The BIG (american) RTW feedback thread!

[Degtyarev14.5]

I just thought I'd tease you all a little... Rome's release here in Australia will co-incide in date with the American release, i.e. TOMORROW.

Of course, Australia is eight to ten hours ahead of GMT (depending on which coast one lives) while the US is several hours behind GMT. So I guess the Aussies among us will be the first to savour the experience of Rome: Total War.

I'll be claiming mine at precisely nine o'clock in the morning... Enjoy the ride.

A.

[andrewt]

4 more hours for me.

[Silver Rusher]

So... has anybody got the game yet?

If so, can you PLEASE PLEASE post me some info, say modding, screenshots or a report on your first campaign?

Thanks

[Thoros of Myr]

Here is 15 screens I just took in a rar file... enjoy

http://members.cox.net/brybo93/RTWpics.rar

[maestro]

Here is 15 screens I just took in a rar file... enjoy

http://members.cox.net/brybo93/RTWpics.rar

Shweeeeeet - thanks dude.

[Jeanne d'arc]

Here is 15 screens I just took in a rar file... enjoy

http://members.cox.net/brybo93/RTWpics.rar

Very nice screens, many thx from across the sea!

[Thoros of Myr]

Glad to help satiate your thirst for all things RTW

I'll take some time for specific screenie requests if you have any?

[Jeanne d'arc]

Glad to help satiate your thirst for all things RTW

I'll take some time for specific screenie requests if you have any?

A screenshot from a battle at night please.
I also wonder if its hard to manage your men when you are fighting at night conditions or in dense forests?
Can u save the progress of the game at any point?
What can u tell us about the multiplayer aspect?
Is it possible to asassinate generals and do the assasinations come with vids like it was in shogun total war.

[Soulflame]

Nice pictures!
In picture 7 I see the option "follow AI characters" what is that? And have you tried out what "arcade style" battles are?

[Thoros of Myr]

Here we go...

night shots
http://members.cox.net/brybo93/RTWN.jpg
http://members.cox.net/brybo93/RTWN2.jpg

As you can see it's dark in the sky but on land it's almost as bright as day...night really doesent seem to have an affect on battles as far as visibility but it probly aids hiding units? will have to investigate that further.

I found it easy enough to command troops in the dense forest, just zoom in to the ground level view. You can't really expect to do any super advanced formations in the dense forest though

I'll be back for the rest...was about to try to MP, need to install gamespy though I suppose heh

***on/off for following AI charactors on the strat map when they move during thier turn***

[Jeanne d'arc]

Looks like your parthian army is getting hammered
On the second screenshot to the left of the picture, are those the screeching german women?
To bad u need gamespy to play in multiplayer, i really dislike using that horrible prog.I hope there will be other ways to play online with this game.
Thx for the pics, i can see the game lives up to its expectations and i will have a copy by the start of next month

[Thoros of Myr]

Looks like your parthian army is getting hammered
On the second screenshot to the left of the picture, are those the screeching german women?
To bad u need gamespy to play in multiplayer, i really dislike using that horrible prog.I hope there will be other ways to play online with this game.
Thx for the pics, i can see the game lives up to its expectations and i will have a copy by the start of next month

Heh, don't make fun of my Parthians

Correct, those are the famed, and feared German howling, screeching, crying, women

I'll have to agree with you on gamespy, just played an MP game and there were some frustrations...see my comment on the other thread about online play. It was fairly lag free atleast in the 2vs2 game I played (and won...don't know how but we did )

Sorry that you and others have to wait...it does live up to expectations I think

[Praylak]

Well I'm not American but I would like to say a few things not frequently mentioned about the game after playing the campaign for the last couple hours.

CA did an awesome job with the campaign map. I salute you guys. This has to be the most significant advancement in gameplay. Everyone is drooling over the graphics of the battles but in time I think many will tend to agree this is what will make RTW, THE strategy game. Both tactical and strategic elements are equalling engaging.

Performance:
I'm impressed. I can't get the performance in MTW that I can get in RTW! And to consider it looks three times better than it's predecessor. It's troublesome at this time to play the game, as everything looks so damn good, I tend to drift away starring and gawking at stuff like mountains.

Audio:
This I really dig. If you have an EAX card, with the forward/rear speaker setup, ohh man. It's all real nice positional sound that is just gravy. Gave me goosebumps when I first heard the faint marching coming from behind me, getting louder and louder. Immersion factor +1

ok, back to the screeching cheerleaders.

[Icerian Rex]

Arrrrrrrrghhhh
I went out, bought the game, brought it home, and started to load it. It took longer than normal, but that merely added to the excitement.

Unfortunately, right as the install got to the very end (past the part where it loads DirectX, asks me if I want GameSpy, etc.... (ya know, that final liiiiiitttlllle download part?) it tells me that there's an error in Kernel "such and such", and that's that. It won't finish loading.

So I says to myself, "self, this'll just be our little secret", and went ahead and tried to play it (after having first shut down and re-booted). Unfortunately, everything is now really herky-jerky acting (not just the video, but the music as well). I tried going right into the prologue, but watched for five minutes as it failed to properly load.

Any suggestions? I've got 128 Megs of Ram and (I believe) an 800Mhz Pentium.

[oblivious maximus]

Hold it there buddy!! your hotter than Georgia asphalt right now!

suggestion is to go get more RAM. Minimum is 256mb. If that is the exact prob,i dont know.

[Thoros of Myr]

Not sure what the first issue could have been but the herky-jerky performance is most likely becuase the minimum reqs are 256mb ram and a 1.0Ghz processor. Time for an upgrade I think.

[Scipio]

time to upgrade from the look of it, 800 mhz? I was scared of my 1.2 ghz and yeah more RAM

[ElmarkOFear]

I am of the opinion the veteran Single Player community will love it. The veteran MP community will hate it.

Here is why the MP community will not like RTW:

1. No logfile feature. If they are there, I cannot find them.
2. Replays do not show unit info on mouse rollover, which makes them worthless for training or even determining why you routed. Doesn't even show what player is what faction or even what faction is what.
3. No 4v4 MP. Only up to 3v3. Each player gets 20 units, which is nice, but 4v4 is why most play MTW. I cannot see them liking being offered less.
4. Sprites are very small, and will force MP games to use UNRESTRICTED CAMERA to be able to get close enough to enemy units to click on them to attack them. Camera seems very far away from the action.
5. I also found what I think is a bug already: I had a grouping of Macedonian Pikemen in a custom battle vs the AI. I could not move them as a group, and could not make them attack as a group. I had to click on each on individually before they would move at all.
6. When fighting the units get so bunched up and with the sprites being so small, you cannot click on the unit you want nor tell what unit you are clicking on.
7. On mouse rollover it is very hard to determine if the unit is yours or the enemy. You can figure it out if you try to give a command and it won't let you though. :)


All in all, I think the SP people will be very happy with the graphics, the sound, the campaign map, and the variety of strategic option in the campaigns. If they are looking for good battles with the AI though, they may be a bit dissappointed. The AI like to chase units all over the map and get exhausted, so you just gotta wait and then regroup and hit them if you are routed. Does give a feeling of a great comeback from death's door though, but not if you know you won because of an AI that made a bunch of mistakes.

[oblivious maximus]

Yes, the SP seems very good. They have implemented great little ideas to help manage your campaign.

[Skomatth]

Elmo I heard that the 3v3/4v4 thing may be based on the size of the map you picked, are you sure you had the largest map size when you said 4v4 isn't available?

[ElmarkOFear]

Nope I just picked one at random. I will try to see if I can find a bigger map. BRB . . .

[Thoros of Myr]

5. I also found what I think is a bug already: I had a grouping of Macedonian Pikemen in a custom battle vs the AI. I could not move them as a group, and could not make them attack as a group. I had to click on each on individually before they would move at all.

I've encountered this bug few times already in both MP and SP modes and it really is frustrating...

[ElmarkOFear]

Nope 3v3 max in MP.

Yup that grouping bug is a pain in the butt. Looks like play testing wasn't as good as I thought it would be given the game took an extra year to come out. I think I would have liked the year-ago version over this one! hehe ;)

[Thoros of Myr]

I'm not too worried about though, there will be a fix. As will other bugs that show up over time.

[ElmarkOFear]

If you have been around since STW days, you would be worried. Seems we get only one bug fix and it will be months from now and then we are on our own. :) Anyways, MP is a moot point since there are a lot of people getting the Invalid Cd Key message like me. Not sure if the Gamespy server is accepting any cd-keys now. LOL

[Gregoshi]

Elmo, the README file noted the change from 4v4 to 3v3. If the change is in the readme file, it must have been a last minute change. I wonder if it is a moddable thing.

[ElmarkOFear]

Gregoshi, I just got online and played some MP. My god the interface for MP is horrible! To host games you have to click click click it is a mess. Also, now to chat in game you have to hit 'T' then a menu comes up on the left side of screen and you have to choose who you want to chat with by either clicking on a persons name or "all" or "Team" or "Enemy". 2 clicks instead of just one. Forget about chatting in game while playing. Instead of making the game easier for new players, it will be twice as hard for them to play MP. It almost looks like they purposely made those changes to kill the MP side of the game. I am extremely dissappointed. I just hope the SP campaign game is good. I have never played a single player campaign, but that is the only thing left in this game. MP has just been killed off.

I had 35 archers die in less than 2 seconds by a charge from a horse unit that had 4 horses left in it and that was fatigued. hehe

Well I am off to play MTW see you guys later.

[Gregoshi]

That doesn't sound very encouraging Elmo. My only comment would be that this is day one of a new game. I'm sure we will be learning more about how best to use all the features of the game as the days and weeks roll by. For example, have you looked into all the game control setting? Maybe there is a short cut key for "chat all", "chat team" and "chat enemy" rather than going through the bulky "t"alk menu/submenu.

Don't give up hope just yet Elmo. Give MP another few weeks before you throw yourself off the city walls in despair.

[Del Arroyo]

Is it turbocharged like the demo??!

[ElmarkOFear]

I am not sure about the speed. I DO know that I lost a unit of 34 archers to a unit of 4 horse cav in less than 2 seconds. The camera view is so bad, you can't tell what unit is what, who your allies are, nor which units are yours and which are the enemy you are fighting. There is little differentiation.

Gregoshi: Trust me. There is no saving the MP game. The lobby is the worst I have seen. You have no private chat and you cannot tell if someone is in a game or not. The lobby looks like an ICQ chat window. The last sentence typed by someone is cut in half and you cannot read it until someone else types another sentence.

Half the time, in the game, when you give orders to grouped units, they will not move. You have to go back and move them individually. There is no redeeming value in the MP side unless you enjoy Age of Kings or Empire Earth-type games, THEN all you have to put up with is the terrible lobby. It looks like they made it yesterday, before the game was released. :)

Oh well, I will devote my time to other games and seeing if I can get some people interested in an STW campaign.

Good luck with RTW MP: You will need it. It took me 20 minutes to log on and I had to use my old name to do so. My UglyElmo name gives me an invalid cd-key error.