Several new pics at Gamespot (May 16)

[Vlad The Impala]

Very colourful, I live the different types of flags, shields and insignia visible in the picture.




French gothic (?) knights, looking very impressive...




City in the desert. The sand dunes look awesome, although I miss the tracks made by the advancing troops. Would it be possible to implement such a feature in the game anyway?

[Basileus]

I realy like the new feature with the units looking diffrently, anyways very nice pics.

[Lorenzo_H]

Those pics look brill!

[Joshwa]

That looks sweeeeet! I really hope they do the political map as well as the battle map

[Watchman]

Nice enough, but why isn't anyone using stirrups...?

[Peasant Phill]

The new pics look really great but I have two remarks.

1. The horses in the desert are hovering over the sand. Someone else noticed this too in another picture. It ruins an otherwise fantastic picture but it does explain why there are no footprints in the sand.

2. I do hope that you can't just charge your cavalry through your own infantry without problems or penalties. There are just so much men and horses in one place that it's bound to go wrong if the horses move to fast. The same goes for a crowding penalty, soldiers just can't fight to their full potential when you have be careful not to trample/be trampled by a fellow countryman.

[IceTorque]

The terrain looks good, the units don't blend into the terrain and that castle looks amazing. Me thinks that for the first time I will actually enjoy playing siege battles.

[Geoffrey S]

City in the desert. The sand dunes look awesome, although I miss the tracks made by the advancing troops. Would it be possible to implement such a feature in the game anyway?

Something like that would be nice. As an almost related aside, I noticed the great little detail of siege engines flattening grass in RTW for the first time the other day. For some reason, I really liked it and would love to see more of such changes to the battlefield such as long clashes churning the ground to sludge and hampering movement.

[paullus]

These things may have been noted earlier, but:
1)the castle has two inner walls before you get to the citadel
2)it looks like in sally battles the army has already marched out of the castle before the battle, rather than having to get out the doors to go fight. I think that would be a good improvement.

[edyzmedieval]

I love the city. I love it.

[Orda Khan]

Enough of this armour, yes we all know it looks cool, let's see some Mongols

........Orda

[ShadesWolf]

Image one is interesting.


- The shields have at least 6 different coat of arms on them.
- I can see at least three different types of archer uniforms....
- The cavalry seem to have a number of different banners......

[Furious Mental]

Damn that is a bad arse castle

[Lord Adherbal]

I do hope that you can't just charge your cavalry through your own infantry without problems or penalties. There are just so much men and horses in one place that it's bound to go wrong if the horses move to fast. The same goes for a crowding penalty, soldiers just can't fight to their full potential when you have be careful not to trample/be trampled by a fellow countryman.

exactly, if these MTW features do not make it back in MTW2 then RTW/BI will probably have been my last TW game. Without crowding and envelopment combat penalties (and not just a slight morale penalty like in RTW) there is hardly any tactics involved.

[Zenicetus]

Notice how steep that one hill is, in the background of the first image. I hope the actual (randomly generated) terrain is that varied, and this isn't just a pretty backdrop outside the battle area. Naturally we'd want most of the big battles in fairly open areas, but a few steep hills or cliffs here and there, would make things more tactically interesting. I get bored with the "gently rolling" terrain in RTW battles. Let's have some real terrain obstacles and opportunities. I see a hill like that, and I want to hide some archers or cannon up there!

[Sir Robin]

Nice find, those are some pretty pictures.

Been a while, but didn't RTW have tracks in desert and snow?

[GiantMonkeyMan]

that castle looks like a mighty obstacle... it has multipul walls and everything and being in the desert gives it a great touch

[Ibn Munqidh]

Nice enough, but why isn't anyone using stirrups...?

There is alot of detail missing, stirrups, sword hilts....

[Ibn Munqidh]

that castle looks like a mighty obstacle... it has multipul walls and everything and being in the desert gives it a great touch

Exactly, Im glad to see castles as good as this one back in MTW2, RTW sucked without them, plain and simple, you can justify that by saying that the Roman era did not witness alot of castle building,.... oh well

[Viking]

I`m beginning to look foraward to this game..

[Watchman]

2. I do hope that you can't just charge your cavalry through your own infantry without problems or penalties. There are just so much men and horses in one place that it's bound to go wrong if the horses move to fast. The same goes for a crowding penalty, soldiers just can't fight to their full potential when you have be careful not to trample/be trampled by a fellow countryman.

To be fair, mixed cavalry-infantry formations were sometimes used. Not all that often, and obviously the whole bunch had to move at infantry speeds, but they had their uses.

Also, in a cavalry fight if one side could also pitch in some infantry they tended to gain a noticeable advantage. I understand it's based on the greater agility of men on foot, and their ability to cheerfully disembowel and hamstring horses whose riders are preoccupied with their peers, and generally make a nuisance out of themselves. That trick in any case goes back at least to ancient Greece if not some earlier period (the elite "chariot runners" of high Bronze Age spring to mind as a similar practice).

[O'ETAIPOS]

There is alot of detail missing, stirrups, sword hilts....

more detail you add the bigger the model is and it is slowing graphics down. On some low-end machines it may be the difference between game and slide(sp?) show.

[Pras the Reaper]

@ ibn - no sword hilts?!

are we looking at the same pictures? french knights on the bottom of second pic...

[Zalmoxis]

Yipee, even more pics! Still wish they showed more of the units.

[edyzmedieval]

@ ibn - no sword hilts?!

are we looking at the same pictures? french knights on the bottom of second pic...

Pras, since you're from Brisbane, are we allowed to visit the CA studios?

I sent you an e-mail(well for the UK). No response.



I'll bombard your offices if I don't get an answer.

[Ibn Munqidh]

@ ibn - no sword hilts?!

are we looking at the same pictures? french knights on the bottom of second pic...

Oh, ok, now they've been added. With the previous pics, they were not there.

But still, there is no stirrups.

[edyzmedieval]

But still, there is no stirrups.

What are they? Huns?

[Ibn Munqidh]

What are they? Huns?

what are you talking about

[screwtype]

Yep, nice pic, but since some guy pointed out how the shadows were going in the wrong direction in another pic, I can't help looking at the shadows critically now. And the shadows in the desert pic don't look either nearly long enough or in quite the right direction.

And yeah, the castle looks good, but then I remember how fantastic the cities looked in publicity pics for RTW and how the reality did not nearly live up to those pics.

While I'm on the subject of castles - it would be cool if you could design and build your own castles in this game, as you could in Lords of the Realm II (Amiga version).

[Divinus Arma]

Somebody commented on footprints. Now that would be a major graphical improvement, even if they were temporary and faded like the snow footprints in Metal Gear for PS2.

How can they march through sand (which looks great; very realistic) without leaving footprints? That is a major immersion killer since the sand looks so realistic. Either dump the sand or add footprints. A good floor template is just not worth the immersion spoiler.