New screenshot (21 April)

**Ludens** · 04-23-2006, 23:01

Originally Posted by econ21

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I rather like this screenshot - it gives a sense of a battle.

Please avoid scatological critiques of CA efforts. I'm not sure you'd take kindly to your professional work being likened to turds.

Agreed. Overall the pictures are beautifull. Yes, there are many small flaws, but if you take every picture apart like we do here you always find those.

**Watchman** · 04-23-2006, 23:54

"If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close, a world's all dirt and rocks."
- Ursula K. Le Guin, quoted in the worldbuilding section of GURPS Space

Maybe I'm just pedantic, but skewed details tend to ruin much of the whole picture for me. The Devil's in the details and all that.

But what bugs me about this new string of promo pics is not so much the buggered details as such, but rather how they're wrong. I mean, I'm willing to let some, ah, artistic license slide as long as the end product's good; after all I could live with the RTW Mummy Returns Eggies without major troubles. But the faults in the pics published are not only often quite glaring, they're downright disquieting. Like now those pikemen with who-knows-what weird quiver-things on their backs. What am I supposed to make out of them ? Am I perhaps supposed to laugh at some inside joke ? If this stuff isn't side effects from early version numbers and as of yet rough edges in the model generator (or whatever it now was), it starts giving severe misgivings of the attitude the makers have to their job. Most of it is so simple after all; medieval pikemen with quivers on their back would strike anyone as odd, so why do they have them in the first place ? One can be forgiven for assuming the makers are doing some background research, and at least make an effort to avoid severe flags of disbelief - so what is one to think of such blatant weirdness ?

I'd be quite willing to believe they're running tests on the graphics engine thingy, but in that case I'd severely wonder at just what criteria exactly they use to pick these promo pics... Surely there are ones that don't make you blink in confusion and disbelief ?

**Duke John** · 04-24-2006, 06:58

Some of the pikemen are indeed were quivers with arrows on their back. Look at the 2 guys a bit right of the centre. There are 2 pikes around that can only belong to those 2. One of them has a quiver.

If it was an unit with both pikes and bows then all of the soldiers would have quivers so the only logical explanation is that it is indeed a fault and that some men are using the torso parts of archers.

**Lord Adherbal** · 04-24-2006, 08:46

should we start on a bug report already ?

**Duke John** · 04-24-2006, 10:06

How good is a game if the players want a patch based on promotional screenshots?

**edwardusbenedictus** · 04-25-2006, 11:05

I agree CA has over looked this and Hope they'll fix it b4 the release the game and Not work it out on a patch!!!!

**Ultras DVSC** · 04-25-2006, 14:08

I think this screen was captured during a historical battle, by name at Crécy. The extremely wide fighting line (almost 2 km!), the slope which wasn't too favourable to the French, the pales sticking out from the ground (their aim was to inhibit the French knights from rushing the longbowmen) all prove that.

**Watchman** · 04-26-2006, 10:30

Originally Posted by Ultras DVSC

I think this screen was captured during a historical battle, by name at Crécy. The extremely wide fighting line (almost 2 km!), the slope which wasn't too favourable to the French, the pales sticking out from the ground (their aim was to inhibit the French knights from rushing the longbowmen) all prove that.

Except that was the sort of deployement the English adopted whenever they could. And pikes in practice weren't in offensive use outside the Swiss for the entire Hundred Years' War.

Wide front lines were the norm for major field battles - when you deploy tens of thousands of men and horses for battles, the frontage obviously tends to end pretty impressive. Anyway, as the English were habitually starkly outnumbered in the more famous battles (and not all that rarely in the smaller ones) they would attempt to force battle in conditions and terrain that forced the French to advance division by division, instead of the entire line abreast (so much as that now was really doable with feudal S-and-C anyway). That's basic tactics for countering numerical advantage really.