What new features does the M2TW engine offer this mod?

[squeehunter]

After playing Stainless Steel I felt a little underwhelmed with the M2TW engine. I know RTW like the back of my hand but I'm not so familiar with the inner workings of its sequel. What new things does this engine offer? Even minor stuff I'm curious about.

[BroskiDerpman]

Everything.

[metziih]

Everything.

So you mean nothing?

[BroskiDerpman]

Lets just say if you get the bugs sorted out then I prefer Medieval 2's engine better. (Those special formations in RTW were insanely buggy, why would you want them in Med 2? )

[jmlinden7]

The Dread/Chivalry system.

Better diplomacy.

City/Castle system (will probably be used for nomads somehow).

More faction slots.

Shield Wall.

Merchants.

Religion (used for culture?)

[CatoTheYounger]

Crusades. Can be alteres to call your allies to directly assault a certain city.

[BroskiDerpman]

Somewhat moddable BAI and CAI, no clone units, can edit buildings so you can put troops in it, cannons deployed on walls if you mod it, no clone units, other graphics, combat requires to maintain more unit cohesion, plus more stuff.

Oh, better scripting too.

[Yerevan]

There are also some troubles with the M2TW engine : the lack of testudo animations. And the DBM team seems to have encountered some troubles with the phalanx and peltats/javeliners anims too.

This might not be the right thread but I really wonder if they found a way with those animsations.

[BroskiDerpman]

I found Testudo pretty useless even in sieges, the pike animations work fine in Med 2 if you use radius, height, spacing, animations and stat tweaking which allow for more realistic pikemen with secondaries.

Javelin animations need to be speeded up/ streamlined a bit so they don't just sit there.

[Razor]

Better graphics (although Roma Surrectum 2 managed to get very nice graphics on screen)
Better AI (and moddable to a degree)
More factions
No clone soldiers
Runs faster
Phalanx ability -> although a bit troubling you could get nice pike formations, and with some modding a separate animation set for a shieldburgh formation for the Germanic tribes too. In RTW you were stuck with only one standard pike/phalanx formation.
Better moddable in general
And better in general IMO.

Downside is that javelin units are more frustrating in their handling.

[Yerevan]

I found Testudo pretty useless even in sieges

Well, Testudo can help when you fight the horse archer hordes from the east.

For the phalanx I finally found out that to use it in DBM you need to stay in normal formation and not§ shield-wall. It's not perfect but it kind of works....

Better graphics (although Roma Surrectum 2 managed to get very nice graphics on screen)

THat's so true. Actually, for now, only the beautifull EB2 previews seems better than what I remember from RS2.

[Smeel]

The engine seems to enable wast amounts of improvement in the campaign map/RP'ing department, with use of missions(maybe?), intertribal politics and buildings for the celtic factions and probably the other tribal factions, and I still don't know what they have in store for the hellenes and the romans. I'm guessing loads of Total Win™.

PS:Btw, been gone from the forums/EB for three years, and dear god it looks bloody amazing!

[BroskiDerpman]

Against HA in reality the later Romans don't just sit there in Testudo, you press on like the man you are.

I move my infantry up to any hill forcing the HA off as they can't fight heavy infantry. If my Shogun 2 experience can be applied to Rome and Med 2 balanced army is the best.

Foot archers are quite good at countering HA in EB plus loose formation if the arrows do anything other then bounce off my men. My infantry works with my cav to deny enemy cavalry advantage. If you put too much in one type of unit you do it at the cost of another.

If you can't counter HA a unit of donderbuss cav will ruin your day in S2tw in a few vollies.

[Team Sleep]

I was wondering what features or items will NOT be in the first release of the game but is in mind to release in subsequent versions of the game? (Number of units/Factions etc)

After the first release should we expect any of the current team members to leave the project or any new team members to join the project?

What features of the game/engine have been completely left on the back burner without any plans to be modded for the game in the future? (Agents)?

Should we realistically only ever expect 1 version of the game to be released? I say this because it's been such a long hard time of merely just getting this far. Does the team still have it in them to complete a masterpiece?

[War lord]

I was wondering what features or items will NOT be in the first release of the game but is in mind to release in subsequent versions of the game? (Number of units/Factions etc)

After the first release should we expect any of the current team members to leave the project or any new team members to join the project?

What features of the game/engine have been completely left on the back burner without any plans to be modded for the game in the future? (Agents)?

Should we realistically only ever expect 1 version of the game to be released? I say this because it's been such a long hard time of merely just getting this far. Does the team still have it in them to complete a masterpiece?

Like with EB1, future patches will probably fix the bugs that are inherent in the first release, maybe an extra unit here and there.

[BroskiDerpman]

No Polybian, Marian, and Augustan reforms for v1.0 if my info is still up to date.

Then a few other things I forgot. These will be patched in and perhaps even more content gets added plus sub mods.

[Dargaron]

Also, every faction is getting some kind of reform. IIRC, only about half of them are planned to have a reform for the first release (but that's still about 15 factions, and we know that the Aeduoi, Arverni and Boii get 3, the Areuakoi get 2 and the Pritanoi get either 1 or 2.

Not to mention, the team will definitely get much closer to the hardcoded limit of 500 units. And we still have two undecided faction slots.

[Team Sleep]

What of agents (Princess, Merchant, Assassin, Spy, Popes/Witches, Diplomat and hotseat campaigns? Has there been any definitive word on these features? What about warpath feature?

[Sconderix]

Do you think the soldiers from the more civilized factions will be as disciplined and responsive as EB1? One thing I noted about the Medieval 2 engine is that Infantry are quite slack when it comes to formation and unit cohesion, instead of instant response and marching in line, many units will take a few seconds before catching up, things like that. Can this be edited?

[BroskiDerpman]

I think unit cohesion in Stainless Steel was modded when they engage.

Marching is ok though I don't care too much as long as it looks good and my units engage. (It does)

Javelin tossing needs to be fixed though...

( If this thing doesn't format itself TWC can go screw itself)

Plus a good after affect is you need momentum to carry out cav charges.