Hey, what happened to my military reforms?

[bovi]

So guys, what would it take to make it even more obvious that the guy in the corner wants to tell you something?

Say it:
1) Along with the campaign difficulty on the faction selection screen?
2) On the faction leader's trait?

Any other suggestions?

[Mouzafphaerre]

.

Along with the campaign difficulty on the faction selection screen

Logical.
.

[Gothic]

Maybe you could make a very small sound file with a voice saying "Don't forget to click the advisor!" play up at the start or loadup of a campaign. It's going to be difficult to miss something coming out your speakers. :)

[Mediolanicus]

Unless you stubbornly hear "Don't ffevergt click the advisor" each time...

You could put in on the initial loading screen... Even on a top notch PC it can take up to 5 minutes before you get to the main menu.
They are bound to have seen it by then!

[Pode]

-Add the FAQ to the quote library for loading.
- ditto for the library of loading splash screens.

[PershsNhpios]

Name the capitol of every faction, "ClickAdvisor"?
Perhaps in a special optional patch.

[bovi]

Thanks to Pode for a good suggestion, I've done just that right now. Also, I'll add the reminder on the faction selection unless anyone in the team objects.

[Kολοσσός]

Undaunted by the wasted campaign, I restarted the campaign from the beginning with the script on. The problem is that the script slows the strategy map down to the point where the game is almost unplayable because scrolling and the cursor are affected. It doesn't begin immediately after loading but appears some time later. I turned the strategy map bit depth down from 32-bit to 16-bit but it didn't help.

Here are my system specs:

Pentium 4 3.4 GHz
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM @ 400MHz
128MB PCI Express x16 GeForce 7900 GT 256 MB
Windows XP Home Edition
Sound Blaster Live!

[bovi]

Actually the game is suffering from a memory leak, but the script is definitely slowing the game down and your 2GB RAM should be just fine. There are tips to make the game run faster, recently talked about. I think you'll find a link concerning it within the first two pages of this forum at least. Otherwise, forum search is your friend.

[Tellos Athenaios]

You use a Pentium IV processor, which might seem like a robust choice (with it's 3.4Ghz) it actually gets hardly the amount of work done you'd be expecting from the heat. In fact, I'd almost doubt that your processor even uses the max capacity of your RAM...

Your CPU is definitely the bottle-neck (which is bad news, because it would be hard to find worthwile upgrades using the same socket nowadays), but the good news is that this problem may alleviate itself after some time though (it must first attempt and fail to load the script into the RAM, which always causes a (slight) dent in performance, but only occurs once in a session). Finally you might benefit from a faster Hard-drive as well (more rpm for instance).

--

EDIT: And most likely lowering any GFX settings will not really help, for the simple reason that your GPU is more than capable to process all the requests and therefore your GFX part of the game hardly requires the CPU to do much work.

[overweightninja]

Undaunted by the wasted campaign, I restarted the campaign from the beginning with the script on. The problem is that the script slows the strategy map down to the point where the game is almost unplayable because scrolling and the cursor are affected. It doesn't begin immediately after loading but appears some time later. I turned the strategy map bit depth down from 32-bit to 16-bit but it didn't help.

That actually sounds to me like the juttery campaign map problem that affects us all. Next time it happens try selecting a unit in a settlement, then moving the unit outside of the settlement. This always sets things back to normal for me.
Hope that helps if it is the problem you're having!

Also as an aside, while Tellos Athenaios is correct in the CPU being a bottleneck, it's still perfectly capable of running EB, i personally ran a p4 3.06 until recently with no problems whatsoever.

And so I don't get too off topic, cracking suggestion there from Pode, good to see its been done

Cheers

[Spvrrina Vestricivs]

And no cheating.

So no autocalc battles (not that I trust the autocalc anyway, did that once and lost too many men even though I won) and no sitting there doing nothing and hitting "End Turn". Anything else?

Remember, Spvrrina Vestricivs, he said deserve a cookie, not actually getting one. Still, it may be worth it just to experience the feeling of deserving one...

That'll do for me. I'm at 136BC in my 0.81a Romani campaign and I want to finish it before getting 1.0 and playing a Casse campaign, so I might as well go for the long haul.

As for the script activation reminder, how about adding one on the save game loading screen as well, just in case? (Sorry if that's already been suggested).

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Internautus III, you have slighty better specs than me. Turning off campaign-map shadows worked wonders for me.

So no autocalc battles (not that I trust the autocalc anyway, did that once and lost too many men even though I won) and no sitting there doing nothing and hitting "End Turn". Anything else?

With autocalc, the computer simulates the same stupid thing that he does as AI in an actual battle-map battle: letting your cavalry frontally charge at the enemy... That kinda kills autocalc for me.

[Kολοσσός]

BTW, if you're frustrated because people are failing to notice the advisor avatar as he reminds them to activate the script it is because experienced Total War players are conditioned to ignore that character. When you've played RTW or MTWII for a couple years you're used to that avatar flashing all the time offering gaming advice experienced players don't need anymore. After a while the brain filters out and ignores that image. It's a simple fact of how the human central nervous system works. The only reason you can get true compliance is if you pop the message in the very center of the screen where it obscures something the player needs to see or perhaps program a message that won't permit the player to resume the campaign at all-unless the script is activated.

[mcantu]

So guys, what would it take to make it even more obvious that the guy in the corner wants to tell you something?

Say it:
1) Along with the campaign difficulty on the faction selection screen?
2) On the faction leader's trait?

Any other suggestions?

In RTR: TIC we have a green circle draw around the show me how button with a red arrow pointing to it. Then a mouse graphic superimposes on it with a left-click animation...

[Pode]

Thanks to Pode for a good suggestion, I've done just that right now.

OMG! I actually contributed something to EB! That's the best thing I've heard all week!

As for stratmap speed, I simply had to go back to the vanilla sea graphics, much as I loved the new ones. That made a world of difference, so I'd suggest you start there.

[Respenus]

I agree that experienced player do tend to have a blind spot, I have it when I mess around with ForceDiplomacy minimod and I'm not an experienced player at all.

Yet why would someone with so many game hours of experience even leave it turned on? Why not just turn it off? It would save you a lot of trouble while you're playing at let your brain see the full image again (not that you can turn it of for EB script).

[Dyabedes of Aphrodisias]

OMG! I actually contributed something to EB! That's the best thing I've heard all week!

As for stratmap speed, I simply had to go back to the vanilla sea graphics, much as I loved the new ones. That made a world of difference, so I'd suggest you start there.

That must be a placebo, because changing back to the original graphics shouldn't change anything speed-wise, given that the file size is the same...

[Pode]

That must be a placebo, because changing back to the original graphics shouldn't change anything speed-wise, given that the file size is the same...

Huh. I've certainly suffered from worse delusions before (good grades matter, work hard and you'll get ahead, women like nice men, etc.), but I'd have sworn by this one. My video setup is somewhat . . special . . . though, so it may have something to do with the adventures signal has to go through to get rendered on my monitor(s). Or it may just all be in my head. If so it'll keep the voices company

[bovi]

Yet why would someone with so many game hours of experience even leave it turned on? Why not just turn it off?

That's the thing, the default is turned off advice, and we've made it so the EB advisor still pops up as what he says is actually important. And his popping up when disabled might be another indication that you should check what he says once...

[blacksnail]

The old sea texture does not improve the speed whatsoever. However, the new sea texture makes any existing slowdown or stuttering obvious. You still have it with the old sea texture, it's just not immediately noticeable because you can't watch the clouds seem so uncertain about heading east.

[bovi]

In RTR: TIC we have a green circle draw around the show me how button with a red arrow pointing to it. Then a mouse graphic superimposes on it with a left-click animation...

Hey, that's a good idea too, I almost missed it. Would you mind saying how it is done (possibly Atilius knows already, but I don't)?

[blacksnail]

Play the Vanilla tutorial and you'll see it - it's all in there as part of the tutorial code.

We may want to fire off a first turn event as well.

[bovi]

Oh, okay, I had forgotten all about that. Obviously it had to be used in vanilla, or they wouldn't have made the functionality .

[beatoangelico]

Fourth Age Total War uses a "buiding", in every fucking city on the map, called "Important Information" (or something similar) with vital infos listed on

[blacksnail]

We don't have the buildings to spare, unfortunately.