nwg

It was pretty late by the time the download completed in Australia but I got an SP game in to check out how things look. I was pretty sleep deprived, and perhaps this is colouring my judgement but certainly my first impression was that this latest effort is a _lot_ better than previous attempts. In fact, this was much closer to my original expectation of the game back in March.

Still plenty of issues, don't get me wrong, modders are absolutely required to turn this good game into a great one, but I feel we're closer to decent foundation to work from.

Things I've noticed so far:

PRO:

- The game _does_ now seem to use both cores of my core2duo. Unfortunately for me I don't (yet) notice any FPS increase though.[Edit: Yep, no doubt about it, sustained 52FPS with 8000 men on the field previously around 24FPS]
- Although as a matter of principle I'm against the 'range bands' that each range unit has at least with this patch you can see the band clearly over the background terrain.
- Got a fright for a moment when the patch installed as it seemed I'd have to _buy_ the promised new units. Thankfully though the new 'free' units are available and they look really great. The new DLC (US$3.50) units look like they might be worthwhile too, but I'm not sure if I should buy them as it just encourages bad CA behaviour I think (ie, don't finish the game at release date but instead sell upgrades in small chunks over time) [Edit: the new free units are nice. Diversity in the troops really adds to the game. Can't wait for the modders to do the business to ETW]
- A bit early to comment, but the artillery problem of teams being killed too easily seems at least partially corrected. Didn't play with arty as much as I should have, hope the ability to have your gunners flee the guns when under pressure has been implemented.[Edit: Much much much(!!) better. However, new weird bug. Artillery gunners can fire their 'guns' even when they have left them behind on the field somewhere. Be on the watchout for this its a strange and dangerous bug]
- Are the transitions from models to sprites better? Can someone confirm this? Seems so, but the whole sprites mess can be a little bit random so perhaps I just got lucky in my test game.[Edit: For me at least the graphics are clearer and I've not yet seen one of the previously familiar really ugly sprites]
- Perhaps its just been ages since I played a vanilla game, but it seems that the army lists have been expanded (and not _only_ the new units). Maybe I'm wrong on this.


CON:

- Pricing of units is pretty silly. Perhaps its just me, but the pricing model appears to favour the building of ridiculous ahistorical armies.
- The cold dead hand of excessive marketing is entering the game in an even more obvious way with a steam "buy now" button appearing on the menu page of the game (sheesh!!!)
- Steam. Steam is always a CON. Sorry, I'm not impressed. The Steam client initially told me that my locally installed, paid for and previously working ETW was "not available" - what the!!?? This is a crazy DRM scheme of the worst possible type. I very often feel abused as the legal owner of ETW via the imposition of Steam.
- No new maps. Goodness me. Gunner, you should contact CA and offer to sell them some new maps at 50p royalty per copy distributed (this seems to be CA's own distribution method, they shouldn't object (wink).


Overall, notwithstanding certain irks that seem to be part of the genetic makeup of TW games (all of them) this is a good patch.

Cheers, Moopere

Lag seemed less to me, a big improvement in the camera movement. Smokehammer thought the same.

The range bands can be turned of I think, not that I would turn them off myself, the new red is better than the old white.

Did you really want any more of the trashy CA maps ?.

50p per copy, that would add up to a lot of money, that would be great, it would make up for the time I used making them - it take's a very serious amount of time to make a single map, I mean, like at least 10-15 hours each, compared to half that for ntw2 maps - but there again these are 100x better, so it's time well spent.

I appear to be lucky with steam so far, not really having any problems with it but I agree, I don't like it much.

Yes, now I've played about a bit more I completely agree. As one of the most vocal NWG critics of ETW when it finally arrived I need to give CA their dues on this patch I think. The graphics 'look' better, I could swear they hae fixed a lot of the sprite/model issues that used to bother me enormously. The lag is better, the artillery is a _lot_ better.

Sheesh, I might actually jump online tonight and play some vanilla games, its now the game it _should_ have been in March.




Yes, they can.




Thats a fair comment actually. They are rubbish, quite right.




I figured that CA must have sold a million+ copies so 50p each would be a nice bonus payment I know the NTW2 maps were hard work and by all accounts the ETW ones are even harder.




I just really sticks in my eye to have the games launching mechanism (steam) tell me the game is unavailable presumably because it couldn't authenticate me at that moment - thats just wrong, really.

Cheers, M.

I have just quit Steam. Strudog invited me to play a game.

"Failed to join, incompatible version".

We both own the patch 1.3 but Strudog explains it it because he doens't use the mapmod.
Difficult to believe (for my poor brain), because I can't join when he uses a original ETW map.

What could be another explanation??? Please.

GP, We tried that the other night with some NBC. All participants must have the Lordz Map in data folder in order to join each others' games.

So the Strudog's assertion is correct even if amazing.

Thank you for the answer, AnkLrd.

Yes, that is correct, Badger is trying to fix it at the moment.

I don't see it as a problem anyway, why would anyone want to play WITHOUT the Lordz maps ?.

True enough - they are the best maps out there and by a large margin. They do however bugger up the names of the new units (I think) - does this cause any real in-game problems (ie; a crash??)??

Cheers, M.

Evidently, I keep my mapmod.

I've had 4 MP games, no crash, I don't know anything about messing up unit names.

The new unit names that just appeared for CA 1.3 don't show up on the unit selection cards when choosing your army. It will be the localisation file issue for sure. I don't particularly care to be honest, so long as the games don't crash as a result.



Moo.

I have now seen something from Badger about this - he has a fix for it.

A bit late for comments I guess but I'll throw in my sixpence anyway. I actually play Vanilla and not any mods, so I probably have noticed more than those who do.

PRO's:

Spain no longer has that ugly ahistorical gold color. The uniforms are actually spot on. Better uniforms in general for all nations too. Always a plus.

Lagfests are relatively non existant now, even when I do play with people from distant lands.

The DLC units are awesome and they give a big flavor to the game. Yah, paying for them is a bit silly, but the best way for a game to keep its fan base interested is releasing new content. Brilliant scheme charging for them though.

Nations are still relatively similar, but each nation is no longer a carbon copy of the other. Some nations' line infantry is better than others, etc...So one has to be mindful who they are fighting against, etc.

Nations like the Netherlands and Sweden aren't as generic and are now worth taking.

CONS:

I don't know if anyone else has seen this, but there's a HUGE artillery bug. If you turn on schrapnel shot and aim as high as you can on the ground behind your opponent, you can still shower his infantry with little pieces of grape shot and still do, albeit light, damage. This is really annoying, and I wish CA would get rid of the damn thing in the first place or reduce its range even more.

Campaign map is still *farting noise* Diplomacy never works, and "sea invasions" happen on rare occassions. Still lots of buggy things too such as navies becoming trapped in the straights of Gibralter.

Spam armies. This is the essence of TW MP sometimes, spamming armies are still relatively possible, and they rarely work. I wish we had the old MTW1 system in which the more of the same unit you took, the more expensive each unit became. Furguson rifle and Heavy cav spam gets soooo anoying. (Even if it is a rare occurance)

I'm glad CA made units more vulnurable to routing, but elite units shouldn't rout as fast.

Despite lag being alot better now, the amount of desyncs and disconnects seemed to have trippled. WTH...

The Finland map is getting dull and CA has REALLY lacked in the maps department. And no, I'm not using the Lordz pack, so save your breath.


Over all I'm glad that CA decided to listen to it's fan base and actually act upon their opinions. (well most of them at least..) They still have a ways to go (as seen above) but this patch is certainly in the right direction.

I played a little bit of vanilla after the patch too. Its no-where near as bad as it once was and so long as your opponent is decent a pretty fun time can be had.




Yep, 100% agree with this. They've done something with the models and LOD interactions/distances too I think. Still too many sprites and they are still god awful, but they are not quite so bad as they were prior to the patch.




Yep. Coming from Australia this is a big plus for me. I've had some great games recently without any lag to speak of and 50+ FPS even in one game of Darths mod in MP with 7000+ models.



I've had some opponents with these. They do look nice I agree and do help to differentiate nations a bit.



Brilliant as a monetisation scheme and generally the fanbase probably won't care that they are being gouged. Its really sticking in my eye for some reason though.




Shrapnel really annoys me and I'd be happier to just see it gone TBH. I didn't know about the bug though, thanks for the alert.

Cheers, M.