Thoughts After A Full Day.

**eventhorizen** · November 11, 2006, 07:57 AM

I took the day off yesterday to play M2TW, and it arrived nice and early.

I wanted to talk about my experiances so far, and bring up some points for discussion.

First of all, its a great game. The Campaign map is massivly reworked, and while some things may seem a bit gimmicky, they still have their uses and add a bit of depth to your attempt to take over the world. So thumbs up there.

The battles are stunning. To fall in love with this game, simply construct an Army of Scottish Highland Nobles and attack York before it builds walls. Watching men blocking and parrying enemies attacks with two handed swords, before stabbing them clean through their stomach, then decapitating them as they fall, means watching the slow carnage of a hard grinding battle from up close (one of my favourite parts of the previous titles) is improved by factors of ten.

The only problem is, in my opinion, is that this is so rare. This leads me to my main point of contention.

Infantry seems stunningly weak.I am playing on Vh/Vh, this may be a difficulty bug that the battles are not really a challenge, but my point mainly centres around unit sizes.

CA said the game graphical engine is optimised, I have a Core 2 Duo E6600 and X1900XTX, so I dont really need smaller unit sizes to play the game. Huge unit sizes see's calvary at a Unit size of 80, and infantry at no higher than 120.

It seems to me that infantry unit sizes have been decreased, and the reason I say decreased, and not balanced, is because infantry lines seem tiny in all armies regardless of their content, and are easilly decimated regardless of their statistics by even poor cavalry and archers.

I am really dissapointed in the infantry so far. Phalanx armies in Rome for example could consist of units of 250 men. This is a 50% decrease in the actual numbers of troops you can field in a maximum size army, but the statistical balance between cavalry, infantry, and archers has not been altered to take this into account. In short infantry are not a force of any kind in battles.

I must say though, I have only played Scotland and England so far. Perhaps an army of pikemen may bring some balance to the game.

I also find the cavalry to be buggy. I am finding it incredibly difficult to get a lance down charge with my cavalry. I have positioned cavalry ontop of hills with clear runs to the enemy troops, but they just stop at the front line and cut with swords most of the time.

Coming from playing the Rome Total Realism mod almost daily for over a year, I think the combat is inferior as a tactical challenge, and as an immersive experiance. Although the unit looks and combat manouvres certainly help to make it better than it otherwise would have been.

Vanilla RTW was exactly the same, so their is no reason for me to condemn this game as inferior, which I wont. Once modded I am sure it has the potential to be superior in every respect to its predecessors.

To sum up here are my points.

Excellant campaign map. Much more ways to engage with the rest of the game.
Littered with bugs, which will no doubt be addressed.
Stunning battles, if you manage to fight a long infantry battle, which is incredibly rare if you actually use the best troops.
Dissapointing unit, and therefore army, sizes and scales. Hopefully it can be modded, but I fear not.
Usual gimmicky and instant gratification troop types and statistics, again waiting with baited breath for some class mods.

Things like wearing cloth, leather, and chainmail to successive battles because you upgraded your Castles are a brilliant addition to the game. Alliances through marriage, Papal elections, merchants etc. all bring a new level of realism and involvement to the game.
Scripted events and the Mongol horde are definatly fun, if you are not close to the area they occur

All in all, its vastly superior to Vanilla RTW, and considering the mods released for that game were some of the greatest games I have played, this is even more exciting.

I just cross my fingers someone can find a way to increase the Infantry Unit sizes, even if it is just for purely aesthetic reasons.

**scottn72** · November 11, 2006, 08:10 AM

I agree about the size of infantry units, they could do with being beefed up a little. I noticed that if you spread your spearmen out so that they are only 2 lines deep they get decimated by a cavalry charge.

A possible solution would be armies with a lot of infantry units to give your front line more depth? And maybe later period spearmen will cope a lot better.

Haven't had too much of a problem using my own cavalry, i've watched them move towards the enemy lower their lances and gain speed, before ploughing into the enemy lines and sending men flying, it doesn't happen all the time, and I'm not sure if it is a bug or that the conditions for a charge were just not right.

I imagine that pretty soon some excellent mods will begin to appear, although I feel that I'll be able to give this game more of chance before modding. With RTW I used mods almost from the beginning, starting with the speed mods to slow the movement rates down, as it felt more like a click and run affair rather than a strategy game. This doesn't seem to be so much of a problem this time round.

**CaptainCernick** · November 11, 2006, 08:27 AM

I love reading these kinds of reports. They adress things a normal games reviewer without sufficient background in the TW series and it's mods wouldn't.
+rep

**happyho** · November 11, 2006, 08:28 AM

Originally Posted by scottn72

Haven't had too much of a problem using my own cavalry, i've watched them move towards the enemy lower their lances and gain speed, before ploughing into the enemy lines and sending men flying, it doesn't happen all the time, and I'm not sure if it is a bug or that the conditions for a charge were just not right.

Lusted stated earlier that the success of your charge depends entirely upon the positioning and timing of the charge. A well timed charge will have your troops crashing into the enemy as a unit, while a poorly timed charge will see the unit cohesion broken. In other words it is up to the player to time the charge properly and not just simply click on the enemy you want to charge and hope for the best. Practice makes perfect in this situation I suppose, more realistic in other words.

**scottn72** · November 11, 2006, 09:27 AM

Originally Posted by happyho

Lusted stated earlier that the success of your charge depends entirely upon the positioning and timing of the charge. A well timed charge will have your troops crashing into the enemy as a unit, while a poorly timed charge will see the unit cohesion broken. In other words it is up to the player to time the charge properly and not just simply click on the enemy you want to charge and hope for the best. Practice makes perfect in this situation I suppose, more realistic in other words.

Glad to hear it, that was my feeling on the matter. No more double clicking charges all over the map. And I also agree that it is much more realistic and adds another aspect to battles, as like I said, when it works it really works well.

**Roman-Warrior** · November 11, 2006, 08:24 AM

I was planning on playing on " Large " anyway so my comp could run it, so for the unit sizes Im fine with. Lets just hope CA will adress more than the AI in their first patch!

-Wes