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...

[TomPaine]

That's fair -- the formation problems can be a killer for tactical play. As for elephants and light infantry -- it's my understanding that light infantry was precisely the unit deployed to counter elephants. They were fast enough to dodge out its way, get up close, and slit its belly, or what-have-you; elephants were actually deployed against the heavy infantry, who were too heavily armored to dance away. At least that's what one of the guys said on Time Commanders.

I also agree -- I'm not sure I hate the new interface, but it's close to it. I found the early interface to be pretty elegant when you got used to it; now, I have an impossible time determining who's tired, who's doing what -- and what's even worse, *who I have selected*. With white backgrounds, and white unit cards, making the selected card *whiter* was not an inspired move.

I'd be happy if all that got changed; but I'd also be happy if they could get the guy who growls "TRIARII!" do do the battle event voice overs for the romans. On the plus side, one of the devs gave a video interview at gamespot yesterday, and he said that they're feature complete, but still tweaking things. So, unit AI, and slight interface upgrades might happen. Plus, who knows what the "CLASSIC_UI" entry in the preferences.txt does? I suspect we're playing the default, "popular" settings right now (just got to any site that's not for hardcore TW fans -- penny-arcade has a 20 page love-fest going on, with much less bitching than here), and that we'll have the option to check a lot of boxes to give us the gameplay we'd like. And I'm still praying that they'll have a different UI for those of us that liked the earlier TW formats.

Btw, have you played the romans vs gauls mod? It gives *great* battles -- 20 minutes or so, and removed a lot of my fears about the game. It's much, much better equipped to impress hardcore TW fans than Trebia was.

[exarchi]

That's fair -- the formation problems can be a killer for tactical play. As for elephants and light infantry -- it's my understanding that light infantry was precisely the unit deployed to counter elephants. They were fast enough to dodge out its way, get up close, and slit its belly, or what-have-you; elephants were actually deployed against the heavy infantry, who were too heavily armored to dance away. At least that's what one of the guys said on Time Commanders.

This I understand, however I was writing about ARMORED elephants. I'd understand LI ravaging the non-armored ones...

I also agree -- I'm not sure I hate the new interface, but it's close to it. I found the early interface to be pretty elegant when you got used to it; now, I have an impossible time determining who's tired, who's doing what -- and what's even worse, *who I have selected*. With white backgrounds, and white unit cards, making the selected card *whiter* was not an inspired move.

I don't understand what you're agreeing with; the interface itself is a major jump forward in terms of usefullness and the overall graphic look, however it needs more additions.

Btw, have you played the romans vs gauls mod? It gives *great* battles -- 20 minutes or so, and removed a lot of my fears about the game. It's much, much better equipped to impress hardcore TW fans than Trebia was.

Yes I have; this is why I was referencing to the nonexistent formations on f.e. the gaul swordsmen.

[Nobody You'd Know]

As to the UI, I definitely don't like it as much, just because it isn't as easy to use. It looks a lot nicer (3d-ish, stone) but if that interferes with use, drop it. It's harder to see who's selected, who's tired...it'd be nice to see not only who's routing but who's routing AND getting attacked at the same time...the minimap is really annoying with those arrows - I hope there's an option in the game to turn off the arrows - I need to know where all of the units are, not which direction they're going in the minimap - and if I want to see the direction, I really only need a three or four pixel arrow, not that huge monstrosity. And please please put the speed slider back. As for the bottom right icons, I think it's probably just a matter of getting used to them.

Here's hoping that they give you LOTS AND LOTS of options to change things around in the UI. And wouldn't it be nice if they gave you audio options to mute just some of the voices (like checkboxes for each of the following: Unit Identification, Unit Commands, Formation Commands (including Group))?

Finally, to respond to the remark about spearmen allowing gaps in the line, just select several spear units, group them, then click the "Group Formations" icon - bottom right hand corner of screen - and choose the line formation. There still may be a little space between units, but I doubt if it's tactically meaningful. And you can probably figure out a way to get them closer, once we're more familiar with everything.

[Soulflame]

About the formation as one line.. I heard you could also use Shift+drag to create a line (without first grouping them) and that + and - would allow for larger and shorter gaps between regiments in one line. Haven't tested then though.

[Nobody You'd Know]

When I used + - (or = and -) - not on the numpad, just to left of backspace - what it did was stretch the selected unit out a little more, or compact it a little more. Just made it a little wider or narrower, by moving a few individuals around. This will have the effect of making a more solid line, but will make the unit have fewer ranks, and therefore spear units will be less effective.

[TomPaine]

Hi Everyone -- Someone over at TWC broke apart the .pak file, in which all of the pre-battle speeches (as well as nearly every other bit of text for the full game) seem to be contained. No idea what the voices are like, but the speeches are amazing -- both in their quality, and in their number. There's 131 pages of them. Yeah, 131 pages of pre-battle speeches your general might use; from what I can tell, they can also be dynamically stitched together. So 131 factorial pages of texts. Samples from just from the first two pages (I'm not going to read much further into it -- I don't want to spoil it for myself):
{ R o m a n _ I n t r o _ 0 4 _ 4 }

I f e a r n o m a n l i v i n g o r d e a d . I d o n o t e x p e c t t h e s a m e o f y o u , b u t i n b a t t l e r e m e m b e r t h i s - t h e c o w a r d d i e s a t h o u s a n d t i m e s , a b r a v e m a n o n l y o n c e . F i g h t w e l l , a n d y o u w i l l n o t n o t i c e D e a t h w h e n h e c o m e s f o r y o u .



{ R o m a n _ I n t r o _ 0 3 _ 1 }

H e l l o . T o d a y w e a r e g a t h e r e d h e r e t o d o b a t t l e . R e g r e t a b l e , i s n ' t i t , b u t s o m e t i m e s , y o u k n o w , l i f e i s l i k e t h a t . Y o u h a v e t o d o s o m e t h i n g t h a t y o u d o n ' t w a n t t o d o , j u s t b e c a u s e s o m e o n e i s t e l l i n g y o u t o d o i t . I d i d n ' t w a n t t o b e h e r e m y s e l f , b u t t h e n m y m o t h e r t o l d m e t h a t I ' d b e t t e r m a k e a r e a s o n a b l e s h o w o f i t a l l , s o h e r e w e g o t h e n . . .

{ R o m a n _ I n t r o _ 0 6 _ 1 }

W e l l r i d e m e s i d e w a y s a n d w h i p m e w i t h a w i n k l e f o r k , l a d s ! T h e r e ' s a l o t o f t h e b a s t a r d s , a r e n ' t t h e r e ? T h o s e a r s e w e a s e l s a r e h e r e t o g e t a w a y f r o m t h e i r u n f u l f i l l e d , s h r i l l w i v e s . H a r d l y s u r p r i s i n g , a s t h e y a l l h a v e t i n y l i t t l e m a n h o o d s ! S m a l l e r t h a n a f l e a o n a c o c k r o a c h ' s b u m !


I know people have issues with the demo, but these speeches make me want to trade a kidney for a beta version of the full game.

[TomPaine]

By the way -- each of those three speeches (and again, there are HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS) of them is clearly given by an utterly different persona, and I'm certain they'll have separate actors, or at least separate "characters" voicing each one. I don't think we've even begun to see the tip of the iceberg of the voice acting in the full game.

[pmaura]

Personaly I liked the voices and and have no problem with them. In general I really liked the demo and realize its just a demo that is probably a month old. I am condident the full game will be great