Demo Discussion Thread

[Rhyfelwyr]

What tactics did you use for this battle?

I deployed one unit of horse artillery at the central hill, where the gap in the forest is. The other one was deployed at the near end of the main valley, using a hill for elevation. I sent my light infantry forward first, straight up the central valley. My Hessian Infantry followed them, while the Line Infantry marched into the woods on the central hill, since I thought that might give them cover while they wait for the others to cross the river.

Meanwhile, I sent my Highlanders, Granadiers, and a unit of Line Infantry round the 'alternate' route, with the Hussars right behind them. I let the main opposing forces exchange artillery fire while this group crossed the undefended river crossing point, and took out a couple of units of US infantry. A few more came at my men, but they were sent one at a time (slightly disappointing AI there), and were routed quickly. Just when I was marching this force to take out George Washington, he went forward to join his main force. To my shock, the main US force crossed the main river crossing at this point. I had some men on the central hill and quickly formed my Hessians into a line in the valley, and they mopped up the US fairly comfortably. Soon after, my Hessians crossed the river and engaged the remaining forces with their melee attack. By this point I was rushing the Hussars and Dragoons right round that bit in the river that sticks out, smacking right into the rear of the remaining US forces.

In the end, it was a fairly comfortable win, but great fun nonetheless!

[Sir Beane]

And now the server issues begin.

I got to %30 before my download stopped. Now it says it's 'updating' and went down to %0

My friend over in Scotland reported a similar thing happening at almost exactly the same time.

ITS AS IF A MILLION FANBOYS SUDDENLY CRIED OUT IN PAIN

Same problem on my end. How can it be updating if it hasn't even downloaded? Anyone got any ideas on what's going on?

[ToeAndno]

Pause the download and then resume

[Meneldil]

First comments make me feel like a sad panda.

Furthermore, I'm not really found of the battle aspect of the TW serie, and this demo apparently only offer a few battle tutorials. Too bad.

[Sheogorath]

Pause the download and then resume

Yup, that starts the download again.

Still doesn't bring the % back, though. Eh, oh well. It's going at a decent rate.

I'm thinking Steam assumed the download finished normally and is counting the rest of the demo as an 'update' to the partial download. I recall this happened to me once before...so it should be alright.

[peacemaker]

GAH 47.8 kb/s download speed...Im dying with excitement but am also worried about what some comments have been said....

[Sir Beane]

GAH 47.8 kb/s download speed...Im dying with excitement but am also worried about what some comments have been said....

You aren't the only one who is worried. The fact that the demo is taking ages to download only makes things worse.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I've had similar problems with the time loading screens take, and the battles have been a bit laggy, even on Low settings. Also, has anyone else gotten crashes playing naval battles?

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Just had a quick go at both battles.
Controls were unfamiliar, so I struggled more with that then the enemy. No giving orders when paused? That can't be right! The AI didn't seem to suck, which is nice.

The naval game was a huge let down. I expected an arcadish approach but wasn't prepared for what I saw. Overly manoeuvrable ships (and not a little, think handbreak turn manoeuvring) and the French sailed dead into the wind at a fair pace while my man o war were crawling along at what should have been the ideal angle (just to the side of the wind direction) Hope the modders can fix this because it's a mess.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Forgot to say that the Naval battle froze up on me too. Also, menus are choppy.
Smooth gameplay though, even if I had to turn stuff down a notch more then expected.

[Brighdaasa]

lol, benelux servers: ~30 k, US east coast servers ~700k, go figure...

[Daimon]

GAH 47.8 kb/s download speed...Im dying with excitement but am also worried about what some comments have been said....

Try switching to a other region, I switched from Holland (Benelux) to USA East Coast and it boosted my download bij 300 kb/s (I was downloading around the 150 kb/s before)

[Hosakawa Tito]

Both battles played smoothly for me. Load times were no different than COH, under a minute. Melee animations were a bit weird as Monk stated, but my system handled it just fine. My specs:

Processor: IntelCore 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz 12 MB Cache 1333MHz FSB
Power Supply: 750 Watt Multi-GPU
Graphics Processor: Dual 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT
Memory: 4GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHZ - 2 x 2048MB
Motherboard: NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
System Drive: 500 GB SATA 3Gb/s 7,200 16MB Cache
Dual Optical Drives: 20x Dual Layer Burner, 4x Dual Layer Blu-ray Burner
Killer K1 Gaming Network Interface Card

[Darklife]

Your Killer NIC card made my day.

I wonder whether there's a significant difference between a quad and a dual.
E8400
2GB RAM(the other two is being serviced)
GTX 280
Judging by the rig above I should be fine, although my RAM will probably hold the game back somewhat.

[Monk]

Both battles played smoothly for me. Load times were no different than COH, under a minute. Melee animations were a bit weird as Monk stated, but my system handled it just fine. My specs:

Processor: IntelCore 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz 12 MB Cache 1333MHz FSB
Power Supply: 750 Watt Multi-GPU
Graphics Processor: Dual 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT
Memory: 4GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHZ - 2 x 2048MB
Motherboard: NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
System Drive: 500 GB SATA 3Gb/s 7,200 16MB Cache
Dual Optical Drives: 20x Dual Layer Burner, 4x Dual Layer Blu-ray Burner
Killer K1 Gaming Network Interface Card

Single core here and the demo runs horrible on it. The actual battle phase is fine but load times are insane, i've never seen a game optimized so poorly. The only one that comes close was The Witcher before they completely re-tooled and optimized it with the "Enhanced Edition."

[Monsieur Alphonse]

First impressions

- As other have stated loading times are very slow. Not five minutes but slow enough to make a campaign taking a lot of time. When I chanced the resolution the screen went blank for more then a minute.
- At first there was something wrong, because my keyboard didn't function properly. Instead of someone out with the W key, my artillery unit started to withdraw. restarting the game solved the problem.
- I set the units on ultra large but there were still 80 men per unit of infantry. Does this only apply to the demo or is this the new unit size?
- Played the battle and defeated the Americans. I let the three Hessians and one light skirmisher unit defend the ford and moved the rest of the army to the other. The AI started to attack me with single units which were easy routed. I ordered my there Hessians to charge the artillery and the AI counter attacked with some line units. One AI unit formed a square when attacked by infantry (not very smart). In the end only an average victory because I didn't see the AI move more units to the other front and my Hessians were routed.
- graphics look nice, not that Private Ryan like gloomy.
- Sound is soft. I had to increase the volume.

I hope this all will improve.

[Fisherking]

I started it up and it was a bit slow but nothing like 5 min. It was roughly 2min. The intro started well but became jittery and unstable after the ships.

When I got to the user screen I went to options and checked. It was on custom and had read the machine pretty well, but not wanting to take chances from what was said before I turned them down a bit.

When I left the options however it CTDed. I restarted the demo and skipped the intro…was still a bit jittery though. I went through the two tutorials ok with a load time of about 1min 15sec. For each. Leaving the battles took as long as getting in however.

I tried the naval battle first but was a bit frustrated by the new interface and quit to come here and see how thing were for everyone else.

my rig is a dell XPS M1710 with a few upgrades.

[Greyblades]

OK I finished downloading about 15 mins ago and I have to say the loading screens are a little longwinded but for me it has been more of a minor wait not the five minute strain the others have been experiencing.
I have done the naval tutorial and tried the land tutorial. Well I say tried the land one but
I ended up staring at a flickering loading screen while the instructor said... something I wasn’t really listening.
My first thought on the naval tutorial... holysheeshkebabthatshipandsealookscool!!! Ahem... well the camera is unfamiliar and a little sluggish and I have to say the sails do clip a bit and why is the sea clipping through the deck? It looks like its taken in water.

[Monk]

You guys who are experiencing "Not bad" load times:

What do your specs look like?

Single-core systems? Dual core?

I need some info!

[Sisco Americanus]

My expectations were a bit more muted than many of yours, it seems, but I found it rather enjoyable. I was worried at first that my computer couldn't hack it as it performed horrendously during the land tutorial, even when I turned down the visual settings. I shut down a few processes and loaded her back up to play Brandywine Creek, and it ran pretty well at high settings (although I could see throttling back to medium being necessary for the full game. For the record, my computer specks:

2.4 ghz quad-core
2 gig ram
GeForce 8500 GT 512 MB
Vista 32

If figure the processor is probably fine, but I'm getting some bottlenecking at high settings with the graphics card and the ram, given the demands of Vista. The load times were a bit long, but under 1.5 minutes, usually about a minute.

Anyway, I didn't play through the whole thing as I wanted to just get a feel for it and then try the naval battle before I went back to working on my thesis (taking a coffee break now ), but It's about what I expected. It's not a terribly realistic representation of 18th century warfare, and it definitely feels like a total war game... but neither is it Imperial Glory or whatever that horrid game was called. Overall, I thought it was fun, and it fulfills a desire I've had since I first played the first MTW-- a Total war game set in the age of the musket. The animations may have been a bit sloppy, but I rarely zoom in close enough to tell; I have a hard enough time keeping track of all my units as it is, especially when I split my force as I did in the Brandywine Creek battle.

As for the battle itself, I began by attempting to place my artillery, which I attempted to position in the exact same locations described by Rhyfelwyr, above. Unfortunately, just as one of my batteries moved atop the hill overlooking the clearing directly in front of the main crossing, it came under fire by the U.S. artillery which scored a direct hit within the first few shots: a blow right down the front of one of my still-limbered pieces, taking out the entire team and the piece itself. The other team (there are only two pieces per horse arty battery-- don't know if that's just how things are or if that's specific to the demo) got spooked and took off, reforming some time later in the woods behind my general. After that I just sort of screwed around to see what I could see. I sent the light infantry into the woods directly across the creek from the main U.S. force with orders to skirmish (as someone else said, this didn't spread them out at all, which surprised me; maybe I was doing something wrong), and sent the Hessiens up behind them to occupy the main force while I sent the rest of my units around the other side. Watched the fireworks for a bit before exiting out. I'll play more later.

I will say that I can tell I will enjoy placing my artillery and watching it tear up enemy ranks; I can't wait untill I have more substantial field pieces at my disposal than four 6-pndrs of horse arty! CA seems to have managed to implement the use of formations well while still retaining the Total War feel and customizability; you can still spread your line out thin or give them more depth. I'll give it another play later tonight and see how it goes.

[Greyblades]

Monk my system specs are: Intel dual core 6320 1.86ghz, 2gigs of ram and a Gforce 8800GT
And somehow I managed to play the sea battle on ultra and it was only a little jittery. I have no clue how.

[Sheogorath]

Monk my system specs are: Intel dual core 6320 1.86ghz, 2gigs of ram and a Gforce 8800GT
And somehow I managed to play the sea battle on ultra and it was only a little jittery. I have no clue how.

Computers are mysterious things sometimes. I think it's a conspiracy, myself.
I bet the elephants are behind it.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

I wonder .. will my pc allow me at least see the main loading screen?
CPU: 2-Intel Pentium 4, 2992MHz
RAM:512MB
Video:RADEON X300/X550 Series Secondary
OS: Windows XP Home Edition, Service Pack 3

[ConnMon]

I wonder .. will my pc allow me at least see the main loading screen?
CPU: 2-Intel Pentium 4, 2992MHz
RAM:512MB
Video:RADEON X300/X550 Series Secondary
OS: Windows XP Home Edition, Service Pack 3

I wouldn't bet on that. You need more RAM, among other things.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

oh well.. since I'm a lazy upgrader then I guess I'll have to buy a new computer then..

[Zatoichi]

Finally got the demo downloaded and installed after 4 attempts. I didn't have long load times - pretty much a minute at most. I was able to run most stuff on High at 1680 x 1050. I've got a Core 2 Duo 6700 (2.67Ghz), 2 Gigs of RAM and an ATI 4850 graphics card on XP SP3.

The battles were pretty smooth, with a 0.5 second pause every 20 seconds or so. One thing I couldn't get working were the horse drawn guns - they'd deploy but never fire - half the time the horses seemed to be in front of the guns. I guess I was just unlucky with my placement. I had to increase the mouse movement speed because the default scroll speed was like wading through treacle - even holding down shift didn't get the camera moving as fast as default on M2TW. But it was fine after I altered it.

I'm going to go back and try the land battle again to improve on my initial close victory (handy tip - when splitting your forces, don't completely forget about the other half of your army).

I've not tried the ship battle yet, only the tutorial, but that was hectic enough for me with one ship, so I'm not sure how I'll cope with 6, let alone 20 in the full game...

It's definitely whetted my appetite for the full game, which is pretty much what a demo is supposed to do.

[pyradyn]

I went into my CPU usage and Steam is using a lot of it, I downloaded FEAR 2 Demo and I am having the same problems constant lagging FPS is horrible however the Normal game from CD is working just fine no lag at all. Thus my experience with steam has not changed since the beginning. I only wish I could run with out steam. Since ETW does not require steam to play if on hard disk I think I should be fine. I ended somethings and my load times are about a min.

[Divine Wind]

I've just completed the tutorials for land & sea, and won a victory at Brandywine.

System specs:

2.33 Ghz duo core.
2GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce 8600GS
Vista 32

1. Main menu screen has horrible lag (the background cinematic seems to have this problem too, intended?). The menus take a couple of clicks to register where you are trying to go.

2. Loading times for the tutorials and the Brandywine battle are not that bad. I waited a maximum time of 2 minutes tops with my PC.

3. Land tutorial is horribly laggy, and makes things a click fest. No mention of formations, or anything...nothing about squares, stakes, grenades, ammunition etc. You fight a couple of formations of militia and thats it.

4. Naval tutorial is nicely done, albiet a little too lacking in detail as above (nothing about wind advantage). No lag what so ever on the map itself, and the water looks absolutely fantastic. The crewmen climb around on the ropes and rigging, and the ship design is magnificent.

5. Brandywine battle loaded pretty fast, and for some reason did not have the horrible lag like the land tutorial had.

I won't go into too much detail to spoil it for you but here are a few things that I picked up on with the AI.

a. AI seemed to use skirmishers pretty well. They kept engaging any of my units that became seperated from the main army, as well as stay at a distance where they could shoot me, and my chaps could not return fire. Thumbs up!

b. Enemy artillery, did not move for the entire scenario, even though they were completely flanked, and did have cavalry to transport them. Thumbs down.

c. Enemy general did not stay with the main army, but ended up standing next to the cannons for the entire duration. Thumbs down.

d. As I flanked the enemy, their entire infantry force gathered together in good lines, along the only route I could reach the guns. Unfortunately the majority of the enemy cavalry did not join them. Thumbs up and down.

e. I moved both my 6 pd cannons onto a small hill in front of the main force and continued to fire for about 10 minutes with no enemy AI reaction. They just stood there and took it. Thumbs down.

f. I advanced my line infantry (5 units in total) towards the bulk of their lines in good order. Unfortunately the enemy did not match my armies good order, and came at me in pretty piecemeal fashion. This allowed me to bring up my elite infantry (grenadiers, highlanders) and flank the enemy from a small wood on the right flank, which was also elavated and brought the battle on the right to a quick end. The AI left was a bit more organised and they did put up a decent fight, until my right came with the hammer blow. Thumbs up, and down.

g. The AI had a townhouse right in the middle of their position, and they did not fortify it. Thumbs down.

h. When approached at short range the enemy cannons used canister to good effect, and the effect on morale was huge. Thumbs up.

Thats it for now. Time for the navy battle! If anyone has anything they want me to test or try, let me know.

[NagatsukaShumi]

Its going to take forever to be frank, may be leaving it overnight.

EDIT - A point to consider, the demo shouldn't be seen as representative of the game, unless they've specified its a very recent build.

If lagging etc was a huge issue, a prevewi/review somewhere would have picked it up surely?

[Rhyfelwyr]

Forgot to say that the Naval battle froze up on me too.

Do you mean went really laggy, or actually crash?

Because if this is happening to several people, it may be an issue worth looking into. I've had two crashes in just a few minutes play on naval battles, but I've never crashed on the land battles...