Interview at CVG!

[Fwapper]

to be presise... you read it. But anyhow.

I think this looks promising. Sure it is all by a man inside CA so it will probably be biased, but there were many AI and a few realism mentions.

I remain cautiously optimistic...

[Bob the Insane]

Well if you want realistic then you are going to need a baggage train and watercarriers...

Armoured knights would fight for like 5 minutes and then break off combat in an orderly fashion to drink water brought by the water carriers. If they didn;t do this? Well it was not unknown for people in heavy armour to keel over of dehydration and exhaustion in pretty short order.

Imagine seeing that in the game...

Personally as someone how greatly enjoyed MTW, RTW and RTW:BI as games I am really looking forward to M2TW and it's new and reintroduced features...

[Midnight]

Nice to see that eras are coming back. I hope the AI can build better than in could in original MTW, because Early games weren't challenging for long as the AI couldn't keep up with structures.

[Ituralde]

Eras are coming back in MULTIPLAYER ONLY!
So I'm sorry to say the AI won't be around to screw anything up concerning the eras.

[Lord Adherbal]

doesn't have anything to do with having eras or not. Either the AI can keep up with the player technology-wise, or it can not.

[sunsmountain]

It usually ended within 20 seconds with someone dead.

In Rome, it usually ends within 3 seconds with 2 men dead.

[The Spartan (Returns)]

Eras are coming back in MULTIPLAYER ONLY!
So I'm sorry to say the AI won't be around to screw anything up concerning the eras.

mp only?

[Puzz3D]

I hope the AI can build better than in could in original MTW, because Early games weren't challenging for long as the AI couldn't keep up with structures.

That doesn't seem to be an intrinsic problem in RTW, although it was in MTW. I've played XGM for RTW/BI and the strategic AI has no trouble moving up the tech tree. This seems to be a matter of fine tuning which unfortunatly is lacking in the vanilla game.

It's great that the kill rates are being evaluated. However, the evaluator seems to think that the gameplay in RTW was awesome. Why isn't the community player they hired evaluating the kill rates?

[Geoffrey S]

It's nice that they're finetuning things now. Hope it leads to a better balance.

Whatever my complaints about RTW, it is the game I've played longest and I've still enjoyed it immensely. However, at a LAN party recently we got round to playing it and BI, and in multiplayer it was atrocious. At 10.000-15.000 denarii I would build a balanced army, whereas someone who had barely played the game went wild on cataphracts or berserkers - there was no stopping him, not even with two players. It just wasn't fun, and I hope at the very least costs are balanced to prevent this from happening.

That said, it was great fun playing against someone who also knew the game well and we both had good armies. Lots of maneuvering going on, and plenty of tense moments.

[Lord Adherbal]

Why isn't the community player they hired evaluating the kill rates?

I'm not sure I'm supposed to say this, but considering it won't hurt CA or MTW2 sales:

He is. It's certainly good to hear they are putting more efford into balancing in MTW2 (I wonder if they even bothered at all in RTW), but only time - or a demo - can tell if it'll be enough to win us MTW/STW vets back to the series.

[The Spartan (Returns)]

yes! eras!!!!!

[Puzz3D]

It's certainly good to hear they are putting more efford into balancing in MTW2 (I wonder if they even bothered at all in RTW), but only time - or a demo - can tell if it'll be enough to win us MTW/STW vets back to the series.

Well by the interview it certainly sounds like Bob Smith, the project manager, is going in to micromanage this, and he likes the gameplay of Rome.

They definitely worked on the kill rates and movement speeds in RTW, and made the choices they wanted. They even re-evaluated the movement speeds in the RTW demo, and told me they were ok.

[DisruptorX]

It's nice that they're finetuning things now. Hope it leads to a better balance.

Whatever my complaints about RTW, it is the game I've played longest and I've still enjoyed it immensely. However, at a LAN party recently we got round to playing it and BI, and in multiplayer it was atrocious. At 10.000-15.000 denarii I would build a balanced army, whereas someone who had barely played the game went wild on cataphracts or berserkers - there was no stopping him, not even with two players. It just wasn't fun, and I hope at the very least costs are balanced to prevent this from happening.

That said, it was great fun playing against someone who also knew the game well and we both had good armies. Lots of maneuvering going on, and plenty of tense moments.

Play 5,000-10,000 denarii for more balanced armies, and cataphracts are easy to counter with a solid phalanx wall.

[Tahanaman]

About the unit speeds, the only thing I can say about them from RTW-
CA must have had an Aboriginee and a horse with rider run side by side and compared the speeds, because here in Kentucky a man without armor carrying only a sword running flat out against a horse with rider carrying a sword simply can not run that fast away from the horseman. Beats me where they measured their running speeds. Maybe in Medieval times everyone ran like Yule Brenner decked out in full plate mail armor?

[screwtype]

the evaluator seems to think that the gameplay in RTW was awesome.

Yeah, I noticed that. Didn't exactly inspire confidence. Hopefully it was no more than a bit of hype.