Broken Crescent: First Impressions

[Ahiga]

Whether you've been watching since the beginning, a recent arrival, or anything in between, what have your impressions been with playing Broken Crescent for the first time?

[Miraj]

Other than the campaign map, the mod in general is OK. But I will continue playing minesweeper until this mod is upgraded to "good" - then I may consider playing it.

[boerekovic]

It was awesome on my first install,but that crashed in the second turn of the Campaign.
I was impressed by the nice Music! tho i didnt like that "mamama" or what is "lalala"? Something repeating.
Please help me with getting BC installed properly,
thread name is "this doesnt seem to be listed anywhere..."
edit:
Gotta agree with Miraj, this is a mess,the units are Messy and the whole setting...its just wrong Also the Flags and textures do absolutely NOT rock.

[Beauchamp]

AWSOME!!!!!!!!

You can guess whom I am playing as

I am absolutely loving the game and am constantly
thinking about it, but I just have a few recommendations:

1)The Aceh warriors are really abundant, and I had thought
that they might be like a "specialty" unit given their rarity.
Perhaps they could be included in the third tier port?

2) Although the game is difficult (aka: MORE FUN) I
think that the spy/emissary/merchant combo should
be introduced right in the beginning, you have no idea
how insane it was to wait and get money for those things!

3) A question: Is the Imam's guard cavalry an offshoot of
the last tier cavalry for Oman? Or is it better.

4) al-Muharraq is situated in the archipelago of Bahrain, not
in modern day Qatar

Sorry to be extremely pedantic, but I felt that I must
say my piece.

Ma'Salema and amazing work gentlemen!

[The Mongol]

Great first impression, title screen got me pumped, then the menu music, then I hopped straight into my Kypchak campaign. Loading screens are cool showing off the units. In game music is good, UI is quite nice. (The Army, Agent etc. tabs could use a little improvement imo)

Overall : Great


You guys really have created something special.

[Jwb187]

I love it already and I haven't even finished downloading yet, but I will post my true impressions later

[randir14]

Pros:
-Amazing unit graphics
-Awesome music
-I like the long historical descriptions that many of the units have
-Very good campaign map

Cons:
-Many units seem unbalanced
-Battle AI is messed up, soldiers stand around doing nothing or run into each other. Reminds me of the vanilla M2TW battle AI.

[AaronJBC]

Pros:
-Great unit skins
-Map
-Battle AI is good

Cons:
-At least for Sindh, the start is hard. The two towns have about 9 stacks of units in them, the ones past that have about 10 stacks, with a general right there with about 3000 units or so.

[spooksman]

You prolly have heard this already from me but here I am saying it again, VERY WELL DONE, GUYS.

I"m having a blast...and as you can see from my signature, I've ditched the Imamate and taken up the cause of the Abbasids.(the temptation of pitting the Caliphate against the ERE as per history is too great!)

[CtrlAltDe1337]

In a word: "Awsome"

I'm playing Armenia atm and having a blast. The music, units, graphics, map, etc all go together so good. GJ BC team

[The King Of Peasants]

Ive had more fun then I've ever in medi2 had using makuria and the ai has been good so far coupled with the different formations you can't use one cookie cutter strategy and you'll pretty much always take some casulties
I also luckily haven't run into any bugs. So my conclusion is you guys have made a mod that is totally different from the regular game which is a big plus.
One last thing Ive noticed and liked is that the ai makes large armies of good military units the days of spear militia/peasant archers/mounted sergeants armies are gone!!

[zznɟ ǝɥʇ]

sSrsly--

First up, I sorta don't like M2. I think the battles are clunky (and not because of my system), blah blah blah blah, overall, I feel like the game itself is a step backwards from RTW.

So BC gets the thankless task of both making M2 more playable and being a good mod. Does it succeed? So far, yes, in both counts.

The atmosphere is a big part of a game. The setting needs to set the tone, and CA seemed to forget this with the original (they fixed it with Kingdoms). The music is superb. The thunderstorm is a nice touch, and when people chant, it raises the heartbeat. My only complaint is that I'd like more (yes more! I am greedy) music. It's all wonderful, a bit more would add to the variety. The menu interface is great as well, it rivals the Crusades campaign one imo.

Battles--Seiges in this game engine were never that fun for me, and Im afraid BC is no different. Though I think that's the fault of M2, not BC. I must say though, just seeing the units on the walls does give a thrill. as to the other sort of battles--I've only had a couple field battles, and they were tough affairs, both very enjoyable and intense. BC delivers here, no doubt about it. Watching the AI fight it out confirms this--I watched the Khwarezm Shah and the Abbasids duke it out around Baghdad for turn after turn, saw armies destroyed and the heroic victories markers pop up. Looking around the map, you can see a lot of other tough areas for battles--particular the Hindu Kush and the rough mountains of the Causcaus. Armenia seems particularly fun as well.

That means a big kudos to the map. Maps are always my favorite part of mods since I spend the most time looking at them. The passes are brilliant, the vast mountain ranges are stunning, and it reveals an almost unknown world to see green next to the Aral Sea, Samarqand nestled near a mountain, you get the picture.... There are very small number of black dots on the map (forgot the cause of this, I once knew lol). Similarly I noticed maybe two small triangles of land jutting into the water. All minor issues, and none detrat from the map at all.

For 1.0, this is incredible, and it sets the bar for future modifications. The factions built from the ground up, the AI, the music, the map--they all show that the makers have put a lot of time and care into the final product.

From the loading screen its clear that BC is meant to be fun. (Wa wa wee wa!) The fun only increased when you're actually playing the mod. Thanks to AD in particular for the unique faces of family members--its touches like these that make a mod great.

Yes, there are small issues, some characters on the campaign map need some reskins, etc...but we're talking about a mod that until a few days ago was only in the hands of a small number of people. If this is 1.0, I can't wait to see what the team will do after hundreds of suggestions come pouring in.

Short summary: the big things make a mod, but when you notice that the little things were looked after as well, that's when you know what you are playing is a great mod. Thanks, BC team, can't wait to see where this beauty goes.

(*sniff* got emotional)

[SpaceUnion]

I have to say this is the reason why I'm playing M2TW after 2 months of a break. And I must say is thrilling. Everyone did a great job in this mod and in fact I've been playing since 3 PM (every since back from school) as the Eastern Roman Empire and I must say crushing those Turks is very very pleasing.

[Valor]

First impressions : AMAZING.

When the loading screen left place for main menu, I immediatly felt that this is THE mod. Great colors, superb menu music (what's the title ?), very clean campaign screen, the map is brilliant (and as a maper, I say congrats !). The atmosphere is there.

Then the first battle : awesome !! Beautiful units, generals, banners, fantastic musics again (loved the ones from MTW1 - and others of course !) and an improved AI !

So needless to say, very good first impressions.

[whhyy]

Very polished.

[Miraj]

Just a quick note:

All the menu work, symbols, loading screen style, splash screen and general "badassness" you're greeted with when loading up BC for the first time = AlphaDelta.. so he's not just a skinner.

The awsome title track for the menu was found by Ahiga.

[Tiroth]

Amazing mod, its more of a bloody official expansion than the term "mod" gives it credit for . Its a truly difficult game too, the AI is doing great at holding off relentless attacks and gathers armies together in a fashion that makes them really hard to tackle without having large numbers of casualties.

The large map is very daunting . I'm sure to get used to it though.

I was wondering however, is there any point at all in keeping a castle once you've captured one from the enemy? I know that i can only recruit levies, so i assume the best thing is to turn every place i take into a city? Curiously I can recruit horse archers and cav from captured castles though.

[Miraj]

All "nomadic" units like tribal horse archers have no AOR.

Castles are still important outside your AOR since you can recruit mercs and its alot more defensible to base them out of a castle. In the future versions we will give the player some incentives and special units for out-of-AOR castles.

[Dead*Man*Wilson]

Insert McDonald's ad slogan.

Besides the beatiful units and the like; the music is great too. Everything from LOTR to the orginal MTW. Great stuff. Im still in aw of the whole project. With all the new cotent, its quite overwhelming.

[beatoangelico]

to be the first public version the 1.0 is really good. All the graphics part is great, and amazingly not heavier than vanilla M2TW, both the map and the battles. The battle AI has some very nice moments and other ones where it reminds more the vanilla AI, but the main problem in the battles is the hardcoded, almost non existant cohesion of the units, so you are still "fighting" more your units preying to do what you order them than the AI. There is obviosly a lot of balancing still to do, but no mod or game have a perfect balance in their first playable version