Demo impressions and discussion (everyone please post here)

[econ21]

Now that some people legally have the demo, I am creating this thread for them to post any impressions they have of the demo and to discuss the demo.

To avoid profileration of threads, please use this thread for this topic.

Please do not discuss acquiring the game illegally here.

To start the ball rolling - can anyone comment on game speed (specifically kill rates and movement speeds)? Specifically, how they compared to RTW?

[Monarch]

Meh, tbh I was just playing not really taking any notes. It seemed alot like RTW tbh.

Also I thought you campaign guys might be interested in this screen:

http://www.freewebs.com/monarch1/gmt.gif

French cav charged right on to my stakes....

But blood looks great, animations very cool, user interface virtually the same as rtw. Also cannons look sweet, when they load them that rocks, if they do a NTW3 on MTW2, that'll look great.

Erm, can't think of much else to say lol. Its hard to test unit speeds because for example in agincourt you just sit their whilst frenchies charge at you lol.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I'm sure the French cavalry is scripted to fight as such

[Monarch]

Scripted to charge...but onto my stakes...I wasn't aware they has kamikaze guys in medieval france (and ones that didn't even kill anyone in the process)

Btw, the tutorial said different type of units get different shaped banners, as I said I just raced round winning the battles, but can someone confirm this? IMO thats pretty cool :)

[TB666]

Ran it on medium setting and ran very good.
I was really surprised.

Tutorial Battle: was slightly pointless IMO but on the other hand I'm a TW vet so it is useless for us

Pavia: Awesome battles this.
Just hearing the german accent is just awesome.
Seeing the cavalry charge your landsknechter was slightly fun but the real fun was when you see your zweihander in action.
They are just as cool as we had imagine.
Also the first time I saw some finishing moves was from these guys.
Needless to say they can turn a unit into a bloody pile of corpses very fast.

Agincourt: Oh this battles was a bit tough on my computer but still fine.
The french infantry almost destroyed me but then I noticed that I had billmen ready so I was saved.

The music is great and so is the sound.
Graphics even on Medium looks wonderful.
The animations are so much better.
The AI is scripted like hell but in times where I felt that it could act on it's own I felt it was better.
Movement and kill-rates are fine now too.
Gotta remember that your troops have alot of bonuses compared to the enemy and still they lasted longer then in RTW.

I say M2TW is looking very very good

Some screens from Pavia

[Monarch]

(i can't say if it is legal or not because i would break the forums rules)..

Its not up for download legally, only way to legally get it through PC Gamer magazine lol. So I thinks its fine to asume which way your getting in :P

Anyway, we need a mod for this, I want some custom battles

Btw, are any of the already announced mods looking at this? Its their first chance to get some actually textures are however it works lol, I hope they're going through this

Edit: Oh ye I have a question, those musketeers you see firing in TB666's screenshot, in game you can see their bullets, you can't see bullets in NTW2, but thats set a good 300 years later. I know squat about early fire arms, but could you see the bullets back then firing from the guns?

[Furious Mental]

Since the historical battles are scripted and the units all seem to have increased experience I don't think they would be a very good indicator.

[TB666]

Since the historical battles are scripted and the units all seem to have increased experience I don't think they would be a very good indicator.

Indeed.
All your units in Agincourt have 3 gold chevrons while the enemy have 1 bronze.
They don't stand a chance.
Still the battle last longer then in RTW with the same settings

[The Blind Samurai]

how did you guys get the demo where can i get it

Moderator edit: To the best of my knowledge, the demo is legally available from the US PC Gamer. Let's keep this thread to gameplay issues, not how to get the demo.

[legion commander167]

im downloading now i can't wait to play it i can run rome on high great with out any lag can i run the demo on medium or high?

[Mars]

well, once i said....to controll the speed u need skill and this fact didnt changed!

Look at STW, now that was speed, noone complained these days. Anyway, the speed isnt what makes the game good or bad. Its also not the "blob" stuff some spoke about.

Im more interested how long units last, how the fatique is, killratio of missles, this cav thingy scares me a lot... just to call a few.

Puzz ofc worry about speed :P

Some ideas are not bad, like static money, and also the limit of the units isnt that bad, at least they try to work aroudn the balance. That its impossible to balance all these units isnt something new, but its a first step.

I saw that they work on a ladder...



So far so good, the problem is still the same, its SEGA i have my doubts that they will make the game too complex, so i bet the moral and penalty system will be dumbed down like the last TW versions.

Mars

[Puzz3D]

well, once i said....to controll the speed u need skill and this fact didnt changed!

Look at STW, now that was speed, noone complained these days.

RTW movement speed was 50% faster than STW, and you have 25% more units to control. In addition to that, units routed on contact in RTW. M2TW movement speed is now reduced almost all the way back to STW speeds.

[spong]

I just dloaded and played the demo and I really enjoyed it, though I have to say I'm glad there's some time left before the release because I have one problem with it and thats that the combat animations are no where near as nicely synchronised as we have seen in the trailers and videos, I have frequently watched as soldiers would do a scripted attack against thin air, attacks that from the previews are supposed to stick into people going nowhere near them, finishing manevers against fallen troops being performed against invisible soldiers on the ground in completely the opposite direction. I find this very confusing as, either they have it working properly and caught it for the vids, and this is just a really unrefined version in the demo, or its as is and someone who made the video spent ages initiating melees and watching very carefully to capture the one-off perfect moves.

Anyone else got any thoughts on this?

[maestro]

Dunno why everyone's getting in a tiz about this being an "illegal demo" unless you have it fro US PC Gamer or whatever. I just logged into Fileplanet and I'm downloading it legally at over 300kb/s

God bless Fileplanet and their reasonably priced Founders Club subscription for 50 quid a year

[AussieGiant]

RTW movement speed was 50% faster than STW, and you have 25% more units to control. In addition to that, units routed on contact in RTW. M2TW movement speed is now reduced almost all the way back to STW speeds.

I'm now a very happy man.

Great news Puzz.

Cheers,

[edyzmedieval]

I got the Special Edition demo from Amazon, and I've played it. The battlemap parts look very exciting, but I am keeping my doubts about the AI and it's diplomacy.

[Tamur]

Downloaded via fileplanet last night and played once through each of the battles & the tutorial. The first thing I did in each of the battles was pause and just look around the battlefields.

The vegetation is truly phenomenal; Agincourt town and the manor are both very well done. I love the variety of troops, this is such an improvement over RTW.

The landscape has such rich variation, it's quite impressive, especially at Agincourt. If the battle hadn't been so scripted, I would have marched my army over to take advantage of the cliffs off to the left, some really nice terrain over in that area. In fact, the variety of terrain is so much better than RTW, judging from only these two battles, that I'm wondering if terrain will once again be installed at a tactical factor in battles? We'll see how the random terrain generation does throwing interesting combinations together, but I'm hopeful.

As has been said, the battles play out at a decent pace, except for the 2 seconds it takes for the cavalry to be slaughtered at Agincourt. I was surprised and gratified that I actually had to flank the French to get them to rout.

[ShadesWolf]

So im first impressions.....

I will need to mod Agincourt to make it MUCH harder.
First attempt average victory.....

What has happened to my beloved archers, what not wedge formation, how can this be?

And the balance was all wrong, not enough archers and way to few French.

Graphics are excellent though and my PC and graphics card performed well. The battle map loves lovely......

[lars573]

My impressions.

I can run the game at medium high setting. $478 for an X1900XT was money well spent. The new animation system makes the soldiers move and fight a great deal more like real people. I still dislike historical battles. So TW demo's will always be a test of my hardware at running the game.

[Censor]

Where did all the French go? It didn't even seem like I was outnumbered 3:2, felt like a 1:1 matchup. They should have pitted us against more frenchmen, especially given the low quality of the french troops.

[IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer]

I didn't really play the demo extensively, as I was pressed for time. But my biggest problem was this:

They made an *extremely* poor choice in the two battles they let you play. Instead of giving us a conventional battle with two large armies facing off to let us get a fell for our units, we get a completely scripted battle where we defend and they come at us in small waves, and leave us very little room for maneuvering. And we get a second battle, where we have an ally that alqays loses in 30 seconds, and then get swarmed by three different armies all over the map. I was disappointed that I only got to use one unit of cavalry the entire demo, and it was a bodyguard unit.

Wasn't really paying attention to killing speeds that much. I do know that in Patvia, my spearmen killed off the initial charge of French knights, and then went off to direct my knights around, and when I came back a minute later, my spearmen were at 36 men left in the unit. Are those Scots Guard archers really THAT good?

It was fun from what I saw, I'll revisit again when I have time. Agincourt was pretty crazy when they flanked me, and I never managed to win Patvia after two tries, which is surprising. I'm a bit out of practice with Total War, hell, I forgot how to maneuver the freakin' camera initially, haha. Skipped the tutorial.

[CBR]

I have done some test on running speed. I tried my best to find some flat pieces of terrain and make sure the units stayed at max warmed up so fatigue didnt reduce speed. There is still no way to mod the demo so testing is therefore a bit limited.

But here are the numbers I have come up for infantry (might try and test later today with the single cavalry)

Light infantry (in this case archers) ran at a speed of about 240 meters/minute. Heavily armoured units like dismounted knights did 180 meters/minute.

Im still not sure there is a movement class in between them but I did get some results for militia halberds (classed as heavy infantry but very little armour) that suggests they could be right in between at around 210 meters/minute.

So for those who dont know what these numbers mean:

In MTW running speed was 133/166/200 meters/minute for dismounted knights/heavy inf/light inf.

In BI it was around 250/300 for heavy inf/light inf. Which was a 10% reduction from RTW.

So it appears running speed has been reduced by around 20%

Killing speed is pretty difficult to say. In Agincourt we have English valor 7 units versus French valor 1. Some French units rout pretty quickly while others dont. A guess would be that its slowed down a bit from RTW, but these units are also heavily armoured, and heavy units in RTW didnt die quickly either.


CBR

[Lord ZORO Savage]

Thank you for the testing CBR

[Aenarion]

Any info on where this 'virtual' demo is pls?

[Lord ZORO Savage]

Any info on where this 'virtual' demo is pls?

Legally you can get it from PC GAMER MAGAZINE,illegally i can not say.

[Aenarion]

Ah I see ok thanks. :)

[Duke John]

So it is again scripted battles with high valour units? How is that supposed to give an indication (about AI and gameplay) wether it will be worth buying the game?

Perhaps I know enough already, I've got a download link and I am not even interested in using it. (I won't share the link, so don't bother asking.)

Have fun everybody!

[econ21]

So it appears running speed has been reduced by around 20%

Belatedly coming back on this - it is interesting that the major realism mods (EB and RTR) cut movement speeds by 20% from RTW.

If, as you say, BI was 10% slower than RTW and M2TW 20% is slower than BI, this means that units may run slower in M2TW than in the realism mods.

[CBR]

Belatedly coming back on this - it is interesting that the major realism mods (EB and RTR) cut movement speeds by 20% from RTW.

If, as you say, BI was 10% slower than RTW and M2TW 20% is slower than BI, this means that units may run slower in M2TW than in the realism mods.

Yeah most mods did a reduction of 20-30% IIRC

RTW heavy infantry had a running speed of around 275-280 meters/minute(m/min) so mods who reduced the movement modifier to 0.8 would then have them running at around 220 m/min. The 0.7 would give a speed of around 195 m/min.

Personally I used 0.7 even for BI mods which as about 175 m/min


CBR