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]

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.

When playing RTW or RTR, I usually saved the zooming in for the closing stages of a battle when I'd obviously won and there was maybe just one enemy unit left. Then I'd set up a fight between it and one or two of my units, zoomed right in to savour all the action.

I still believe that when you are zoomed right in in RTW, the kill speed drops dramatically, things seem to happen much slower, but I've never actually tested it to see if that's really the case.

[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...

[Dooz]

There's always battle-lengthening mods like SPQR. Those bad boys take longer than you might think to resolve. Plenty of time to get good looks at all these awesome units killing eachother awesomely. Man I'm loving these. The variation in the units is still one of my favorite new aspects of the game, apart from the improvements in the graphics overall. And even though these preview shots are touched up and taken on super computers in the first place, they can't be too far off from the real thing. Lookin' good.

[Servius]

the spear guys almost look more like skirmishers, not spearmen. The spear shafts are pretty thin, they look more like long throwing spears rather than what I thought defensive spears would look like.

If they are spearmen, I still don't get why their shields are so small, why they're in loose formation, and why they're not holding the spear with two hands (which looks like it could easily be done with the shields they have). For all those reasons, I think they're skirmishers, like the Kerns, rather than Feudal Sergeants.

Also, even the guy with the spear over his head is holding it under-hand (with his palm facing down). That way, he'd have to swing his arm around for power. If they were throwing spears, they wouldn't be holding them under-handed.

[screwtype]

The spears don't really look hefty enough either, do they? They look as though they'd snap on first impact with something solid.

[x-dANGEr]

I really see nothing wrong. They are charging, that's why their shields are off a little. Though, it's right that both their shields and spears are a little small.

[Orda Khan]

To re-emphasise Watchman's comment about spear formations, they were generally solid, almost static and basically defensive. I doubt that many spearmen broke ranks to charge into melee against better armed opponents. I think we all know who will be the victors in that particular screenshot, regardless of the slope

.....Orda

[Furious Mental]

Well then don't order them to charge.

[Duke John]

What use is a shield when you keep it to the side when charging?

Too bad that CA continues to exagerate the animation making the soldiers move in an illogical and unrealistic way. But oh boy, isn't it looking spectacular!?

[Watchman]

It is my understanding stabbing with a spear held underhand does not requie terribly much movement, and certainly not moving your shield too much. Heck, when spearmen with large shields charged opponents they probably just held their spears firmly as if jousting and let the momentum provide the power behind the tip anyway, and kept the shield firmy on the front both to ward off enemy blows and to use as a battering ram against the enemy line.

Or at least most ancient descriptions of heavy-infantry clashes tend to emphasize the tremendous impact of the lines of shields and spears crashing together, with heavy damage to the shields in the process apparently being fairly common.

[SpencerH]

Very nice pics. At this point. what I care about though, is the tactical combat. If it's like RTW, (ie too fast with unrealistic move speeds etc ) I'll wait for the price to come down before purchasing.

PS I'm happily playing a MTW campaign right now.

[t1master]

will i need to memorize combo buttons for the finishing moves?

looks great, but i'd prefer a more stable battle engine than what rome has provided us. what changes are being made to that?

[Watchman]

Oh yeah - far as I know, the knights in the first pick are holding their shields all wrong. Tapering shields were so not held in that manner.

[Watchman]

Ditto for the guys in the second last pic - makes me wonder if it's actually a graphics engine/skeleton thing. Anyway, the guy at the front in that pic A) seems to be dressed for suicide, as such berets aren't famed of their ability to stop blows (plus it's not ever red, green or black, so he doesn't get a "truly badass" saving throw out of it... ) B) is holding a really weird-looking little spear while his mates have really phallic bigass lances C) has clipping issues with his right foot, which makes you wonder why the Heck this pic was allowed to get into the public view. I mean, come on - if you're going to advertise the new graphics for the time being, what's the point of throwing in a glitchy pic...?

Odd, that.

[screwtype]

Yeah that little spear struck me as odd too. It doesn't look much longer than a sword. Can't imagine it being much use in combat.

I noticed the problem with the right foot too, but it didn't occur to me it might be a clipping issue. But now that you mention it, yes, it looks like the leg has been clipped by the saddle instead of the other way around.

[metatron]

To re-emphasise Watchman's comment about spear formations, they were generally solid, almost static and basically defensive. I doubt that many spearmen broke ranks to charge into melee against better armed opponents. I think we all know who will be the victors in that particular screenshot, regardless of the slope

.....Orda

Depends on their valor. Quick, count the flags! ;)

[Watchman]

Another nitpick: the knights aren't riding with the appropriate high saddles and long stirrups that make them keep their legs practically straight.

I do hope they later the skeletons and saddle graphs for the release...

[Turin]

You all have to realize that YOU all are not CA's target audience. There really aren't that many people out there well versed in the specifics of medieval combat, or combat in general. What there are a lot of are people who've watched a lot of medieval movies and whatnot and a few scant popular literature or TV documentaries about medieval combat. They are CA's audience, and to them, as long as it looks cool and not entirely odd, it's all good.

Sorry guys, but this how it works in marketing!

[Watchman]

Yeah, but we still get to nitpick don't we ? Everyone needs a hobby.

[Turin]

I'll be honest.

I love historical accuracy as much as most of you but really, as long as the game isn't buggy and there isn't some terrible imbalance, I'm fine with it. It seems already that the units look real, historically inaccurate, but real nevertheless. No more bright 80's dance floor colors at least.

Sometimes you just have to enjoy a game for what it is, a game. You just have to swallow that the world is generally ignorant to history and that is the way it will always be.

Or you can just join/wait for one of the many historical mods that I'm sure will be complete within a year of release.

[Kraxis]

I can understand those that nitpick enough.

The historical armours, clothing and all that, is more than enough to make a WOW factor for the presumed target audience. They don't care for these rather odd and sometimes not very stylish aditions.

The Twohander is significantly cooler than the Swordsman (what a lousy name btw, at least Man at arms sounds better), and at the same time more correct. And I know as my GF's younger brother (14 and not very historically inclined) found him to be "SOOOO cool!" while the Swordsman got a "WTF? I wouldn't like to be him."

Sure they are from different timeperiods, of which I have to admit the latter period looks more interesting to the uninitiated. But if they had modeled the man over figure 1C in Osprey's MAA of the Medieval Scandinavian Armies (1), he would look not only better but likely be more correct. Or for that matter one of the middle Norman Knight figures.
There is often little need to 'spice' things up. Of course I can understand it is being done when it is truly boring, and I only complain for my own benefit then.

[Duke John]

And besides most movies look a whole lot more historical correct than the designs of CA. At least the artists of the movies take the bother of opening a few books and perhaps even go to a museum.