Teutoburg Forest walkthrough

http://uk.gamespot.com/total-war-rom...lWarRomeIiBatt

Gamespot released a video of the historical battle of Teutoburg Forest, around 10 minutes long.

Thoughts?

First thing I noticed was that he gave orders from the overhead tactical map, which they said you wouldn't be able to do.

Making allowances for the pre-alpha state - that video was absurd on a number of levels:

- Arrows are like death rays
- Roman morale was off the charts - no routing
- Tired Titus? Who me Marius? I can run - and fight - all day in heavy armor carrying a huge shield!
- Great balls of fire!!!!!!!!! (What were they?)
- Poor Varus - his rep takes another hit. Begging for his life? Really?

CA has some work to do.

When are we gonna see some darned Parthians? Darn Carthage, darn Rome, darn them all. I want to see what they have done with Parthia!

The balls of fire were the boulders that were shoved down by the warbands

Originally Posted by Barkhorn1x

Making allowances for the pre-alpha state - that video was absurd on a number of levels:

- Arrows are like death rays
- Roman morale was off the charts - no routing
- Tired Titus? Who me Marius? I can run - and fight - all day in heavy armor carrying a huge shield!
- Great balls of fire!!!!!!!!! (What were they?)
- Poor Varus - his rep takes another hit. Begging for his life? Really?

CA has some work to do.

Agreed on the arrows, I thought they were abit over the top.
Agreed on the morale OTOH, they are disciplined legions with nowhere else to go...
Agreed on endurance lol
The inspiration for using that strikes me as coming straight off the movie, "Troy" when Hector attacks the beach. There is no historical record that they used such tactics and in fact the historical record mentions an earthen wall so archers could freely rein arrows.

Not going to comment on balance. Alpha is alpha.

Hope the flaming arrow visuals are place holders since they looked a bit more like lasers to me.

Love the tactical map, glad to see they listened to the feedback that said we wanted to issue orders from that. That's a huge improvement right there.

The rest is way too scripted to say much about, other than it looks pretty cool. The flexibility of the camera is a big plus too.

Good:

The engine looks fluid, crisp, well scaled and there are great animations and physics. The shoving between infantry lines and the way they remade cavalry into effective shock troops who's primary goal is to disrupt enemy formations, rather than kill everything.

Concerning:

The voicework is sometimes a bit corny. The red colour on the shields - I know Hollywood conditioned us to think that Romans were Red and violets were blue, but seriously. Too much red in those uniforms. Red dye was bloody expensive as far as I know.

The kill rate for archers and flaming arrows is much too high.

No fatigue and morale to speak of.

Cav charges from 10 meters are effective.

I'd like to see who blows all these war horns all the time.

Horrible:

"Set phasers to arrow trails!" - overuse of flaming arrows. Facepalm inducing arrow trail animations.

Dogs that charge at a formed line of romans. Since when did dogs charge head on like trained destriers? I'd expect them to circle around in packs and try to hamstring and bring down individual fighters or horses, but not this.

The Romans still don't fight like Romans should. Although it seems more realistic and organized than RTW, they are a long way off from solid lines, falling back trough the ranks, cenutrions directing their cohorts etc. Perhaps this is due to the scenario... We will see.