Some info given by a member from the Total War forums
I'm surprised it never took a step here, as it is a lot of information. This is all information carried from the official Total War forums, and the original thread can be seen here: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...london-event)?
I'll also paste it here for all the lazy people in the world:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:First off - Cheers to CA for giving a fantastic event and thanks to the MADD bar for hosting it. A special thanks to the developers whom took time to answer questions on and off video.
I had a chance to play the prologue and also spent an extensive time talking to some developers: Tim, Dave, Pawel - and a few of the others whom I didn't get the names of. I also sat in on the filming of the Rally Point with Will and Craig; whom are quite the characters.
1. 2 Great Interview videos with 3 guys from the Art team Tim, Dave, Pawel with some input from Craig, Will and a few of the other developers I met.
-note- (sound quality not great; Very noisy room)
2. In depth answers to various questions and game mechanics
3. My list of questions were taken away and I was told would be answered by those in the know and emailed back to me. To help clarify. Thanks in advance
4. Little preview on Sparta
5. My opinions of the game
Disclaimer: Dave, Tim and Pawel did their best to answer a Ton of questions in Great detail; but as you know art is not the same thing as programming so keep this in mind.
1. Without further ado ... 2 interview videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=gBhTRP0M1ZA
Tim on the left and Dave on the right; myself on the far right. Pawel and Craig added input or helped with some of the filming (including Tim a member of the public). Sound is rough but I really wanted to capture the excitement and intricacies of the detailed answers so I am including the video. I could tell that these guys put a lot of work into this game and are just as excited as we are to see the final product.
(any questions I will try to clarify)
questions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=s7nTbCjscLE
naval discussion
2. In depth answers to various questions and game mechanics:
Spent time before and after the vids asking specific gameplay mechanic questions:
Agents - On the prologue I saw on the screen that it had a list 0/10, 0/10, 0/10 so perhaps a max of 10 each. I also asked if we will have to deal with agent spam or if we will be tempted to agent spam.
a. I was told that agents will be limited with either provinces owned or structures in the province or perhaps both; also agents cost money (and it was suggested that they cost upkeep (although needconfirmation)) - also something new is that agents have passive skills and also active ones (assassination) and some of these active ones like assassination cost gold to use. I saw someone playing the prologue and he used his agent in an attempt to assassinate which had a 60% success rate and it cost approx 250 gold to use~.
Difficulty levels - There is no difference with difficulty levels meaning the AI is not dumbed down; although it may do different things given a certain situation; we will still have the AI flanking us on normal and on legendary. Difficulties just give us +'s or -'s to our or the AIs bonuses (no specifics given).
Troop amounts: These numbers were chosen because siege battles often only have room on the walls for X amount of men. So the max of 160 fits this amount; and it was suggested if you have too many men it may cause some issues with placement. I was also told it will be quite easy to increase these amounts if you want. Also a statement about naval allotment as far as unit numbers but I can't quite remember the detail of this.
Diplomacy and the AI - The higher the difficulty the more difficult diplomacy will be; so on easy it will be easier to create alliances and to keep them; and on very hard you will need a lot more Oomph to your diplomacy. Was also given an example; Sparta is at war with epirus to start with - you could theoretically seek to make an alliance with epirus from the start - as long as conditions are met (perhaps lining their pockets with gold may help).
The Navy - this sounds like the system that got the most overhaul (well this and the AI diplomacy).
First off You can expect 1 ship per unit; it was suggested this decision was made for gameplay purposes (fun factor). There also will be all sorts of different ship types; one's with siege towers, catapults, ramming ships, large ships with harpoons (they harpoon smaller ships since they tend to be faster).
Boarding a ship plays a big roll - so you can have multiple ships board a particular ship from different points.
Also ships can 'fire' onto land or help reinforce a land army. So the naval combat will be a battlefield in-itself - different units; different tactics - either on a sea hex or helping in coastal fight.
Walls: 1 type of wall for each culture; and the walls will function much differently then in past games; much more intricate when damaged - and from what I can tell an extensive amount of work was involved in creating these different types of walls and what happens to them when they are being destroyed.
I was told mercs will gain experience as long as they are in your army - although some clarification may be needed.
a garrison and an army would both be on the battlefield at the same time; so perhaps the army would come on as reinforcements; like they did in older TW games.
Development started when shogun ended but in various stages
Rome 2 does support multicores; but some of it doesn't; meaning some systems only utilize one core because that's the way programming works
The game has gone to disc approx 2 weeks ago; meaning the main part is done and just the important tweeks are left for the day 1 patch. So we are getting a finished product.
4. Sparta - Dave told me he really hasn't had much of a chance to play test the game; obviously his job is to make the art look pretty - and he mentioned he has spent a lot of time on the naval aspect.
I asked him about the heroes of Sparta unit and Dave mentioned he only used then in a custom battle but he said they were Awesome! - and used them as flank holders (which I never thought of doing) - but he said they were great in holding a flank and that it's quite important to keep that secure (sounds more so in Rome2 then in past games).
It was also mentioned that Sparta has a challenging start because of its location and lack of a navy. Also I think it was mentioned that all Greek factions will get a - to diplomacy with each other.
My play of the prologue (had approx 45mins of playing) - I only did one scripted battle and then the start of the prologue; so didn't get too far into it.
Things to note:
- water on the battle map looked beautiful; almost looked like real water
- I think the systems were average; nothing top of the line (I don't have exact specs) - but I had no issues with the game as far as lag or stutter. It looked beautiful on a 27" screen; the battle map just looked gorgeous.
- You can expect a bit of a learning curve with this game; meaning there are so many new/changed things it really felt like a different total war game. Example; the agents (from what I saw) had many uses in themselves, the complexity of the new naval system, the tech trees and city upgrade paths ... and just think there are variations with all the factions.
Bound to give us hardcore gamers hours of fun in learning about all the new systems.
- Now it has been awhile since I played a total war game; but don't expect a breeze when fighting the AI on the battle map; I had some pretty good tactics but the AI threw some surprises at me.
a. In one instance I charged my horses into their skirmishers but the AI; when I was distracted elsewhere rushed in some spears and they make quick work of yours cavs (unless you charge them from behind - and even then it is not suggested you leave them there to fight for long).
b. When I used my slingers to pelt their troops; their shield using ones kept raising their shields over and over and little damage was done (to be honest it almost looked weird - went up and down repeatedly) - but once my melee troops engaged the repeated shield raising stopped.
prob one of my only gripes - their effect looked good but the animation sort of looked weird.
also IMO you wont be doing much damage to roman units that use shields if you are using slingers.
c. I got up close and personal with some of the battles and the animations looked Awesome! - shield clashing and blocking - it looked like a real brawl.
d. if I hadnt already mentioned this; flanking plays a bigger roll (or at least it appeared too); you could have 2 units duking it out and they would last awhile ... but throw in even a small flanking or rear attacking force and the enemy is going to be taking heavy damage and soon route. Really makes you think about tactics and maneuvers and set up positions.
Before I forget - morale seems to play a big roll - I really liked the feel of the battle from reading and watching history shows it felt more like a reenactment of one of these battles then in past TW games; example beating a flank of a unit would soon cause it to flee and this would soon carry over to other units.
e. Keep your cavs away from spear units!
f. the scripted battle that I played; the map looked Great; farms, houses trees a river etc ... it looked like a real place with troops fighting in it.
g. buffs; only had a little chance to play with buffs - I liked the generals buffs (similar to what we have seen in the videos) - only made sense a general could buff his troops. Some of the individual units (most of the melee) could have some other buffs like whip (which would increase a couple things for x amount of time and have a cooldown). This had a longish cooldown (I think 300 seconds but going on memory here) - felt maybe a bit arcady but I can see its roleplaying uses too.
h. I tried to get a decent look at the tech trees and building upgrades etc etc ... Most information was not available but some I gleaned. I noticed with the military tech trees that it appeared that all forms of military will equally represented; example - one might think under the tech tree there would be a lot of infantry upgrades but I saw everything pretty evenly distributed, cavs, infantry, siege, navy
there were all different kinds of temple upgrades, a lot of different building options and now from what I can tell you will have to choose what you upgrade because of the limited slots; example - do you want a military power house city or a economic one?
...
OK that's enough for now. Like I mentioned above - I will be getting some more answers soon to most of the questions in my previous thread.
If you have anything you would like clarified (can't hear from the videos or from my reports above) let me know.
Again a big thanks to CA for this Event and to Tim, Dave and Pawel for sitting down with me to give us fans something to drool over while we wait these long 'few' weeks before release.
Rome will soon realize what that thundering is ... it is the sound of thousands of hoplites marching in unison with defiance and fury in their eyes.
Let loose the dogs of War!
edit -
just remembered that forced march mode gave your army 2x the movement speed with some negatives attached to it; I don't recall what they were exactly but they honestly didn't seem that bad; I think being able to be ambushed easier and maybe a bit less morale when attacking. I forsaw a big large army rampaging through a weaker enemies land at high speed. (but maybe Im wrong).
direct links to vids for those having issues
http://youtu.be/gBhTRP0M1ZA
http://youtu.be/s7nTbCjscLE
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Originally Posted by GussieFinkNottle
it was worth a shot!
