Demo Discussion Thread

[Wausser]

Yeah just beat the crap out of the yanks

[MK_MadMick]

Not played demo properly yet. Just messed about and admired the graphics which are superb.
I do have a decent PC.
XP32
4 gig of ram
ATI HD 4800
Intel Quad Core CPU.

I think many peeps will need to do some sort of upgrade to make it run smoothly.
Cant wait for game to come out. I just hope and pray it runs smoothly in multiplayer.

[Monk]

No thats happening to everyone, heck Monk (I think) was complaining about waiting more than 5 minutes to load a tutorial.

Indeed.

I did what greg did and decided to struggle through the constant reloads (and long load times) to try and turn down the options, despite meeting all the requirements.

The result was a bit surprising. Load times are down by two min. Main menu loading takes about 1 min-1.30 and battle loading takes about 1.30 to 2 min. Crazy stuff. It's still a bit of a hassle but not nearly as bad as the 5 min snore-fest I was dealing with when I first installed. Once I actually got to play the demo and enjoy it, it wasn't so bad. Animations are still bugging the crap outta me though.

I'll tinker around some more with options to see if I can find a balance later. It's probably my single-core that's doing it, all you guys reporting nice load times seem to be running dual/quad cores. Ah well. The battles run great and I can live with 1-3 min loads.

[Sir Beane]

Which animations in paticular bothered you Monk? Personally I thought that infantry seemed to do quite well (they certainly responded to orders faster). It was cavalry that annoyed me, they seemed to move much, much too quickly for my tastes.

The mount/dismount animation worked well I thought. And the cannon loading and firing animations weren't too bad either.

I'm glad you got the demo to run more smoothly. If you play it on a high - power machine you can really appreciate it a lot more I think. It's a shame CA didn't optimise it very well.

[Wausser]

hmm I keep getting close defeats on the naval battle, anyone gut suggestions to beat those wine drinking lads?

[Sir Beane]

hmm I keep getting close defeats on the naval battle, anyone gut suggestions to beat those wine drinking lads?

Try splitting your line in two and attempting to get a ship on either side of each French ship. Taking two full broadsides on eitehr side should demoralise them nice and quickly.

ps. This tactic is theoretical, I haven't yet tried it in the naval battle.

[Husar]

Well, I played it on my notebook with the following specs:

Core 2 Duo 2GHz
2GB DDR2
256MB 8600M GT
1920*1200 24"

and it works, on medium without AA or anything like that.
It looks a bit worse than M2TW does on the same machine IIRC and it's not completely fluid on these settings, but it works. May buy a new desktop PC sometime this year but we will see.

I wasn't too impressed by the americans, they kept sending single units to intercept my forces so I easily overwhelmed them, they got my artillery but then I didn't really need it anyway.
Got a bit confused by the two fronts(I scroll around less when the game lags a little bit) so that helped them. In the end they had only a few units around that farmhouse while I had not lost much more than most of the light infantry, most of my hussars and some dragoons, then I just went there and shot them dead with half my infantry, not really needing the rest.
Well, it was just one battle, I'd expect a bit more in the campaign though.

The sea battle I lost the first time around, then won the second time, I'm sort of missing a follow feature that makes one ship follow the other in the same path, similar to the convoy they start out in.
That ships can almost turn on the spot is also quite weird, you cannot even plan a course around another ship or anything like that and the curved direction arrows are useless because the ships never follow the curve, they turn really tight and the curve becomes straight...
Doesn't mean it can't be fun, but it could be better, if ships actually followed those nice curves for example.

Oh and what I really like is the detail on the ships and how they sink, they seem to sink more realistic than they move.

[Monk]

Which animations in paticular bothered you Monk? Personally I thought that infantry seemed to do quite well (they certainly responded to orders faster). It was cavalry that annoyed me, they seemed to move much, much too quickly for my tastes.

The mount/dismount animation worked well I thought. And the cannon loading and firing animations weren't too bad either.

I'm glad you got the demo to run more smoothly. If you play it on a high - power machine you can really appreciate it a lot more I think. It's a shame CA didn't optimise it very well.

Melee animations are the biggest cringe factor for me. While some render beautifully (it's amazing to see two soldiers lock in combat, slamming their rifles together, trying to stab each other with a bayonet) half the time they don't engage properly and you'll get soldiers gliding about. The charge animations get hung up for a long time on impact too (a problem from m2 and R), and I find it hard to believe that zero troops would die on impact if Hessian line troops charged into them at full speed with their bayonets drawn.

Cavalry troops will sometimes charge right passed a unit they were sent to attack, sometimes continuing to charge into the wild blue yonder for a long time before realizing "Oh wait. I missed by target thirty yards back.

The rest isn't bad, it's really the charge and melee animations that just feel... unfinished. Maybe hoom is right and this is a debug version of the code and we'll see improvements in the final game. I dunno.

I'm glad you got the demo to run more smoothly. If you play it on a high - power machine you can really appreciate it a lot more I think. It's a shame CA didn't optimise it very well.

Indeed.

I'm not as frustrated as I was earlier because I actually got the blasted thing to work. They likely didn't give much time to optimize because they were too busy just getting it to work right. The AI is heavily scripted so I couldn't really get a good look at its capabilities, but I really loved the naval battles. Yeah they are arcadey, but i found them insanely satisfying (double-broadside ftw )

[hoom]

So my flickering UI was either because of the forced AA or AF, much more sensibly behaving with them off.

I well beat the French in Lagos MkII :D

Swept along their line with all my ships in a group following the lead ship in line astern.
The last in line sank the French lead ship as she was turning to double back, 2 surrendered as we went past & I dove the Namur between the 2nd to last & last French ships, giving them both a good raking broadside with solid shot.
Doubled back with the Namur between the two lines, engaging both & with the rest of the squadron coming round the back of the French line.
The French 2nd line all surrendered pretty quick.
I did get the Namur alongside one but it seems to have managed to surrender before there was any boarding.
That left only one of the first French line in the fight (heading away with full sail) but all my ships were facing the wrong way & I had a good muddle to get them around (the automated pathfinding did pretty well here, it does manage to allow collisions but generally seems to maneuvre the ships out of each others way without looking forced)
A lucky long range broadside with chain shot from the Namur dropped the foes mast in the water & the mere sight of my squadron approaching from various directions caused a surrender.

[Argent Usher]

I have only played the tut and the land battle (had some probs with my new steam account and then the european servers were all but my thanx goes to the east coast).

I can only play with 1200x800 (my TFT screen max) but the autodetect decided ultra settings could be easy handled ( Dual Core; 2 gig; MSI GeForce 7900 GTO; XP) so i tried it out and it was Ok.

Contra:

Scripts or AI (there were some weird things as i moved my troops to the spanish enemy (hidden in the wood) nothing happens no reaction of the AI but i can't make damage)

the lightsources still over saturate colors as in MII (especially red and white)

high variance in the quality of the environment (as example the building are barely ok but the scrambled house , the grass vegetation goes from really good -> lousy, same with the pieces of damage)

The units moving all as under Amphetamine maybe I'm just too old.

The demo doesn't includes an unpacker Or ???


Pro:

The game is defintiv an improvement in the TW serie an there is the hope to change again all bugs by the dev teams (CA and modders).



Regards A.U.

[Marten]

hmm I keep getting close defeats on the naval battle, anyone gut suggestions to beat those wine drinking lads?

I splitted my ships in 2 squadrons, first lead by "Namur", second by "Prince". Crossed the french line between second and third ship with the squadrons - 2 french sunk. Then up to the other french line, same procedure.

After that, engage at will and close combat. Captured 4 french ships. The last one was the "Acheron" (nice one CA!) to sink. Unfortunately i lost the "Jersey" - brave men fought very well.

[miniwally]

how do you find out your internet connection sped for steam?

[Monk]

This is actually kinda depressing. My AMD turion x2- dual core 2.1 ghz laptop can run empire swimmingly. Load times are around 45 seconds -1 min. And no i'm not joking.

My poor desktop started having confidence issues when it saw how high i had the graphics up on my lappy. Looks like I was right, the ETW demo is not at all optimized to run on a single-core system. If you have one and meet the requirements, but wonder why you're having such long load times this is likely the case.

[miniwally]

how do you install demo i press install now but nothing happens

[Monk]

how do you install demo i press install now but nothing happens

Try restarting your steam client, as in completely closing it down and then reopening, not just logging off.

[Polemists]

This is actually kinda depressing. My AMD turion x2- dual core 2.1 ghz laptop can run empire swimmingly. Load times are around 45 seconds -1 min. And no i'm not joking

This is actually good news as I have a dual core labtop and was worried it may only run on desktops. Huzzah :)

[Captain Trek]

Frankly, I'm not sure why everyone's having so much trouble with the naval battle... The first time I played it, I throughly trounced the French fleet, forcing three or four of their ships to surrender and sinking the rest, losing none of my own ships (though the admiral's first rate and the second rate took substantial damage)... I guess it may partly have been to do with the fact that I was taking a " chain shot, just sink the bastards!" approach, using nothing but standard cannon fire...

[miniwally]

Try restarting your steam client, as in completely closing it down and then reopening, not just logging off.

still not working

[miniwally]

now it's working :P OMG it's there do i dare try and go on it?

[Monk]

I'm actually loving the naval battle. It's crazy amounts of fun and somehow much more satisfying than the Land battle.

This is actually good news as I have a dual core labtop and was worried it may only run on desktops. Huzzah :)

I'm not sure what it was really. At first my lappy was having horrible load times too, and I almost gave up, but once I tinkered a bit and lowered a few things it ran it can now run it even better than my desktop can. Using much higher settings!

Optimization is a problem that can be fixed, which is the good news. Just look at The Witcher, a game who's loads were longer than this demo's were. Those problems are a thing of the past and it's actually a largely better game because of it. Here's hoping the final product has had a bit more optimization, or if not let's hope CA introduces some fixes in the future.

[miniwally]

how lonjg do you have to wait until you can play it mine said updating for 5 minutes and no progress up a progres bar if there is one

[Polemists]

Well that's why I think it's good the demo is out now because they still have ten days to try and tweak it, and even if that is far to short of a time (aka the copies already sent out to distributors) they can hopefully get a patch up with some quick fixes shortly :)

Hopefully CA is scouring these threads so they know what to fix when the game goes live :)

[miniwally]

wow 7 hours 32 mins updating :O

[pevergreen]

Info on my download: 30 minutes.

[Vlad Tzepes]

First thoughts:

Register with Steam, download and installment - things used to be much more user-friendly in my good 'ol days.
Controls/land battle - switched to MTW style and I'm on familiar ground again.
Terrain is of high importance, nice improvement.
Enviroment looks strange and artificial, buildings quite sketchy. Maybe I'll get used with those?
Shooting range for infantry is shorter than I would have imagined.
AI reacts to flanking, but it wasn't convincing. I moved my entire army over the creek through the ford (Brandywine battle) and AI sent in troops to counterattack one by one (or at most two at a time).
Cavalry dies at frightening rates. Different role from now on.
Grenades make nice video effects but seem to be filled with confetti.
US artillery had sniper abilities. Tried to move mine on higher ground and it was shot to pieces immediately.

Unit icons a little difficult to comprehend, switching through modes (melle, shoot, grenades, un-limber etc) not very intuitive for now (but I assume it's only a matter of my learning curve).
Couldn't figure yet how to occupy a building - is it even possible to storm it?

All in all - I'm pretty sure the final game will be much better. Former TW demos weren't great, either, but I enjoyed the games very much.

Thank you CA and SEGA for your hard work. I'll buy the game.

[Captain Trek]

OK, played the naval battle again and once again I trounced the French fleet without taking a single loss, this time forcing all but one French ship to surrender... Actually, if forcing a ship to surrender means that you take control of it on the campaign map regardless of wether you actually board it or not, then it would seem there is little point in boarding actions... On the other hand, if you don't take control of a surrendering ship unless you board it, then you need to be able to board ships that have surrendered, because in the demo you can't...

[Zatoichi]

It seems like I suck at being an admiral - lots of poor English sailors hanging around Davey Jones' Locker thanks to me.

Do you do the broadside thing, or let your ships fire at will? I've been trying to micromanage the broadside for my ships, but I end up missing or not quite getting the angles right. Either way, I seem to end up being sunk. A lot.

On the land battle side, I'm faring much better (I guess it's because it's so much more familiar after nearly 10 years!) I haven't had the problem with my horse drawn guns not firing like I did first time round - I think it was a minor bug with them being too near trees or something. Now that they are firing, it's such a joy to zoom in and watch them! Ah well, what can I say, I like eye candy.

As for AI tactics in the land battle, I've not see them do too much wrong that overly worries me. So far I've not had them come at me one at a time except when they rally and come back for more punishment. I wish they'd move their cannons when they're in danger though. I've had some very intense fire fights - the grenadiers seem a touch powerful - it's certainly more fun throwing grenades than having them thrown at you.

I've had 2 crashes (1 in each battle) - these occurred right at the start while it was 'setting the scene' before I took control of my units, and were apparently caused by me deciding my rig could handle 2 X anti-aliasing. Turns out I was wrong. Changing it back to 0 stopped the crashes.

So, other than needing to bone up on naval engagements and learning how to manoeuvre my ships, I think I'm ready for the full game now!

[CBR]

For naval combat:

I don't really like the concept of giving destinations instead of a course. If things become a bit hectic you have ships stopping up instead of just continuing as you forget to give them new order.

Wind direction does not seem to be something to worry that much about. It might give different speed but with rather fast paced combat it does not appear to be that important.

In the tutorial my ship did a quick 20+ degree turn to move toward the enemy ship, with furled sails!

A few odd moments with ships ordered to take a hard 90+ degree starboard turn but furling sails and turning a bit to port instead.

Group function is nice though so don't have to give orders to every ship.

So a bit of a beer and pretzel arcade game.


Land combat:

Counter battery seems very effective although the shorter range might have had something to do with it. My 2 horse batteries needed only a few salvos to take out the enemy batteries on my left and center.

Infantry run run rates seem to be very similar to M2TW. Think they run about twice as fast as marching. But with the shorter range of muskets it cuts down on your reaction time. Cavalry seems to have been given a boost or at least the lighter cavalry (hussars and dragoons) They are now close to RTW run speeds.

Maybe it is the demo but fatigue is very low from running. With double speed from running and low fatigue one can easily run twice the musket range without worrying that much about fatigue.

So overall it is still gonna be rather fast paced. The demo might have felt OK but we did not face lots of enemy cavalry nor control a full army.


---------------------------------------


For those not interested in numbers you can stop reading now:

MTW run speed for normal/fast inf - ETW run speed for grenadier/line/light inf*
166/200 meters/minute - 180/200/225 meters/minute

MTW cav run speed for normal/light - ETW run speed for General and horse artillery/dragoons and hussars
333/400 meters minute - 450/600 meters/minute


Reaction time based on missile range versus run speed:

MTW (100 meter range)
Inf 36/30 seconds
Cav 18/15 seconds

ETW (70 meters - I use that as I assume most line inf will have 70 and only light inf will have 80)
Inf 23/21/19 seconds
Cav 9+/7 seconds

Of course there are rifle units that will increase the time by around 70%


*based on demo map so slight elevations can change the result a bit but there should be 3 classes of infantry speed.


CBR

[Miracle]

Couldn't figure yet how to occupy a building - is it even possible to storm it?

Switch to melee mode and right click on it.

To get out of the building, deactivate melee mode and right click on the ground outside.

[pevergreen]

I didnt have to do that. I just selected a single infantry unit and clicked the single building on the map with the door and and an arrow pointing into symbol above it.