Eeeeh feedback for open beta here?

**Zastrow** · 12-29-2005, 21:01

Here is some of my thoughts:

The triats and qualities of the family members for the factions are amazing, i love reading them, considering I've only played Pontos and Baktria so far, I got alot more reading to go before I experience all the cool little facts in the traits.

The map is superbly done, it blows RTR's map out of the water, not necessarily because of its shape or such, but because you guys didn't overload it with tons of mountains or make it a maze of passes like RTR's eastern part of the map is. I hated playing Baktrians in RTR, it was simply a maze of mountain passes, but your map is logical and well designed, kudos to the map makers.

The Battles are lacking, archers are incredibly overpowered, I mean rebel levy Persian archers or some Dahae cavalry archers will eat through anything, its forcing me to rely on archer power extensively myself, archers and cavalry together can destroy anything in the game. I gotta give RTR kudos in this field, their battle-setup was very well done and balanced, I'm sure it comes after a year of balancing and development, but i was hoping EB would take a page from RTR and make battles balanced. At the moment its super easy to route enemy troops or just shoot them to pieces with arrows, or alternatively get my entire army shot to pieces by 4 units of scythian horse archers that wander into my Pontic kingdom. Its frustrating to have your Kingdom destroyed by 4 units of Scythians, because units are expensive (at least beyond the levies) and buildings take awhile, making recovering from even one disaster nearly impossible. It makes it difficult, but I think there are better ways of making the game more difficult, such as making morale higher so the AI doesn't break and run on a dime like they do so much. Of course my experience is limited to the Eastern parts of the game, things may be different in Gaul and such. My simple suggestios are tone down archery, or make then shoot slower or something, right now horse archers are simply unstoppable, and while they were a pain historically, I don't consider them the epitome of warfare and capable of killing anything. I think they should be used for harassment (killing a few), wearing down and exhausting formations not shooting them to pieces.

The building setup is superior to RTRs, there are more buildings and its a bit confusing with all the Greek everywhere, but I think its a bit more original than "AOR building 1", which is just gamey, I really like the three buildings for Baktrians, Satrapy, Semi-Autonomous and Allied, really makes you have to decide between money-saving temporary measure (allied) or expensive but more permament Satrapy level, It makes me feel like I really have to make decisions in the administration of my fledling Kingdom.

Expenses I got mixed feelings on, stuff seems awfully expensive, I miss huge RTR armies! While I can see maybe your trying to force the player to be economical, at this rate I'll never get to some of the more powerful Baktrian units, and never get many of them, and those Agema and Cataphracts look badass, I gotta get some of them!

Skins/Animations are overally high quality, the new cavalry animation for Cataphracts is killer looking, when they lower all those spears my heart skips.

Some of the skins seem rather dull and boring, but I imagine its largely because the majority of the world's people were poor, nomadic or levied and not everybody came to war with strapping leather pants and elaborate armor and shields. I prefer RTR's skins for the Romans, but your Romans probably are far closer to reality, however much I hate losing those massive plumes. The gamer part of me dislikes it, titantic battles with purty units is the best, the history guy part of me loves it, but overall good work on the skins. One final thing, the large size of the Gesatae and shock Gallic units is a bit ridiculous, it just looks wierd and ungainly. I dunno what the height of the average unit translate to in real life, but all your Celts look like 7 and a half feet tall and double the shoulder width, I know Celts and Northerners were bigger men on average and such, but it just looks ridiculous ingame at the current difference. I think you should tone down the height difference a bit.

In all truth, I think the mod is completely opposite of RTR. RTR is bells and whistles, alot of eye-candy, alot of glamour, but not much beyond the surface. A pretty shallow modification with a dull campaign. EB I find not that eye-catching with many of the units, not that glitzy or full of glamour but the campaign is amazing indepth and full of little things that make my nerdy history part of me smile with glee. I hope this helps you guys out some, and thanks for all the hard work.