[Is there a] Jan/Feb Preview[?]

[Tellos Athenaios]

Probably the future equivalent of an EB-Proof rig nowadays?

No, honestly how is anyone supposed to know? On one hand the M2TW engine comes with the assumption of a much more potent PC than does the RTW one. (AFAIK the optimization towards lower-end-of-the-market system isn't pursued as far as was the case with RTW which runs on minimum requirements comparable to that of an age-old semi-3D strategy game we all know as 'Age of Empires'... )

On the other hand the entire scripting department seems now much more smooth, and much more integrated design: no more fancy work-arounds for the lack of persistency with event-counters to name just one big obstacle which causes the reforms to be far more complexed in EB1 than would ever have needed to be the case with the improved support of scripting for M2TW. Another is that it appears at least one big chunk of movement code & spawning code for client rulers and similar events can be immensely simplified because of the support of abstract names (labels) and more abstract commands for controlling characters on the campaign map. (Think of this: you can name a character by a label, and let the enigne do the gruesome task of keeping track of his actual in-game name. Then you can move him by using the label, rather than the actual name.)

[cmacq]

I get the idea, thanks for th help.

[General Appo]

So I assume then that my current computer that can easily run MTW2 with highest settings and many even newer games with equally high settings should be able to run EB2? Though from my experience the processor is more important when it comes to handling the script. But 2 years is a long time, who knows what will happen. Maybe (Zalmoxis forbid) I will only have a weak work laptop, or some other horrible thing. Maybe I´ll be a billionarie with a personal supercomputer that can run the entire worlds economy while still giving me zero load times in EB2. Or maybe mankind will have been wiped out.
That would be horrible, especially if I survived, and had to ponder for the rest of my life on how great a finished EB2 would have been. Oh horrid thought, may the never come true.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I would assume so to. Besides: it's all a matter of personal preferences in the end: some people complain about a minute of loading times, others happily wait out 20 mins just to get to the loading screen.

Just a little thing which is of actual worth helping you, methinks: with EB1, even though you might've set the unit details setting to low, you have actually been playing with highest detail possible. The reason is that EB1 for just about every (or just every) unit offers you only the highest level skin; and does not provide for the lower levels. This is something to keep in mind, since quite honestly I wouldn't be surprised if the same eventually goes for EB2. (~500 skins to do instead of ~500 times 5 levels of detail, you see...)

[cmacq]

So I assume then that my current computer that can easily run MTW2 with highest settings and many even newer games with equally high settings should be able to run EB2? Though from my experience the processor is more important when it comes to handling the script. But 2 years is a long time, who knows what will happen. Maybe (Zalmoxis forbid) I will only have a weak work laptop, or some other horrible thing. Maybe I´ll be a billionarie with a personal supercomputer that can run the entire worlds economy while still giving me zero load times in EB2. Or maybe mankind will have been wiped out.
That would be horrible, especially if I survived, and had to ponder for the rest of my life on how great a finished EB2 would have been. Oh horrid thought, may the never come true.

You digress.