…waiting, mouth a’water, and getting their schedules set in order to spend some serious time with the puppy when it rolls out next Friday (Nov. 17th…well, in theory anyway)? I am, of course, a huge fan of the Total War series…but this one looks to be the best yet, bringing together the best elements of Rome, with the earlier version of Medieval. I’ve played the demo, and it looks…well, beautiful. If the full version matches the demo (and I have no doubts it will), this is going to be an instant classic.
For anyone interested in the game and who hasn’t kept up, this is probably the final preview from Gamespy before the thing ships in a little over a week.
Anyway, thought I’d start a thread on this now, and then revive it when the full game ships if there is anyone on the board interested in discussing the game.
I hadn’t realized it was coming out so soon. I won’t likely get around to playing it for a while, myself. Let us know if the battle AI is improved enough to pose a challenge.
Got it on pre-order already. I’ve got a huge backlog of games right now, but this one is going to muscle its way to the top of the queue. I wonder if I could play Medieval II and Final Fantasy XII at the same time?
I’m currently playing a lot of WoW…but intend to drop all my other games and take up MTWII when it hits the streets. I will certainly revive this thread when that happens next week and give my own thoughts and impressions. There is a really good preview on PC Gamer, but it doesn’t seem to be online unfortunately. The guy says there are some small problems with pathing and such, and the same sorts of issues as before in Rome (i.e. allies attack you for seemingly no reason, provinces rebel, again for no appearent reason, generals go over to the other side, etc)…but overall the guy said its the best TW game yet. Lots of depth, lots of good eye candy, tons of units. The demo looks really good, but its pretty short so its hard to really get into it.
I guess I’m going to have to get this one too. I’ve been splitting my gaming between Civ IV and Hearts of Iron II lately and it will be nice to get something different.
So Total War it is. But then again, Europa Universalis III is coming out in the spring. I’m praying for that. After a got a world conquest in EU II I just couldn’t go back, because it was sooooo tough to slog through all the rebellions and stability hits to DOW those last few crappy countries in SE asia. After you’ve got 99% of the world under your control, you’d think your subjects would give you a pass if you declare war on some barbarian country halfway across the world that no one’s ever heard of. It’s just a colonial police action at that point, it’s not like declaring war on Spain or Russia or the Ottoman Empire.
Well…it just LOOKS so damn good, even if the underlieing problems are all really still there. Gods…the graphics are unreal. I always thought the TW games were beautiful in the real time tactical portion…but these are definitely a step up from even the coolness factor of RTW. The battles are much grittier…and they are huge. Which brings up yet another ‘problem’…its damn hard to keep track of things, and there is no way to slow the game down below the default setting (you can of course speed it up…just like in RTW). In the demo you can fight like 3 battles, and in the biggest one I was having some trouble really controlling my troops and using them effectively…so I was taking much higher casualties than I normally do in the other games.
I guess I’ll get used to the new system quickly enough though…and I have to say, part of my trouble was wanting to zoom in and see my cavarly crash into that shield wall, or watch my pikemen fend off a cavalry charge, or see my musketmen volley fire at an oncoming pike hedge…
I’ve extremely high hopes for this game. Always preferred medieval warfare to Rome’s ancient but after playing with 3d toy soldiers it’s hard going back to 2d sprites. Yes I’m shallow like that. Apparently they’ve addressed my biggest annoyances with R:TW too, a boring mop-'em-up endgame and occasional laughably bad battle AI - but how that turns out remains to be seen. Played the hell out R:TW anyway despite the minor flaws so I’m not expect a bad game in any case. I can wait to see what the Total Realism team does with this new engine either.
By the way Europe is getting it on the 10th so you might have some early action reports to drool over.
I knew I could count on you, xtisme. I threw the mention of this game in a response in Debates. I’m looking forward to it, that’s for damned sure. I hear that the hardware needed won’t be much more than Rome because they’re essentially using the same engine.
I didn’t get the demo. I AM looking forward to it.
Christ, it’s been one busy month. Tiger Woods, Madden (yeah, past a month, but hey), Live, Call of Duty 3, Neverwinter Nights 2, Age of Empires 3 expansion, and now…this.
I’m such a fucking dork.
I’ve gotta upgrade my video card for Neverwinter Nights. Blah.
Dude, I won the Super Bowl after trading away my first round pick. The draft was VERY defensive end heavy. I ended up trading for the 6th overall pick, a defensive end from Notre Dame.
The man is a MONSTER. He’s got a 97 speed, he runs running backs and receivers down, he sets the record in sacks…and Terrell Suggs became a free agent the next year. My defensive line is this draft pick, Suggs, Tommie Harris (was the first round pick I traded), and Shaun Rogers (I’m the Lions).
I’m pretty sure there will be a Total Realism mod for this new game as well. I think I recall reading something about it somewhere…I’ll see if I can dig it up later, time permitting.
Well, the demo (like the one for Rome before it came out) is only the tactical battles that will probably be included in the game. My system (a Dell XPS 600) handled it fine. No lag, now chop…ran smooth as butter the whole time. I don’t expect to have any problems at all with the game from that perspective, to be honest. If I do, then I’ll just back off some of the settings from the max.
I did notice that there are a lot more units available on the battlefield than in TW. I’m guessing the army size will be roughly double, if the demo is any indication of how the campaign game will be. Its going to be like Rome also in that you start off with only a few choices in nations you can play, but you can then unlock a bunch more by winning a few games.
Unfortunately the sea battles will be pretty much like in Rome…boring. They REALLY need to put in something better in the next game. Can’t be THAT hard to put in some kind of tactical sea battles game to go along with the land battles and add some kind of skill to what is not ‘have the biggest fleet or chance losing’ scenerio.
Sea battles really have an odd balance to them, then. Either you rule the seas, and for that…you don’t get a giant benefit (Aside from blockades, but then that halts what your navy can do)…or you don’t rule the seas…and hold the cities with a monster army. Can’t take over battles from boats.
Boats end up being a necessary evil unless you hav a tiny island nation. Then they’re vital…until you get SOMEWHERE on the mainland.
Well I went to Cork and bought the game and played for a few hours this evening. First impressions are very good. I won’t talk much about the tactical part because you’ve seen that but the strategy section has changed quite considerably.
Firstly, your towns are no longer jack-of-all-trades. They can be either cities or castles, concentrating on making lots of money or varied units. I haven’t really figured out a good balance between them yet so just leave them as found.
Secondly, you can’t just recruit any number of your favourite units (cash permitting) at will. Now each unit producing building has a training pool which fills slowly over time and any units built there drains the pool. Doesn’t sound terribly significant but if you want to raise an army quickly you’ll need to utilise a large mix of units or these pools become a huge bottleneck. Just a few turns into my first game I was actually using town militia and peasants in my armies! It also means you value your elite units so much more when even a pyrrhic victory means you might be fighting with farmers for a while. I really like this mechanic as it’ll make producing an elite steamroller army really difficult.
The battles of course look lovely, with puffs of blood and swords going in awkward places if you zoom in real close. Fighting the Scots felt like a scene out of Braveheart - if I had a moustache I’d have been twirling it evilly while archers raked their lines. I won’t comment on the AI yet as I’ve only played a few battles and no sieges.
Haven’t really touched on all the changes or cool little things (cutscenes are back, loads of recorded dialogue for each nation etc) but I’d like to get another battle in before bed.
