First Impressions

[A Very Super Market]

You haven't played EB, have you?

I'm used to waiting for a while, and I don't really mind it.

[thurjack_mahr]

Regarding the earlier post about England and France being Maritime partners yet not starting with large fleets:

Remember, this is a video game abstraction where units have upkeep costs, so implementing larger navies would lead to being such a great burden on your fledgling treasury as to bankrupt you immediately were you to actually start with that many ships. I think they did a good job of providing maritime powers with adqueate naval facilities. Trying to rescale the game to allow for larger starting navies would tip the economy - if you try to adjust it the other way, the player only has to disband the huge starting navy and will have a massive cash influx of coin normally set aside for upkeep of naval units.

[Subotan]

You haven't played EB, have you?

I'm used to waiting for a while, and I don't really mind it.

Right on, brother.
In the meantime whilst waiting, you could do something useful, like lift weights. (Heh, "weighting")

[crpcarrot]

wow i really cant believe there are so many complainers here already, its amazing how people wnat the game to exactly to their own preferences and say its a bad game if its not lol

i am pretty amazed by this game and ive been playing since STW and so far the all the game systems are new and seem very interesting diplomacy,policy,governmet wow i still dont know how these things work exactly and it really fun learning.

i took the advice of some on here and started my campaign on hard difficulty and the AI seems pretty good. admittedly most of the battles i fought so far i have been outnubered but the AI have showen pretty goos tactical AI for example

in one battle they sent a couple of units right up to my line and made me engage in melee while i was dealing with that some units had flanked me and taken cover over the wall

in another battle the ai held back till i adcvanced and when my general was vunerable sent cavalry units right at him. they use the cover very well to get units that can hide use all the cover available and in this battle its had kept a nice reserve of about 4 units. i routed about another 10 units and didnt relaise there were 4 units left was going to finish off the general when these 4 units pring out of hiding. my depleted units couldnt handle the fresh reserves who charged me down to finish me off.

of course i havent still adapted to this form of fighting just not used to seeing so many units just stand facng eachother and shot each other feels wrong lol

[Suraknar]

My First impressions are Good for the most part.

I really enjoy the changes on the Strategic map, the new building system as well.

Of course, Naval battles are just great!

The AI needs some work and so is Path-finding, some few tweaks and fixes here and there as well.

But other than that I am having a blast so far :)

I did the complete Road to Independence Campaign so far, and that is as good as First impressions Can go.

For the Future I can see this TW having many possibilities, expansions couls actually add more theaters in this new Map system, I foresee an expansion that can take us all the way to Napoleonic era, but I would love if it can just combine with the main Campaign and add more units and technologies permitting the game to evolve up to maybe 1850 or so Technologically and the game ending in 1899 for the sake of playing a while with Napoleonic era techs...19th century is tough many technological breakthroughs that could unbalance the game, the end of the age of sail the advent of ironclads and steam engine etc may complicate things too a bit.

Yet TW series for me has always been about being able to reshape history somewhat, while starting with a Historical setting.

We shall see what the future holds, I can see however with this new engine many countless fun Hours of play, and hoping about the multiplayer campaign as well.

(now going to start my first grand Campaign) Cheers!