Game Speed Considerations
I think CA's programmers are stuck between a rock and a hard place on this one (not completely of their own making.) We have to consider the objective of a new graphics engine: Great graphics with 3d in place of 2d sprites, large number of soldiers, bigger maps/more space. At the same time the pace can't be too sluggish and it should be possible to speed up battles at times. Also, they wanted better AI control of units.
Ok, as has been pointed out in previews and in another thread some of these things are mutually exclusive and require compromise. Run and charge speed for units are a bit higher and that helps with the big maps. Ironically, that reduces the effective size of the map.
It is going to be tough for CA to slow down the action. Why? Have you tried to run "triple speed" to advance things during a battle? What I see is that triple speed is slow as far as acceleration goes, yet it is not smooth. It also is disabled back to 1x for camera movement, etc. This indicates that higher acceleration levels might be too taxing on the base engine. So if they slow units down, this effect is only going to get worse, because the graphics engine and position calcs will still require the same number of cycles, just having slower movement rates at each step. If you cut movement speed in half, then the 3x becomes 1.5x effective--that is your maximum "real" acceleration. Now to execute pre/post engagement moves takes 2x as long--and this is usually most of the "time" in battle. This is going to make some battles unnecessarily long in the late stages (tediously driving off armies of horse archers comes to mind.)
The demo gives a poor impression of the speed of the base engine because of the high experience units killing at a stupendous speed (Hastati and Carthaginian cav.) Things get manageable with 1 exp units where kill rates are plausible. Of course, in full game battles you will have upgrades, commanders, and experienced units--so things could get overly fast for them.
The real stumbling block appears to be that max acceleration is quite low (probably by necessity.) There does not appear to be enough dynamic range with which to work. Perhaps, this is just a limitation in the beta, but my impression at 3x is that it will be difficult to allow more acceleration.
Side notes:
It would be interesting to play whole battles from the camera view of the general. I'm not sure if this is practical though, because I don't think you will be able to position many units this way because the view angle will be so shallow and blocked by any minor obstructions/ overlapping unit select fields. You will not be able to select a unit or piece of terrain that you can easily see from the general's saddle. And your can't really get the feel unless you are using flags or trumpets for signals, or sending runners to officers, etc.
From what little I can tell about the AI at this point, it is unlikely to be any better than MTW was at managing troops to use their skills. Skirmishers are actually a bit worse from what I've seen since the run rates are so fast it completely screws with them and they run. The general's cav charges into spear fronts. Roman units with pila often don't use them when they should. At this point, I don't get the impression that I'll have any less need to micro manage the battles. It would be nice to give general commands like, "Advance with units X,Y,Z on the left flank and wheel to engage; use units A,B,C to hold the center; cavalry stay on the flanks to prevent flanking by enemy cav or infantry; skirmishers throw a few javs into the approaching infantry then withdraw behind our infantry and continue firing away; archers target infantry (etc.)" I don't think we are there yet.
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Originally Posted by Colovion
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