The Shield Problem(s)

**Carl** · 01-16-2007, 18:02

Most people's rigs can run huge unit size if they turn off shadows. Shadows are a huge performance hit, and they don't add much to the looks of the game, so I always turn them off.

Mine can run it, but not with full stack armies!

And I don't consider my PC THAT out of date yet, (allthough it DOES need an update). Plus if given a choice between more guys (and the pathing problems it induces), or less men and better graphics and pathing. 'll go for the better graphics.

**Musashi** · 01-16-2007, 19:23

Yeah but shadows are something you don't really even notice, so it's not like it makes the scene much prettier.

My rig is quite out of date, 64 meg GeForce card, 1.7ghz processor, 1.5 gigs of ram, but I can run huge unit sizes with two full stack armies with no problems whatsoever. Even when the men pile into one siege tower.

**Carl** · 01-16-2007, 19:26

Thats really bloody of then as i'm running a 9800pro on an AMD Athalon 3200+ with 1 Gig of ram and theirs no way I could run 2 full stack armies at that size, at least not infantry stacks anyway.

**Musashi** · 01-16-2007, 19:37

Yeah, it seems to like nVidia cards better than ATI cards, from what I've been reading... And it seems to want more than a gig of RAM.

**Carl** · 01-16-2007, 19:39

That probably explains it nicely then. plus of course my processer dosen't have SSE2 which dosen't help.

**Musashi** · 01-16-2007, 19:42

To be fair, my system's a laptop, and Pentium M's are a little sweeter than an equivalent speed P4... But still, my specs are hardly top flight. Especially in terms of VRAM.

But my little mobile GeForce card seems to work shockingly well, better than you'd expect it to, since I was able to play Quake 4 from end to end...

**Blademun** · 01-16-2007, 20:58

Well, fine, what is the professional spear armed infantry unit for that same period then?

Armoured Seargents, Papal Guard, ect. There are probably more that are similar but I can't think of them now. As far as I'm concerned, "Professional Militia" is a Oxymoron, seriously.

Personally, I'd like to see units like the Armoured Seargent, Papal Guard, ect, get a "brace" option to put them up and above the militias so they could actually absorb a head-on cavalry charge. Let Spear militia continue to get bowled over to send home the message that in the early days before professional armies..Knights trully did rule.

Also, to Carl, who's mentioned on several occasions that he wants to merely have the game work as the Devs intended I have this to say..GODS NIPPLES?! Who drank my ale...

And also, we, the paying customers, do not answer to the Devs whims. They answer to us and our desires. Instead of focusing on how to go backwards in game design, why don't we focus more energy on improving this game above and beyond what "The Devs Intended". I know thats probably heresy for questioning the might of our almighty CA gods, but then I'm a protestant..

**PaulTa** · 01-16-2007, 21:26

Originally Posted by Musashi

To be fair, my system's a laptop, and Pentium M's are a little sweeter than an equivalent speed P4... But still, my specs are hardly top flight. Especially in terms of VRAM.

But my little mobile GeForce card seems to work shockingly well, better than you'd expect it to, since I was able to play Quake 4 from end to end...

Not bad. I myself can't run the game with playable framerate on huge unit settings, but that's because I desire quality over quantity, so I crank up the visuals (except for shadows and bloom).

I'm running a 2.8 P4 proc, 1 gig of ddr2 RAM, and a eVga 7900 KO. My next upgrade is going to be another gig of RAM, which I believe is the cause of any woes I might have in MTW2. It seems like a really RAM/Proc intensive game.