Alexander Impressions

**The Blind King of Bohemia** · 06-16-2006, 21:46

So what do you guys think of the expansion then? Some very nice new units I must say, like the Phyrgian and the Immortals. The presentation can't be faulted, and already it seems like it should provide a tough challenge. Overall much better than I expected, and a good job by CA.

**GeneralHankerchief** · 06-16-2006, 22:05

It's available for download now? Gah, shows how much I keep up.

Answer me these:

-Can you play as a faction besides Macedon anywhere in the game (including just singular battles)?
-Does the map look like that grotesque thing we saw or does it look more normal?

**Barbarossa82** · 06-16-2006, 22:31

Some early notes:

1) The new skins look good, and the overall level and quantity of content is good value for the price of the expansion pack.

2) The campaign map has not changed from the early pics that were shown here, and is still very "blobby". However it is quite large and has many provinces and cities, once you get used to the strangely liquid look, it actually is quite pleasing

3) Battles seem exactly like RTW, with one VERY annoying exception, a change to the camera controls. In normal RTW, when you double click on the unit card of a unit you want to zoom to (say because they are on the other side of the field), and you don't want to wait for the camera to finish its pan, you can just flick the mouse pointer to the side of the screen and the camera jumps instantly to the unit you needed to see. Now, with Alexander, doing this stops the camera pan dead, and returns the camera to its previous position! So now it takes much longer to zoom to a unit which isn't in your field of vision, which isn't good given the extremely fast pace of RTW battles.

4) Don't want to see the immersion-killing "100 years remaining"? Simply comment out the line "show_date_as_turns_remaining" in the game's descr_strat file.

5) Persia can be made playable simply by moving its entry in the descr_strat file, as with regular RTW. Not tried the other states.

6) The campaign so far is quite challenging compared to regular, am looking forward to getting into it.

7) RTW: Alexander reports itself as version 1.9, so it looks like there is going to be a patch to bring RTW up to 1.7 and BI up to 1.8. Should fix the siege tower bug I guess.

**Dol Guldur** · 06-16-2006, 22:36

Most interesting. Thank you Barb. No new/modified/removed features?

**The Spartan (Returns)** · 06-16-2006, 23:49

Originally Posted by Barbarossa82

Some early notes:

1) The new skins look good, and the overall level and quantity of content is good value for the price of the expansion pack.

2) The campaign map has not changed from the early pics that were shown here, and is still very "blobby". However it is quite large and has many provinces and cities, once you get used to the strangely liquid look, it actually is quite pleasing

3) Battles seem exactly like RTW, with one VERY annoying exception, a change to the camera controls. In normal RTW, when you double click on the unit card of a unit you want to zoom to (say because they are on the other side of the field), and you don't want to wait for the camera to finish its pan, you can just flick the mouse pointer to the side of the screen and the camera jumps instantly to the unit you needed to see. Now, with Alexander, doing this stops the camera pan dead, and returns the camera to its previous position! So now it takes much longer to zoom to a unit which isn't in your field of vision, which isn't good given the extremely fast pace of RTW battles.

4) Don't want to see the immersion-killing "100 years remaining"? Simply comment out the line "show_date_as_turns_remaining" in the game's descr_strat file.

5) Persia can be made playable simply by moving its entry in the descr_strat file, as with regular RTW. Not tried the other states.

6) The campaign so far is quite challenging compared to regular, am looking forward to getting into it.

7) RTW: Alexander reports itself as version 1.9, so it looks like there is going to be a patch to bring RTW up to 1.7 and BI up to 1.8. Should fix the siege tower bug I guess.

or the scattering phalanx bug i hope.

btw how big is the download?

**The Blind King of Bohemia** · 06-17-2006, 00:30

There's a new Thracian skin (Thracian Mercenaries I believe) which is excellent, one of the best CA have done.

Oh and after doing some rummaging I have a horrible feeling the Indians have no presence on the campaign map at all, and that their role in this game is limited to Hydaspes and Custom Battles only. Is this really the case? If so I'm very disappointed.

**econ21** · 06-17-2006, 01:05

Originally Posted by The Blind King of Bohemia

Is this really the case? If so I'm very disappointed.

Disabling the fog of war, there are no Indian provinces, so you may be right and if so, I feel the same way. CA made the units - I don't see why they could not have extended the map a little to bring them in?

Unless they appear as some MTW Mongol arrival type event. Here's hoping.

**Zatoichi** · 06-17-2006, 02:18

I've played a few battles in the campaign and I'm enjoying it - the phalanx battles seem to be better in my opinion. I've not seen the weird back-peddling falling over soldier issue which is present in 1.5, and my units are maintaining their lines. Cavalry can still disrupt the phalanx units though.

The morale is set very low, maybe I'm just too used to mods! I may have to up the stat_mental values a bit, but I'll keep on with it how it is for a bit.

I like the new skins and units - maybe not up to some of the amazingly high standards set by EB and RTR, but an improvement none the less. Oh, and Brian Blessed is of course fantastic!

So far I have a very positive impression of this add on - props to CA.

**Quid** · 06-17-2006, 09:13

Originally Posted by The Spartan

...btw how big is the download?

The download is 475 MB.

Quid

**The Spartan (Returns)** · 06-17-2006, 15:34

Originally Posted by Quid

The download is 475 MB.

Quid

yess! even though it will take me about 30-25-21 hours to download it. (have dial-up)

**UltraWar** · 06-17-2006, 20:32

I'll get this when I have the time.

**Roy1991** · 06-18-2006, 01:45

Originally Posted by econ21

Disabling the fog of war, there are no Indian provinces, so you may be right and if so, I feel the same way. CA made the units - I don't see why they could not have extended the map a little to bring them in?

Unless they appear as some MTW Mongol arrival type event. Here's hoping.

They aren't in the campaign.
After you meet the requirements to win, there's a sort of cutscene telling about Alexander wanting to conquer all of India, but his troops refusing (something like that :P)
There's 1 city (owned by Indian Rebels), that can't be conquered, simply because it's impossible to reach it.