Quote Originally Posted by Puzz3D
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.