Frogbeastegg's gold code day comments and early thoughts on M2TW

[frogbeastegg]

ever played on very hard?(battles)

From the paragraph about wooden walls and seiges:

Incidentally, the AI destroyed both of my rams before they reached the wall, and my single set of ladders proved woefully insufficient because the AI positioned a good selection of troops on the wall around the area I was trying to scale. This was my only loss to the AI; it was set to very hard.

and what was it like?

I've only played for a couple of hours total; 13 campaign turns and about 4 battles, one of which was a LAN battle and the other three against rebel held cities. I'm not able to say much until I have played more; I simply haven't seen enough to judge.



Econ, I'm not going to compare vanila M2TW against any RTW mod Firstly I didn't play them except an early bversion of RTR, and a bit of gothmod. Secondly and most importantly, it's CA's work I am looking at and interested in, and it's that which is the important thing here. Mods are not the reason I get the game; I barely ever touch them for any game. I didn't go to Kew to test out a mod, and I didn't dump RTW because of features which were present in mods.

The cavalry may have been like that in RTW but I never needed to take it into account. I simply moved my cavalry behind the enemy line at a run, double-clicked to attack without giving them time to stop or reorient, and that was that, my cav smashed into the enemy and pulped them.

Wooden walls were little aid to the AI in defending a city; a battering ram or two and that was it, job done and with very little trouble. I only needed to start planning when I encountered stone walls, and even then I didn't have to plan much. Two sap points and the units to man them et voila, job done. Boring. I wouldn't know about walls from the defender's position; I don't recall needing to defend a city in battle in the entire time I played RTW. In terms of forcing an enemy army to stand about besieging low level walls worked as nicely as high level ones. I didn't let enough time pass for the city to surrender before I relieved it.

Whether the features were in the vanilla in some form or not, the vital thing is that they could be utterly ignored. So far in M2TW they can't be.

[redriver]

meh! comparin' RTW to M2TW is like comparin' apples to oranges.. different eras and almost 1500 years apart.. how bizzar. try comparin' to the original MTW instead. ppl should only compare graphics/UI to RTW because it's the most recent product. and everythin' else is way too different to make it a fair comparition.

[Quickening]

Great report frogbeastegg! Just got two questions.

I noticed that they have the minimum system requirement at a 1.8 Celeron. Im going to attempt to get it running on my 1.7 Celeron. Was performance on older systems discussed at all?
How much more scalable are the options in comparison to the demo?

[Tamur]

Great writing as usual Froggy. I do hope you get the chance to actually play the game for fun this time round before launching into a guide. Saying of which, I hope the laudatory verbage regarding the manual does not mean you think it is sufficient...?

[Kanamori]

Keenly informative... again.


This may not be the best place to ask, but I've always been interested in making math models for theoretically grounding the results of different types of units against each other, speed prior to engaging, formation, angle prior to/while engaging, forests, hills, or just as many factors as possible. Basically, I'm just trying to figure which elements are most important, without relying on intuition. Has this been done before? Would one be able to figure it w/o relying too much on in-game observation or w/o having any knowledge of programming?

[doc_bean]

Great little preview/review

[geala]

Nice review. I received the game yesterday and played about 30 turns since.

First impression is positive. Graphics are fantastic (but not so important for me). Very good atmosphere. Interesting new features.

Some short remarks:

- Diplomacy is much better than in RTW/MTW at least for lazy guys like me. You get enough hints about the others position to make logic decisions instead of guessing.
Unfortunately an ally is not a real ally yet. Venice became my ally only to attack me (with a rather weak army) 2 turns later.

- AI is better than RTW but sometimes strange yet. For example: I was attacked (as HRE playing on H/H) by the Venetians who sieged Bologna. When I came with an army to relieve the town the Venetians retreated to their bridge which was clever indeed. But next turn AI sent 4 troops (only spearmen) away without any reason. I attacked: in the following battle the 4 units of spear militia stand still and took the rain of arrows of my four bowmen troops without any movement. I had 3 units of spearmen and a general in addition; in RTW AI would have withdrawn from the battlefield in such a situation to minimize casualties which would have been much better.

- Frogs remarks about the performance give me something to think of. I myself was a bit disappointed in some situations. I had a battle in a wooden area with 4 units of mine against 3 enemy units and I had to significantly lower the settings. I have a relatively new pc with Intel C2D 2,4 Ghz, a GF 7950 FX2 and 2 MB RAM which is presumably a bit more than the average.

- I am angry about the fact that the stats are not longer in normal txt-files (didn't know this before because I didn't play the demo). That makes even primitive modding more difficult for pc-dummies like me. Fortunately thanks to notepad I could kill the green arrows otherwise I would have stopped playing. But in RTW it was more easy.

Overall it will not be to negative. I am very eager to play more at least.

[hoom]

ppl should only compare graphics/UI to RTW because it's the most recent product. and everythin' else is way too different to make it a fair comparition.

This is actually an important issue.

Many many TW veterans were unhappy with how RTW compared to STW & MTW*.
If a comparison between RTW & M2TW shows much to be very different in a good way, particularly if it makes more sense to compare with MTW then the right sorts of changes must have been made because many people were expecting M2TW to be pretty much just RTW with Medieval themed skins.

* actually RTR PE on the BI engine with Candelarius' Extended Realism mod & a couple of my own tweaks is currently giving me much joy in ways that STW & MTW never could.
But then thats the point too, I'm running a modified version of the 2.3 version of a mod that runs on beta 1.7 version of a mod that is a conversion between official patch versions of version 6.3 of a mod for RTW & I find anything less a let down.
Which just goes to show how far from the mark RTW was.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Keenly informative... again.


This may not be the best place to ask, but I've always been interested in making math models for theoretically grounding the results of different types of units against each other, speed prior to engaging, formation, angle prior to/while engaging, forests, hills, or just as many factors as possible. Basically, I'm just trying to figure which elements are most important, without relying on intuition. Has this been done before? Would one be able to figure it w/o relying too much on in-game observation or w/o having any knowledge of programming?

You need a patient MP partner It's still in game observation though...

Louis,

[AussieGiant]

Thanks for those very well written words Froggirl. It sounds very positive.

No need to respond...just play away, and get back to us later

[-Isapostolos-]

I have the game since yesterday, although only yesterday I had the time to play. I can say that I too was pretty skeptical at first when the game was announced, because RTW was pretty much diappointing to me. The main problem for me was not the AI, lack of historical accuracy or the numerous other problems that were present, but mainly the lack of atmosphere which namely shogun and mtw did have.

The one thing I'd like to say is that this game really captures the feel and atmosphere of the era in so many ways, which really makes the game very enjoyable. One of the important contributors to this atmosphere are definantly the voices; there are so many more of them now! And of high quality! Some examples: When I had captured the Venetian Doge I was offered to ransom, release or execute him (just RTW). When I held my cursor over these options, I could hear a guy speaking with emotion and in Italian accent comment on my possible decision e.g. release: "Yes, yes! You would be gracious and noble to do so!" Or something in that sense. And when I held it over Ransom: "yes we can pay, we have the money, you would make a wise decision!" When I held the cursor over execute, a could really notice the Venetians despair and horror :).
All characters on the map now have an appropriate reaction ready: I think the Venetian army leader remembered my chivalrious behaviour for releasing some prisoner for no ransom, when he said "We seek a fair engagment, my honourable foe".
When you click on a rebel army it said "you are not mein Kaiser!" (I'm playing the HRE) and a heretic told me that the pope was a liar.
Add to that the lovely movies, the comment of the story telling monk on world events, the music, inquistors picking on my family members and priests and burning them at the stake.

All in all, this game really is much more emmersive then RTW probably ever could hope to be. Congratulations to CA for doing a job well done.

p.s. I can confirm that I ahd similar experiences as Frogbeastegg, kudos for writing such a nice review!