Some new pics at the Com

[screwtype]

New to me anyhow. Apologies if you've seen them
already.

This one looks sweet, although one or two of the animations of the horsed riders in the background look a bit unrealistic.




I like this one:





Again, nice, but they need to do something about those spears all held at exactly the same angle:




The animations of these spear wielding guys look just totally wrong to me:

[anti_strunt]

These have all been at the CA homepage for at least a week, nice pics anyhow. What faction could that be in the second shot with the artillery? My guess based on their flags would be Timurids...

[screwtype]

I hadn't seen a post about them at the Org, so I thought I might as well do the honours.

I have no idea what that faction might be, except that it looks Muslim, kinda Turkish...

[Zenicetus]

The spearing animation in that last frame does look a bit strange. The one guy using an overhead thrust (in the center of the screen) looks pretty good, but those other guys swinging the shield way off to the side, exposing their torso, look suicidal. Maybe they're just really excited or something. It looks like they're in the middle of a charge, so maybe they go into a more shield-defensive mode after the initial charge.

[Puzz3D]

The graphics look great. Zooming in and watching the fighting could be very good, although I don't know how you can play the game and do that at the same time. I also wonder without men being impaled with spears or having heads, arms and legs cut off or sustaining stab wounds if the fighting will appear to be realistic or simply gamey and repetitive.

[metatron]

I just noticed. Not only are the animations going to be different for similar circumstances, but the models will have variants in the ranks!

[econ21]

Zooming in and watching the fighting could be very good, although I don't know how you can play the game and do that at the same time.

Theoretically, that's a benefit of the pause button. But I agree I don't do it often with RTW - the action is too frenetic even with frequent pauses. I tend to manage battles zoomed out, where you lose nearly all the eye candy (you just see blurry sprites)[1]. With RTR and EB, the combats last a little longer, so I zoom in more often for a look. Some of the units in those mods are superb looking and suprisingly zooming in for a look does not get old. It's interesting on the RTR forum, some of the modders have been admiring the M2TW screenshots and (modestly) saying CA are catching up with them in terms of artistic virtuosity.

One grumble about the graphics - those short, thin spears in the last screenshort look very weird to me. They are just not functional - imagine trying to face the lances in the penultimate screenshot with those puny things? I know sometimes lances might outreach spears (hence the pike), but really it's too much. They are more like javelins than real spears, but clearly are meant to be spears.

[1]It is a weird thing about the latest RTSs like Dawn of War and Battle for Middle Earth. The graphics are drop-dead gorgeous, but the combat is all so chaotic, I can never really savour them.

[screwtype]

The spearing animation in that last frame does look a bit strange. The one guy using an overhead thrust (in the center of the screen) looks pretty good, but those other guys swinging the shield way off to the side, exposing their torso, look suicidal. Maybe they're just really excited or something. It looks like they're in the middle of a charge, so maybe they go into a more shield-defensive mode after the initial charge.

It's not just that, it's the way they are thrusting those spears, with their arms practically out vertically. It just looks wrong, they should have their arms tucked in so they can both aim the spearpoint and get the weight of their body behind the thrust IMO.

Doesn't look right to see these spearmen attacking individually either. The phalanx may not have been employed at the time, but I'd think that any spear wielding troops would have more discipline than these guys.

[Watchman]

When it comes down to that, they're also in oddly loose formation. By all accounts most medieval spearmen were near-static, essentially defensive infantry that could only offensively maneuver against equally sluggish formations, but fought in very solid order and (naturally assuming they were any good) quite difficult to break without massive archery saturation, repeated cavalry charges, outflanking and similar.

These guys look like re-skinned Barbarian Infantry from RTW set to loose order and sicced at the enemy line...

[Jarardo]

I've definetly spent a lot more time looking at the units close up with EB. And I must say, I really like these MTW2 pics!

[Jarardo]

Ooo!





Looks like some of the town is outside the walls, the settlements in general seem to be a huge improvement. :)