I thought battle-pace was reduced?

**InferiorBeing** · November 10, 2006, 06:17 AM

Well, so I got the game. First thing I did was to start a custom battle. For my side, I chose the British, and as the enemy, the French. (I thought I'd go classical.)

Late period, huge unit-scale. The battlefield was a flat, grassy plain, without a single feature, the difficuilty was "Very Hard".

For my side, I chose a majority of Armoured Swordsmen, and the enemy majority was Armoured Sergeants. Both sides had one cavalry unit, one artillery unit, and two ranged units as well.

When the battle started, I only charged my men straight forwards, without any kind of strategy used. Simply a full frontal charge. They collided, fought for four/five seconds, and then the first enemy started to flee. Soon, I witnessed a chain-rout of the kind that I mean to remember being promised would not happen.

Well, I figured it was the enemy that was too weak, so I upgraded them until they cost as much as mine. Next battle, they fought for maybe one second longer or so.

Next, I chose an enemy army that was mostly swordsmen, like mine. The enemy was The Holy Roman Empire, and their core units were dismounted knights, in stead of those sergeants. Now both armies' units started to rout, about five seconds into the fighting, and before you knew it, the battle was over.

I tried this over and over again, with different armies with different units. I tried Poland, Sicily, Spain, England, France and Denmark, but the result was the same.

What the hell? And this was the "Huge" unit size! I'll mostly be playing on the "Large" size or so, so imagine how fast they will be!

**Lusted** · November 10, 2006, 06:20 AM

It is reduced, if you play the battles for a bit longer you will see the enemy units reforming as you get bogged down fighting the units that did not rout.

**InferiorBeing** · November 10, 2006, 06:22 AM

My mistake. I forgot to add that I did fight all battles until the end.

**Lusted** · November 10, 2006, 06:25 AM

Hmm, now i've played battles on vh on huge and they laster quite long, though it was over quite quickyl as the ai out manouvered me and surrounded parts of my line at a time. Even on medium/hard difficulty i've never had mass chain routs unless i've killed the ai general easily, or managed to wipe out a large part off their line quickly.

**DavidtheDuke** · November 10, 2006, 06:26 AM

Unless it's Gothic Knights colliding into peasants or units just a bit farther up I don't think they should rout instantly (and 5 secs is rather instant IMO)

**Roman-Warrior** · November 10, 2006, 06:36 AM

I agree, are you sure your not overexagerating? I mean surely they fight longer.

-Wes

**yemeth** · November 10, 2006, 07:15 AM

I haven't played many (any) custom battles, yet, but in the campaign the troops hold out a lot longer than in RTW. In one siege I had two units of my billmen tie up the enemies armored sergeants on the side of the castle, while cavalry charging through the gates I shot open with my ballista. Firstly my billmen died apart from 9 men who ran away, so the held a long time. Secondly the enemy units getting charged did not rout immediately but held my knights at bay in the gate until eventually some knights managed to break the line and attack them from behind.

Overall I think battles are a lot more costly, because the AI actually reacts to units you send behind their fortified position in castle sieges. Not because your men rout instantly, but because the AI will charge your flanking units, if you try to sneak past their chokepoints, and will hold chokepoints when you don't.

**Boudicca** · November 10, 2006, 07:25 AM

I can only talk about the campaign, but those battles lasted long enough. I even had the nice experience that when outnumbered the AI either tries to flee from the field rather quickly or charges at your weakest spot. (They did so while I was manouvering my archers to take them down...). About battles lasting 5 secons - no, I can't confirm that from my experience. Nevertheless - I am only playing the campaign game. So it might be a custom battle thing perhaps?

**Salazar** · November 10, 2006, 07:57 AM

Im Sure my Brave Jihadists who conquered Leon would agree that battles are very costy and last much longer now. Those damn spear Militias of the Ai almost slaughtered my Ghazis. While my Spear militia was busy enough fighting on the walls so that my troops wouldnt be shot to pieces by the enemy.
So no 5 sec battles for me either.

**InferiorBeing** · November 10, 2006, 08:07 AM

I agree, are you sure your not overexagerating? I mean surely they fight longer.

I understand your question. But I took great care when I wrote this post to not let aggression or anger make me whine or exaggerate. I hope I succeded, and I am entirely calm as I write this.

No, I am not exaggerating. They actually didn't last any longer than that at all. And this was on "Huge", and "Very Hard". My PC is too much of a wimp to actually play the game on huge as well, so I'll have to stick to a size lower, which means even shorter battles. And although the units, like you said, re-grouped faster, this made a mess of the whole battlefield.

As to the AI, I really haven't seen any sophistication in their actions at all, but I'm presuming this is either because I haven't played the game enough just yet, (Not so likely), or because it will be fixed in the patch supposedly out today. (More likely), so I'm not really complaining about that, as I know this is not the latest AI version. Besides; with really short battles, one could argue that really intelligent AI is a bit of a waste anyways.

EDIT: oh, and obviously I'm not talking about siege battles, here, so what Salazar said is really not a reply.

**craziii** · November 10, 2006, 08:20 AM

why don't you save some recordings of that happening? it is custom, so recordings are possible. that will prove your point, other wise we will continue to doubt you claims since CA promise 30 sec at least on an open charge type of battle.

units regrouping after routing is very nice if use correct to flank the engaging enemy units, just in case you didn't get lusted's point.

**Lusted** · November 10, 2006, 08:21 AM

After playing a multiplayer battle i can definitely say that battles last much longer. Me and my oponent had similar balanced armies and so it ended up being a long fought war of attrition before his superiror infantry won the day for him.

**InferiorBeing** · November 10, 2006, 09:12 AM

After playing a multiplayer battle i can definitely say that battles last much longer. Me and my oponent had similar balanced armies and so it ended up being a long fought war of attrition before his superiror infantry won the day for him.

What unit scale?

**Lusted** · November 10, 2006, 09:12 AM

I use huge.

**AlfonsoVIII** · November 10, 2006, 09:30 AM

Originally Posted by InferiorBeing

Well, so I got the game. First thing I did was to start a custom battle. For my side, I chose the British, and as the enemy, the French. (I thought I'd go classical.)

Late period, huge unit-scale. The battlefield was a flat, grassy plain, without a single feature, the difficuilty was "Very Hard".

For my side, I chose a majority of Armoured Swordsmen, and the enemy majority was Armoured Sergeants. Both sides had one cavalry unit, one artillery unit, and two ranged units as well.

When the battle started, I only charged my men straight forwards, without any kind of strategy used. Simply a full frontal charge. They collided, fought for four/five seconds, and then the first enemy started to flee. Soon, I witnessed a chain-rout of the kind that I mean to remember being promised would not happen.

Well, I figured it was the enemy that was too weak, so I upgraded them until they cost as much as mine. Next battle, they fought for maybe one second longer or so.

Next, I chose an enemy army that was mostly swordsmen, like mine. The enemy was The Holy Roman Empire, and their core units were dismounted knights, in stead of those sergeants. Now both armies' units started to rout, about five seconds into the fighting, and before you knew it, the battle was over.

I tried this over and over again, with different armies with different units. I tried Poland, Sicily, Spain, England, France and Denmark, but the result was the same.

What the hell? And this was the "Huge" unit size! I'll mostly be playing on the "Large" size or so, so imagine how fast they will be!

Can you post the replays of the battles for all of us to look at?

**hammi** · November 10, 2006, 09:46 AM

I have the same 'complaint'.

For background, I have played the series since Shogun, although I got no enjoyment out of RTW untill the great mods came along.

Unit size normal and difficulty normal for campaign map and very hard for battles.

The battles so far have required pretty much zero tactics, everything dies too damn fast. The running speeds and walking speeds of the units are too fast.

Mind you, I just got the game from local supermarket ( Anttila for the finns ) and have fought just couple battles so far.

Still, I'm liking the game very much and looking forward for good mods reduce the speeds in battle (killing and moving). Definetly playable straight out of the box, even without the promised patch that seems not to be out yet, unlike the horrible RTW.

**Sinuhet** · November 10, 2006, 12:54 PM

Originally Posted by hammi

I have the same 'complaint'.

For background, I have played the series since Shogun, although I got no enjoyment out of RTW untill the great mods came along.

Unit size normal and difficulty normal for campaign map and very hard for battles.

The battles so far have required pretty much zero tactics, everything dies too damn fast. The running speeds and walking speeds of the units are too fast.

Mind you, I just got the game from local supermarket ( Anttila for the finns ) and have fought just couple battles so far.

Still, I'm liking the game very much and looking forward for good mods reduce the speeds in battle (killing and moving). Definetly playable straight out of the box, even without the promised patch that seems not to be out yet, unlike the horrible RTW.

Ave!

As for movement speeds, there is very simple solution which I ahve used already for my version2.0 Mod for MTW2 Demo - the customised script file for battlefiled movement modifiers. If you download it and then use the appropriate file only all should be working also in full game. I ahve not the game unfortunatelly (in Czech mutation it will be releasd in the end of November

, so I will have to go with English or German version which is howvere double priced ...), so I cannot give you right config file or info as for the recpective .pack whixh is needed to patch vie MedBattlSelector or TWgrep by ShellShock. It is possible to do it also manually by hand via hex editor ... However the modifying the movement speed of the units on the battlefield is not expalining the problem of the first poster in this thread. This is related more with morale levels in EDU.txt file, which is waiting on the extraction ....

Bye Sinuhet

**La Vache Qui Rit** · November 10, 2006, 10:07 AM

Nope, haven't found that. Just got the game and jumped straight into a med/med campaign to see what the game wass like. I didn't touch the unit size so that's standard. Playing ass the English just had a couple of battles against rebels to take York (unfortified) and in the field. On both occasions the enemy militia spearmen stood up well to my mailed knights. Even when I engaged the spearmen from the fron with mine and charged them from the rear it took longer than 5 seconds for the to rout. Even the peasant archers fought back rather than just run away immediately.
My only gripe so far - archers seem to be underpowered and slow (missile-wise).

**InferiorBeing** · November 10, 2006, 02:16 PM

I'm just raising my head from the game for a moment to ask some quick questions:

When an enemy routs in the middle of battle, which they do frequently, what's the best choice? Pursue or stay to fight?

For some reason, the game slows down an awful lot when there are fighting, but other than that it stays fine. For example, I can play the game on "Huge", and it runs quite fine. When they shoot, walk, hell, even when both armies run at once with arrows and flaming procectiles raining everywhere. But once the two armies close up and start slashing, it suddenly slows to a halt. Why?