tip - when splitting your forces, don't completely forget about the other half of your army).

I've not tried the ship battle yet, only the tutorial, but that was hectic enough for me with one ship, so I'm not sure how I'll cope with 6, let alone 20 in the full game...

It's definitely whetted my appetite for the full game, which is pretty much what a demo is supposed to do.

[Sisco Americanus]

.

The battles were pretty smooth, with a 0.5 second pause every 20 seconds or so. One thing I couldn't get working were the horse drawn guns - they'd deploy but never fire - half the time the horses seemed to be in front of the guns. I guess I was just unlucky with my placement.

Did you click the Limber/Unlimber icon on the HUD? They won't be able to fire unless you unlimber them; conversely, they won't really be able to move unless you limber them again.

[Rhyfelwyr]

If you try to unlimber them near trees sometimes they just sit there with maybe the guys getting off their horse and getting stuck walking into something.

[Zatoichi]

Yeah I unlimbered them with the button, but they wouldn't fire - first time I did it the horses on one team ran in front of the cannon, the other set of horses correctly ran behind the other cannon, but they wouldn't fire.

I guess what may have happened is that I got the range wrong - maybe their target was too far away, and they couldn't move to it as they were unlimbered?

I'll give it another go tomorrow.

[pyradyn]

Wait wait wait wait wait wait......Where is Polemist? Did he vanish or something?

[Hosakawa Tito]

I tried a different tactic with the land battle. Instead of splitting my force I took my entire army to the undefended ford. The Americans did move their cannon from the main crossing, but did not set up in an advantageous spot. They chose a placement with thick forest, the wooded hill on my right flank but too far back to be effective, moving those 24 pounders to either flank would have been deadly for me. My Highlanders, Light Infantry & Dragoons routed them advancing through the trees for cover to get close for a volley & bayonet charge. My main force just steamrolled their infantry after softening them up with the horse-arty. The husars chased down and eliminated General Washington and the rout was complete.

[Divine Wind]

I've just completed the tutorials for land & sea, and won a victory at Brandywine.

System specs:

2.33 Ghz duo core.
2GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce 8600GS
Vista 32

1. Main menu screen has horrible lag (the background cinematic seems to have this problem too, intended?). The menus take a couple of clicks to register where you are trying to go.

2. Loading times for the tutorials and the Brandywine battle are not that bad. I waited a maximum time of 2 minutes tops with my PC.

3. Land tutorial is horribly laggy, and makes things a click fest. No mention of formations, or anything...nothing about squares, stakes, grenades, ammunition etc. You fight a couple of formations of militia and thats it.

4. Naval tutorial is nicely done, albiet a little too lacking in detail as above (nothing about wind advantage). No lag what so ever on the map itself, and the water looks absolutely fantastic. The crewmen climb around on the ropes and rigging, and the ship design is magnificent.

5. Brandywine battle loaded pretty fast, and for some reason did not have the horrible lag like the land tutorial had.

I won't go into too much detail to spoil it for you but here are a few things that I picked up on with the AI.

a. AI seemed to use skirmishers pretty well. They kept engaging any of my units that became seperated from the main army, as well as stay at a distance where they could shoot me, and my chaps could not return fire. Thumbs up!

b. Enemy artillery, did not move for the entire scenario, even though they were completely flanked, and did have cavalry to transport them. Thumbs down.

c. Enemy general did not stay with the main army, but ended up standing next to the cannons for the entire duration. Thumbs down.

d. As I flanked the enemy, their entire infantry force gathered together in good lines, along the only route I could reach the guns. Unfortunately the majority of the enemy cavalry did not join them. Thumbs up and down.

e. I moved both my 6 pd cannons onto a small hill in front of the main force and continued to fire for about 10 minutes with no enemy AI reaction. They just stood there and took it. Thumbs down.

f. I advanced my line infantry (5 units in total) towards the bulk of their lines in good order. Unfortunately the enemy did not match my armies good order, and came at me in pretty piecemeal fashion. This allowed me to bring up my elite infantry (grenadiers, highlanders) and flank the enemy from a small wood on the right flank, which was also elavated and brought the battle on the right to a quick end. The AI left was a bit more organised and they did put up a decent fight, until my right came with the hammer blow. Thumbs up, and down.

g. The AI had a townhouse right in the middle of their position, and they did not fortify it. Thumbs down.

h. When approached at short range the enemy cannons used canister to good effect, and the effect on morale was huge. Thumbs up.

Thats it for now. Time for the navy battle! If anyone has anything they want me to test or try, let me know.

[peacemaker]

man, this demo is killing me. I don't know anything about steam, I just went on "demos" then clicked on Empire, then "Install". I'm sitting at 46 kbps....I'm feeling like the game will be out by the time I get the demo working

[Belgolas]

You guys who are experiencing "Not bad" load times:

What do your specs look like?

Single-core systems? Dual core?

I need some info!

Running smooth no crashes max settings load time under a minute. Everything sett to max. 8 x AA 16xAF 1920 x 1200 (got a 30" monitor on the way)

My settings are...
Core i7 920 at 3.6 ghz (stable at 4ghz but am waiting for a better cooler)
Tri SLI GTX 260 core 216 overclocked to the "FTW" settings
12GB of DDR3 at 1600mhz
1TB western digital black (why is black considered performance is wierd, AMD has black edition processors, western digital has black edition hard drive, and XFX has black edition graphics cards)
EVGA X58 (waiting for the EVGA classified)