Demo Discussion Thread

[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

[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..

[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.

[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)