Med2 Preview Event... the answers

[Ibn Munqidh]

Al-Malik al-Afdal ibn Badr al-Jamali Shahanshah all the way.

We need a piety 10, dread 10, influence 10 Egyptian.

Sorry, I'll take my hero-worship outside...

Want al-afdal shahanshah the idiot who kept being mopped up by the crusaders? Whats to admirable about him?

[Ludens]

Great job, Soulflame .

[Soulflame]

Soulflame, thanks for the fantastic news. Straight to the point. Did you manage to take screenshots or make movies?

I am happy with

The fast killing speeds in the vanilla RTW almost eliminated the battlefield tactics. Many mods tried to rectify this problem by increasing the defence values, which lead to another anomaly. E.g. winning battles with inferior units vs. elite units just by staying on defence. I win with Numidian javelin man against Triarii in RTR! At the end I feel that it is an exploit and I feel guilty.

I wasn't allowed to make photos of gameplay footage, but the PR Executive would give me a link in the near future to a video and some screenshots (although I don't know if they are new).
I did make some photos from the people there and the 'scenery' (they had a medieval armor suit prop and the menu had medieval items on it, like 'Barbarian Burger' and such)

I'll try to get those up soon

[hoetje]

GJ Soulflame I appreciate what you've done =)

[AussieGiant]

Soulflame,

Thanks for spending a lot of your own free time to update us all here.

Cheers

[Dinsel]

Thanks Southflame.

But I was just wondering what is this shit about "bridges" between Ireland and Scotland, and Denmark and Sweden.

You only got a bridge between Denmark and Sweden in the 20th century. Whats this nonsence with bridges that cant exist?

[Orb]

Want al-afdal shahanshah the idiot who kept being mopped up by the crusaders? Whats to admirable about him?

Possibly his popularity but most of all -

The name.

[Ituralde]

Thanks for the great information Soulflame, it is really appreciated and clarifies a lot of things.

To some of the questions popping up in this thread I'd like to add my two cents:

But I was just wondering what is this shit about "bridges" between Ireland and Scotland, and Denmark and Sweden.

You only got a bridge between Denmark and Sweden in the 20th century. Whats this nonsence with bridges that cant exist

The 'bridges' he is referring to are land bridges, which are an abstract representation of local shipping used to pass small stretches of water, this makes them behave like modern bridges gameplay-wise, but that's not what they are.

ow what I'd like is a "Hall of Fame" scroll in the campaign, that keeps track of the most talented generals and maybe governors that lived so far in the campaign. That I'd like much more then historically accurate people spawning from nowhere into an alternative history.

There actually are some screenshots around that show the most famous general of your faction in your faction screen, while this sure isn't the feature you've envisioned it's still a beginning.

Cheers!

Ituralde

[Mount Suribachi]

Thanks Southflame.

But I was just wondering what is this shit about "bridges" between Ireland and Scotland, and Denmark and Sweden.

You only got a bridge between Denmark and Sweden in the 20th century. Whats this nonsence with bridges that cant exist?

Landbridges were a feature of previous TW games. And watch your language

[SpencerH]

Thanks for the effort Soulflame.

[hoetje]

Thanks for the great information Soulflame, it is really appreciated and clarifies a lot of things.

To some of the questions popping up in this thread I'd like to add my two cents:



The 'bridges' he is referring to are land bridges, which are an abstract representation of local shipping used to pass small stretches of water, this makes them behave like modern bridges gameplay-wise, but that's not what they are.



There actually are some screenshots around that show the most famous general of your faction in your faction screen, while this sure isn't the feature you've envisioned it's still a beginning.

Cheers!

Ituralde

Can you give me a link to those screenshots mate?

[highlanddave]

not on subject for ... the answers, but

IMO the landbridges become essential for the computer ai to act rationally and effectively. the ai becomes landlocked often in the 1st medieval game if the bridges are removed. it has some trouble getting crusades to move to the orient across constantiople if there isn't a bridge. i remember many times even in rome total war the scippi and brutti would not act well with their fleets. they would not take advantage of their fleet advantages and they would not do seabourne invasions in any concrete way. many times i saw the brutti move armies up the peninsula of italy and back down the balkan side instead of just ferrying the army straight across to greece.

[Bob the Insane]

One option that's in is 'minimized ui', which basically removes almost everything from your battlescreen except the action. If you are able to work with that ui or you already almost certainly won, then it's nice

Woohoo for that... I always played RTW with this on...

Thanks for all the responses, that was great...

So, BI with better graphics, more religion, more factions and and such... But basically still the same game... Not a problem for me, I liked it in the first place...

[TB666]

A question to soulflame.

In M1TW you could you marry your daughters to your familymembers, can you do the same in M2TW ??

Yes I know it created some nasty children without a chin but it was a cool feature.

[Kralizec]

Actually I recall a discussion on this forum about incest marriages and their effect, the conclusion was that an incestious marriage was no more likely to produce heirs with "odd number of toes" and "inbred" then normal ones.

[TB666]

Oh really.
Guess I'm just unlucky

Getting the princesses together with their brothers was a nice way of getting rid of princesses that nobody wanted to marry but something tells me that it isn't in M2TW.

[Martinaz]

Soulflame youre great!

[Bob the Insane]

Getting the princesses together with their brothers was a nice way of getting rid of princesses that nobody wanted to marry but something tells me that it isn't in M2TW.

That provokes a thought...

If the Family Tree thing works much the same way as in Rome that means Princesses will most likely be the come of age but unmarried girls of all the generals/family members. Thus once you get fairly far down the tree you will start having second and third cousins wandering around (and in the case of adopted generals who then get married and have kids completed unrelated by blood). So the marrying princesses to members of the ruling faction will not be so weird. I wonder if the game will accomodate this fact and whether it is possible for it to see the difference between the princess that is your sister and the princess that is your 4th cousin by marriage?

[Ituralde]

Can you give me a link to those screenshots mate?

The Famous General can be seen in the faction overview scroll, the only screenshot I have found is the following of rather bad quality, I'm afraid, hope you can still make it out:
http://www.mitglied.lycos.de/eagleey...hots/mtw04.jpg

The faction overview can also be seen in the newest Official Movie talking about Religion and Crusades. The faction overview appears around 2:12 into the movie. The movie can be found here:
http://www.3dgamers.com/dlselect/gam...sades.wmv.html

Hope that helped!

Cheers!

Ituralde

[Mount Suribachi]

not on subject for ... the answers, but

IMO the landbridges become essential for the computer ai to act rationally and effectively. the ai becomes landlocked often in the 1st medieval game if the bridges are removed. it has some trouble getting crusades to move to the orient across constantiople if there isn't a bridge. i remember many times even in rome total war the scippi and brutti would not act well with their fleets. they would not take advantage of their fleet advantages and they would not do seabourne invasions in any concrete way. many times i saw the brutti move armies up the peninsula of italy and back down the balkan side instead of just ferrying the army straight across to greece.

The AI is much better at seaborne invasions in BI.

[JR-]

*There are 21 factions, namely;
i prefer not to have starting factions

*Unit speeds and kill speeds have been decreases;
excellent news

*There are 8 Historical Battles planned
good news i guess

*A public demo is in the works and nearing completion
excellent

*They are aiming for minimum specs of; P4 1.8 Ghz Geforce4 128.
i would prefer they were higher, but i appreciate that won't suit everyone

*Generals can't be given titles like in Med 1
shame

*No eras like in Med1, there is only one campaign period.
not too fussed, but in the same manner as custom battles more variety is good

*Campaign battle replay... is uncertain.
do you mean battle replays or campaign replay, i am only aware of the former in M:TW?

[JR-]

cheers soulflame,

i'd love to see the answers to the modding questions.

particularly:
> max # of provinces
> max # of factions
> max # of unit types
> max size of map
> how christian/muslim reformation/schism events can be accomodated
> can we force linear multi-part year progression

[|Heerbann|_Di3Hard]

*They are aiming for minimum specs of; P4 1.8 Ghz Geforce4 128.
i would prefer they were higher, but i appreciate that won't suit everyone

Can you tell us why? Don't forget, it isn't a 3D first person shooter. It is a battle simulation with 10k soldiers!

[Aquitaine]

I'm a little confused about the titles. I know that, unlike MTW/STW, you can't turn any old captain into an important person with a title, but what was 'broken' about the 'drag Duke of York to Lord Roos' system? It personalized your armies and your generals in a big way and it was one of the biggest things I felt was missing from RTW. The spontaneous appearance of 'Commander of the Armies of the East' and the like in RTW/BI was a half-hearted effort to put this back -- you had no say in who got the titles to begin with, and your generals had to be sitting around in a city to get them in the first place!

I guess I just don't see the motivation behind this change.

[hoetje]

The Famous General can be seen in the faction overview scroll, the only screenshot I have found is the following of rather bad quality, I'm afraid, hope you can still make it out:
http://www.mitglied.lycos.de/eagleey...hots/mtw04.jpg

The faction overview can also be seen in the newest Official Movie talking about Religion and Crusades. The faction overview appears around 2:12 into the movie. The movie can be found here:
http://www.3dgamers.com/dlselect/gam...sades.wmv.html

Hope that helped!

Cheers!

Ituralde

Thank you very much mate

[Furious Mental]

"I guess I just don't see the motivation behind this change."

Probably to make sure governors actually stay in the places they are supposed to be governing.

[Aquitaine]

"I guess I just don't see the motivation behind this change."

Probably to make sure governors actually stay in the places they are supposed to be governing.

For what purpose? This wasn't necessarily historically true, and it's certainly not great for gameplay. If the Duke of York's troops were going to battle under the King, the Duke had jolly well be there.

Look at the bit in Henry V (okay, not the most historical document, but still) where they read off the names of the French nobles who were killed or captured at Agincourt. It's a long list of nobles who were present. Sitting at home (while maybe a good idea, if you were French around Agincourt) wasn't the norm.

[JR-]

Can you tell us why? Don't forget, it isn't a 3D first person shooter. It is a battle simulation with 10k soldiers!

i am a tech geek, i pay for expensive PC components and appreciate seeing it pushed to the max.

[Soulflame]

Peregrine_Tergiversate; those are not the only things I asked, I have more answers for you in I think the second page of this thread (I'm not sure if you saw them, but you only quoted the startpost of this thread).

As for the modding questions, I emailed them to CA England, who will forward them to their Australian collegues (who work on that and balance issues and the like), they said that it might take around a week to get answers on those questions.

[JR-]

many thanks Soulflame, i have seen the second page. :)