Hooked on the detail

[gardibolt]

I really need to upgrade my video card so I can see some of this stuff going on.

[Didz]

Wow! your video card must be really bad if you can't see the movement of units and individual soldiers.

You'll be telling me next you can't see the pet dog's, small children and semi-clad women that follow them about on the battlefield.:-)

[Bobo]

I believe that when you attack that unit, your arrows tend to target the center, so men positioned at extremes have a very low probability of getting hit. A similar thins happens when you attack a running/routing unit with cavalry, where one or two men are running far behind. Your cavalry will then run in between those subgroups hitting nobody.
Incidentally, have you then also noticed that when they shoot arrows straight up (to get to your men behind walls), they actually aim normally, the arrow actually appears normally, but then the arrow all of a sudden goes straight up? Have you also noticed that sometimes the arrow appears way after the shooting animation (I've seen that with Aztecs).

[Didz]

I believe that when you attack that unit, your arrows tend to target the center, so men positioned at extremes have a very low probability of getting hit. A similar thins happens when you attack a running/routing unit with cavalry, where one or two men are running far behind. Your cavalry will then run in between those subgroups hitting nobody.
Incidentally, have you then also noticed that when they shoot arrows straight up (to get to your men behind walls), they actually aim normally, the arrow actually appears normally, but then the arrow all of a sudden goes straight up? Have you also noticed that sometimes the arrow appears way after the shooting animation (I've seen that with Aztecs).

Hmm! The short answer is no and I suspect this might have more to do with your graphic's settings or processor than the game itself.

Whilst, when fired upon from the front or rear I agree that missile troops tend to aim for the centre of the unit and in particular at the standard bearer so I there do tend to be a higher concentration of missiles in the enemy centre and consequently slightly higher casualties. However, one of the things that actually impresses me about the TotalWar approach to missile fire is that the missiles seem (if not actually) to hit whatever target they hit on an individual basis. Thus, when fired upon from the flank I have seen whole files of enemy cut down simply on that flank. Also, my impression is that it makes a difference where the missile hits the target, I say this because I've noticed that missile fire is far more lethal when fired into a unit from the opposite flank to their shield arm, and also more effective if it hits them when they are at ease with their shields down rather than braced for action.

Even more impressive is the fact that with long range missiles fired at a column of units one behind the other you can actually see the overshot missiles hitting men in the units behind. One of my favourite tricks in STW was to use musketeers to fire into the head of the column stacked up on road waiting to assault a bridge and watch men hundreds of yards back in the column get hit by the spent balls that overshot their mark.

As for aiming, in my game the individual archers/crossbow men in my units can be seen either aiming low to take a direct shot or aiming high for a drop shot. In fact, I use this to decide whether my unit is in an effective firing position as I don't like wasting too many missiles in drop shots particuarly when using crossbows and the easiest way to gauge it is to look at the number of men aiming high in the unit. (Aztec's??? are we talking about the same game?)

Pursuing routing troops I've certainly seen my cavalry run right past and through stragglers, but if you look closely they don't actually ignore them. Those who pass close enough do take a swing at them as they pass and very few actually survive the entire passage of lines. In fact, I've watched individual riders swerve to get a better swing at a target as they pass and I've even watched guys near the back reign in and swing their horse round for a second attempt.

Admittedly I do have my graphic's settings up pretty high and I do tend to zoom in pretty close to the action when things get interesting.

[Didz]

Ok! getting back to the detail.

Has anyone else noticed the name on the gravestones in the graveyard of the small church?

I only noticed it today when my men were marching past on the way to their final assault on the town centre of Milan.

[hoom]

The little individual side combats have always been one of the main charms of the Total War series for me.
I remember watching a few individual Yari Samurai on the flanks do some pretty amazing killing & back then you could go read the text file log that showed individual Honor, kills etc per unit per battle.
Unfortunately you often couldn't be sure exactly which guy you were looking at but it was still way cool

I was hoping with M2TW it would be possible to more clearly present those sorts of stats.

[Bobo]

The idle soldier animations are sometimes pretty nice to watch, too. I think I saw some idle units clean their noses, though I don't recall who.

@Didz: you had me in doubt for a second. But yeah, Aztecs! You can find them in the west after 1492 ;).