Just tried RSII...questions

[Bullman]

Hi I have reinstalled RTW just to try RSII which, based on the many "cinematic" videos and screenshots "looks" fantastic (whether the campaigns are actually worth playing is another issue).

The mod seems to have problems on my PC crashing if I start a battle (another story), but I have seen the campaign map and the units/unit cards included on it. I started playing as the Dacians but what is surprising is just how diverse the Dacian unit stacks are right from the start. There are 13 combat units to recruit from immediately from the capital city. This is only one type of unit, Dacian infantry, to recruit from the other two towns.



The starting army stacks are a a mixed bag of what seems to be random units from all over the place, giving the Dacian faction army no real identity. I appreciate all the units but why are so many units available at the start? Do we really need that many? I would have expected to start with a small selection and through upgrades/buildings make more advanced combat units available. What's worse is that because all these 13+ units are new to me, I have to literally "learn" exactly what each ones strengths/weaknesses are if I am to use them with any intelligence.

So what was the idea behind this?

Also, i noticed that during winter turns, it is as if my agents (spy/diplomat/assassin) on the campaign map get two shots a moving.....I click on them once and the green movement field comes up. I move them to the edge of the green area and then ANOTHER green area comes up and I can move them again. What is this about?

Cheers

Bull

[Dull_Gladius]

Hi I have reinstalled RTW just to try RSII which, based on the many "cinematic" videos and screenshots "looks" fantastic (whether the campaigns are actually worth playing is another issue).

First of all, each faction starts out with a variety of units. None of them start off with the ability to recruit their most elite ones to my knowledge.

Also, most people actually find learning about the different units quite enjoyable since the development team put loads of work into each of them. Maybe this mod just isn't your cup of tea.

Never mind the fact that their all historically accurate, that fact seems lost on ya'. I'm not sure how spies and diplomats being able to move farther is such a big deal... I'm sure the more resourceful ones of old could get around much easier then say, an army.

[Brusilov]

The units you start with should all be units that you can eventually recruit either in the barracks or the 'hire mercenaries' building which is available later on. The idea is to give you a wide variety of units - it's up to you to decide whicg one's you want to use in your army. The army composition is down to personal preference.

As you upgrade your barracks you will have different units to recruit - usually more elite and more powerful units. In some barracks the weakest units may no longer be able to be recruited.

[Imperator_OfRome]

As for dacia having no identity.. they have a nice selection of elite troops later on in the game who use the legendary falx. These weapons were feared throughout the ancient world as they could cleave a mans heads off with a single stroke (with ease might i add)

If i am correct, the only time in the history of the roman empire, that the roman legions basic equipment was changed during a campaign, was in the campaign to conquer Dacia. They were commissioned with arm guards and leg guards because the falx was so efficient at chopping offlimbs. They also had roughly made reinforced strips applied to their helmets.

[Chris Death]

So you started playing a mod and find it an issue that it's not the same like vanilla anymore?

The wide variety of units is cool to have so you can change your army compositions during a single
campaign instead of having to start a new campaign with another faction.

The green area not showing the total movement availability might be due to hardcoded limitations
by the game itself (not sure on that one) but after a first try this shouldn't be an issue (at least
i took it how it is after first time playing and had no prob with it). Tbh that's not only during winter
but during all time of the year.

Those army compositions on the start is also nothing new - in vanilla just look at eastern factions
where there is also already the one or other stack including units available later in the campaign.

Btw - the idea behind the starting armies imho is to get you a nice starting battle (a few of them
historically if not most of them therefore these armies are built in a way that battle happened).

Somehow it seems to me that your biggest problem is that you started playing something which
you didn't know before (like a new game) and now you're surprised about it but instead of enjoying
the total new experience you have to complain. There's a kewl mod out there it's called RTW vanilla
and it changes back everything to ordinary where there is everything like you know it already. j/k

Just play it a while (RS2 i mean) and it won't take long until you start enjoying it

~S~ CD

[Bullman]

Thanks for the replies, but don't carried away making judgements on the type of player I am. I certainly would rather play a mod truer to history than "packs of dogs" vanilla and appreciate all the research that goes in to mods like this.

Back to my questions....the point I was making was that with 13 combat units already available for recruitment at the start, it just doesn't seem I have many new units to look forward to/discovering (I can't remember if there is an 18 slot limit to the number of different units that can be recruited (or if it scrolls down if there are more), but Dacia starts with 16 of these slots filled as you can see in the screenshot.

Now I see there is quite a bit of variety in at least the costs of the units ranging from 200 to 2400 denarii (some mercenaries 3800) with upkeeps from 100 to 750.

As far as the long range of the agents...I was just asking...its actually a good thing they can move further than armies...after some experimenting, I now see how the game handles the extended movement range of agents and what must be the hardcoded limitations on showing the available movement range.

I am hoping the campaign doesn't turn out to be like some campaigns I have seen in the past....where you end up making/saving ridiculously high amounts of money/units so that it just becomes a grind.

Because I think the last time I played RTW was on a 4:3 monitor, I have noticed what turns out to be a very disappointing thing about the RTW graphics engine and how it handles 4:3 and 16:10 screens. I have posted about it here in the technical forum but feel free to answer it here. Basically I want to know if any of you guys have found the way RTW resizes its screens to suit 4:3 and 16:10 resolutions/screens to be somewhat "strange" to an extent I would call amateurish and incomplete.

[dvk901]

Thanks for the replies, but don't carried away making judgements on the type of player I am. I certainly would rather play a mod truer to history than "packs of dogs" vanilla and appreciate all the research that goes in to mods like this.

Back to my questions....the point I was making was that with 13 combat units already available for recruitment at the start, it just doesn't seem I have many new units to look forward to/discovering (I can't remember if there is an 18 slot limit to the number of different units that can be recruited (or if it scrolls down if there are more), but Dacia starts with 16 of these slots filled as you can see in the screenshot.

Now I see there is quite a bit of variety in at least the costs of the units ranging from 200 to 2400 denarii (some mercenaries 3800) with upkeeps from 100 to 750.

As far as the long range of the agents...I was just asking...its actually a good thing they can move further than armies...after some experimenting, I now see how the game handles the extended movement range of agents and what must be the hardcoded limitations on showing the available movement range.

I am hoping the campaign doesn't turn out to be like some campaigns I have seen in the past....where you end up making/saving ridiculously high amounts of money/units so that it just becomes a grind.

Because I think the last time I played RTW was on a 4:3 monitor, I have noticed what turns out to be a very disappointing thing about the RTW graphics engine and how it handles 4:3 and 16:10 screens. I have posted about it here in the technical forum but feel free to answer it here. Basically I want to know if any of you guys have found the way RTW resizes its screens to suit 4:3 and 16:10 resolutions/screens to be somewhat "strange" to an extent I would call amateurish and incomplete.

Regarding screen size and video capability....be SURE that when you first go into each and every campaign (because the preferences.txt file will get created for each one) that you go into Video options and click the icon in the lower left hand corner. This 'routine' allows the game to analyze your video cards capabilities, and will allow supported video resolutions to show up. If you DON'T do this, RTW will only show the defaults.

Regarding the variety of units, and the variety of units available for each faction at the start in their 'capital' city:

1. We have walked a 'tightrope', so to speak, between having the mod start in a situation where you have an empire to build...vs.....the historical fact that many of these nations were very advanced at this point in time. The capital city of each faction therefore reflects that this isn't a backwater village with a few peasants and levy units to start with....but a Kingdom (in Dacia's case) that gave Darius a black eye several hundred years before, with a highly developed society and military establishment. Indeed, Dacia is\was for me one of the most fascinating and misrepresented factions in RTW. They were every bit as advanced and intelligent as the Romans and Greeks, and wrongly lumped in with what Vanilla portrayed as just a bunch of backwards wood-dwellers or something. Dacia, as well as the Celts and the Sarmatians\Scythians should've all had their OWN distinct cultures.

2. The so-called 'Barbarian' nations\tribes....contrary to Vanilla representation, didn't field armies that were homogeneous like most Roman armies. These people fought with a wide variety of different warriors from different walks of life, and in many cases included allied tribes or people of different tribes who lived in their territories. So RS2 tries to represent the fact that in Dacian controlled areas, there were Scythian, Thracian, and other tribal peoples who formed the Dacian military.

3. Why start with so many of them already represented? Well, I guess that's a personal preference on our part. Some people like to 'discover' what can be found. We are proud of the units and the work that went into RS2, so we give you an instant taste of some of the various units that will make up your military.

[Bullman]

Regarding screen size and video capability....be SURE that when you first go into each and every campaign (because the preferences.txt file will get created for each one) that you go into Video options and click the icon in the lower left hand corner. This 'routine' allows the game to analyze your video cards capabilities, and will allow supported video resolutions to show up. If you DON'T do this, RTW will only show the defaults.

OK but I am not sure this is the issue. I have put up the screenshots of what my RTW (RS2) looks like when I have the game graphics resolution set to 1024x768 (4:3) and when it is set to 1680x1050 (16:10). You can clearly see that they both show exactly the same field of view. The only difference is the aspect ratio: the 4:3 screen is just a narrower version of the 16:10 screen. To be precise, it seems the toolbars are in their correct proportions when in the 4:3 res (therefore stretched and out of proportion when in the 16:10 res), while the 3D game world seems to be in its correct proportions when in 16:10 res (therefore squashed narrow when viewed in 4:3 res).

Here is a screen shot of the RSII battle screen being displayed at 4:3 (1024x768 game res). Note the extents of the screen and how the toolbar looks in proportion.


And here is a screenshot of the RSII battle screen being displayed at 16:10 (1680x1050 game res). Note the stretched toolbar and that you have the same field of view as you have in the 4:3 screenshot....therefore, they are just stretched/compressing the same image regardless of resolution.



Can you guys please tell me what happens when you change the resolution in the video settings? Is this something that is peculiar to me (for some reason) or is it common to everyone and it's just that people have never really realised what actually is going on when you change resolutions?

....but did you check out the comparison screenshots when switching between 4:3 resolutions to 16:10 resoultions?

[Dacer068]

In the video options after launching the game. There is a magic little checkable box titled Wide screen..... click on it.

Please report back the wonders you will behold.

I have a widescreen, and I don't check the box, but it does give you a wider field of view on the Strat map. pretty sure it does on the battle map too.

[Bullman]

In the video options after launching the game. There is a magic little checkable box titled Wide screen..... click on it.

Please report back the wonders you will behold.

I have a widescreen, and I don't check the box, but it does give you a wider field of view on the Strat map. pretty sure it does on the battle map too.

Yes I am fully aware of that check box. I have now done a few trials and have a better understanding for what is going on.

The check box DOES increase the field of view of the 3D world as you would hope it would. BUT!....it does not affect the toolbars, menus or splash screens or anything else, which will ALWAYS appear distorted when viewing them in resolutions other than 4:3 (regardless of whether widescreen is checked or not).

When I did the comparative battle screenshots, I had the "widescreen" box checked. When I changed the resolution with the battle paused, you can not check/uncheck the "widescreen" checkbox so that is why in the 4:3 screenshot, the 3D world is squashed (it's trying to fit the larger field of view in to a 4:3 space because the widescreen checkbox was checked before I started the battle).

So essentially, CA seem to have designed all the menus, toolbars, unit cards and splash screens in 4:3 and thought it OK to S-T-R-E-T-C-H and distort them when players choose resolutions other than 4:3, which would be the case of most players today. This is really a bad cheapskate game design and I really can't believe this is the case. Surely they can't be that stupid? I can't stand looking at distorted images and text etc in RTW on a widescreen monitor. I mean this is as retarded as people buying widescreen TVs and stretching 4:3 broadcasts to fill the whole screen.

Surely any mod designer would be 100% cognisant of this because it means that all their custom toolbars, all their carefully researched and designed unit cards and splash screens would be designed in 4:3 but will all ultimately look all crappy and stretched when people play and view it on their widescreen monitors.

So guys, what is your take on this? I am surprised that no one else has understood what it is that CA have done.