New to the Forum, and a thought on the Demo voices

[TomPaine]

Hi Everyone -- Long time lurker here; I've plundered nearly every thread in all the fora for a year now. You guys make any "strategy guide" supererogative, and I just wanted to say thanks.

I've downloaded the RTW demo, and I share a lot of your concerns; it was a bit to frenetic for me to enjoy fully, and I never had the time to poke the camera's nose in the action, and just enjoy the graphics.

I did want to address Barkhorn's comment in the Rome forum, about the voices being placeholders. No idea here (though I'll miss the "Resistate!" from MTW) -- but there's a video that I pulled off the web, a 15 minute demonstration of the game, that has much better voices in it. There's a Roman General, giving his pre-battle exhortation speeches, once against the Gauls, the other against the Seleucids ("the Seleucids! Hah! I've wiped better off my boots!") -- and his acting is infinitely superior to that which is in the demo. He's really quite invigorating, though the script gets a little redundant ("Today we we live in honor, as those men of honor, the roman senate, have given us the honor", etc). He's also got a thoroughly persuasive received-pronunciation British accent, which, for us Americans, is the accent of empire.

Anyway, I hope that this might encourage some to have a little more hope in the final product. As far as I can tell, CA hasn't every given us a reason to doubt their skills, and they'll come through for us.

Thanks for having me in the forum.

[The Marcher Lord]

Welcome to the forums Tompaine! I saw the same movie you mentioned with the pre-battle speeches and wondered why there were not in the demo. Sounded very convincing to me and certainly help to get the adrenalin up for the coming battle. I think I saw the general actually moving up and down the front line of the troops while rousing them with the speech.

If you want to watch the action close up just stick the battle on Easy and forget about ordering the troops around too much, that way you can stay zoomed in and watch the action.

[TomPaine]

Thanks for the tip on easy/spectator mode, Marcher Lord. I'll go try that out. As for why there weren't any of those cool speeches in the demo, I've got a hunch: it's partly because they're so cool. They're artifacts of the campaign game -- meaning, they're dynamically constructed at the beginning of each battle, to reflect your troops, enemy troops, and both general's personalities, as well as position on the campaign map, and even the strategic goals at stake (such as, "we're doing this at the bequest of the senate", etc). It's possible since these battles were separated from the campaign game, they didn't have all that information, and so the speeches weren't generated. God I hope so. The general in the video was thrilling; I can't wait to hear the voice of the general with the "Weak Attacker" vice set -- apparently, CA said it should climax in a rousing "Go forth, my soldiers; I shall command and encourage you . . . from the rear!"

[exarchi]

The voices in the demo are very good. I wish people would stop whining about them. The only thing that I dislike is the units telling you their name for the upteenth time; it gets tedious after a while. So, I'm going to try to mod that out of the game, if possible.

As for other voices; it's good that the units tell you what they are doing; it adds to the realism. Remember, it's actually your general unit giving out the orders, after which the unit commanders guide their men (cavalry; CHARGE!).

[TomPaine]

Hi Exarchi I hope we're not whining; I've actually been quite pleased with some of the voices in the demo. I find that the roman general's "Units, GROUP!" to be really good. I was just trying to remind everyone that I've heard *even better* voices in some videos of RTW. I think that the voice-over narrator for the romans ("Your enemies have won this battle, but that is not the same as winning a war") is pretty weak; *he's* the one doing the whining, not us. And compared with the roman general who I heard shouting in one video, comparing the Seleucids to something stuck to the bottom of his shoe, the narrator is utterly out of place.

By the way, I also think the voices for the Gauls are very satisfying. I've been playing around with the modded tutorial, as both romans and gauls, and I'm getting some great battles from it -- I actually think that many "old-timers", who found Trebia to be not only unsatisfying but worrisome, will have lot of their fears dissolved by playing it. The battle, as either side, is much slower, almost as deliberate as a MTW battle; give everyone a valor of at least 2, and the lines hold really well. You certainly have the time -- in fact, you have the obligation -- to pin and flank, which I recall many people remarking as neither necessary nor possible for Trebia.

[exarchi]

What's more important to me is how spear equipped units don't form up into a nice line, among other formation related bugs. Instead, they leave a gap unit-to-unit; how there is no morale or fatigue bar indicating the corresponding levels; how most barbarian (oops, gauls, for the history nerds) units don't form up at all and instead move and deploy in a huge, round chunk. It also annoys me how fully armored several tonne elephants supposedly crap their pants when faced with light infantry (I mean wtf? Spears would atleast make some sense) and run amok / rout. There are several things like these that are far more important than the already decent++ voice acting...