GameStar Revie (German magazine)

[Ituralde]

So I just received my copy of the GameStar magazine. Along with a five page test there's also around 23 minutes of video material on the accompanying DVD. So everybody living near or in Germany should definetly check it out once it hits retailers coming Wednesday.

GameStar gave it a rating of 90/100, which is pretty high for the magazine. They say that the games surpasses its predecessors but not all bugs have been ironed out yet. The two mentioned that would have otherwise given the game a 92/100 are:

- pathfinding on walls during sieges is often bad
- wait time during turns can take up to three minutes

CA promised a fix for those two errors for the retail version. Take it for what it's worth, but apparently the first test version was more bugged and the later version was able to fix these inside a few weeks so who knows.

Now on to the interesting tidbits of the review:

- 11 playable factions
- Switzerland is not on the map
- campaign goes from 1700 to 1750 (short campaign) or 1799 (long campaign)
- game objective is to conquer provinces or to get prestige points for military, naval, financial, and social advances.
- Each province capital can have up to six improvement slots for military buildings and the like
- Additional improvements can be placed in towns that appear on the map the richer the province gets
- three types of agents: gentleman, rake, priest
- Priest converts much like he did in M2TW
- you can fire one minister per turn, replacements are random
- in constituional monarchies and Republics elections can replace all of your ministers
- the trade goods you have are important for the lucrativity of your trade goods. Rare goods (sugar, tabacco) make the highest profit. You can heighten the profit by decreasing the supply. (i.e. burning down plantations in the New World)
- Diplomatic AI acts reasonable and keeps alliances
- Only somestimes refuses to sign peace
- Battle AI acts good
- Battle AI does not make use of Dragooners
- Line Infantry often better than Dragooners, so they are not really necessary
- Naval battle pathfinding can sometimes lead to vessels becoming stuck on each other
- Naval AI works good and employs line tactics

The rest is pretty much known/standard stuff. I'm gonna watch the videos soon. Maybe they'll have more information. Now on to wait that my demo finishes downloading.

Cheers!

Ituralde

Edit: Stupid typo in the title. Should of course be revieW

[Polemists]

Sounds good, only line that disappointed me was

you can fire one minister per turn, replacements are random

I had hoped you could nominate ministers or that they'd be choosen from two nominated opponents in a election. Thought it does say they change out in a election the results seem random as well. It seems though it will be random, oh well, can't have everything.

[Sir Beane]

No switzerland? That's a shame, and it will have to be modded in. It's also a little odd given that it appears on every map we have seen so far.

[Marten]

Lol, good one Ituralde!

I just added the conclusion to the sticky 2 minutes ago ...

To polemists concerns: If i remember right, you should be able to change the ministers in absolute monarchy as you wish
and only in democratic government you got them random.

[Mailman653]

No room for neutral countries in ETW I guess

[Greyblades]

I was hoping that we would be able to shoot religion in the head for this one, oh well...

[Monk]

So I just received my copy of the GameStar magazine. Along with a five page test there's also around 23 minutes of video material on the accompanying DVD. So everybody living near or in Germany should definetly check it out once it hits retailers coming Wednesday.

GameStar gave it a rating of 90/100, which is pretty high for the magazine. They say that the games surpasses its predecessors but not all bugs have been ironed out yet. The two mentioned that would have otherwise given the game a 92/100 are:

- pathfinding on walls during sieges is often bad
- wait time during turns can take up to three minutes

CA promised a fix for those two errors for the retail version. Take it for what it's worth, but apparently the first test version was more bugged and the later version was able to fix these inside a few weeks so who knows.

Now on to the interesting tidbits of the review:

- 11 playable factions
- Switzerland is not on the map
- campaign goes from 1700 to 1750 (short campaign) or 1799 (long campaign)
- game objective is to conquer provinces or to get prestige points for military, naval, financial, and social advances.
- Each province capital can have up to six improvement slots for military buildings and the like
- Additional improvements can be placed in towns that appear on the map the richer the province gets
- three types of agents: gentleman, rake, priest
- Priest converts much like he did in M2TW
- you can fire one minister per turn, replacements are random
- in constituional monarchies and Republics elections can replace all of your ministers
- the trade goods you have are important for the lucrativity of your trade goods. Rare goods (sugar, tabacco) make the highest profit. You can heighten the profit by decreasing the supply. (i.e. burning down plantations in the New World)
- Diplomatic AI acts reasonable and keeps alliances
- Only somestimes refuses to sign peace
- Battle AI acts good
- Battle AI does not make use of Dragooners
- Line Infantry often better than Dragooners, so they are not really necessary
- Naval battle pathfinding can sometimes lead to vessels becoming stuck on each other
- Naval AI works good and employs line tactics

The rest is pretty much known/standard stuff. I'm gonna watch the videos soon. Maybe they'll have more information. Now on to wait that my demo finishes downloading.

Cheers!

Ituralde

Edit: Stupid typo in the title. Should of course be revieW

This was the most promising to me. It's good to hear that CA is fully aware of their load time problems and is already at work to fix them.

[ConnMon]

I like that CA said they were going to fix those bugs, so hopefully there's hope for the problems we have seen in the demo (load times, graphics, animations, etc.). I also mourn the loss of Switzerland...

[Sir Beane]

I don't see why CA would remove Switzerland, what possible reason could they have? It makes no sense, especially considering they clearly were in the game at one point.

[Monk]

I don't see why CA would remove Switzerland, what possible reason could they have? It makes no sense, especially considering they clearly were in the game at one point.

It was likely due to no-one having any strong feelings, one way or another, toward keeping them in the game. You could say CA was really neutral on that issue.



I'll be quiet now.

[Ituralde]

I watched the videso concerning the campaign map and they give a very good overview over that aspect of the game. Nearly every window is shown. Every part of the map is shown so you know exactly where which provinces are. Each of the playable factions is introduced with their starting provinces. I don't have the time right now, but if you're interested I can provide those lists for every faction.


Also some more information:

- 11 playable factions referst to the Grand Campaign. The US is a protectorate of Great Britain.
- The US can be played from 1783 to 1810 as last part of the Road to Independence Campaign
- There's a graphical overview where you can see the relations of each faction towards all other factions in the game. A small campaign map will colour from dark green to dark red depending on the relations to the country chosen.
- Once a minister gets fired there is a pool of five ministers to choose from. I guess the random replacement referred to the pool being filled with new random candidates.
- The screen where you set your taxes also shows the campaign map and automatically indicates what effect your tax setting has on the population. Adjusting the taxes is very intuitive and simple.
- The trade routes look like the known green lines from M2TW. Now you can hover over them though and get a detailed description on how much money each faction makes from this trade routes. The same applies to the road network.
- Every map region has transit zones. Once your ships enter them you can choose if you want to send them to a trade theater or to North America/India. It takes them some turns to get there.

That's all for now. Gonna watch the videso about land and sea battles later.
Cheers!

Ituralde

[Ituralde]

So here are the starting provinces of each faction:

Great Britain:
London, England
Edinburgh, Scotland
Dublin, Ireland
Port Royal, Jamaica
Nassau, Bahamas
Moose Factory, Rupert's Land

13 Colonies Protectorate:
Savannah, Georgia
Charlestown, Carolina
Williamsburg, Virginia
Annapolis, Maryland
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Albany, New York
Boston, Confederation of New England
Falmouth, Maine

France:
Paris, France
Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine
Quebec, New France
Fort Nashawaak, Acadia
Montreal, Upper Canada
New Orleans, Lower Louisiana

Spain:
Madrid, Spain
Gibraltar, Gibraltar
Cagliari, Sardinia
Naples, Naples
Milan, Lombardy
Brussels, Flanders
La Habana, Cuba
St. Augustine, Florida
Santo Domingo, Hispaniola

Austria:
Vienna, Austria
Preßburg, Hungary
Klausenburg, Transylvania
Zagreb, Croatia
Prague, Bohemia & Moravia
Breslau, Silesia

United Provinces:
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Trincomalee, Ceylon
Punda, Curacao

Prussia:
Berlin, Brandenburg
Königsberg, East Prussia

Ottoman Empire:
Cairo, Egypt
Jerusalem, Palestine
Damascus, Syria
Baghdad, Mesopotamia
Yerevan, Armenia
Ankara, Anatolia
Istanbul, Rumelin
Athens, Greece
Patras, Morea
Sofia, Bulgaria
Belgrade, Serbia
Iasi, Moldavia
Sarajevo, Bosnia

Russia
Moscow, Muscovy
Petrovskaya Slobodz, Karelia
Arkhangelsk, Arkhangelsk
Uit-Syvodik, Koml
Kiev, Ukraine
Cherkansk, Don Volsko
Karzan, Tatarya
Astrakhan, Astrakhan
One Eastern province, I can't make out the name

Poland-Lithuania:
Warsaw, Poland
Gdansk, West Prussia
Vilnius, Lithuania
Minsk, Belarus & Volhynia
Lwow, Galicia & Podolia

Jelgava, Courland is allied with Poland-Lithuania

Sweden:
Stockholm, Sweden
Abo, Finland
Riga, Estonia & Livonia
St. Petersburg, Ingria

Maratha Confederacy:
Arcot, Carnatica
Satara, Bijapur


That's all the provinces from the starting factions I could see on the map. Obviously there are some missing, if you look at the Spanish holdings in North America for example. Also Sicily is never shown in the videos, I assume it belongs to Spain too. Also I apologize if there are any misspellings. It was often extremely hard to make out province names and their capitals.

Cheers!

Ituralde

[Polemists]

This review is packed with info, I prefer it much more over the other pc review.

Also nice to see that Austria gets lots of land and it's very diverse (as it should be which later will lead to division of the Austro Hungarian nation)

Prussia only gets two regions at start..hmm...I guess if you like smaller countries that's good. Looks like smallest is Prussia or Marth and largest is Spain or Ottoman's depending on which Spain regions arn't listed.

All in all i'm happy and can't wait to play, I'm trying to find a good 18th century map to print off until I can get the game map in the mean time :)

[Sir Beane]

This is fantastic information Ituralde Keep up the good work!

I wish I could read the magazine and watch the videos.

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

So we get the first patch on release which means we will only get one more untill the exp pack comes. Sigh

[Polemists]

Dosn't it usually take them a year to year and a half for a expansion?

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

exactly

[Monk]

So we get the first patch on release which means we will only get one more untill the exp pack comes. Sigh

So, do you have a source for the arbitrary number of only two patches allowed?

[Sir Beane]

There will be more patches due to the fact that Steam allows the game to be easily updated with a variety of small patches rather than several huge ones. Ca can easily bring out a patch every couple of days as they work on fixing small bugs and balance issues.

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

it has been CAs policy since Shogun?

[Monk]

it has been CAs policy since Shogun?

That really doesn't mean anything now due to the easy update ability that Steam provides. They've never tossed us a patch on day one before, which should tell you where their priorities lie. Until we hear a CA rep on the matter there's really no way to tell how many patches they plan to release, one way or another. We could be looking at two, we could be looking at 10.

[Sir Beane]

That really doesn't mean anything now due to the easy update ability that Steam provides. They've never tossed us a patch on day one before, which should tell you where their priorities lie. Until we hear a CA rep on the matter there's really no way to tell how many patches they plan to release, one way or another. We could be looking at two, we could be looking at 10.

I'm fairly certain we will end up getting lots of very small patches, as CA can patches as and when they fix problems rather than having to gather everything into one big package.

[Polemists]

I think CA has read at least parts of the issues people had with the gaint demo download. I assume they know that everyone would prefer lots of little 25 or 100 mb fixes rather then gigantic 2 or 3 gig fixes.

Besides if you don't want piecemeal you can always choose to play in offline mode and just go online when you want updates.

[CBR]

Every patch takes man-hours that could be used for something else. Maybe they will make more but smaller patches because of Steam, but Steam itself has nothing to do with the overall amount of time and effort that CA is willing to use to fix the game.

Last couple of games there was a major patch that came out ~5 months after release and then they moved on to the expansion that of course had some more fixes.

Unless CA/SEGA has a permanent testing/patch team I doubt we are going to see that many small patches. But OK maybe times have changed.


CBR

[Polemists]

Actually CA and Sega have stated that they have a variety of additional staff members in additional roles. As this is the only strategy game (uprising just a expansion) or pc game period I can think of that is a major title coming out in Mar-May period.

For instance before someone worked on AI part time, this time they had a small team working on it.

So they may very well have a patch team, espically if Empire sells well.

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

I wish I had your optimism. I for one thing will not be buying the game untill there will be 3v3 or 4v4 MP battles.

[Monk]

I wish I had your optimism. I for one thing will not be buying the game untill there will be 3v3 or 4v4 MP battles.

Not sure about 3v3, which is still my favorite, but there is at least 4v4 as confirmed by Lusted in the link.

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

Not when Prof tried it

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...79#post4516179

[ArtillerySmoke]

Great Britain is going to be a BEAST.

[Monk]

Not when Prof tried it

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...79#post4516179

Yeah, the maps are MP only. You can't use them for single-player custom battles.