Demo impressions and discussion (everyone please post here)

[demonot]

i cannot get the demo to work. i have all of the latest drivers and everything is within specs but all i get is this Error message.

Error Signature
Appname: medieval2.exe AppVer: 1.0.0.0 Modname: medieval2.exe
ModVer: 1.0.0.0 Offset: 008c1040

any help as to why it's not working is greatly appreciated. thank you.

[Sarmatian]

What does "IIRC" mean?

[Barkhorn1x]

Longbows are actually just as slow as crossbows and arbalesters in MTW

CBR

That does not sound very good at all - they should be at least twice as fast, IMO.

Barkhorn.

[Tyford]

"What does "IIRC" mean?"

If I Remember Correctly

[CBR]

Seems a bit silly given that IIRC english longbowmen could (historically) shoot 12 shots per minute. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Well AFAIK we cannot be sure about their precise rate of fire. The 12 shots a minute comes from a much later estimate IIRC.

One of the rare archers today who can shoot the heavy 150+ pound drawweight bows prefers to shoot 6 shots/minute or less. An experienced archer can do 20+ with a lighter 60'ish pound bow but he is not gonna be very accurate.

But Im not so concerned about historical accuracy in this case, but more about balance/game mechanics. Just imagine you see the enemy coming at you and you turn your archers. It takes time for the unit to move, adjust its ranks and then spend 15 secs to load an arrow. You might only get perhaps 3 salvos against an infantry unit attacking and losing one salvo because you moved a bit is 1/3 of your total firepower!

The combination of awkward moving, adjusting ranks, then standing and doing nothing and finally they reload...

Just doesnt feel right and was certainly not something you worried about in STW/MTW.


CBR

[Gealai]

15 sec of reloading times are, if true, too much. I'm myself an archer and can shoot quite fast, around 7 arrows per minute, with a standard targetbow while retaining decent accuracy, enough to hit a mansized target at 50 m almost every time.
Of course the arrows have to be in the right position ( sticking into the ground or in a stabilized quiver which faces you in the right angle, and of course this are perfect conditions. Still I think that 10 sec per shot would be closer to the reality...

[CBR]

That does not sound very good at all - they should be at least twice as fast, IMO.

Barkhorn.

I just checked the crossbows at Agincourt. Appears they are having same reload as the bows. Although sometimes they just stand there for a bit before reloading.

The arqs of Pavia are shooting every 22 seconds or so and thats with the revolving ranks formation. So that must mean 45 second reload. They also have a tendency to just stand there and do nothing for a while.


CBR

[Spino]

I just checked the crossbows at Agincourt. Appears they are having same reload as the bows. Although sometimes they just stand there for a bit before reloading.

The arqs of Pavia are shooting every 22 seconds or so and thats with the revolving ranks formation. So that must mean 45 second reload. They also have a tendency to just stand there and do nothing for a while.


CBR

Ouch. Fifteen second reload times for archers and even longer reloads for crossbows? In TW battles that is an eternity! I shudder to think how horse archer/crossbow units are going to fare with those reload times. It sounds like the missile heavy factions are going to have a helluva time making a go of it in SP and MP battles.

One thing for sure is if these prolonged reload times and oddball missile unit behavior are present in the retail release you can bet people are going to go bananas about it in the official and unofficial forums.

Anyway congratulations, it looks like you guys identified the first major item for the 'to fix' list for the first patch.

[TB666]

I just checked the crossbows at Agincourt. Appears they are having same reload as the bows. Although sometimes they just stand there for a bit before reloading.

The arqs of Pavia are shooting every 22 seconds or so and thats with the revolving ranks formation. So that must mean 45 second reload. They also have a tendency to just stand there and do nothing for a while.


CBR

Well all those problems are known to CA atleast the arqs.
That problem is fixed by now(atleast I hope it is)

[KARTLOS]

There was a "Battle of Agincourt" show on the History channel that went into great length about the real effectiveness of the english longbow against the french armor. They tried to show in detailed tests that the penetration effect wasn't as great as generally believed. The big winner for the English was the mud and the archer's daggers. As the arrows took their toll on the horses, the knights were reduced to fighting on foot. The archers were more nimble in the mud as it didn't stick to their footwear as it did to the armor. The lowly archer, not in the ransom business, was quick to stick their blades thru the faceplate of a fallen foe.
There was also discussion of troop costs and how cheap the longbowman was in contrast to a more armored man at arms. That was one reason there were more of them as well.



Terry

footnote: I just looked it up. It was the Battlefield detectives series...

the problem is iirc that in the game you cannot shoot the horses i.e knights never fight dismounted after their horses are shot

what happens instead is that very few knights are killed and the hail of longbow arrows is effectively completely useless against the french knights

i understand that is is a matter of debate as to how effective the longbows were at killing knights in plate armour, however i think it is not a matter of debate that they were an effective weapon against such knights whether this is through killing them outrighty or forcing them to dismount - currently this effectiveness is not represented in the game at all

the only way that I can imagine is possible to fix this at the moment is to make the arrows more lethal

[CBR]

the problem is iirc that in the game you cannot shoot the horses i.e knights never fight dismounted after their horses are shot

what happens instead is that very few knights are killed and the hail of longbow arrows is effectively completely useless against the french knights

Cavalry has always been easier to hit in the Total War games. So even if the rider was just as heavily armoured as when he is dismounted the unit would take heavier losses when fired at by missile.


CBR

[Sun of Chersonesos]

is there a way to mod this demo so i can be the french for once in the historical battle?

[frogbeastegg]

Not sure of the logic there - you can get it on preorder from Amazon for £25; I can't quite see why that is different from picking it up released. (Unless you have a very high return investment you could put your £25 into. )

Buying the game in a shop like that would be an impulse thing; preordering is a cold, planned thing. Cumulatively there's enough that curiosity could create impulse; there's not enough to make me put blind faith in this and coldly decide to buy. The price itself doesn't matter, except that a lower one makes me more likely to give in to the impulse.

Well, modders are sort of like my "money back guarantee".

Finding a mod I enjoy for RTW some two years(!) later is salvage. As much as I like GothMod I would far, far rather I had never felt the need to so much as look in its direction. I don't want to need to salvage M2TW - I want it to be enjoyable for me out of the box.

[spong]

the problem is iirc that in the game you cannot shoot the horses i.e knights never fight dismounted after their horses are shot

what happens instead is that very few knights are killed and the hail of longbow arrows is effectively completely useless against the french knights

i understand that is is a matter of debate as to how effective the longbows were at killing knights in plate armour, however i think it is not a matter of debate that they were an effective weapon against such knights whether this is through killing them outrighty or forcing them to dismount - currently this effectiveness is not represented in the game at all

the only way that I can imagine is possible to fix this at the moment is to make the arrows more lethal

that also brings up issues of the whole mounted/dismounted knights being seperate units or not. We had heard from somewhere at one point that it would be possible to dismount mounted knights, that foot knnights and mounted knights would not be seperate units. I'm not sure how reliable this is however, the demo would suggest this is not the case, does anyone know confirmation of whether this is in or not? If it was I would suppose that it would have been possible to have the horse shot out or the rider shot off and this would have an effect on gameplay. I personally suspect that this was just a rumour and that in fact foot knights and mounted knights are entirely seperate units, recruited seperately and all. Shame.

[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.

[screwtype]

Welcome to the .Org, Nikolaos

Are you pressing Pause/Break? I did this to pause the game, and was irritated to find that it now shows the console as well as a hotkey list.

I just stopped using the key.

Uh, that is bad news. I sure hope they don't have this "feature" in the full game!

[screwtype]

Yes RTW introduced a higher boost in speed when charging compared to STW/MTW. That is still in M2TW and personally I feel the combination of charge, overall running speed and that command delay makes it too fast. Sure one can play with it, it just doesnt feel right.


CBR

I agree that the command delay really sucks. I'm disappointed to hear it's apparently been included in M2 as well.

If the game's got to be faster paced, the least they could do is have your units as responsive as they were in STW!

[Wandarah]

Apologies if I missed something.

But are reload times for fire arrows and normal shot, the same?

[Bob the Insane]

But are reload times for fire arrows and normal shot, the same?

Good question, previously fire arrows where slower but now I am not sure...

I do not think they do any less damage as a did a little test on Agincourt... I had retreated my army further back and fought the battle under some trees.

Due to the scripted nature of the battle the French crossbowmen were still on the field doing nothing where most of the fighting was done so a sent two full and undamaged longbow units forward, one for each...

Firstly they have a much better range. I sent one two fire arrows and the other to normal and they both decimated the crossbowmen at about the same rate.

Now I remember that the units using normal arrows ran out of ammo first so they may have been firing at a faster rate, though it did not check that they started the test with equal amounts of ammo...

The new fire arrows look great and a love the way the ones that miss stick in the ground still burning for a while...

[Beirut]

Just finished an excellent book on Agincourt (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...stcount=229and) the author said all men were required to shoot ten arrows a minute and some could shoot twenty. Archers were required by law to practice on a regular basis. It was also mentioned that the bodies of English archers later disinterred showed they had bent spines and oversized skeletal structures on one side owing to constant use of the longbow. Apparently they took it very seriously.

As for the demo... love it! The graphics are pure Haagen-Dazs. My mid-range system is giving my good FPS and great visuals. This is a stunningly gorgeous game. I'm having some trouble organizing my troops, but I've only been playing for an hour.

Loved the graphic representation of Agincourt. Really great. Fantastic sense of immersion. Really looking forward to this game.

[Kwartjuh]

My max Units Remaining was 712.. i have a screenie, but i am too lazy to post it online :P

[petersand]

CA Staff News: 13.10.2006 from TotalWar forum.

CAOZ Official Demo News! Wow the forums are running hot with demo chat. I thought I better hurry up and address some of your concerns so you can relax and enjoy the weekend. As mentioned in the developer blogs the demo is a pre-beta build and since then the game has had over 2 months of polish and optimization. I am happy to inform you that:

� SSE2 is only required for the demo, the release version of the game will only require SSE.

� Most of the issues with the Athlon XP processor were fixed for the release version of the game, the single player game works fine but there are a few residual issues with multiplayer and as such we can�t officially support it.

� Regarding frame rate, considering there has been over 2 months of work on game optimization I think it�s safe to assume the frame rate in the release game will be better than the one seen in the demo.

I will be sure to keep up to date with the demo chat and try and address any additional issues requiring clarification.

Jason

[Braden]

Very glad to hear these updates, though, I hope that most of us considered that these issues were related just to the Demo version.

I think the addressing of the SSE2 issue was a major concern for many though so the update will be greatly received.

Thank you CA.

[Dave1984]

Archers were required by law to practice on a regular basis.

Still are, it's never been repealed. But like being able to shoot a Welshman within the walls of Chester, it's one of the archaic ones that doesn't carry any weight any more. Sadly.

[Bob the Insane]

But like being able to shoot a Welshman within the walls of Chester

It's kill, and only in the hours of darkness...

My favourite is that Oliver Cronwell banned Christmas and that law was never revoked either...

[Dave1984]

It's kill, and only in the hours of darkness...

Who's telling?

I think football is still illegal as well.

[Braden]

It's kill, and only in the hours of darkness...

My favourite is that Oliver Cronwell banned Christmas and that law was never revoked either...

....what's this "Christmas" thing? If its that thing that happens on December the 25th, well, that's Winter Solstice - well it is in our house.

and.....YAY! an excuse to kill Welsh people, but must move to Chester......hmmmm......Nope, sorry not worth it.