Will anybody else not be able to play for a few days?

[Monk]

Here's some info for you guys who can't play yet. I was gonna put this into a new post, but decided it would be a much better fit here:

I got the game downloaded and finallygot a chance to play it. Let me just say first hand, before i get into the nitty gritty. Wow. This game is deep. It has a lot more depth than previous titles and its just down right gorgeous to look at. Technologies, diplomacy, unit creation. A lot of things have changed and for some, the changes are gonna bring with them feelings of frustration and uncertainty. We like things that are familiar.

However, the changes (most of them) are in a good way. Most of the reviewers have touched on them so I won't get into huge details. Rather i will touch on a few things I know a lot of people wanna hear about.

Performance -

Load times are back, but they are not as bad as the demo's were. Trust me. They run anywhere from 1 min to 1:30 on my machine. Turn time is around, as pever said, 1-3 seconds per faction. Honestly, the game is actually a lot smoother than it was in the demo and CA was telling the truth. It was old code, it wasn't optimized very well. That being said, the campaign map is a little jittery at times and you may notice a second or two delay when selecting things. This needs to be fixed, but its a minor annoyance. One I quickly overlooked passed the third turn (you get used to it).

In battle the performace was, well, it was beautiful I fought a single battle. Half stack versus half stack on High and hardly saw a single drop in frame-rate on my machine. This is without a doubt where CA spent most of their time refining graphical bugs, ect. Melee animations look light-years ahead of where they were in the demo, but could still use some minor tweaking. I'll touch on this later.

The AI -

What's the biggest draw of the TW campaign? The AI of course. And the Ai in ETW is a step up from m2's I can say that for a fact. The strategic AI seems much more reasonable, and is pretty straight forward about asking for things. Turn one, Poland demanded a settlement swap. One of mine for one of theirs and some cash! I thought no, i need Hungary. When you declare war you have the chance to call your allies to do the same. They can decline, but in my campaign every ally I had accepted my call for war. Saxony ended up at war with Half of Europe thanks to me.

As for battle AI -

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I won't lie to you folks.

It's definitely improved, but it still has some stupid moments. I fought a battle outside of Dresden against an army comprised of cavalry and militia. I was pretty confident in my Austrian line troops and artillery to hold on. I decided to set up along a stone wall and wait out the advance, however I noticed a second line that Saxony could have used to set up. It would quickly turn the battle into a stalemate!

I pushed my line troops forward, the 3rd and 5th Vienna foot taking up positions along the second line while the 1st and 4th garrisoned some nearby buildings. I thought I had a pretty strong position, when the Saxons sent a massive cavalry detachment and hit the 3rd. Being turn 3 and super early in the game, I didn't have many military techs and couldn't form a square to counter them. Still the cavalry did minimum casualties on impact and I was confident my boys could hold.

What I didn't realize is the AI had sent its cavalry on a diversionary attack. It quickly thre militia into the effort and bogged down half of my army dealing with them. The 1st and 4th were frozen in the buildings, unsure of what to do while the 3rd, 5th and 6th fought for their lives against half of Saxony's army unsupported. The other half of the AI army made a powerful strike against my general, who was watching the artillery line. I was forced to micro my general and keep him out of harms way...

Spending all that time micro'ing him I completely forgot about the 5th! By the time I got back to them the entire regiments of 5th, 3rd and 6th Vienna were destroyed. The AI had effectively coordinated an attack on my general and in my panic, I let it pick apart my men who were pinned down.

Quite angry the 1st and 4th withdrew from their garrison and took up positions near the first wall, our original line. Both sides settled into a stalemate taking bot shots at one another. And here's where the critizism comes in: The AI was amazing up to THIS point.

It was unsure of what to do with a single unit. the rest were positioned nicely, but one could not figure out where to go. Path finding when there are multiple stone-fences seems to throw the AI for a loop at times as they continually hopped back and forth. It couldn't decide if it wanted to attack or defend, so I decided for it and threw my remaining troops into an attack. It focused then and reacted to me, rallying around the focal point of my assault

Final Verdict: AI is improved but still prone to idiot attacks. This battle was a huge shocker to me and forced me to withdraw in disgrace. The 1st and 4th were the only survivors of what should have been an easy campaign into Saxony! The Austrian King Leopold must now stand on the world stage embarrassed his mighty army was defeated by mere militia.

I'll post some more thoughts and bugs i found later, but for now I need some sleep.