Demo Discussion Thread

[Monk]

No thats happening to everyone, heck Monk (I think) was complaining about waiting more than 5 minutes to load a tutorial.

Indeed.

I did what greg did and decided to struggle through the constant reloads (and long load times) to try and turn down the options, despite meeting all the requirements.

The result was a bit surprising. Load times are down by two min. Main menu loading takes about 1 min-1.30 and battle loading takes about 1.30 to 2 min. Crazy stuff. It's still a bit of a hassle but not nearly as bad as the 5 min snore-fest I was dealing with when I first installed. Once I actually got to play the demo and enjoy it, it wasn't so bad. Animations are still bugging the crap outta me though.

I'll tinker around some more with options to see if I can find a balance later. It's probably my single-core that's doing it, all you guys reporting nice load times seem to be running dual/quad cores. Ah well. The battles run great and I can live with 1-3 min loads.

[Sir Beane]

Which animations in paticular bothered you Monk? Personally I thought that infantry seemed to do quite well (they certainly responded to orders faster). It was cavalry that annoyed me, they seemed to move much, much too quickly for my tastes.

The mount/dismount animation worked well I thought. And the cannon loading and firing animations weren't too bad either.

I'm glad you got the demo to run more smoothly. If you play it on a high - power machine you can really appreciate it a lot more I think. It's a shame CA didn't optimise it very well.

[Wausser]

hmm I keep getting close defeats on the naval battle, anyone gut suggestions to beat those wine drinking lads?

[Sir Beane]

hmm I keep getting close defeats on the naval battle, anyone gut suggestions to beat those wine drinking lads?

Try splitting your line in two and attempting to get a ship on either side of each French ship. Taking two full broadsides on eitehr side should demoralise them nice and quickly.

ps. This tactic is theoretical, I haven't yet tried it in the naval battle.

[Marten]

hmm I keep getting close defeats on the naval battle, anyone gut suggestions to beat those wine drinking lads?

I splitted my ships in 2 squadrons, first lead by "Namur", second by "Prince". Crossed the french line between second and third ship with the squadrons - 2 french sunk. Then up to the other french line, same procedure.

After that, engage at will and close combat. Captured 4 french ships. The last one was the "Acheron" (nice one CA!) to sink. Unfortunately i lost the "Jersey" - brave men fought very well.

[miniwally]

how do you find out your internet connection sped for steam?

[Monk]

This is actually kinda depressing. My AMD turion x2- dual core 2.1 ghz laptop can run empire swimmingly. Load times are around 45 seconds -1 min. And no i'm not joking.

My poor desktop started having confidence issues when it saw how high i had the graphics up on my lappy. Looks like I was right, the ETW demo is not at all optimized to run on a single-core system. If you have one and meet the requirements, but wonder why you're having such long load times this is likely the case.

[miniwally]

how do you install demo i press install now but nothing happens

[Gregoshi]

My AMD turion x2- dual core 2.1 ghz laptop can run empire swimmingly. Load times are around 45 seconds -1 min. And no i'm not joking.

<Gregoshi eyes his wife's new for-school-only laptop and wonders if he should risk it...>

[Monk]

Which animations in paticular bothered you Monk? Personally I thought that infantry seemed to do quite well (they certainly responded to orders faster). It was cavalry that annoyed me, they seemed to move much, much too quickly for my tastes.

The mount/dismount animation worked well I thought. And the cannon loading and firing animations weren't too bad either.

I'm glad you got the demo to run more smoothly. If you play it on a high - power machine you can really appreciate it a lot more I think. It's a shame CA didn't optimise it very well.

Melee animations are the biggest cringe factor for me. While some render beautifully (it's amazing to see two soldiers lock in combat, slamming their rifles together, trying to stab each other with a bayonet) half the time they don't engage properly and you'll get soldiers gliding about. The charge animations get hung up for a long time on impact too (a problem from m2 and R), and I find it hard to believe that zero troops would die on impact if Hessian line troops charged into them at full speed with their bayonets drawn.

Cavalry troops will sometimes charge right passed a unit they were sent to attack, sometimes continuing to charge into the wild blue yonder for a long time before realizing "Oh wait. I missed by target thirty yards back.

The rest isn't bad, it's really the charge and melee animations that just feel... unfinished. Maybe hoom is right and this is a debug version of the code and we'll see improvements in the final game. I dunno.

I'm glad you got the demo to run more smoothly. If you play it on a high - power machine you can really appreciate it a lot more I think. It's a shame CA didn't optimise it very well.

Indeed.

I'm not as frustrated as I was earlier because I actually got the blasted thing to work. They likely didn't give much time to optimize because they were too busy just getting it to work right. The AI is heavily scripted so I couldn't really get a good look at its capabilities, but I really loved the naval battles. Yeah they are arcadey, but i found them insanely satisfying (double-broadside ftw )

[Husar]

Well, I played it on my notebook with the following specs:

Core 2 Duo 2GHz
2GB DDR2
256MB 8600M GT
1920*1200 24"

and it works, on medium without AA or anything like that.
It looks a bit worse than M2TW does on the same machine IIRC and it's not completely fluid on these settings, but it works. May buy a new desktop PC sometime this year but we will see.

I wasn't too impressed by the americans, they kept sending single units to intercept my forces so I easily overwhelmed them, they got my artillery but then I didn't really need it anyway.
Got a bit confused by the two fronts(I scroll around less when the game lags a little bit) so that helped them. In the end they had only a few units around that farmhouse while I had not lost much more than most of the light infantry, most of my hussars and some dragoons, then I just went there and shot them dead with half my infantry, not really needing the rest.
Well, it was just one battle, I'd expect a bit more in the campaign though.

The sea battle I lost the first time around, then won the second time, I'm sort of missing a follow feature that makes one ship follow the other in the same path, similar to the convoy they start out in.
That ships can almost turn on the spot is also quite weird, you cannot even plan a course around another ship or anything like that and the curved direction arrows are useless because the ships never follow the curve, they turn really tight and the curve becomes straight...
Doesn't mean it can't be fun, but it could be better, if ships actually followed those nice curves for example.

Oh and what I really like is the detail on the ships and how they sink, they seem to sink more realistic than they move.

[Patricius]

Well, I played it on my notebook with the following specs:

Core 2 Duo 2GHz
2GB DDR2
256MB 8600M GT
1920*1200 24"

and it works, on medium without AA or anything like that.
It looks a bit worse than M2TW does on the same machine IIRC and it's not completely fluid on these settings, but it works. May buy a new desktop PC sometime this year but we will see.

I wasn't too impressed by the americans, they kept sending single units to intercept my forces so I easily overwhelmed them, they got my artillery but then I didn't really need it anyway.
Got a bit confused by the two fronts(I scroll around less when the game lags a little bit) so that helped them. In the end they had only a few units around that farmhouse while I had not lost much more than most of the light infantry, most of my hussars and some dragoons, then I just went there and shot them dead with half my infantry, not really needing the rest.
Well, it was just one battle, I'd expect a bit more in the campaign though.

The sea battle I lost the first time around, then won the second time, I'm sort of missing a follow feature that makes one ship follow the other in the same path, similar to the convoy they start out in.
That ships can almost turn on the spot is also quite weird, you cannot even plan a course around another ship or anything like that and the curved direction arrows are useless because the ships never follow the curve, they turn really tight and the curve becomes straight...
Doesn't mean it can't be fun, but it could be better, if ships actually followed those nice curves for example.

Oh and what I really like is the detail on the ships and how they sink, they seem to sink more realistic than they move.

Mine has those specs, so some hope for me.

[Polemists]

Those are my settings and I run it on medium sometimes and low other times.

I find that on low generally the animations seem to work better, and look more fluid. The downside of course it the zoomed in graphics look different. Still zooming out looks the same on medium and low so as campaign goes on i'll probably just stay on low.

It does work though, but like others have said, your better off with a 512 graphics card and a quad if you can afford it.

Laptops just arn't made for gaming.

[quadalpha]

Did anyone notice that the shortcut keys for wheel right and move forward overlap?