First Impressions

[AntiDamascus]

Also joy, my first actual post is a double post. A good sign of things to come

[mouzfun]

Is that just me or you cant kill faction's navy after you destroyed every of their cities? i tried to kill all the units, ram it, burn it, nothing works. it says victory but on the campaign map it's still there with 26 people, next turn he comes back for me with 26 damn people, i'm tired of killing it 20 turns in a row.

[B-Wing]

I finally got to play the game for about 45 minutes this morning before heading to work. I skipped the prologue, started a campaign as Epirus, and spent my limited time getting familiar with the campaign map. Having played RTW, M2TW, and Shogun 2, this game's interface seems the least intuitive by far, but I'm sure I'll get used to quickly. One thing I haven't figured out is how armies interact with navies. After realizing I couldn't make my land units board my navy units, I realized that they could magically conjure their own fleets... which can't be merged with the permanent naval units. I don't get that. Can anyone shed some light on this new function?

[CaptainCrunch]

Pretty buggy right now, units moonwalking often (or just gliding with no walk animation) and poor and inconsistent collision detection. Charging units often 'meld' into one another several ranks deep before being 'reset' back out to where they should be. Sarissa from the 2nd rank in a phalanx poke right through the shields of the front rank. 'Pikemen' going into battle with swords drawn unless placed in phalanx.

Also, special abilities like intimidation seem very inconsistent right now. Units that are even or sometimes winning will break for seemingly no reason when fighting a unit that has this ability.

After unit cohesion breaks down (which happens a bit too often to 'disciplined' units) and men start to wander, they often stand around looking at each other. AI still gets confused and commits highly questionable acts of suicide. Had a group of AI Suebian Berserkers break ranks and charge my flank-screening Royal Parthian Cataphracts in the open field from quite a far distance while my force advanced on the Suebian line in a Custom Battle. They were almost completely annihilated in one charge.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment right now though came during a Custom Battle pitting Athens vs Epirus, where my advancing hoplites were rained on by flaming javelins from the Epirote peltasts. Flaming javelins people, you read it right. What's next CA, magic spells?!

So tired of nonsense...

One note, tested some of the hero units like Heroes of Sparta, Berserkers, etc. and found that they were nowhere near as OP as they were in RTW in terms of resistance to damage.

Also, I'm playing it on a 9600GT 1Gb with the latest drivers (modest card for sure) and the shadows even on 'High' are horrendous (V.High or Ultra wouldn't be feasible). If you rotate the camera around to the shaded side of a unit even with the Sun high up, the units turn into dark silhouettes with little to no detail. Wanted to point that out in case there are others out there waiting to play it on older hardware.

[rickinator9]

It seems the civilized bias is back again...

I(Macedonia) attacked the Triballi with 800 men while they were defending Navissos with 3600. I had with me the companion general, 4 hoplites, 2 slingers and 2 skirmishers. I lost my general early on, but still I was able to win with 300 left while they lost 3000. C'mon, this can't be my good generalship.