GED's report from NY

Finally...

Eye Candy:
There is quite a bit of it, its a great looking game. The amount of smoke in our 2v2 game inside a city was staggering and actually prevented us from being able to see the battle at all in some cases. Kieran and I played as a team, and neither one of us brought artillery as we planned to occupy the buildings and fight street to street. I did bring a few heavy cavalry and went after one of the other players artillery units right off which allowed us to take position inside the city. I occupied the buildings and smacked down some artillery units and then sent the rest of my troops to support Kieran. Basically we had 2v1 on one side of the city as our second opponent was coming into the other side of the city. We pretty much put him in full retreat and then tried to redeploy to meet the threat from the other side. Anyone watching this game for the first 10-12 minutes would have bet that the game was over and that we had won handily.

But we ended up losing. A close defeat, but we still lost. I lost most of my cavalry trying to kill the artillery units of our first opponent, and Kieran lost his general. We had a solid position inside the city, and the troops I had in the building had high accuracy and damage ratings, good riflemen. The troops that werent in buildings were mostly skirmishers and the remnants of my cavalry. When player 2 (I forget names, sorry. I think that was ASL) got into the edges of the city from the other side he had some hefty infantry and sent some of them to capture a building I had occupied on the outskirts. It was basically 3v1 against my riflemen in the building. I sent over 2 units of skirmishers to help out. At this point I had 7 units of riflemen inside various buildings, 3 or 4 units of riflemen in the center of the city, and 4 units of skirmishers. I think the only unit of Kierans that had taken serious losses as this point was his generals bodyguard and some other cavalry. He was keeping most of his force together to support my troops holding the center of the city. Player 1 was down to about 50% of his forces, probably a bit less. Player 2 was virtually untouched. Most our troops were working their way from the north east edge of the city towards the center and Player 2 was attacking from the southwest.

It all started to come apart at that first house battle. My skirmishers were no match for his heavy infantry, and though my riflemen inside the building held up well I still ended up losing the building. But thats not what hurt us. He had gotten some artillery into position and they were firing on the buildings. While we were fighting street to street inside the city we were getting pounded by artillery. My forces were fairly spread out between the 7 various buildings and were getting picked off one at a time, but Kieran was holding his own against Player 2 in the streets supported by the few individual units I had not committed to buildings.

But we couldnt find the artillery, and had no real cavalry forces left to do a quick search for them. I still had my general and he died trying to fight through some heavy infantry in an effort to find the artillery. There were two reasons we couldnt find the artillery, we had no real forces to spare in a search, and there was soooo much smoke we couldnt see anyways! The area the artillery was in was entirely covered with smoke, as was most of that side of the city.

At this time I should point out two things which I consider to be bugs. The first pretty much cost me 4 entire units of riflemen, the second might not actually have been a bug but a conscious decision on the part of Player 2, I should have asked him. Player 2 had gotten some heavy infantry into a building at the center of the city and they were fighting hand to hand with my riflemen inside. I sent my 3 units of riflemen from the square into the building. While all this was going on the building was still getting pounded by artillery. I am not sure if Player 2 made a decision to fire on that building, or if the Fire at Will command allowed them on fire on a building containing friendly troops in an even fight, but they kept firing. By the time my 3 units arrived the building was about 50% damaged. Those troops arrived and made fairly short work of his troops trying to get inside, but then all 4 of my riflemen units got stuck. I decided to abandon the building because it had sustained so much damage, and if a building collapses with troops inside they all die. But my troops could not leave. Several men of each unit were inside trying to get out, the rest were outside trying to get in. I had given them all commands to move to a new location as I had secured the building and concentrated on another battle site for a few minutes. When my troops had not yet arrived I went to check on them and they were milling back and forth at the doorway. I pointed this out to Kieran and he asked me if I had issued the orders singly or if I had sent all the orders at once. I had highlighted all 3 of my support units and sent them to the building all at the same time, and when I ordered them out I had highlighted all 4 (the original unit in the building plus the 3 support units) and told them to move to a new position. This caused them to get stuck going back and forth in the building/courtyard and they never redeployed. By the time I noticed that they were stuck the building was about 90% damaged, and when the building collapsed it destroyed most of them. The ones that survived routed. Kieran told me they knew about issues with ordering multiple units into and out of buildings and were trying to address it with the day 1 patch.

That hurt us pretty badly. We were now pretty evenly matched with Player 2, maybe a bit stronger except for artillery, and the fighting inside the city was getting nasty. But Player 1 had managed to regroup a bit and come back into the north side of the city. The fighting went on for another 20 minutes or so, and I had been decimated so badly that my remaining 4 units eventually routed. As I said we lost that battle, but it was pretty close. I think at the end Player 1 had two units left and Player 2 had 3 units left, all badly damaged. They were actually talking about how little they had left and they were going to lose, but since I was out of the game I was up walking around looking at everyones machine and I knew it was over for Kieran and I.


Modding:
There will be no modding tools released, other than the unit editor. There are some proprietary and other issues. But Kieran did tell me that everything needed to create a new map for both ETW and NTW should already be accessible. But there is a huge difference between mapping M2 and Empire, and a lot more skills are needed. I asked him to try and get me some documentation on that to at least get everyone pointed in the right direction. Hopefully we can get that.


Bathooks/Siege grapples:
These have been left in the game for a few different reasons. This was mostly a choice between gameplay and accuracy, and it definitely has an arcadish feeling about it. But without some way of getting units over the walls, such as ladders or grapples, the AI is really outmatched by a live person in a siege battle. The idea behind battles of the period was to pound a hole in the walls and send the troops through. Kieran said they talked about removing them, and did some testing without them, but it really hampered the AI's performance because it removed so many options available to the AI. The AI was too easy to beat without them, so in the interest of gameplay they were left in.


Battle AI:
The battle AI is quite a bit better. The way Kieran explained it to me is that the AI is now multitasked, it can consider more than a single option at a time. Before the AI would make a decision, then when something new happened on the battlefield it would make a contradictory decision that made the AI seem to get stuck and go back and forth between decisions. Sort of an endless loop. Now the AI can react to multiple situations, and multiple goals at once which helps it avoid that problem. For instance it can have Goal #1 : Eliminate Artillery and Goal #2 Protect General, and give them different weights. Then send some units to go after the artillery while holding some in reserve. Before the AI rewrite it could do this, but if the general was threatened then the units attacking the enemy artillery would get "confused" about what they were supposed to do, which made them go back and forth on the battlefield endlessly. That should not happen nearly as often with NTW.

My first battle I just clicked start without rearranging any of my units, and watched. All I did was deploy the artillery. I had an artillery unit out on the wings, one on each side. The one on the left side was close to my general, the one on the right side had some lower quality militia units close to it. The AI immediately sent out some heavy cavalry and smashed into that artillery unit on the right side while the main force redeployed to match up with my battle line. My milita unit tried to help out the artillery unit but they were no match for the cavalry, and as soon as the artillery unit was destroyed the cavalry unit ran back and joined their main group. It had done its job of killing my artillery unit.

On the other side of the field it was trying to flank me, but I had a terrain advantage because of a luckily placed hill and they had to fight uphill to get to me. I should also mention that I had them outnumbered by about 6 units, and if I had just auto calced this battle I would have won it pretty handily. I won that battle fairly easily without doing anything at all, but I definitely took a lot more losses than I would have if I had actively tried to win. The AI did not just rush into riflefire from the front, it did try to gain a position advantage. It just didnt have the forces to do it.

In another battle vs the AI I had sieged Cairo, and they sortied out to fight. They had a lot of militia units which arent that great to begin with, and I had nearly a full stack. This was a desert battle on a wide open field of sand. I positioned my general, my artillery, a few units of riflemen and 2 units of cavalry on the far left of the field, and lined up the rest of my troops in a single line on the right side of the field. There was a HUGE amount of space in between my two groups. The AI reacted appropriately in my opinion.

It also split its forces, one group went to take out my artillery and general while the other tried to engage my main force on the right side. Some of the militia units attacking my right side ran straight into a line of 10 units of riflemen while the AI's stronger units tried to get around behind them. It was using the cheap militia units as cannon fodder. It would send them in to keep my riflemen busy and withdraw them back to the line periodically while his cavalry and heavy infantry tried to flank. I also could not support one side of my army with the other because of how the AI deployed. I didnt really have to because the AI was so overmatched to begin with, but it did give a valiant effort.


Campaign AI:
The campaign AI ia quite a bit better was well. The above mentioned battle of Cairo was very early in my Egyptian campaign, and I had merged nearly all of the forces I had at the beginning of the game and sent them to Cairo. This left the two cities I started with virtually undefended, and the AI tried to take advantage of that. I was playing as France, and England had landed an army near one of my cities and actually besieged it. As I already mentioned the Mamelukes had sortied out of Cairo to fight, but they didnt have to. They still had two turns left before they lost the city by default. At the time I thought that was an odd decision and mentioned it to Kieran, and he came over to check it out. As it turns out they were moving an army towards my second city, while all my troops were at Cairo and my first city was besieged by England. I took Cairo with losses of about 25%, but I was about to lose my two original cities and there wasnt a damn thing I could do about it. If I had continued that campaign I would have been in serious trouble.

In my Italian campaign, which I actually played before the Egyptian campaign, I was also in trouble early on. You start with two armies, one led by Napoleon and one led by another general, and a single city. I hadnt even ended a single turn when I sent Napoleans army into battle, a battle that I actually lost against the AI. I should mention that when Napolean gets "killed" in battle he goes off screen to recover from his injuries in France and there are huge penalties involved in this. This left me with a single army with a mediocre general and the remnants of Napoleon's army which wasnt in good shape and was way out of position to do any good. The AI sent a small army and camped out between my city and Napoleon's army, they couldnt resupply.

It then sent another army around the mountains on the east side of my city. Again I was in trouble on the campaign map, mostly because of my stupid decision to immediately attack without doing any real preparations, but also because the AI knew it now had the upper hand and moved to exploit it. I did manage to get my act together and beat the AI back a bit, but it wasnt easy.


Diplomacy:
The diplomacy seems to be quite a bit better, but its hard to figure out why the AI makes certain decisions when you do not know what is going on in the rest of the world. Kieran mentioned in ETW that the AI values its technology at about 5 to 1 compared to your technology. So if you offer to trade tech with the AI, and the two tech items involved are at the same place on the tech tree, the AI will refuse because it considers its tech to be 5 times more valuable than your tech. This is designed to prevent the player from trading straight across for one piece of tech, then trading that piece of tech to another faction for something else, then trading that piece of tech for something else, and so on. A player doing this could theoretically amass a huge technical advantage over the AI in a single turn.

The AI now tries to account for what is going on in the rest of the world when deciding how to deal with diplomatic offers from players. To demonstrate this Kieran and I played a multiplayer campaign in Egypt where there are only 4 factions involved. He played as the Ottomans, I played as France, and we were at war from the start with the Mamelukes in between us. Kieran made some diplomatic offers to the Mamelukes to get them more on his side, and I was trying to do the same. He spent more money on this than I did, so obviously the Mamelukes sided with him.

However if I had not known what he was doing, I would have thought the AI was being stupid in refusing my offers of tech and 1000 in gold for military access. Because I knew what Kieran was doing, it all made sense when they refused, and since I didnt have access I couldnt get to him without declaring war on the Mamelukes and going through their territory. That suddenly made the game 2v1, Kieran and the Mamelukes against me.
I didnt get to spend a whole lot of time testing every aspect of diplomacy as I was more interested in the BAI, but it definitely seems to be improved and there are more options.


Multiplayer:
CA has really gone after the multiplayer market with NTW, and there are 3 ways to play multiplayer. Multiplayer battles, multiplayer campaign, and drop in battles.

Multiplayer battles are nothing new, so nothing really needs to be said.

The multiplayer campaign is interesting, and the way they have set it up works fairly well. Basically the host selects an amount of time for each turn. Kieran selected 5 minutes. When it is your turn, you can do everything just as if you are playing a single player game. When it is not your turn, you can manage all your cities and build armies and research tech, but you cannot move armies, navies, agents, or engage in diplomacy. This allows you to do something besides just sit there for 5 minutes while the other player takes his turn, and makes the game play at almost single player speed. If you have the turn times set at 5 minutes (or even 3 as we tried once) and you make all your management decisions while the other player is moving armies, then you can quickly move your armies and agents around when it is your turn. If the other player does the same, then the turns progress fairly fast and you dont get bored doing nothing. For me personally I never really got into multiplayer battles, but playing multiplayer campaigns this way is actually fun. At this time its limited to 2 players but in the future I hope they expand that and figure out a few other ways to speed up gameplay in multiplayer campaigns.

And my favorite part of the new multiplayer options is the drop in battles. This was a great idea. Basically you are playing a single player game, but throwing your battles open for multiplayer action. If you select this option, every time you go into battle someone from Steam can jump in and take the place of the AI. The player that joins has to play with whatever the AI has available, but as we all know, no matter how good an AI is it will never replace a human. This allows other players to affect your single player campaign because you dont get stuck in a rut or have the chance to figure out a simple way to beat the AI. And you never know which human player will see your battle posted online and decide to join in. I really like this feature.


Revolution/Evolution
I actually spent quite a bit of time talking with Kieran about the production process for the entire TW series as well, not just NTW. His way of explaining it was Revolution and then Evolution. The idea behind this model of design is that you do something Revolutionary for one game release, and then that release Evolves to a better product in the next game. And then you start over with a new Revolutionary idea.

You can see this if you look at the past releases. RTW was the Revolution. It brought a 3D campaign map and a ton of new features that we all loved. M2TW was the Evolution but based on the same engine. ETW was the Revolution, NTW is the Evolution.

The new production model is constant Evolution. There is a core of code that is stable and solid, and everything else is attached to that. Kieran compared it to the human body. The core code is the spine, the other parts of code that attach to it are the ribs. You can remove one rib (feature), and plug in another rib, and radically change gameplay.

I will compare that design model to other software platforms. Most games are short term peices of software. You produce one game, then you go and make a completely new game. You have all seen this in nearly every game you can think of. Some of them follow specific themes, like Star Wars or something similar, but essentially they are completely new rewrites based on a similar world.

Other pieces of software are more long term, like operating systems or suites of software like Office or Adobe. They have a central core that is built upon with each release. Linux and Windows both are good examples of this, as is Photoshop or even TurboTax. You dont have to recreate the wheel every time you produce a new product, and this saves time and money that you can then use to do other stuff. You still make core improvements and changes, but its not a total rewrite. Unreal Tournament is another game platform that follows this concept, and its worked well for them as well. I think that this style of approach to gaming will lead to better improvements and makes for a better product long term. Time will tell if this approach works for games as well as it does for other applications, but I suspect it will.


Synopsis
Overall I was fairly impressed. The game is not perfect, and Kieran and company will readily admit that. However it is a good product, and I have no qualms about dropping a few bucks to get it. There are a lot of improvements, and as I pointed out a few problems as well. But the improvements vastly outnumber the problems and I think CA definitely moved in the right direction both in terms of NTW and in terms of their long range goals.

I do wish that things were more moddable, and I will get whatever I can out of Kieran and company to help modders out.

Hmm, BAI does indeed sound better. Did the AI units keep formation at all? Or at we again treated to fighting 'globs' of enemy units as in ETW?

They keep formation a lot better. As I mentioned, in one battle the AI sent some cavalry after my artillery and then reformed the line once they had destroyed them. Also in my cairo battle where the AI was severely outmatched the militia units did try to maintain a cohesive line. It wasnt perfect on that one but they were heavily outnumbered and were in trouble to begin with.

Well, sounds good if it pulls together in the final product.

Originally Posted by GrnEyedDvl

Modding:
There will be no modding tools released, other than the unit editor. There are some proprietary and other issues. But Kieran did tell me that everything needed to create a new map for both ETW and NTW should already be accessible. But there is a huge difference between mapping M2 and Empire, and a lot more skills are needed. I asked him to try and get me some documentation on that to at least get everyone pointed in the right direction. Hopefully we can get that.

That's bad news about the maps. I know the files pretty well and without documentation, it's hopeless.

Originally Posted by erasmus777

That's bad news about the maps. I know the files pretty well and without documentation, it's hopeless.

I agree, its bad news. Kieran did say it should be able to be done and will try to get me pointed in the right direction. I havent even looked at the stuff involved yet so I am not sure what I am getting into, but if he can get me some stuff from the devs I will try to get a few people together and figure something out.

Originally Posted by GrnEyedDvl

I agree, its bad news. Kieran did say it should be able to be done and will try to get me pointed in the right direction. I havent even looked at the stuff involved yet so I am not sure what I am getting into, but if he can get me some stuff from the devs I will try to get a few people together and figure something out.

I'd love to be a part of the discussion, even if as an outsider. I've done a lot of work on the EsfEditor. There are some things that alpaca and I figured out about the files but never moved forward with that might (or might not) be helpful.

Originally Posted by Leoben

Did you notice other bugs in the game? And how would you rate the AI behaviour according to the one in ETW? Not that better? Better but not that good? Did it make something blatantly stupid like shooting its own men or stuff like that?

Thanks for your review and focusing on the BAI by the way, I was really looking forward to it.

I didnt notice anything blatant like that. The AI is not perfect, no AI is, but its definitely a few notches above ETW.

Originally Posted by shireknight

Are you saying that enemy units don't show up on the radar unless one of your units has direct line of sight with them and because of the smoke your units could not see them so they weren't on the radar either?

You dont know which unit is which on the radar, only that there is a unit present. I honestly dont know if the artillery showed up or not.

Originally Posted by erasmus777

I'd love to be a part of the discussion, even if as an outsider. I've done a lot of work on the EsfEditor. There are some things that alpaca and I figured out about the files but never moved forward with that might (or might not) be helpful.

Cool. Alpaca is a sharp guy, as are several other people involved with modding ETW. If I can get some stuff out of them I will make sure everyone has access to it and I will get involved trying to figure it out as well.

Originally Posted by GrnEyedDvl

You dont know which unit is which on the radar, only that there is a unit present. I honestly dont know if the artillery showed up or not.

Can you confirm this? I had the impression every unit is shown different on the radar map: X for artillery i.e

Originally Posted by GrnEyedDvl

I agree, its bad news. Kieran did say it should be able to be done and will try to get me pointed in the right direction. I havent even looked at the stuff involved yet so I am not sure what I am getting into, but if he can get me some stuff from the devs I will try to get a few people together and figure something out.

so is there an easier way to share 3rd party maps in NTW than in ETW, or is it all still done manually and outside the game? also, if you have custom maps installed will that make all vanilla games appear red like it is currently in ETW?

Did you notice other bugs in the game? And how would you rate the AI behaviour according to the one in ETW? Not that better? Better but not that good? Did it make something blatantly stupid like shooting its own men or stuff like that?

Thanks for your review and focusing on the BAI by the way, I was really looking forward to it.

But we couldnt find the artillery, and had no real cavalry forces left to do a quick search for them. I still had my general and he died trying to fight through some heavy infantry in an effort to find the artillery. There were two reasons we couldnt find the artillery, we had no real forces to spare in a search, and there was soooo much smoke we couldnt see anyways! The area the artillery was in was entirely covered with smoke, as was most of that side of the city.

Are you saying that enemy units don't show up on the radar unless one of your units has direct line of sight with them and because of the smoke your units could not see them so they weren't on the radar either?

The game sounds great so far.

You bring great news, GED. It seems the AI in ETW is greatly improved; in fact, they way it acts sounds like a total do-over after the failure that was ETW AI.

Regarding the new direction in development, I'm glad they're taking a page off Valve's book and sticking with this engine for a while. It will probably allow them to iron out most bugs from release to release, and modders will have an opportunity to grow familiar with its workings, even if it's a daunting task, at first. I wouldn't be surprised if they branched out into two totally different directions, like Victoria:TW and Rome 2:TW withing a short window of time. I just hope they keep supporting whatever they put out (they do that, and I'll keep supporting them with my money )

Thanks!! GED, if i may, could i use your report? i want to persuade the local Gaming Center (like a modern day arcade) to get napoleon, and while i have had many things said about multiplayer, im sure many will question the AI and say that the previewers and CA are just saying its good. with user confirmation, it may change their minds. all credit gos to you

Thanks, it appears some of us will be truly blown away.

This sounds great !!! And if they release some patches within the next couple of months this could become quite an adventure. Id love to see that BAI implemented in a new rome or medieval edition.
MULTITASKING is the future! Thx GED for such an excellent 'review'.

Originally Posted by ClaymanVTW

Thanks!! GED, if i may, could i use your report? i want to persuade the local Gaming Center (like a modern day arcade) to get napoleon, and while i have had many things said about multiplayer, im sure many will question the AI and say that the previewers and CA are just saying its good. with user confirmation, it may change their minds. all credit gos to you

Absolutely.

Originally Posted by BURNY26

This sounds great !!! And if they release some patches within the next couple of months this could become quite an adventure. Id love to see that BAI implemented in a new rome or medieval edition.
MULTITASKING is the future! Thx GED for such an excellent 'review'.

There is a Day 1 patch planned. The game is obviously already being boxed since its release is so close, but there are several known issues they intend to patch on the day of release. With a project as complex as this game is, there are bound to be some issues and I for one am glad to see them taking a more proactive approach to fixing them.

Originally Posted by silencer124

Hey Grn great review of the game and your experience with the BAI maybe someday we can play a multiplayer GC when N:TW comes out

We will have to set something up.

Hey Grn great review of the game and your experience with the BAI maybe someday we can play a multiplayer GC when N:TW comes out

Sounds awesome, I'm seriously fiending now.