Demo Impressions

[SeveredSoul]

I have an NiVidia GForce 4200Ti and I don't see any of those red things like in your screenshot Froggy. It's looks so wierd and would honestly piss me off Is that red glow on the screen the whole time or just when you are moving the camera around??

And you have a better card than I do.....odd.


-Soul

[The Wizard]

Hehe... I guess the Romans had time-travel...

Anyways, downloading the demo now... my esteemed self shall let you know how I find it



~Wiz

[Barkhorn1x]

Legionnairy cavalry, in lorica segmentata... what are they doing in 218 BC i wonder.... ~:p

Actually, if you look at the Tutorial Start screen it reads 329BC !!!

Barkhorn.

[frogbeastegg]

The red glare is not linked to flaming arrows; as I said before I turned them off and it made no difference at all. The glare is present whenever any unit that is being hit by arrows of any variety is on screen, even if it is hidden behind a hill or something. The screenshot doesn't do the effect justice; the red lights flicker and move like strobe lighting, they aren't stationary.

Updating the drivers is not really an option right now; newer drivers cause big lighting errors in thief 3. Thief relies on lighting, so it is unplayable with the glitches. I have to finish thief before I can update, and I am playing very slowly indeed because I'm busy writing assorted stuff.

Lorica segmentata on mounted units hundreds of years before it was invented

[Yoritomo]

Well, my 2 cents

I found the demo to be a little unpolished.

My comp had no probs running everything on high, Hopefully you will be able to look at some really cool replays in the full game, I can't wait for that. The music was ok, nothing startling, My opinion it didnt really set the mood.

I hate the cheesy accents of the Carthaginians. For all its worth, I loved Shogun for the way it stayed very close to the units actually speaking Japanese.(Even the voiceover was a Japanese bloke speaking english, but it gave the game authentic flavour) I for one would like to see units speaking Latin Aramaic, Greek etc, Instead of speaking English, It kinda tarnished the game a little for me.

As for the unit saying its name everytime you clicked it, THIS WAS VERY ANNOYING, and I only played it for 20 minutes, CA you have some work to do on the voiceovers for the units..

Its fine saying you have engineered a better engine and revoluionised the Brand, but please stick to having authenticity to the period. (Thats why Shogun made the grade)

I would of liked a Hans Zimmer approach to the music, with Lisa Gerard type vocals, but I was wishfully thinking.

Maybe this is in the full game?

All in all a 7.5/10 from me

[Leet Eriksson]

Actually, if you look at the Tutorial Start screen it reads 329BC !!!

Barkhorn.

Woops mixed it up with Trebia date ~:p

but wow 300 years before it even got invented, thats even worse

[Sjakihata]

one thing that is neat though, is the 'view from generals position' have yet to test it, but I sure will like it.

[Cruelsader]

Just finished my first battles. Overall not too bad. I hope that I will like the battles better when I get used to the new feel of the game.

Red Glare: I have it also. My graphic card is Radeon 9100.

Rallying: not only the general but also the Sacred Band has the rally button

Units saying their names: I found it mildly irritating but also useful for locating units. The voice comes from the direction of the unit and its strength depends on the distance from the camera .By clicking on the card I could pinpoint the respective unit even when it was not on the screen. (I have Creative surround system)

[Lucius Lucullus]

Units saying their names: I found it mildly irritating but also useful for locating units. The voice comes from the direction of the unit and its strength depends on the distance from the camera .By clicking on the card I could pinpoint the respective unit even when it was not on the screen. (I have Creative surround system)

It is soooo annoying when they keep saying what unit they are, would be better if they said something like "Ready" or "Yes Sir". Even better if they said it in Latin/Greek/Pheonician/Pidgin/Mandarin/Eutruscian/whatever

[Sjakihata]

omg, how many do you think speak pheonican?

[Steppe Merc]

I wonder if you can slow down the units? If this was MTW (which it isn't, I know), I'd probably chop in half all of there walk/run/charge speeds. I can't figure out whats going on half the time.

[BDC]

But the cavalry charges are about a hundred times better than MTW's...

The English words and American accents bug the hell out of me though.

[SeveredSoul]

Yeah it is a bit faster now compared to M:TW. But I would imagine that battles in ancient times were about that fast moving. I mean just look at how fast mechanized warfare is today.

This whole game is gonna' take a bit of getting used to. Granted this is the demo but I'd say this is the game speed we'll all have to live with.
'Till it get modded of course


-Soul

[Steppe Merc]

Sorry soul, but ancient battles with infantry tended to be slow, hours or even day long affairs, with infantry lines walking, not running and just pushing against each other. Now cavalry did speed up the battles, but the heavy infantry were slow, and couldn't manuever well at all.

[Sinner]

So far I'm feeling quite underwhelmed for reasons already mentioned by others: the units seem too fast as they dash around the battlefield; some of the standard graphical effects, while maybe switchable, are very annoying, with the flaming arrows in particular being rather irritating - somebody at CA seems too enamoured with the opening battle in Gladiator ; finally, the interface just doesn't feel as comfortable.

Too often I found myself just staring blankly at the screen as the battle played out, unable to recapture the eagerness to get involved and influence the outcome as I felt with STW & MTW.

I really hope the actual release improves upon the demo, else I can't see me playing many tactical battles, instead limiting myself to the campaign map, which in itself will limit how long the game stays on my PC. Just like Civ3 & MOO3 a long awaited sequel proves less than I hoped, maybe not unplayable, but frsutrating and disappointing all the same. Maybe it'll grow on me over time, but I'm not very hopeful right now.

[nightcrawlerblue]

I have one word to describe this demo:

WOW

The cavalry charges are awesome and do a lot more damage on the initial charge than in MTW (MTWs charges sucked).

The graphics are kind of dissapointing because of the way they chose to do them. If you zoom out enough to actually be able to see more than 1 unit all of the units get blurry and the graphics become about the same as MTWs (for infantry anyway). This might just be my cruddy graphics card though. I'll change the settings a bit and see if I can find something that helps.

The Game performance is surprisingly nice as I had barely any lag with most settings on high (No AA and no shadows because of my graphics card but the rest were at high).

Finally, the thing that was gonna make or break the game for me... Elephants. In my first battle I immediately charged my elephants into a huge group of enemy infantry and my face lighted up with glee as the elephant charged into a group a 100+ infantry, immediately shooting 10 of them up in the air and wiping out another 30. I was dissapointed when the elephant then routed but soon the routing had stopped and another charge was set up. Oh it was sooooooo cool! Damn just posting this is making my slobber on my keyboard.

[GFX707]

It is soooo annoying when they keep saying what unit they are, would be better if they said something like "Ready" or "Yes Sir". Even better if they said it in Latin/Greek/Pheonician/Pidgin/Mandarin/Eutruscian/whatever

I think rather than the unit "saying what it is" it's the unit commander or even the general addressing his unit....

"triarii....CHARGE!!!!" etc.


doesn't bother me.

[Sjakihata]

good point!

However, it still feels like red alert / C&C generals, if you click a unit it responds

[frogbeastegg]

I think rather than the unit "saying what it is" it's the unit commander or even the general addressing his unit....

"triarii....CHARGE!!!!" etc.


doesn't bother me.

Good theory, however when you select the barbarian units in Trebia they answer with a different voiceset. Either the general swaps cultures when he addresses different units or it's the units themselves talking. If just the accent changed we could say it represents the general speaking the unit's language, but the actual voice changes too.

[fenir]

Well I have been thrashing the demo, and also watching and learning, I have come across a few horrible things.

1. The Music, not bad.....certianly not as enticing as MTW, but it is in a sense, a classical peice which can at a stretch can be invovling.

2. Everytime you click on a unit, it gives you it's name. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NO! It will make me a very violent person in no time at all. I like the charge!! Call, nice touch. But repeating orders back to me? I don't like at all.

3. The camera, seems stuck. The camera controls actually made me feel sick.
I do not like the tilt when pushing the arrow key on the Keyboard, it really does not need to tilt!, we had a + & - keys for that if we need the.
I have to say, the MTW camera was far surperior. I like how you can zoom in zoom out, and lock on unit. But the camera is really bad.
They are certianly not game play controls.
The reverse clicking from MTW had me totally annoyed. It was as though someone had replaced the British made car, with an American made car, Simply put, CA, the steering wheel is on the wrong side.

4. The units tend to move very fast. I have had some thoughts about this, one being the area is quite large, and in a time factor they needed to be speed up to cover the distances involved.
The second, being that time react within a given set of circumstances. But still, they are to fast imho.

5. I hate that I had to hex the demo just to play the Romanus.

6. There not does seem to be enough time to control your units once battle has been joined. I have read, that someone else had a simlar feeling about this also. I found that as Cathage, I only truely had control over a few of my units. Sure I beat the be-jeppers outa the legions. But that is only because of my experiance i would say from previous TW series.

7. The pause, why 'p'........Why not Pause? with the pause button? 'P' is to hard to find with out looking at the keyboard. 'Pause' is far easier, and makes more sense.

8. I found the Advisor to be quite helpful. Thank goodness we can turn them off.

9. The green higlight for selected units, a much improved way of seeing who we have "under mouse". But the Big green Arrow go here thing?? To micro-c**p and still annoyes the bee's and the jeepers outa me.

10. When fighting, the units tend to vapourise, that is they do not look like fighting men at all. You lose men, you can see it after a while, but not in the same sense of game immerision as MTW or STW.
Their is, I suppose, a lack of urgentancy about the fighting? There is certianly not the lack of peneration of cavalry as in MTW first release. There is however a lack of developed fighting involvement by the units man to man.
The pole Armed units tended to singlely fight it out, when they technically use the phalanx system, where multiple rows could fight.
This however didn't look to be the case. I don't know whether they where actually fighting as row upon row, or whether i just didn't see it.

anyway just some food for thought

fenir
have a nice day

[Orda Khan]

One thing we don't need is a click fest

.......Orda

[GFX707]

Good theory, however when you select the barbarian units in Trebia they answer with a different voiceset. Either the general swaps cultures when he addresses different units or it's the units themselves talking. If just the accent changed we could say it represents the general speaking the unit's language, but the actual voice changes too.

Then perhaps it's the unit commander talking to his men, like I said.


Few other things - the map size seems pretty much the same as in MTW, and when I clicked on "assume AI command" or something for my skirmishers the game froze!

[Sjakihata]

1. Agreed, definately not the worst music for a game, but not as classy as the Shogun one. We have yet to hear the music for other factions as well, though, and a lot of different tracks.

2. See GFX's post, it is in fact the general ordering.

3. The camera is far superior to the MTW one, imo, but just enable 'general camera view'. The tilting doesnt annoy me at all, and I can better control the camera here.

4. Agreed, units are fast. What I have thought is this: we only experienced one battlefield, with set units, so too early to say how this works in the actual game, however, for the demo it is too fast. Also, a simple mod can just reduce speed for all units by two or something suitable.

5. Well, it is a DEMO (demostration) it is not supposed to be a full game, be glad that it COULD be hexed

6. Again, you are correct. But untill proper testing in the actual game, it is too early to say.

7. Does it really matter? You can use your mouse if it is too hard to locate the p.

8. Well, he is o k for utterly new players to the game, but it is nice he can go away.

9. Arrows, be gone!

10. I like the fighting, try zooming in and you will see fighting like you've never seen before!

Good input fenir

[fenir]

Just a few quick questions i forgot to enter..........

1. Is there someone new in charge of the developement of the game?

2. Are they American, no offence intended just asking.

3. Mr R.T (godlike) Smith, i would hazard a guess is not working on this game?

IF any CA person can answer these, i would be most grateful.

thank you in advance,

fenir

[fenir]

thank you Sjakihata,

I should have mentioned, this is only pre look, as it is only a take off the Demo itself.
I do expect the full game, to be a .....perhaps more polished affair. For want of a better way to put it.

But then again, a demo is what is released to sell the game.


fenir

[GFX707]

As for the camera, put it on total war and it's great....

[nightcrawlerblue]

Wow I just found a really cool thing.

Zoom in on one of your units or on any enemy unit as they charge into battle and follow them. It sorta looks like you're looking over their shoulder as they charge into battle. Looks really awesome with horses because of the awesome charge effect.

I have come to the conclusion that I want a pet elephant... with armor...

My only problem with elephants is that they must have super-low morale. After the initial charge into a battalion of infantry my elephants immediately rout. then again that might be realistic (I've never seen an elephant attacking people before...).

[Steppe Merc]

I'm pretty sure that's real Nightcrawler. You'd be pretty ticked off if a bunch of little guys were stabbing you and shooting you. Besides, they can't be invincible, than that would be no good (for obvious reasons, I'd think).

[Ellesthyan]

Although I too experienced a few things Im not really comfortable with (stupid arrows!), Im FAR more impressed by all the thousands of little changes they put in. For example:

Cavalry charges. They look a lot more realistic, charge _through_ the unit and recharge again. They have tons of new animations (I even had a running unit of Numidians JUMPING over my triarii! The result was 6 dead horses, but 2 guys made it to the line), and are very effective. Sacred band is overpowered, though.

And so on. The new animations (MTW only had 5 or so per unit) are great and the special abilities the strawberies on the cake. The music is all right. I usually put on some of my own anyway. The unit repeating orders is actually useful to locate it. The accents are horrible (which goover decided to give the Romans an Australian accent??), I hope they can be changed before the release. All in all, I really like the demo however limited it is. It promises great gameplay, and Im dying to try out the testudo!

And in answer of Fenir:

1. No, I doubt it. They've planned this game from the start of STW, and I assume they've worked on it with the same crew for years.

2. They have an office in Brittain and one in Australia, so no, they are absolutely no Americans.

3. Dunno

[frogbeastegg]

Then perhaps it's the unit commander talking to his men, like I said.


Few other things - the map size seems pretty much the same as in MTW, and when I clicked on "assume AI command" or something for my skirmishers the game froze!

You said unit commander or general; I was replying to the general part (as in it can't be him so it'd have to be the unit's officer). Sorry for any confusion.