RTW demo conclusions: a full summary

[Red Harvest]

6. Game aspect/balance

Rally Feature- Forcing you to select your general before rallying the troops is a major pain in the ass. Pausing in SP battles to do this is fine but in MP games things are way too hectic, especially if you're in the middle of a tricky maneuver. Based upon the entries in the descr_shortcuts.txt file I see there is NO Rally hotkey! Rally has become a specialized function of a general unit. Please bring back the MTW method where you could use the Rally feature simply by selecting all your troops and then hitting the button or using the hotkey. Yes, I suppose you could macro your general and use the Rally function that way but with a 20 unit limit I can see people shying away from giving the commander an entire slot.

Spino, I haven't played with this much yet. But this actually makes more sense than MTW's method. It should take the physical intervention of an officer/general to rally most units. Yep, it's a pain in the butt, and won't matter if the fighting/movement speed is so high that you don't have time to do anything. Elite/disciplined units should rally on their own--but rank and file should not. I need to study the implementation of this a bit more.

[frogbeastegg]

Excellent work, Blodrast. It certainly voices my main concerns better than my scattered, lack of sleep hampered, rushed ramblings.

Red Harvest, you managed to fix the ATI problem by maxing everything? I have a 9800 pro, 1280x1024 res with everything set to max and it's still there. I also enabled antistrophic filtering x8 in the ATI control panel. The red galre is still present. I've tried a few other settings (lower res, less advanced effects, no filtering) and there was no change to the glare. Interesting.

Which reminds me of another point:
Graphics options Can we have a control for antistrophic filtering inside the game please? RTW really benefits from this on my system but my other games don't, so having to rely on a universal override setting is not great.

[The_Emperor]

Excellent post Blodrast!

One other addition I for one miss from the previous two games... The Casualty ratio bar! That used to be extremely helpful in working out how well a battle was going, now it seems a lot harder to work out.

It would be great to have it back.

[Papewaio]

Emperor that ratio is above the speed buttons on the bottom left box.

Hover your mouse over it and you will get % displayed... just look for the blue/red bar.

[The_Emperor]

oh well its not as easy to see as it used to be... Make it bigger!

[Spino]

Spino, I haven't played with this much yet. But this actually makes more sense than MTW's method. It should take the physical intervention of an officer/general to rally most units. Yep, it's a pain in the butt, and won't matter if the fighting/movement speed is so high that you don't have time to do anything. Elite/disciplined units should rally on their own--but rank and file should not. I need to study the implementation of this a bit more.

It is an even greater pain in the butt since you cannot hotkey group a single unit! I tried making my general unit hotkey Group #1 and the game will not accept it! So basically in the middle of combat you may instantly command groups of normal units but in order to access your general and command him to rally the troops you either have to use the mouse in order to select your general unit or cycle through each individual unit with the keys in order. This means precious time is lost before you can directly control the general, let alone rally the troops.

On a different note I've also noticed that 'Exhausted' troops can run! No more trudging about as in MTW. In RTW exhausted infantry units can run at a respectable speed and for a looooong time, almost indefinitely! I played the modded training battle as the Gauls and had a Tired unit of Gaulish archers chased all around the map by an Exhausted unit of Triarii! In all that armor the only thing with two legs an exhausted unit of Triarii should be able to catch is a dead man! C'mon CA, give us a break!