Demo Discussion Thread

[Tomisama]

Ok, it's a long download, and it's slow to come up once you get it. That is all the same for everybody

But what do you think about the game?

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Unless someone has an idea on how to fix the This game is currently unavailable thing that doesnt involve re downloading it.

Make sure your firewall isn't blocking the processes. It turned out that Comodo was blocking mine from initializing.

[peacemaker]

finally. got the demo going and wow. Many of you seem disappointed at how easy this demo is, I found it very challenging. I guess I'm not that great of a gamer but it offered me challenges on many levels. The naval battles blew me away, then again I'm really new to gaming. I really will not have much time to play this too much, and I got beaten both times at the demo

[TheArsenal]

Intel Core 2 Quad 2.67GHz
RAM 4GB
Vista 32 bit
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS

Graphic settings: Ultra for everything. All additional boxes checked.
Load time land battle: 70 seconds
Load time sea battle: 50 seconds

I'm very pleased. Both the land and sea battles ran smoothly without graphic or audio glitches. And, the sea battle in particular, looks amazing at the very highest settings. My first try at the land battle resulted in having my ass handed to me. As much my inexperience with moving armies of that size as anything the AI did. My second try at it was far more successful, and not through any advance tactics. I simply circled the units that were lined up on left behind the American forces and timed a frontal assault with the remaining troops at the same time. The Americans were trapped and died accordingly, but I lost a good number of men. A Close Victory.

The sea battle also went better the second time when I got a better gasp on moving the ships. I broke their formation and basically circled single ships around the strays firing until they sank. But not without loss to a couple of mine own. Another Close Victory.

Have to say, well, well done. I am seriously looking forward to see the full game in action.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

I found the naval battle challenging, due to my lack of knowledge about any kind of naval tactics. Can anyone recommend a good tactic to use?

[Mailman653]

I found the naval battle challenging, due to my lack of knowledge about any kind of naval tactics. Can anyone recommend a good tactic to use?

I suppose some easy tips to follow are try to keep the wind on your back as much as possible, if your going to board, load up on grape shot and fire a volley or two so you have a better chance of taking the ship. You could also try using chain shot and slowing a ship down or maybe knocking a mast down, once you do that you can move on to another ship if there are any since the one without the mast won't be going anywhere, just stay outside of it's range. Or if there aren't any other ships and you just want to sink it (the demasted ship), move your ship to the stern or bow of the enemy ship, anchor and fire away, you'll take little or no damage that way.

[Polemists]

I managed to get to 1.2 gig before I left this morning, I am very optomistic that come lunch at best and after work at worse I will have the demo.

Major yayness.

It sucks to have slow internet but at least it is working somewhat

[scipiosgoblin]

The problem with looking to the modders for a solution is the AI, which is likely to be buried deeper in the code. In the naval battle demo, we're not seeing the AI act as if it knows where the wind is, and how to use it. So even if more realistic wind an maneuver was modded in, what would the AI do with it? If it's at a level that can't be touched by modders (and I don't think we've ever seen major changes in the AI from the mod community in previous TW games), then realistic sailing would just become a player exploit. We'd know how to sail, and the AI wouldn't. We'd blast 'em to smithereens as we stay upwind and they try to reach us, floundering dead in the water because they're no longer driving bumper cars.

Maybe I'm wrong, and the modders can fix this. If not, I sure hope there's a decent auto-calc for naval battles, so they're just optional eye candy and we can focus on the land battles. That's something we won't find out about, until the game is released and we can get some reports from people playing the campaign.

IIRC I saw a Ca interview or post where they said the programmers had the ships working closer to a correct physics model and they removed it because it wasn't "fun." I'm hoping they just commented out the code and left it in place so the modders just have to take the comment marker out.

If that is the case then the AI would obviously know how to use the wind effectively (at least for an AI). IIRC the problem was the friendly AI would tack for you to get you to the destination you chose causing the ships to turn in unexpected directions. I think the players could figure this out. How steep the learning curve would be is probably what CA was worried about.

SG

[Polemists]

I don't know what will happen with Naval combat, some people love it as is, some don't. I'm not sure the devs would leave in a code they deemed wasn't to be used in the game. If they did the mods can handle it, if not they may add something in a expansion where it has a check box that says something like "realistic wind"

In the end, I think you can never make anyone happy, alot of people seem to find naval combat fun tho as is, so that's all I looked for fun, not perfect just fun

[scipiosgoblin]

In the end, I think you can never make anyone happy, alot of people seem to find naval combat fun tho as is, so that's all I looked for fun, not perfect just fun

I completely agree. It is fun. I think the majority of people would find a realistic wind geometry problem for one ship difficult and for a fleet impossible. I used to do that for a living so I think of the fleet problem as mildly interesting. For one ship a piffle.

I think the way it works now is just fine for the game. If someone comes up with a mod for a realistic wind, then I will take it, because it will be more fun for me. But I'm deleriously happy that I can take sailing ships to war in ETW.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I decided to fight the land battle and charge right up the mouth of the American guns on the defended ford.

Surprisingly, I won. Lost a lot of men, though (almost 700). It was really close, and the AI might have won had it moved the hidden long rifle men who were hidden, guarding the other bridge. But they only came after I drove back the main force completely.

Also, at the end of the battle I had my general chasing the other general, who happened to run through a line of stakes set up earlier in the game. My general's cav lost five of seven horsemen as they tried to follow.

CR

[Forward Observer]

I thought the battles fun and did manage to win both on the second try.

The ships look wonderful, but there is one thing that bothered me visually about the naval component that no one here has mentioned. A poster at another forum mentioned this some time back, but I didn't pay much attention to it at the time since his illustration was from a very early build screenshot. I just assumed they would have corrected the error by now, but there it was in both the naval battle and tutorial.

Anyway, all the 3 masted ships, as portrayed in the game, have a technical error that evidently no one at CA has discovered in their nautical research.

At full sail they all have a sail bent to the cro'jack or crossjack. This was simply not done during the period that the game covers. The crossjack is the lowest yard on the mizzenmast. (rear most mast) However it is simply a lower brace for the mizzen top sail. To fly a lower sail, or course as they are called, from the crossjack is incorrect and would compete with the function of the trailing spanker or gaff sail.

Later 19th century sailing ships like the Cutty Sark actually did use a mizzen main course along with a gaff sail, but they were engineered differently and mainly for speed

In the screen below, the arrow is pointing at the crossjack and the sail circled is the one that does not belong. I guess somebody in their art department figured if there was a yard there, it was supposed to have a sail. I wonder if this could be modded out.



Cheers

[peacemaker]

nice catch! I really don't know too much about ships back then but it sounds about right.

Yay I finally beat the naval demo

[Polemists]

I'm curious for those who have demo (tonite....common download)

Everyone says the land battle Ai is improved and the naval battle has easier Ai.

Yet from what I read, everyone has a harder time winning the naval battle.

Is this just because the naval battle the unit numbers are more against you?

[Ishmael]

I'm curious for those who have demo (tonite....common download)

Everyone says the land battle Ai is improved and the naval battle has easier Ai.

Yet from what I read, everyone has a harder time winning the naval battle.

Is this just because the naval battle the unit numbers are more against you?

Well, for me it was because I had absolutely no idea what tactics to use for naval battles, how the ships would work, what do do in general etc. At least for land battles I knew to flank and focus overwhelming firepower, but for naval battles I just pressed Ctrl + A and clicked on enemy (to paraphrase another Orgah) and hoped for the best.

[A Very Super Market]

Actually, the land battle has the numbers advantage as well. I didn't even find the naval demo that hard. As soon as I figured out that I didn't need to use the broadside button every time I wanted to fire, it was alright.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Broadsides actually seem very weak. Maybe I'm not using them close enough, but letting the ships handle firing themselves seems to score much better hits.

[pevergreen]

CA got actual ship plans and based their ships off those.

Broadsides are situational. You need to be close enough that all guns will actually hit, as the all fire straight, not at an angle.

[Miracle]

Lusted said that they are scripted to not cross the ford so a proper counter-attack is not possible.

He said that they would remain in position initially, but be brought under normal AI control once you make a move towards either of the fords. This is what happened when I accidentally revealed my light infantry unit that was hidden in the trees near the main ford:



The Americans chased after my light infantry all the way to the my starting position. They were then slaughtered by my prepared line infantry. Notice that there is a battle already underway at the other ford. Some four or five American units crossed that ford (and were utterly defeated) as well.

[Polemists]

Well I finally got the demo and played a little bit during lunch, only the land battle tutorial so that's all I'm going off of at this point.

The Pros: Was fun (this is key :P)

The Cons:

Land Animations:
Am I the only one who found land animations not connecting on certain units? Certain units would go into the animations but for some reason my officer did this sort of ginsu sword swing that never seemed to connect with any unit. Also the units seem to die far..far to quickly..maybe that's just my view or the tutorial hard to tell.

Graphics:
As mentioned by others the auto detect plopped me into Medium which as you can see by screenshots while decent hardly shows off much. I switched to low out of curiousity and did not see much of a difference to be honest. I guess the graphics will only matter at High, Very High and Ultra.
The speed was fine so I could have probably pushed it to high and only hope when game comes out we can choose our selves.

My only two comments thus far, otherwise it was fun, and enjoyable. Look forward to playing the other battles tonite.

I don't think it's the finished project but it is enjoyable so I'm optomistic :)

[Wausser]

He said that they would remain in position initially, but be brought under normal AI control once you make a move towards either of the fords. This is what happened when I accidentally revealed my light infantry unit that was hidden in the trees near the main ford:


The Americans chased after my light infantry all the way to the my starting position. They were then slaughtered by my prepared line infantry. Notice that there is a battle already underway at the other ford. Some four or five American units crossed that ford (and were utterly defeated) as well.

Hmm in one of my games, the yanks actually did attack the Hessians(+ general, Hussars and light infantry) I left at the starting position, with IIRC 3 line infantry

[bloodshed]

Yeah! I finally figured out what was wrong and was able to play the demo. Its awesome!! Can't wait till it comes out. I was hesitant after hearing all the negatives about it but after playing I found out it was awesome so that relaxes me until it comes out.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Personally, I didn't have too much trouble with loading times, they're hardly any worse than what I was used to with RTW 1.5 + EB. I do run the full graphics though, that might have something to do with it.

I miss the arrow keys, and I'm not entirely sure why all key-functions should be grouped under the left-hand-side of the keyboard. Oh well, you can probably re-assign hotkeys anyway.

[Hooahguy]

downloading now.
my speed is an average of 190 kb/s.
i feel lucky, from what im reading on the official TW forums, where averate is like 75.

right now im at 412 kb/s.

[Hooahguy]

I miss the arrow keys, and I'm not entirely sure why all key-functions should be grouped under the left-hand-side of the keyboard. Oh well, you can probably re-assign hotkeys anyway.

from what i hear, the idea of doing that is to promote better form for playing computer game. i read a study in the NY Times that you have less of a chance of getting Carpel Tunnel if the keys for moving are on the left side.

[oudysseos]

So far.... meh.
Certainly there seems to be a lot of Imperial Glory in there.

Looks like lots of good modding potential though.

[peacemaker]

hmmm.it doesn't let me switch to high or very high on the settings mode thing. The options are just low and medium...

[A Very Super Market]

Well.... maybe you just can't handle it? You can just change the settings manually...

[ConnMon]

I wasn't going to download the demo, but I finally broke down and I just started it about 10 minutes ago. Is the demo worth it overall? I'd like to know before I download the entire thing. Thanks

[peacemaker]

the options for manually switching graphics are greyed out or just not there, i figure my comp probably cant handle it anyway. Is there a way to play as the americans in the demo? cuz that would be cool\


The demo is most certainly worth the time, btw