New Video in German Magazine

**Sir Robin** · 05-30-2006, 22:26

Have not seen this posted yet so I'll mention it here.

There is a CD in the German magazine "Gamestar(sp?)" that has a new video not available anywhere else.

The video appears to show two "battles" though it only shows the deployment of the first.

It appears that the battles are Agincourt and a battle between Saladin and Richard.

Pros:
1. Longbowmen can place sharpened stakes in front of them "during" deployment.

2. Troops hit by flaming artillery have better "i'm burning" fire affects than RTW.

3. Troop movement and combat animations are greatly improved over RTW.

4. Troops also have more "idle" animations then RTW, even noticed an english soldier bending to flex the knees.

Maybes:
1. Morale units are in. The battle between Saladin and Richard had a small unit with a very large cross on a wagon. Personally I do not like giving up a unit slot for a morale or assassin unit.

Cons:
1. Unit speed is still way to fast. The reviewer ordered some knights forward at the double and they ran into Saladin's troops coming the other way before they got there.

2. Kill speed appears just as ugly. IIRC there were five knights and one general grouped in the fight. In less than thirty seconds three had dropped out of the group because they were routing.

3. Insta rout appears to still be happening. Though the reviewer never gave his knights the "attack/charge" order so they were basically caught flatfooted. Still five knights with the general among them should have held out a lot longer.

4. My personal rub is "line cohesion" Saladin's battle line was disintigrating into individual unit attacks before they even reached Richard's infantry line.

Hopes:
1. This is not a "mostly finished" version of the tactical AI. Though considering how much time they have left it could very well be just that.

2. Movement Speeds, Kill Rates, and Morale are not basically imported "direct" from RTW. If so an additional hope is that they can be modded without messing up the units movement and combat animations.

3. The reviewer was playing the battle in "Arcade" mode.

Final thought:
1. While visually the game is a great advance over RTW. As far as gameplay, tactically at least, the advance appears to be far less.

**Basileus** · 05-30-2006, 22:49

Thanks for the info mate, lets hope things improve then :D

**screwtype** · 05-31-2006, 04:39

Could be that the video is a little speeded up too, to try and make it all look more action packed and exciting. But by and large this is not encouraging news.

What would really make a big difference IMO is if they made such things as movement rate and kill speed fully moddable. Then it wouldn't matter if the vanilla game is too fast, because the modders could wind it right back to MTW or STW speeds if they were so inclined. Full moddability of such factors would be the best solution to this problem. I hope CA have realized this, but I have my doubts.

**Duke John** · 05-31-2006, 06:49

Killspeed can already be modified. However some mods prefer to fix it by giving lots of morale to the troops.

Movementrate could also have been moddeable if we had a proper tool for importing and exporting animations. CA hasn't released it during the last 2 years so I have little hope that this will change. Especially with CA saying that they will give the same modding support with tools as they had done with R:TW (that is 0, CA!)

My personal rub is "line cohesion" Saladin's battle line was disintigrating into individual unit attacks before they even reached Richard's infantry line.

Line cohesion should have been the first thing they coded for the AI. That doesn't sound promising at all.

**Lorenzo_H** · 05-31-2006, 08:03

The very fact that Saladin is in the game makes me drool with anticipation...

**Peasant Phill** · 05-31-2006, 08:22

3. The reviewer was playing the battle in "Arcade" mode.

Are you sure about that? Besides I'm still wondering if the AI, movement speed and kill ratio in the "reality" mode would be any better.

**ivoignob** · 05-31-2006, 08:22

Thanks Sir Robin!

I found the video at this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzoC7glqQko

**Monk** · 05-31-2006, 08:32

Just watched the vid, thanks for the link ivoignob...

The Ai appeared to have good cohesion until the player charged his cavalry. It's a little hard to get a good picture of the entire battle; but it appears as if the AI only faltered in its movement when it tried to react to the human tactic employed.

Hopefully that will be fixed before release..

**DukeofSerbia** · 05-31-2006, 16:21

Originally Posted by ivoignob

Thanks Sir Robin!

I found the video at this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzoC7glqQko

Thanks man.

I just watched video (without sound and music) and I am not impressed. As somebody noticed, there are cannons in time of Crusades.

For me, it's just graphicly improved Rome TW and nothing more.

**Zatoichi** · 05-31-2006, 08:35

Having watched the video, I have to say that it looks wonderful - the animations on the trebuchets etc are fantastic.

The German fellow playing the game was not trying to win, rather he was showing off the different units and the graphics, hence his abandonment of the cavalry he left to get slaughtered. He never did give them an attack command, and so they are killed much quicker because they are not benefitting from their charge bonus, unlike the Egyptian cavalry that are attacking them - so that muddies the waters a bit on the actual rate of kill speed. The unit speeds look to be about the same - can't say I'm entirely happy with that.

I am more concerned over the response of the AI's army to the player's deployment of cavalry. Up until the point the player ordered his cavalry to advance, the AI's army held its line. However, it seemed like all the AI units individually decided at the last minute to turn towards the player's cav, exposing their flanks to his infantry. So the AI looks to be the same as in RTW at the moment.

Hopefully the AI will get the work it needs in the coming months - CA have stated that it will be improved. The AI in the battle is presumably not the final version, as the E3 show presentation was labelled as pre-alpha by CA, implying lots more work is required on the whole game.

The game does look absolutely fantastic. I just hope it plays as well.

**Rodion Romanovich** · 05-31-2006, 09:39

They said AI was going to be done from now on, which implies it wasn't ready. Hopefully that means battle lines will be more robust in the final game. As for kill and move rates, I suppose movement speed has to do a bit with the animations and that doesn't sound to good if they've started making plenty of too fast animations already. As for combat speed that can be modded easily, but I hope for the sake of the MP part of the game that they are decent in vanilla MTW2 because very, very few MP players have the guts to install a mod for MP (although many use mods for SP), so there are very few opponents to play with if you run any of the mods.