Demo Discussion Thread

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Forgot to say that the Naval battle froze up on me too. Also, menus are choppy.
Smooth gameplay though, even if I had to turn stuff down a notch more then expected.

[Brighdaasa]

lol, benelux servers: ~30 k, US east coast servers ~700k, go figure...

[Hosakawa Tito]

Both battles played smoothly for me. Load times were no different than COH, under a minute. Melee animations were a bit weird as Monk stated, but my system handled it just fine. My specs:

Processor: IntelCore 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz 12 MB Cache 1333MHz FSB
Power Supply: 750 Watt Multi-GPU
Graphics Processor: Dual 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT
Memory: 4GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHZ - 2 x 2048MB
Motherboard: NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
System Drive: 500 GB SATA 3Gb/s 7,200 16MB Cache
Dual Optical Drives: 20x Dual Layer Burner, 4x Dual Layer Blu-ray Burner
Killer K1 Gaming Network Interface Card

[Darklife]

Your Killer NIC card made my day.

I wonder whether there's a significant difference between a quad and a dual.
E8400
2GB RAM(the other two is being serviced)
GTX 280
Judging by the rig above I should be fine, although my RAM will probably hold the game back somewhat.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

First impressions

- As other have stated loading times are very slow. Not five minutes but slow enough to make a campaign taking a lot of time. When I chanced the resolution the screen went blank for more then a minute.
- At first there was something wrong, because my keyboard didn't function properly. Instead of someone out with the W key, my artillery unit started to withdraw. restarting the game solved the problem.
- I set the units on ultra large but there were still 80 men per unit of infantry. Does this only apply to the demo or is this the new unit size?
- Played the battle and defeated the Americans. I let the three Hessians and one light skirmisher unit defend the ford and moved the rest of the army to the other. The AI started to attack me with single units which were easy routed. I ordered my there Hessians to charge the artillery and the AI counter attacked with some line units. One AI unit formed a square when attacked by infantry (not very smart). In the end only an average victory because I didn't see the AI move more units to the other front and my Hessians were routed.
- graphics look nice, not that Private Ryan like gloomy.
- Sound is soft. I had to increase the volume.

I hope this all will improve.

[Greyblades]

OK I finished downloading about 15 mins ago and I have to say the loading screens are a little longwinded but for me it has been more of a minor wait not the five minute strain the others have been experiencing.
I have done the naval tutorial and tried the land tutorial. Well I say tried the land one but
I ended up staring at a flickering loading screen while the instructor said... something I wasn’t really listening.
My first thought on the naval tutorial... holysheeshkebabthatshipandsealookscool!!! Ahem... well the camera is unfamiliar and a little sluggish and I have to say the sails do clip a bit and why is the sea clipping through the deck? It looks like its taken in water.

[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

[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)

[Monk]

Both battles played smoothly for me. Load times were no different than COH, under a minute. Melee animations were a bit weird as Monk stated, but my system handled it just fine. My specs:

Processor: IntelCore 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz 12 MB Cache 1333MHz FSB
Power Supply: 750 Watt Multi-GPU
Graphics Processor: Dual 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT
Memory: 4GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHZ - 2 x 2048MB
Motherboard: NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
System Drive: 500 GB SATA 3Gb/s 7,200 16MB Cache
Dual Optical Drives: 20x Dual Layer Burner, 4x Dual Layer Blu-ray Burner
Killer K1 Gaming Network Interface Card

Single core here and the demo runs horrible on it. The actual battle phase is fine but load times are insane, i've never seen a game optimized so poorly. The only one that comes close was The Witcher before they completely re-tooled and optimized it with the "Enhanced Edition."

[Fisherking]

I started it up and it was a bit slow but nothing like 5 min. It was roughly 2min. The intro started well but became jittery and unstable after the ships.

When I got to the user screen I went to options and checked. It was on custom and had read the machine pretty well, but not wanting to take chances from what was said before I turned them down a bit.

When I left the options however it CTDed. I restarted the demo and skipped the intro…was still a bit jittery though. I went through the two tutorials ok with a load time of about 1min 15sec. For each. Leaving the battles took as long as getting in however.

I tried the naval battle first but was a bit frustrated by the new interface and quit to come here and see how thing were for everyone else.

my rig is a dell XPS M1710 with a few upgrades.

[Sisco Americanus]

My expectations were a bit more muted than many of yours, it seems, but I found it rather enjoyable. I was worried at first that my computer couldn't hack it as it performed horrendously during the land tutorial, even when I turned down the visual settings. I shut down a few processes and loaded her back up to play Brandywine Creek, and it ran pretty well at high settings (although I could see throttling back to medium being necessary for the full game. For the record, my computer specks:

2.4 ghz quad-core
2 gig ram
GeForce 8500 GT 512 MB
Vista 32

If figure the processor is probably fine, but I'm getting some bottlenecking at high settings with the graphics card and the ram, given the demands of Vista. The load times were a bit long, but under 1.5 minutes, usually about a minute.

Anyway, I didn't play through the whole thing as I wanted to just get a feel for it and then try the naval battle before I went back to working on my thesis (taking a coffee break now ), but It's about what I expected. It's not a terribly realistic representation of 18th century warfare, and it definitely feels like a total war game... but neither is it Imperial Glory or whatever that horrid game was called. Overall, I thought it was fun, and it fulfills a desire I've had since I first played the first MTW-- a Total war game set in the age of the musket. The animations may have been a bit sloppy, but I rarely zoom in close enough to tell; I have a hard enough time keeping track of all my units as it is, especially when I split my force as I did in the Brandywine Creek battle.

As for the battle itself, I began by attempting to place my artillery, which I attempted to position in the exact same locations described by Rhyfelwyr, above. Unfortunately, just as one of my batteries moved atop the hill overlooking the clearing directly in front of the main crossing, it came under fire by the U.S. artillery which scored a direct hit within the first few shots: a blow right down the front of one of my still-limbered pieces, taking out the entire team and the piece itself. The other team (there are only two pieces per horse arty battery-- don't know if that's just how things are or if that's specific to the demo) got spooked and took off, reforming some time later in the woods behind my general. After that I just sort of screwed around to see what I could see. I sent the light infantry into the woods directly across the creek from the main U.S. force with orders to skirmish (as someone else said, this didn't spread them out at all, which surprised me; maybe I was doing something wrong), and sent the Hessiens up behind them to occupy the main force while I sent the rest of my units around the other side. Watched the fireworks for a bit before exiting out. I'll play more later.

I will say that I can tell I will enjoy placing my artillery and watching it tear up enemy ranks; I can't wait untill I have more substantial field pieces at my disposal than four 6-pndrs of horse arty! CA seems to have managed to implement the use of formations well while still retaining the Total War feel and customizability; you can still spread your line out thin or give them more depth. I'll give it another play later tonight and see how it goes.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Forgot to say that the Naval battle froze up on me too.

Do you mean went really laggy, or actually crash?

Because if this is happening to several people, it may be an issue worth looking into. I've had two crashes in just a few minutes play on naval battles, but I've never crashed on the land battles...

[Mailman653]

CPU:Intel Pent 4 3.40GHz
RAM: 3GB
Vid: Nividia 6800
XP 32, SP3

I think I had similiar experiences as everyone else, I tried to change the resolution a few times but ended either with it looking like it froze or just hangs so I just gave up and put all my settings on low plus upgraded my Direct X with the one that came with the demo.

But that aside, I did enjoy it, just have to get used to the controls, which seem identical to M2TW, but I'm still learning all those formation buttons and their functions. At times it seemed it was easier to click a unit and drag it then to click, double line and watch them form somewhere where I don't want them to go.

[Sir Beane]

Just finished the last battle! Execellent! Lost 128 men and killed 780 of the enemy .

To be honest the graphics are fantastic, and so is the feel of the battle. Cavalry are a little too fast and have some odd animations but apart from that it was excellent.

[ULC]

Yes, I have noticed that the load times are long, so long as Steam is in the background - disabling steam improves the demo's performance considerably.

The controls, although similar to M2TW, took sometime getting used too and I was eventually forced to simply setting them up the old fashioned way. I was able to grasp quickly how to use unit abilities, although there was some minor frustration. Also, although pathfinding seems to be "better", the units really do not seem keen on holding formations well or going somewhere predictable - I had my cavalry all over the place for some reason :freak2:

I found the AI to not be that wonderful at all really. It now responds well to your moves, and is a lot more active, however, it still reeks of stupidity when it has clear tactical advantage - however, at one point I was pleasantly surprised to see the AI use two tactics that caught me utterly off guard.

The first was that after a volley, the US Line, especially the minutemen, would pull back about 30 yards and in good order. This allowed them to hammer me with the riflemen from range, forcing me to walk forward and take the first volley, and quickly falling back again. This may be scripted however, so my hopes are not too high.

The second was pulling troops away from one Flank and covering it with cavalry or riflemen, while using the moved unit to create a inverted star point to hammer one of my flanks. I was surprised to see it quickly move to high ground to take even better advantage of this, and it held it - I could not force them, it would simply morph the formation (ripe for cavalry ) to keep the effect and advantage. Again, this may be scripted, but if it's not then THANK GOD CA GOT THIS RIGHT ! However, I see possible players trying to exploit the AI's newfound stubbornness to their advantage, time will tell....

Needless to say, I lost at Brandywine

I found the Sea Battles merely fluff really. I barely commanded them coherently, watched them pull powerslides, and for the most part look pretty. In fact, the main reason I say it was fluff is that I was able to watch as I took my First Rate and plow right through them to their Admiral, get close for a boarding action (while hammering them with a volley of grapeshot) and watched for almost five minutes as the rest of my fleet went about their business and simply handed the French their back to them, losing only 2 ships to their 5.

However, I do note that the AI did use encircling and dividing techniques to rip apart my ships - I did suffer heavy casualties. In fact, the battles are so pretty I really did not care if I won or lost, I just wanted to watch

No comments on the tutorials - I skipped them entirely.

[knoddy]

yes ima agree with others about the load times, very very long, will try disabling steam next time

very impressed with the game other than that, graphics looked good even on med, i managed to garrison my units in a building hehe fun fun. only major gripe was the load times and just the massive hog it seemed to be for system memory, but that coulda been steam.

Cheers Knoddy

[WarHawk]

very impressed with AI. load times are slow, but hopefully that is steam. everything is smooth once in battlefield, and graphics look very impressive.

one problem i faced was positioning artillery, once unlimbered. couldn't figure it out and my arty was firing into the ground next to it.

[Belgolas]

I am running it at max settings with 8XAA at 1920 x 1200. This game runs smoother then M2TW. Load times are about 20 seconds longer then M2TW. This is one amazing demo. The AI as far as I can tell is improved and I took heavy loses in both battles. The land battle I lost half my men and the navy I lost more then half my ships. Although I spent most of my time in awe of the graphics for naval battles watching my men board. I am dissapointed that you can't have a ship board on each side though.

You can dissable the huge flags or have the flag shown when the mouse is over the unit. That is right in the options menu.

Animations need a lot of work though. Mainly calvary charges but infantry is fine. Boarding animations still need work and it is hard to see whos men are fighting who because both sailers have the same look.

One ship while boarding went partly into another ship.

Water sometimes goes through the ship.

The sound is messed up.

Anyways this is one sweet game so far. I am loving that it runs so smooth compaired to last toal war games.

[Belgolas]

To help download the game double click on the game

[Mithridates VI Eupator]

To help download the game double click on the game

What do you mean? Double click on it in the "my games" list in steam? Will that speed it up?

[Greyblades]

I have to say i dont realy like how my ships automatically veer away from eachother even when i am trying to get my ship to board another. It is especially annoying when I try to see what happens when the ships collide.

[scipiosgoblin]

I have to say i dont realy like how my ships automatically veer away from eachother even when i am trying to get my ship to board another. It is especially annoying when I try to see what happens when the ships collide.

I'll tell you what happens. My First Rate T-bones the French Flagship. It gets stuck and repeatedly raked by the French until it sinks.

Meanwhile the rest of my force is routed by the French fleet. I was still learning the controls. The second time I won, losing only two ships, and one of those right at the end before the last French ship surrendered.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Hmm. Mixed impressions, but definitely more promising than RTW's demo.

The graphics - I had almost everything set ultra high and it ran smooth. Also, the unit design is so much better than RTW. The battle maps are also more detailed, which I like.

Fighting the land battle;
It seems the AI is somewhat likely to come in piecemeal fashion.

I was moving my main force (minus my hessians and dragoons, which stayed behind as cannon bait) across the side ford. The Americans moved nearly all their infantry over to the town and set up a goodly ordered line. Their dragoons remained with the cannons, which continued to pound fruitlessly at my hidden-behind-a-hill-Hessians. I sent some skirmishers up ahead to deal with the hidden American infantry in the woods. As I finished dealing with them, my three line infantry units are perhaps halfway between my main force and the main American force. Then the whole American force started to move towards me.

I was worried. I immediately began running my main forces up. But the whole American force stopped moving, and only two units continued. These two units continued the assault alone, but my vanguard force was able to deal with them easily.

That was an unfortunate move by the AI.

So I moved my main army up, including my cannons, and pounded the main AI infantry force for a while. The AI didn't move their cannons or cavalry. Nor did they move their infantry force at all. They just sat their and got pounded on by my cannons.

After I while I got bored and ordered my soldiers in. They fought off the Americans. One unit garrisoned in the town hall. So I brought up my cannons and leveled it, killing all the soldiers inside. They made no attempt to escape.

After that, I moved the Hessians against the main ford, still defended by the cannons. I moved my Hussars against the cannons farther from the ford. As I charged my Hessians into the teeth of the cannons, the AI didn't real do anything with the two dragoon units they had with the cannons - they simply stood around, instead of trying to flank my Hessians.

Anyway, the brave charge of the Hessians drove back the American cannoneers and dragoons.

Overall, it felt like a good TW battle, but the AI needs to avoid piecemeal commitment of its forces.

CR