Looking forward to the naval combat element.
It’s a rare day 1 purchase for me too. Sea battles and musket lines hell yeah. Expect it to be buggy though not quite bad as M2:TW which was rushed out for Christmas.
There we go. I’m very excited for this; I’m sick of the sea battles in MII:TW where it’s nothing but a contest to build a bigger stack of ships or a coin toss if it’s close to even.
That’s the part I’m most looking forward too…and most afraid will fall short of my expectations. It’s almost like a 2nd game, and if they do it right it’s going to make this the best of the series. If they fail though it’s going to be a major disappointment.
-XT
hopefully the navel system I’d better than how “Imperial Glory” had it. It worked on theory but it was much too slow and tedious.
No thank you. Call me crazy, but I think I’ll say no to violence. I’m actually rather appalled that there are members in good standing of this otherwise enlightened message board that are pushing this kind of garbage.
I fear these games are desensitizing our youngsters and causing the regression of our society back to more hedonistic times. Like the 1750’s. A kid playing this so-called “game” may very well decide, based on his ridiculous fantasy experience, that suddenly its okay to charge any old disordered flank he sees with a squadron of cuirassiers. Do any of you so-called “grognards” really want to take responsibility for little Jimmy and his friends spitting Jimmy’s baby sister and her little tea-party friends with a bayonet charge, just because they “had allowed gaps in their lines”?
Yeah, I didn’t think so. Next time howabout you all take a minute first to think about just how much corruption you might be spreading to our youth before indulging in your petty, twisted entertainments.
Yeah, of course I’m getting it. Don’t be silly :p.
Ha! I knew you’d be getting it Tamerlane! 
Went too GameStop today to pick up my copy of DOWII and was told that they have 500 copies on order (20 of them are the collectors edition) and only 10 are left for the pre-order run (none of the CE). I ordered mine. Anyone who wants to get it in the box on the release date might want to check their favorite gaming store to make sure some will be available. I think it’s going to be available for download though from D2D.
-XT
I hope the AI is better; it made the other games feel unsatisfying to win, not that I ever did much, since it takes so long. These games just always seem great in theory, but I never want to play them, so hopefully this one won’t be like that.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Official Demo news: It’s coming out tomorrow at 11:00 am EST!
It will have one naval and one land engagement:
Woohoo! Definitely going to give the demo a try.
-XT
Awesome! My history teacher will love this, since the battles of the American Revolution are exactly what we just finished studying.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Medieval II: Total War still has game-breaking bugs and shoddy AI, even after years of complaints and modding. Despite that, it’s still quite fun but can grow quite tedious after a while.
Color me cautiously optimistic, but I’ll definitely be waiting a few weeks after release before I pick this one up. I’m very much not excited about naval combat, though - it just doesn’t seem to jive well with the mass-unit spirit of the game.
Bear in mind that each of those ships could hold hundreds of men - and that even the Battle of Trafalgar only featured about 30 ships (albeit ships of the line) on each side. I’d say there’s a good chance that naval battles will be *more *realistic than land battles, at least in terms of scale.
I’ll probably wind up buying this eventually, but I’m not *too *enthusiastic. I think it has to do with the fact that I played the hell out of Rome:TW until I realized how overpowered cavalry was against the AI: it would just let you pick off and rout portions of its armies one by one through a continuous series of charges and reformations, so that a human army consisting entirely of 6-8 middling cavalry units would be virtually indestructible in the field (so long as it wasn’t totally obsolete). They really need to teach the AI how to form squares.
Oh, does anyone know what the time-scale is? Two turns per years? Four?
Normally I wouldn’t say anything, but this is the third time in as many days I’ve seen this mistake around here, so I’m hoping to nip this in the bud: the word is actually “jibe.”
Funny you should mention squares 
The last dev video was showing off how the AI will form a square (with cannon and calvary in the center ready to bombard incoming enemy/reinforce the square) if calvary becomes a problem on the field. It showed him trying his best to break up the square. He managed it, but not without taking some serious losses.
Also, it looks like it’s going to be 2 turns per year. 200 turns in total.
does that seem like too few to you guys?
Wow, only a 100 year span? Seems short in terms of history covered, but MII:TW is 225 turns and I rarely fail to win before the advent of gunpowder, let alone the end of the game. Then again, I’m pleased that there won’t be a 6 months/turn for characters, 2 years/turn for calendar like MII.
That sort of thing is moddable just by tweaking an .ini file, so I wouldn’t worry about it.
I am playing the demo right now. I am enjoying it so far. One thing that has stood out for me is that the battles are going to take a lot longer than in the old games.
Correction : that’s how it used to be in Rome and Med 2, but Empire uses a new engine AFAIK, so old tricks may not work anymore. Considering how Creative Assembly works, I’m pretty sure they’re doing this one from scratch, not reusing or modifying the Rome engine.
With that said, their games have always been very mod friendly, so I wouldn’t worry about it.
Oh, and a pack of flaming pigs fired from trebuchets couldn’t keep me away from this game.