Concerns about PCGamer's gameplay demo video

[kikokyle]

Okay hopefully I embedded that correctly. If not here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zf_DV9zhIQ
So watching the video the game looks great, fun, and beautiful - but I do have some concerns.

First, the line of sight system. This is the first time we've officially been shown like anything on the LOS system... my concern is that it may be needing a nerf. I'm drawing this from when Al sends his skirmishes to the hill, and just as he reaches the top of the hill can he see the Samnite troops again, but their troops are RIGHT there. He even loses like a third of his skirmishers. I'm thinking this may be overpowered. I understand it's uses for realism and such, which is great, I think it's a great idea, but I think it needs to be slightly less realistic because I mean really he lost that many men in just a few moments from light skirmisher troops.
That brings me to my next concern.

Second, Al has his Italian swordsmen come out of the woods to attack the Samnite's four units of skirmishers. Al seems pretty confident that his infantry is well superior and can, and will do so exceedingly, take on four units of Samnite skirmishers. I'm totally fine with that, but I realized something (while watching) about a minute later. I noticed his Italian Swordsmen were just gone. Their unit card disappeared. Start paying attention again and his swordsmen took out one skirmisher unit, if that, and then it really seemed like the rest of the unit was all dead... It kinda looked like I could see some men running away, but the unit card was gone... so I'm assuming they're dead. And I'm still in shock! For someone being so confident that his infantry could handle four skirmisher units they damn well proved Al wrong! He does mention them, saying that they were routing, but I think he mistook the routing (white flag) Samnite skirmisher unit for his own. Still confused and shocked.

Third, something that the PCGamer guy's remark on too... why is that Samnite Italian Swordsmen unit charging uphill against Al's cavalry , which is very close by the whole of Al's infantry, his general, and going against some cavalry with a supreme hill advantage? I would understand if at that moment the AI was engaging all his infantry with all of Al's infantry, and then decided to use a couple units to go uphill against Al's cavalry so that they wouldn't be able to flank the AI's infantry with hammer and anvil strikes... but the rest of the AI's infantry is still a decent ways behind that unit. That unit is merely going to get surrounded by numerically superior cavalry (and apparently stat superior too, because Italian Swordsmen suck (refer back to topic two)), take morale loss because of Al's general being nearby, and the large amount of Al's infantry nearby, and the Roman slingers nearby, and on top of that, they're tiring themselves out by running up a steep hill (sorry for the run-on sentence). I always heard things like the AI was bad (as someone who hasn't played much TW other than M2 and Rome), but damn I didn't know it was that bad. It dumbfounds me.
Haven't watched the video yet? At least the cavalry only took out three guys in that charge. And then, to make it worse, he tried to get his cavalry out of there because they weren't able to do much and the rest of the army arrived, and they wouldn't leave. They didn't run away fast, and they kept reengaging with the troops chasing them (which was oddly like half of the Samnite army). While this is happening, the AI is making a pathetic attempt at fighting Al's infantry, two vs. two units yes, but Al's creating flanks with the rest of his infantry, and the AI pretends they don't exist. "Let's keep chasing this cavalry guys!" the AI yells with enthusiasm. "Oh who cares about our infantry that may just get surrounded WE GOTTA GET THESE HORSES!" Now Al didn't take advantage of an outflanking of the engaged infantry, but he could have... and what would the AI have done? Would've sent the rest of it's forces into the backs of those flanking Roman forces, creating a giant blob of troops (which Al's cavalry would've taken advantage of) without using any real tactics, skill, or intelligence. It is artificial intelligence, not false intelligence.

Fourth, there's a point where Al says "You've presented your flanks you fool!" (see 23:20-ish) to a unit of Samnite Italian Swordsmen who, well, did just that to two Roman Hastati units facing them dead on. Well, why did they do that? Why weren't they already in formation, facing the enemy they should've been engaging? Why did they present their flanks? (I'll spoil it for you that unit got surrounded.)

So, fifth, what happens later in the battle? There's a blob of four Samnite Italian Swordsmen units all blobbed together in the center, fighting seemingly no one, and Al uses/tries to use his infantry and what he has left of his pathetic cavalry to surround them. The blob just lets themselves get surrounded. It's almost like the Battle of Cannae, except the Samnite center wasn't pushing into a Roman center... it simply wasn't there. They were already surrounded on their sides! (See 24:05-ish for that).

Sixth: at 23:40 Al draws attention back to his cavalry to see how they're doing. He says "not to well", seeing that his cavalry (who he had repeatedly ordered to run away) has been somewhat decimated by the Samnite infantry. Well shoot! I guess that's what happens when your troops don't listen! Remember how in older TW's (especially Medieval 2, not so much Rome 1) how you had to tell an engaged unit ten times (click at the same spot ten times) before they'd actually disengage? Why can't this just happen the first time? In past TW's they wouldn't do what you said, you'd have to click ten times in three seconds. Why can't they just do it the first time? Because Al wasn't attentive he lost a ton of his cavalry, that'd make me angry if I did that (but I'd know better from experience and would thus click ten times automatically). This brings me to another thing. Maybe he didn't click the ten times (because surely Al, a guy who works for CA, has played TW, meaning he's had to have done this like us all) because he didn't want to show any micromanaging? There's tons of examples where they're moving away from micromanaging in Rome 2, and surely clicking ten times to make your guys do anything wouldn't look to great to the guys at PCGamer... but certainly all six of my points must not have looked good to them either! On top of this, moments later, I noticed that his cavalry are running SO SLOW. Like slow enough to where the Samnite's infantry are pretty much caught up with them the whole chase. Even though the Samnite's have been running (and uphill) this whole time on foot with some of armour. And even though Al is using light cavalry with not that much armour who are on horseback who've barely been used yet. Alright..... What happens to that cavalry? Oh Al tries running over to the other side of the battle with them, and they get caught by the infantry who were somehow for some reason so close to them, and they all die. The Samnite Italian Swordsmen gains experience at 25:40 and Al doesn't even notice.



Now some nitpicking and not actual real issues. At 27:00 the Samnite Italian Spearmen begin to flee, but they remain in a battle stance for a moment or two before they actually look like they're really fleeing. Odd.
Also it seems like all routing units lose their banner flag now, as well as (judging from the Roman Italian Swordsmen earlier and their disappearance) their unit card. I'm assuming this is if the game has decided the the unit will not come back from routing because wouldn't it be weird if your unit's unit card disappeared, then just reappeared later if it came back from routing? So, it must be in a permanent rout state. If this is the case, why don't the men routing have an animation or something to make them drop their shields and weapons? With the thousands of animations being implemented in the game, wouldn't a realistic and kinda cool animation like that be worthy? I remember this being suggested early on in development in the "features" thread by someone like Prometheus or something (it was a historical accuracy guy, I remember that; maybe KLA or something).



Now for the people who may flame me: this is literally the only time I have ever complained about anything in the game so far, minus not every city having sieges, which to quote myself:

I'm not saying that things don't suck, because not every city having walls sucks a fat one, but I understand why it's there, why it needs to be there, and can thank CA for at least trying to implement a somewhat needed feature.

(From this thread http://bit.ly/1b0h4dL).
I literally love every feature that's been implemented, am super excited, and read the forums daily. I've already watched the new "Find a Way" trailer thrice, and the Carthage LP at least five times. I'm also not saying the game looks bad by any means from this video, in fact it looks great, but not as excellent as it was... these are just some things that seriously confused me and confounded me.

If you read the whole thing, please reply down below if you share my concerns, or if you would like to refute anything that I've said due to my lack of playing recent TW's too much. Hopefully someone at CA will see this and call me dumb or something, I don't know

[Den Stark]

[ptoss1]

Awful Roman general. Inspires the cavalry but leaves the infantry to rout.

[Revan The Great]

Al is probably the worst Total War gamer I've ever seen, and he still beat the Samnites in 2 out of the 3 videos I watched of him playing the prologue. This is even with his completely boneheaded moves like sending his Italian swordsmen to be massacred in exchange for routing a single levy skirmisher in an 'ambush', the inattentiveness in general, the absolute skittishness he has towards his General (who can't turn and run down a bunch of unarmored trash following him. Really?), and horrible use of cavalry/spacing of his infantry.

Had the Samnite AI done something as simple as formed a line rather than a blob, it probably would beat him every time.

In terms of LoS, it's not overpowered. Al should've stayed at the top of the first hill, rather than going down and then back up the further hill, where his slingers came face to face with javelinmen (as he must have known would happen). Had he played smarter, he could've sat on the hill and pelted the javelinmen from a safe distance for awhile, but since he made this mistake in all three videos, I suppose it must be on purpose to try and show the LoS mechanics. Though acting surprised when he runs into Samnite Javelinmen is a little patronizing.

[Sebastianus Somerus]

Al is probably the worst Total War gamer I've ever seen, and he still beat the Samnites in 2 out of the 3 videos I watched of him playing the prologue. This is even with his completely boneheaded moves like sending his Italian swordsmen to be massacred in exchange for routing a single levy skirmisher in an 'ambush', the inattentiveness in general, the absolute skittishness he has towards his General (who can't turn and run down a bunch of unarmored trash following him. Really?), and horrible use of cavalry/spacing of his infantry.

Had the Samnite AI done something as simple as formed a line rather than a blob, it probably would beat him every time.

In terms of LoS, it's not overpowered. Al should've stayed at the top of the first hill, rather than going down and then back up the further hill, where his slingers came face to face with javelinmen (as he must have known would happen). Had he played smarter, he could've sat on the hill and pelted the javelinmen from a safe distance for awhile, but since he made this mistake in all three videos, I suppose it must be on purpose to try and show the LoS mechanics. Though acting surprised when he runs into Samnite Javelinmen is a little patronizing.

yea indeed, al isn't a really good general. He seems so confident about his moves but most of the time they aren't really smart. I wish I was there

[kikokyle]

Al is probably the worst Total War gamer I've ever seen, and he still beat the Samnites in 2 out of the 3 videos I watched of him playing the prologue. This is even with his completely boneheaded moves like sending his Italian swordsmen to be massacred in exchange for routing a single levy skirmisher in an 'ambush', the inattentiveness in general, the absolute skittishness he has towards his General (who can't turn and run down a bunch of unarmored trash following him. Really?), and horrible use of cavalry/spacing of his infantry.

Had the Samnite AI done something as simple as formed a line rather than a blob, it probably would beat him every time.

In terms of LoS, it's not overpowered. Al should've stayed at the top of the first hill, rather than going down and then back up the further hill, where his slingers came face to face with javelinmen (as he must have known would happen). Had he played smarter, he could've sat on the hill and pelted the javelinmen from a safe distance for awhile, but since he made this mistake in all three videos, I suppose it must be on purpose to try and show the LoS mechanics. Though acting surprised when he runs into Samnite Javelinmen is a little patronizing.

Okay, that's what I was hoping most of it was but I didn't wanna insult him or anything in the thread. Still, some of those things the AI did even without Al's actions were just odd and dumb.

[Rittsy]

Well he is trying to play the game and explain all the aspects, with the added pressure of being watched by thousands of people. I can't imagine I would do too well in that situation either.

[Durnaug]

I'm confused.


So Al & AI are not good generals? That only works if I select particular fonts

[Plautus]

Okay hopefully I embedded that correctly. If not here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zf_DV9zhIQ
So watching the video the game looks great, fun, and beautiful - but I do have some concerns.

First, the line of sight system. This is the first time we've officially been shown like anything on the LOS system... my concern is that it may be needing a nerf. I'm drawing this from when Al sends his skirmishes to the hill, and just as he reaches the top of the hill can he see the Samnite troops again, but their troops are RIGHT there. He even loses like a third of his skirmishers. I'm thinking this may be overpowered. I understand it's uses for realism and such, which is great, I think it's a great idea, but I think it needs to be slightly less realistic because I mean really he lost that many men in just a few moments from light skirmisher troops.
That brings me to my next concern.

Second, Al has his Italian swordsmen come out of the woods to attack the Samnite's four units of skirmishers. Al seems pretty confident that his infantry is well superior and can, and will do so exceedingly, take on four units of Samnite skirmishers. I'm totally fine with that, but I realized something (while watching) about a minute later. I noticed his Italian Swordsmen were just gone. Their unit card disappeared. Start paying attention again and his swordsmen took out one skirmisher unit, if that, and then it really seemed like the rest of the unit was all dead... It kinda looked like I could see some men running away, but the unit card was gone... so I'm assuming they're dead. And I'm still in shock! For someone being so confident that his infantry could handle four skirmisher units they damn well proved Al wrong! He does mention them, saying that they were routing, but I think he mistook the routing (white flag) Samnite skirmisher unit for his own. Still confused and shocked.

Third, something that the PCGamer guy's remark on too... why is that Samnite Italian Swordsmen unit charging uphill against Al's cavalry , which is very close by the whole of Al's infantry, his general, and going against some cavalry with a supreme hill advantage? I would understand if at that moment the AI was engaging all his infantry with all of Al's infantry, and then decided to use a couple units to go uphill against Al's cavalry so that they wouldn't be able to flank the AI's infantry with hammer and anvil strikes... but the rest of the AI's infantry is still a decent ways behind that unit. That unit is merely going to get surrounded by numerically superior cavalry (and apparently stat superior too, because Italian Swordsmen suck (refer back to topic two)), take morale loss because of Al's general being nearby, and the large amount of Al's infantry nearby, and the Roman slingers nearby, and on top of that, they're tiring themselves out by running up a steep hill (sorry for the run-on sentence). I always heard things like the AI was bad (as someone who hasn't played much TW other than M2 and Rome), but damn I didn't know it was that bad. It dumbfounds me.
Haven't watched the video yet? At least the cavalry only took out three guys in that charge. And then, to make it worse, he tried to get his cavalry out of there because they weren't able to do much and the rest of the army arrived, and they wouldn't leave. They didn't run away fast, and they kept reengaging with the troops chasing them (which was oddly like half of the Samnite army). While this is happening, the AI is making a pathetic attempt at fighting Al's infantry, two vs. two units yes, but Al's creating flanks with the rest of his infantry, and the AI pretends they don't exist. "Let's keep chasing this cavalry guys!" the AI yells with enthusiasm. "Oh who cares about our infantry that may just get surrounded WE GOTTA GET THESE HORSES!" Now Al didn't take advantage of an outflanking of the engaged infantry, but he could have... and what would the AI have done? Would've sent the rest of it's forces into the backs of those flanking Roman forces, creating a giant blob of troops (which Al's cavalry would've taken advantage of) without using any real tactics, skill, or intelligence. It is artificial intelligence, not false intelligence.

Fourth, there's a point where Al says "You've presented your flanks you fool!" (see 23:20-ish) to a unit of Samnite Italian Swordsmen who, well, did just that to two Roman Hastati units facing them dead on. Well, why did they do that? Why weren't they already in formation, facing the enemy they should've been engaging? Why did they present their flanks? (I'll spoil it for you that unit got surrounded.)

So, fifth, what happens later in the battle? There's a blob of four Samnite Italian Swordsmen units all blobbed together in the center, fighting seemingly no one, and Al uses/tries to use his infantry and what he has left of his pathetic cavalry to surround them. The blob just lets themselves get surrounded. It's almost like the Battle of Cannae, except the Samnite center wasn't pushing into a Roman center... it simply wasn't there. They were already surrounded on their sides! (See 24:05-ish for that).

Sixth: at 23:40 Al draws attention back to his cavalry to see how they're doing. He says "not to well", seeing that his cavalry (who he had repeatedly ordered to run away) has been somewhat decimated by the Samnite infantry. Well shoot! I guess that's what happens when your troops don't listen! Remember how in older TW's (especially Medieval 2, not so much Rome 1) how you had to tell an engaged unit ten times (click at the same spot ten times) before they'd actually disengage? Why can't this just happen the first time? In past TW's they wouldn't do what you said, you'd have to click ten times in three seconds. Why can't they just do it the first time? Because Al wasn't attentive he lost a ton of his cavalry, that'd make me angry if I did that (but I'd know better from experience and would thus click ten times automatically). This brings me to another thing. Maybe he didn't click the ten times (because surely Al, a guy who works for CA, has played TW, meaning he's had to have done this like us all) because he didn't want to show any micromanaging? There's tons of examples where they're moving away from micromanaging in Rome 2, and surely clicking ten times to make your guys do anything wouldn't look to great to the guys at PCGamer... but certainly all six of my points must not have looked good to them either! On top of this, moments later, I noticed that his cavalry are running SO SLOW. Like slow enough to where the Samnite's infantry are pretty much caught up with them the whole chase. Even though the Samnite's have been running (and uphill) this whole time on foot with some of armour. And even though Al is using light cavalry with not that much armour who are on horseback who've barely been used yet. Alright..... What happens to that cavalry? Oh Al tries running over to the other side of the battle with them, and they get caught by the infantry who were somehow for some reason so close to them, and they all die. The Samnite Italian Swordsmen gains experience at 25:40 and Al doesn't even notice.



Now some nitpicking and not actual real issues. At 27:00 the Samnite Italian Spearmen begin to flee, but they remain in a battle stance for a moment or two before they actually look like they're really fleeing. Odd.
Also it seems like all routing units lose their banner flag now, as well as (judging from the Roman Italian Swordsmen earlier and their disappearance) their unit card. I'm assuming this is if the game has decided the the unit will not come back from routing because wouldn't it be weird if your unit's unit card disappeared, then just reappeared later if it came back from routing? So, it must be in a permanent rout state. If this is the case, why don't the men routing have an animation or something to make them drop their shields and weapons? With the thousands of animations being implemented in the game, wouldn't a realistic and kinda cool animation like that be worthy? I remember this being suggested early on in development in the "features" thread by someone like Prometheus or something (it was a historical accuracy guy, I remember that; maybe KLA or something).



Now for the people who may flame me: this is literally the only time I have ever complained about anything in the game so far, minus not every city having sieges, which to quote myself:

(From this thread http://bit.ly/1b0h4dL).
I literally love every feature that's been implemented, am super excited, and read the forums daily. I've already watched the new "Find a Way" trailer thrice, and the Carthage LP at least five times. I'm also not saying the game looks bad by any means from this video, in fact it looks great, but not as excellent as it was... these are just some things that seriously confused me and confounded me.

If you read the whole thing, please reply down below if you share my concerns, or if you would like to refute anything that I've said due to my lack of playing recent TW's too much. Hopefully someone at CA will see this and call me dumb or something, I don't know

TW AI = in paradox dev words: "non existent".
When CA implements new features you can highlight the sentence above.
Promises about a better AI have always been come out as marketing jokes, they care for graphics and stuff. The LOS System will probably screw the AI even further. Remember without that feature it sucked as well.

IN this dutch video i have seen AI troops WALKING away from an incoming charge. They happily received it in the rear.

Im very sure the AI will be utterly annoying and gamebreaking (for me). But RTW2 will be a success. I mean just look at that campaign map, its so sweet .
Maybe they should just go into round based strategy games without tactical battles.
Thing is there Campaign AI just cant win against other round time strategy games in term of CAI. No way.

[RoyalNobody]

Numbers is the only way AI has the possibility of a win against a half-decent player, but that's nothing new. I've yet to play a strategy game that hasn't fielded predictable, easily beaten AI.

[Keyser]

TW AI = in paradox dev words: "non existent".

Coming from paradox it's a bit rich...

The AI in paradox titles sucks as hard as the TW one. It's just the gamestyle who guarantee some AI factions will grow strong enough to challenge the player.
If the AI don't outnumber you badly it will loose and loose while doing idiotic things at that (besieging a high attrition province with a full stack, runing back and forth etc).
HOI3 is the worst offender, the AI is supposed to be good enough to launch operations for you on secondary front, but most of the time it just sit there doing nothing or attacking fortress with barely enough troops...

[Karnil Vark Khaitan]

TW AI = in paradox dev words: "non existent".

I hope they didnt say that. in ck 2 the AI just randomly kills their own family members. its not perfekt enough to claim what they may have said.

[Plautus]

I hope they didnt say that. in ck 2 the AI just randomly kills their own family members. its not perfekt enough to claim what they may have said.

Actually one of there devs did. But lets not loose ourselfs in that off topic discussion. Sorry, for me stating it.

[Neige]

Well, the AI sucks in TW games, what else is new? They told us in an interview that the AI has been improved... That's it. That does not necessarily mean that it doesn't suck anymore.

@Plautus, would you mind NOT quoting the entire OP?

[Plautus]

Well, the AI sucks in TW games, what else is new? They told us in an interview that the AI has been improved... That's it. That does not necessarily mean that it doesn't suck anymore.

Nor did it mean that they actually improved it.

[ritatud]

That's like the fifth thread or s

[kikokyle]

That's like the fifth thread or s

Not on this particular video. There has always been general complaining about the AI.

[Tolgon]

In his defence, every time we've seen Al play he had his attention divided by also answering questions. Maybe he's just bad at multitasking.

[RandyRhoads]

In his defence, every time we've seen Al play he had his attention divided by also answering at questions. Maybe he's just bad at multitasking.

good one

[Karnil Vark Khaitan]

In his defence, every time we've seen Al play he had his attention divided by also answering at questions. Maybe he's just bad at multitasking.

wai´t are we talking about the AI or the player?