2 new Gameplay Movies

**edyzmedieval** · 05-12-2006, 10:27

Can't wait to see em.

**Furious Mental** · 05-12-2006, 10:55

Interesting tid bits from the interview with the lead programmer

- Mid November release
- Tuetonic knights are back and are "really brutal"
- Pikemen kneel and brace themselves when facing a charge
- There are rocket launchers
- There are cannons on elephants. This last one seems dubious.

**Lord Adherbal** · 05-12-2006, 11:08

"Funny" to see how the player was struggling to charge an unit with his cavalry. It seems that whenever you order a charge, they halt, lower their lances and spur their horses.

that kinda annoyed me aswell. But mostly the stupidity of the person who played the game (and the way he handled the camera was pretty noobish aswell).

In fact I think this might be a good thing. If you order a cav unit to charge, then change your mind and want to let them charge another unit that should have a negative effect. In fact I wouldn't mind if once a unit switches to the charge animation it is (near) impossible to stop them or change target. That'd add to the realism, and make you think twice before ordering a charge.

**econ21** · 05-12-2006, 11:29

Originally Posted by [cF]Adherbal

That'd add to the realism, and make you think twice before ordering a charge.

Exactly. In RTW, part of the reason cavalry is so powerful is not (just) its stats, but its its speed and flexibility[1]. You can rampage around the AI's rear, micromanaging it to cause havoc - opportunistically picking on weak spots and avoiding threats. In real life, especially in the middle ages, cavalry was probably more used with more deliberation and harder to control once unleashed. Almost like a "fire and forget" missile. Heck, even in the Napoleonic period, there was typically little close cooperation between cavalry and other arms. Games often allow players to pull off nifty tactical coordination that real life generals just did not have the means to achieve.

[1]You can see that in mods where cavalry is nerfed - EB and RTR - but still extremely powerful when deployed correctly.

**Lord Adherbal** · 05-12-2006, 11:51

I even manage to dodge arrows with my cavalry. For example if I'm pulling back, and the enemy archers fire at my cav, I immediatly order them to turn 180 degrees (sending them back in the direction of the archers). The arrows were aimed at were the cav would have been if they had continued their current course, so they now all miss their target.
I seriously doubt that was ever pulled off on a real battlefield :)

**Puzz3D** · 05-12-2006, 16:16

Originally Posted by econ21

In RTW, part of the reason cavalry is so powerful is not (just) its stats, but its its speed and flexibility[1]. You can rampage around the AI's rear, micromanaging it to cause havoc - opportunistically picking on weak spots and avoiding threats.

The movement speed is too fast, and the AI doesn't know how to protect it's flanks and rear. Those are the things that should be addressed not reducing a players control because that will unnecessarily damage multiplayer gameplay. The fast speed is also increasing the ability to dodge arrows. The speed should be fixed.

**x-dANGEr** · 05-12-2006, 16:35

To be honest, I'm happy with everything's speed in RTW/BI, and wouldn't like all my cavalry to halt each time I tell them to attack a unit. No, thanks. If we are to make the battle act as how it would've, the whole battle system would have been wrong.

**Furious Mental** · 05-12-2006, 11:57

I can see how the feature would frustrate people at first, but I think it's a good idea. I cannot imagine that a cavalry charge would have been possible to organise in a split second, at least not without ending in disaster.

**edyzmedieval** · 05-12-2006, 12:09

The movies look really good.

I hope we get many new features and a better AI.

**Templar Knight** · 05-12-2006, 15:29

Release in mid November he said

**Puzz3D** · 05-12-2006, 15:59

Originally Posted by Furious Mental

I can see how the feature would frustrate people at first, but I think it's a good idea. I cannot imagine that a cavalry charge would have been possible to organise in a split second, at least not without ending in disaster.

That's fine, but it causes a problem for the player who tries to react to the charge. The distances that all this stuff happenes at is shorter than in a real battle. You can get from one battleline to the other in seconds. That means this delay puts the reacting player at an unfair disadvantage because in a real situation his units would have more time to react than they do in the game. The consequence of introducing these delays into a fast game is that they destroy the dynamic balance between attack and defense. I thought Creative Assembly was making M2TW more balanced.

**lancelot** · 05-12-2006, 16:39

Originally Posted by Furious Mental

- There are cannons on elephants. This last one seems dubious.

There were plans to have small cannon on camels in MTW1. Some of the info is still in the game files.

Im not sure to what extent that either were historically plausible, although the elephant one does ring a bell...

**Justicion** · 05-12-2006, 23:11

Well there is somthing wrong with playing the videos from GameSpot..
they even got a 19 pages long thread on their forum about that problem, whith no solution on the end...i guess it just doesn't work for some mortals
So if anybody knows some other site where i can see these videos
LET ME KNOW, cause i would really like to see those

**Furious Mental** · 05-13-2006, 06:36

Small cannons were put on camels historically. I don't know about elephants though. I think it would depend on the size of cannon they are thinking about. In any case I doubt that said guns could fire in an arc, at least not if they wanted to hit something.

**Mooks** · 05-13-2006, 07:22

Cannons? On elephants? What a waste of cannons and elephants, both which were expensive back then. Other then that, and how that guy had that realllly annoying voice. I saw that they didnt even talk about The AI's ability to fight battles. But then agian, they were probaly looking to flash the cool graphics then get in depth about it

**Rodion Romanovich** · 05-13-2006, 09:04

@Furious Mental: wouldn't that just be transportation for cannons? I doubt any cannon would be animal-mounted in combat. Would make it difficult to reload with a moving animal, and the animal would be scared (considering that even humans who could clearly see that the early cannons had a limited ability of inflicting actual casualties got more scared by them by more dangerous troops in the battlefield), not to mention how the recoil would hurt it. I guess it's a repetition of the carroballistae from BI - ballistae were traditionally transported on mule carts to battle, but hardly possible to move around the battlefield like chariots, as BI has depicted it. Similarly longbowmen often had horses for transportation, but never fired longbows from the horseback. A unit's transportation method should not be used as a battle mount!