Demo Discussion Thread

[Greyblades]

Hmm I still think I would appreciate it better if i saw it in person.
Oh and i won without losing any ships second try beat that!
^^And no i was talking to the new guy.

[ConnMon]

I'm not even bothering with the demo. I need to upgrade my computer, and I think that's why a lot of people are having bad experiences. That and the load time.
Steam -->

[scipiosgoblin]

I disabled Steam. That helped a lot. Meaning that I could run the game. For some reason the Land battle tutorial will not run, but the sea battle tutorial and both of the battles run just fine.

I played Brandywine first. I decided that I had no respect for the upstart American Army so I would frontal assault over the primary ford. I sent one unit of Guards and all of the cavalry to overwatch the other ford, just in case they got sneaky.

I moved all of my remaining infantry up to the ford in two ranks per unit. I set the light infantry to skirmish and edged them to the river. The horse artillery flanked the infantry on either side. I pushed the highlanders across first. The Americans tried their best to push them back with a unit of line infantry and two of minutemen. I reinforced with guards and line infantry and pushed the rebels back to make a beach head for the rest of my army.

I moved everyone over creating a large crescent. My light infantry and two line units attacked the cannon to my left and routed them. I then moved my infantry into column and adavnced into the hill overlooking the town hall. I brought the cavalry and overwatch guard unit across the other ford to encircle the rebels.

They had garrisoned the town hall. I began to move forward on a broad front when for some reason my general just had to see what was going on at the town hall. (clicked in the wrong place and didn't realize it.) Some long riflemen ended his career quite rapidly.

Even with this tragic blow, I was able to break the flank of the rebel force. At the same time I sent two units of infantry to take the town hall. (one in either door.) I soon got a message that the town hall was captured. My cavalry arrived and charged the rear of the rebel force and routed the last two remaining units.

All in all a good fight.

The AI performed pretty well, though it could have more vigorously defended the crossing with some reserves. With the frontal assault I expected to get beaten, but Highlanders are good shock troops and will take a pounding and keep on fighting.

By the time I reached the town hall, I had defeated all of the AI's cannon and all but 4 units of its infantry. It did the best it could under the circumstances.

I was just happy to be able to play on the lowest settings.

SG

[ThePianist]

First Impression of the Demo:

It is really fantastic. The land battle is what Imperial Glory should have been. Land battle is good with plenty of good terrain features and hills, valleys and gullies to position soldiers, hiding them from enemy fire and using the terrain for surprise ambushes, especially in wooded areas, which should be abundant in all battle fields of Europe and the United States. However it's also a demo so probably only a portion of the features are shown. The thrill of having soldiers go on a bayonet charge is exhilarating, though I wish it was as dramatic as in Glory (the movie). Since all soldiers can fire, to do a successful cavalry charge without any rider dying feels like quite an accomplishment, and the cavalry looks all the more fearsome when they do arrive. Maybe it's because the uniform look so much more familiar compared to medieval and antique ones. It is much closer to the "real people" of present times, whereas the ancient and medieval world feels more distant. Even with max graphics set at Medium, it is possible to tell that the graphics are very refined.

A drummer beats drums when soldiers go on marching, that is exceedingly good. I wish there were fifes, but drums is a background sound that you can listen to over and over again, but a fife melody would perhaps sound repetitive after a thousand listenings. Still it would be great if there were fife sounds when you zoom in on the unit (but not audible when you are not zoomed it). I like the charge trumpet when a bayonet charge is ordered.

Some distinguishing features are the extra flag beneath the national flag, which makes it really exciting. It means there can be regimental flags. Also the little flag is square for infantry, triangular for cavalry and concave pentagonal for artillery. That is so awesome. The artillery also has exceedingly great range and that is something very exciting as well. I am glad it is compensated by being inaccurate, however repeated firing would definitely take down whatever you are firing at. I hid a unit of horse-drawn artillery behind a hill and some enemy artillery kept firing at it and eventually destroyed the unit. Another great feature is the ability to do indirect fire. I put the other horse-drawn artillery on the reverse side of the hill and had them fire upslope. Some shots hit the ground but others were able to make it over the hilltop and then unto the target. That is very exciting.

In land battle each unit has a drawn field-of-fire in the shape of a section of a circle deployed in front of them. When ordered to move, each unit also has an arrow pointing to where they are going. Overall this make everything look precise like the map diagrams seen in the intro video.

I am also so glad the intro video did not have a speech about "control" and "power", etc.

For some reason I think the devs spent more time and energy on the sea battle aspect since much of the European empires from 1700+ were made by naval power, so the sea battle is exceptionally good: the interface of curved arrows, the ability to fire broadsides from left and right, the ability to disable sails and to board the enemy ship. The water is beautiful, such that I wish I was on that ship sailing (but not in combat).

Now, compared to the intro video, which is how I imagine the game, the sea battles (even with max graphics set on Medium, definitely live out to the expectation, every bit of it. Every bit. It's utterly éblouissant.) The land battles lack one thing: the land does not crater when cannonballs hit the ground, the way the water would burst upon the sea when cannonballs hit the water. I suppose the difference would be that the land needs a crater to stay there afterwards whereas the sea doesn't. Maybe it's visible on graphics higher than Medium? Another odd thing is, the British line infantry, even when deployed in two lines, only the first line would fire, the second line stands idle. In comparison, even the Spanish militia can fire from all ranks and file, not just the most forward line. Maybe because it's before Napoleon invented the "first line fire, second line aim, third line reload, and then cycle"? Or maybe they acquire that skill after leveling up? Other than that cratering and the line infantry detail, every other detail is well-done. The soldiers have so many different postures that it does not look like a game unit, but like a snapshot of real life. The smoke caused by the firing of muskets is impressive. The difficulty of the cavalry in charging into the forest as opposed to on the open plain, is realistically portrayed. Actually one more request: the building in the tutorial scenario, after collapsing due to artillery fire, it just became a mound of earth (as if it was pulverized into powder). Could the collapsed buildings graphic look more like the ones on Company of Heroes?

And the atmosphere is really well made. The menu has breathtaking view of background animation, huge armies moving on the field and lining up to fire. The menu music is so much better done than, say, that Vegas game. It is cinematic and gracious and epic and idyllic at the same time, evoking the life during the time/era when people were expected to be gentlemen, even with the imperial wars going on. The user interface look like the hardcover of 18th century textbooks or perhaps wooden furniture from the Victorian era, and that is exceedingly good. It is not a major detail like the actions on screen, but cumulative little details like that (plus music) actually contribute more than major details. The menu selection of the unit, especially the munition-category buttons of the artillery and the ships look like buttons made of cast metal, and that is also excellent design. I enjoy reading the unit descriptions as always (would help the preservation of vision if font was a bit larger).

My computer might be falling behind in speed, because it takes 10 second just to make the main menu appear after a battle is won. It also takes 20-30 or 30+ seconds to load a battle. Even the EB mod, with lots of extra scripting, loads faster than that. I might have difficulty campaigning at that speed.

Overall, I expect this to be the best RTS game of 2009. I have seen nothing of the campaign map yet, but I can't think of anyone else who can make something this good with this epic of a scale.

[Mailman653]

ThePianist
Some distinguishing features are the extra flag beneath the national flag, which makes it really exciting. It means there can be regimental flags. Also the little flag is square for infantry, triangular for cavalry and concave pentagonal for artillery.

Which are the secondary flags your talking about? Cause I've only see the one flag the model carries and then the big marker flag which I turned off. I'd love to see regimental flags, been talking about that for ages. Even if its not with the "right" regiment just the fact of having that second flag there would be awesome.

[Polemists]

Well I guess I could have done a gaint spam post that just did Demo Demo Demo for a page, but really i'm just to ecastatic at having demo to do that. Plus it's 8 am in the morning and i'm sleepy.

Well other then waiting for the demo to download i'll probably get geared up about etw release in a week ro so :)

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Thanks for the headsup re Jack, quadalpha. I'm a bit disappointed that the AI doesn't always shift the cannons if you go through the unprotected ford. I guess it figures that the cannons can shoot at (though not hit) targets almost the entire time, so it doesn't "think" that they need to be moved.

[knoddy]

played the naval battle, got my ass handed to me, but it was really good, the only thing i didnt like was the men jumping onto the enemy ship, not because they were jumping just cos they were jumping like 10 feet in the air lol. looked a bit weird, to all the people who thought it was arcady i dunno wot there problem is, YES it is a little unrealistic, but i found the turning circles not all that small. i dunno i liked it, im quite excited to get the full version and give it a whirl!

Cheers Knoddy

[Polemists]

For those of you having download problems, though I think more people over at Total War forum center are having problems rather then here

Steam Settings > Downloads > Download region and change it

Seems to be the only real advice over there, they have a 21 page and counting thread going for download issues and speeds but that seems to be the only relevant advice.

I look forward to testing it out in a few min when I head home :)

[Zenicetus]

played the naval battle, got my ass handed to me, but it was really good, the only thing i didnt like was the men jumping onto the enemy ship, not because they were jumping just cos they were jumping like 10 feet in the air lol. looked a bit weird, to all the people who thought it was arcady i dunno wot there problem is, YES it is a little unrealistic, but i found the turning circles not all that small.

The problem for some of us, isn't that the turning circles are small. It's that there's a concept of turning circles at all! Turning circles are for jet fighter pilots, not square-rigged ships.

Some may prefer the way this is being done, and that's fine. Everyone has a right to an opinion. Others like me, are lamenting the loss of tactical challenge. It's bumper car combat, not the slow, stately motions of ships under sail, constrained by the wind to move only in certain ways. We may differ in our views of whether this is fun or not. However, from what I've seen so far, I don't think it's debatable that naval battles are being presented as an arcade game, at a different level of realism compared to the land battles. It will be interesting to see if any of the major game review sites pick up on this.

[Marten]

Good morning gentleman,

after downloading, cursing steam, installing the game and watching ... here are the results from the german jury:

• After chanching the server to east coast, speed increased from average 52 KB/s on german, italian and dutch servers to 580 KB/s. I will keep that in mind for future downloads ...

• I started the pc anew after finished download. Then to the demo! First i disabled Steam. Nice Intro - think i've seen that before in some vid - the automatic settings for hardware say "High" on all options.

• My System: 2.4 Dual Core, XP32 and SP3, 2 GB RAM, 9600 GT with 1024 MB RAM. Resolution in game 1440 x 900, 4x anti-aliasing, shadows on medium, depth on. Average of 38 - 40 fps. I changed later to 1280 x 800 - result was smoother scrolling and faster camera action.

• Load times are similar to Med2 - maybe 5-10 sec longer. I played the land tutorial first - and i loved what i saw. Graphics are good, i had a bit "crackle" in sound- so i changed the sound options from "windows default" to "stereo headphones" - did it for me.

• I played the whole demo 2 times, got frightened first time when the screen seems to freeze after "victory" - but just 3 seconds or so. I won "Lagos" on first time with capturing 3 french ships and loosing 1 of my own. I missed a "follow" button like it was in imp glory. But grouping seems to force the ships to follow the leader. I think i will never play battles with more then 8-10 ships in my fleet ...

To remove the markers and flags: i had to do it every time again when i started the demo. Anyone some resolution for that?

My conclusion: I like it! Can't wait for the retail version. And i will buy 1 GB of RAM to be sure ...

Edit: Wooooooooooooooooooooot! I'm a member Baby! ;)

[Skullheadhq]

Argh... The demo is not available...all the waiting for nothing

Edit: Verify the Integrity of the game cache