Demo Impressions

[spacecadet]

Overall its ok, well it looks good at least. The important stuff for me is online and theres still no way to know if CA will program out the simple problems we have now in MTW.

3 points however:

- Is it so hard for CA to leave the basic controls the same/implement a choice to use the same basic Totalwar control options i.e use left mouse button, dragging out lines, swivelling the grouped units direction around???(Please fix this before this goes gold!)

- is there no rally button?? is this automatic now?

- selecting different grouped units - the old system of having a bar over the icons of the grouped units was intuitive. The new icons size and odd way of having 2 rows makes it irritating to select them in the middle of battle.

[Steppe Merc]

For those lost on the Rally button, it's the special ability of your General. You can only do it sometimes, though.

[A.Saturnus]

The charge is really awesome, that has to be said. I also liked how elephants are done. Not that we could really judge it by now, but they aren´t invincible. You still have to use them wisely.
Overall I really liked the fighting. People beat each other, some fall to the ground and stand up again, units celebrating when they win. Cool. At least when the soldiers were more than grey squares. On lowest setting, the graphic isn´t impressive at all. Though I have to say, I just have the minimum requirement and the game played smoothly.
Saying the unit´s name seems useless and annoying to me, however, repeating commands make sense. The unit commander has to address his men after all. In MTW you heard orders too.
The camera will simply be a matter of practice.
I found the battle to be extremely easy. I send in my elephants without any sense, practically wasting them and still won. Though general camera might be a challenge.

Over all, I liked the demo. I hope that RTW will be more polished than that, but it was definitely fun.

[The_Emperor]

Ok first up, the criticisms.

I didn't like the camera control or the interface... In my humble opinion CA have messed with a winning formula there and i do sincerely hope they have a "classic TW" option regarding all of this. it all seemed a bit unwieldy to me.

Secondly, it did move wayy too fast for my liking. You cannot marvel at the graphics and see your men grind the enemy down like you could in MTW... Constantly moving along the field to try to make sense of the mess was not good.

Thirdly, units repeating their names is not a very good touch... "I know what you bloody well are, just obey my orders!"

Then there's the skirmishing range for the javs, but I just took them off skirmish to counter that one.

Now for the good stuff.

Elephants are good, but as some have said they needs to be used carefully. The main reason my armoured elephants routed in a game was because they charged into some Hastasii... (the velites pelting them probably didn't help matters)

However when I played again I managed to draw out the poeni infantry in a much longer line and draw most of the Roman army into the middle, then my elephants came in and charged right through the Triarii!! It was carnage, Romans flew everywhere!

The graphics were superb and I loved them, the little cutscene when the enemy general died was great fun... Hannibal pinned him in combat when some war elephants came in on a flanking charge, it was a brutal way to die!

As for the units the Carthaginian cavalry and the Numidians did impress me. Their missiles were good when they came behind the enemy lines pelting them, then when the rout was udnerway they truly earned their keep mopping up.

But all in all it was fun.

[Plaxx]

TuffStuff,

I used to work at Dell, and I have built my last two computers. Based on the demo, your rig should be able to run the game with all the eye candy turned on, no problem. Just make sure you have all the newest drivers, especially for your Radeon card.

[Beirut]

Hmmm, kind of look like an RPG screen. And I'm not crazy about the green highlighting of the chosen units. Also, I don't like the button setup. I liked the old way better.

But... the graphics are pretty good and I can see some monumental battles happening once the controls are gotten used too.

Mind you, with the graphics turned up a notch, this thing slowed down my XP2000/512 RAM/9800 Pro quite a bit. Must be quite the CPU pig when things get really heavy.

Can't wait for the demo mods to really get the feel of it.

[historycaesar]

I turned all my graphic setting up and the demo is amazing, too short but amazing!

[mambaman]

yup IMHO a fab improvement on MTW-like a few b4 my only query: why the switch betw left and right mouse functions?

Music i thought was fab and actually helped me enjoy the game more

Camera controls i thought better than both MTW and RTW once u get used to them

Like others thought demo a little on the fast side

Units repeating orders-a bit strange-maybe they'll sort that b4 game release

all in all a massive improvement on MTW-really takes the game to new level as CA promised

one last thing guys....remem this is just a demo-games developers often will make final adjustments on the basis of the feedback they get from ppl playing the demos-have faith

[alioven]

For the people with ray glitches, have you tried disabling advanced shadowing?

For routing units: if you choose your general, its special function (F key iirc) is to rally troops nearby him. So... rallying will be so clumsy and hard to do now...

Cav charges are too powerful, you send a cav behind routing units and they die in... 1-2 seconds? Swiping was a joke compared with this. You back-charge cav against a unit of spears (specially if they are already engaged with another unit) and they simply get destroyed at once. I hope this has more to do with the obvious valour and energy differences btw the two armies (romans are clearly weaker in this demo).

[Tamur]

...my only query: why the switch betw left and right mouse functions?

It makes the painful misordered unit problem a non-issue. Use left to select, right to direct, and everything is OK.

This was a big problem for most human beings playing MTW, who had a unit selected already, attempted to select a different unit, and ended up mistakenly ordering the unit already selected to march somewhere entirely different from where they ought to be.

Tamur