Hooked on the detail

**Didz** · 03-20-2007, 11:03

Has anyone else noticed the little details that occur during the battles and get fixated with watching them play out?

I suspect these are nothing but game glitches but I find them totally fascinating and can't help watching them play out, even to the point of ignoring the rest of the battle.

For example: in a recent seige of Sophia the Mongol army was getting flensed by my archers and crossbowmen from the castle walls and taking heavy losses. Suddenly, one of the Mongol infantry archers left his unit and rushing forward placed himself in the open ground between the two lines, closely followed by a second guy who took up position slightly behind him.

These two archers then proceeded to load and fire carefully at my walls whilst being pelted by just about every arrow and bolt within range. They stood there for what seemed like ages before the second guy finally got hit and went down. The first one carried on for even longer before finally getting hit and sinking to the floor. Just two more corpses amongst the hundreds but slightly apart from all the others.

I tend to watch for these sort of incidents now and its amazing how frequently they occur.

**sapi** · 03-20-2007, 11:13

As you said, they may not be intended, but they definitely add to the atmosphere

**Didz** · 03-20-2007, 11:41

The funniest thing I've ever seen involved a unit of Turkish infantry and a seige ladder. The Turks had climbed the ladder and attacked my spearmen on the walls, but had come off worse and decided to run away, by climbing back down the ladder.

My spearmen in turn decided to chase them, but not by climbing down the ladder after them. Instead they ran down from the walls out the gate and attacked them as they reached the bottom of the ladder.

At which point the Turks turned and began to climb up the ladder again. This time the spearmen decide to chase them up the ladder and so the battle ended with the Turks on the wall and my spearmen assaulting them from below.

**gardibolt** · 03-20-2007, 16:13

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

**Didz** · 03-20-2007, 16:24

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** · 03-20-2007, 18:33

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** · 03-20-2007, 20:51

Originally Posted by 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).

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** · 03-20-2007, 20:59

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** · 03-20-2007, 22:35

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** · 03-20-2007, 23:37

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 ;).

**Didz** · 03-21-2007, 10:37

@Bobo: Cool I've never seen Aztec's in the game before so I'll have to keep my eyes open if my Venetian explorers head out for the New World.

The idle soldier animations can be quite amusing, lots of stretching, yawning, coughing, nervous weapon cleaning and scratching of bottoms.

The name on the gravestones in the churchyard is Scott Lowther btw. He is the campaign programmer apparently and has buried himself there.

I was watching one of my Italian Militia Spear units defending a Milan street against a Milanese counter assault last night. They were under attack by the enemies General Body Guard backed up by an enemy spear unit. On the far right of the line a gap appeared where an enemy cavarlyman had spurred hard into the formation and then died, and into the gap ran a Milanese spearman. He sort of rushed forward and then realised he was all on his own near the back of my formation and stopped as if unsure what to do. I'm sure what I saw next was one of my spearmen rush forward and give this guy what looked like a hefty kick up the arse which sent him sprawling, he seemed to try and get up again and then just decided to lay there and two of his mates rushed over to take his place. It may just have been a trick of the graphic's but it looked convincing enough.