nwg

Fellow Napoleonics fans,

Had ETW retail now for several playing hours and have had a few games. My worst fears are coming true. I am struggling to love this game, much as I struggled to like the ETW demo.

I can't put my finger on whats up, not 100% anyway. Perhaps its a whole combination of things.

1) Much as Gunner24 predicted, this game is -not- Napoleonic. Its not, really, and I can't stretch my imagination far enough. The so called 'late period' is not nearly late enough for my tastes. I struggle with the weird artillery and strange unit 'abilities' (like stakes/pikes for instance).

2) Perhaps I need a computer upgrade, but I'm finding that moving about the battlefield with the camera is so laggy and fast/slow (alternating) that its distracting me from whats going on

3) I'm -really- struggling to tell the units apart. This might get better with time and familiarity, but they are looking pretty much the same to me right now.

4) Much as above, but worse, there is a lack of contrast (or something) which means that for me at least the models of the soldiers are tending to blend in with the textures of the ground they are standing on. I literally visually lose my units in the terrain.

5) Really weird unit attributes that I can't deal with. Grenadier spam! Light units that 'hide' anywhere and disappear, horse artillery where a single loss of a horse by a stray ball appears to kill all the artillery crew, the remaining horses and destroy the caissons and gun, stakes from some light troops, rocket spam, 6lb and 24lb cannon which cost almost the same and have the same range (???), arrgghhhh.

Perhaps a lot of this will go away as my eyes adjust to the new game and gameplay, but gee, right now, I'm under impressed and have to say that its possible I won't ever be able to like this game - might need to wait until the Lordz produce their first mod of it.

Regards, M

I have found much the same but even with all the bad things the game play I find is excellent and not as fast as I had expected.

Lots of rubbish in there, but some excellent stuff as well BUT for me the thing that kills it is the map - they are to flashy and pretty and badly made for game play....as there are only a few maps they neede to be well designed to give maximum game play - they have not been.

I played 2 MP 1v1 games which lasted 15 min. or max 20 min. each. !? My games were like Rome style.
2 things i liked are the * design of my otto men (but still impossible for me to play properly even with low graphic settings) and *group forward/backwards buttons, Thats all i think. Other than that most part of the game annoyed me. Maybe i have to get used to it i am not sure. I dont plan a comp.upgrade till the mod of this game. With that current game i can play some slow,laggy SP for fun or campaigns but not serious MP games.

I cant see who is connected in the lobby so most games you had so far are password protected/invite ones ? I cant even see the games you hosted...on our steam group list sometimes "join" writes beside the nicks but when i hit join it says "couldnt find server!?" Strange...

Ahh. I wonder if this is connected to this post from thelordz new forums?

http://www.thelordz.org/forum/viewtopic ... 14&t=10539



M

ah i see now Moopere thanks.

So which region will ntw-nwg community will use? We better make an Announcement for a common region in NWG Steam Group Room after asking every clan opinion ?

Yes, its a good question. I'd guess and say whatever region is in the GMT timezone is likely to get the most use so far as ex NTW2 players go. Overall though, including RTWers and new players, Central Europe and the USA would probably have to be likely as the biggest single blocks of players.

M

O M G...this is not good news.....looks like something I'd not want to mess around with......best wait and see a bit longer before changing this stuff.

I have now played 4 MP games and Moopere i agree with everything you say about whats wrong with ETW at the moment.
And lets not beat about the bush there is a hell of a lot of it.
The maps issue is easily resolved just get more maps so not really much to worry about in the long run.
Joining and playing games is a bit of a drama at the moment but we will get the hang of that with practise.
But the whole faction and units thing is total dross for me.
Two Florin size army's only available is an unbelievable oversight from CA in my eyes.
Does it matter what faction you choose to play with ?? i think not, there seems little variation (i guess on this point we have been very spoilt with NTW and CB)
I'm not to worried on the unit costings as Cav are no where near as powerful as in NTW so don't need a high price.
As long as we play with the right guys balanced army's will be fine.
Moopere your real gripe i can well understand with the arty.
Even without the deployment difficulty's and the ease of destruction of your crews, the whole Arty thing to me looks like some arcade gimmick thrown in for fun
I may be wrong but there looks to be some dubious weapon and shell types available too.
I could go on but will give it a rest for now.

The thing is Moopere the thing plays out so dam well that despite everything you still want to play.
Just being in a 2v2 and at the hight of battle taking a look around to see all army's lines spread out all over the field some engaged, some not with no bunched forces.
Mate it really could be a Napoleonic battle you are playing out.
I wouldn't give up yet mate on ""TRYING TO LOVE ETW""

I've only had a couple of MP. 1 against CL which was excellent I must say, I'll get back to this in a moment. The first one I had was against an unknown player and was rubbish though, my own fault because I didn't ask for rules (ha! Rules!), but he turned up with 6x 4" Mortors and enough infantry to protect them, then just sat there in front of his mortors and pounded the hell outa me. Pretty funny to watch but not fun to play.

I will admit Dougie/Gun, I concede now that there are several aspects to this game which really are good. Musket fire for instance, its all good, really, I never hoped for a game with the right mix of detail here, the first volley is devastating and each volley after becomes more and more scattered as the men reload and shoot again in their own time, very realistic indeed! Melee seems to work a lot better. You get a little sporadic shooting in a melee but about what you'd expect really, the occasional weapon discharge in the maelstrom of a bayonet fight. Men getting tired, formations being kept and not 'clumping' all this is good.

But...

Boy, theres some bad and weird stuff in there. I won't go over them again as most everyone with a serious Napoleonic bent including me has mentioned them already.

I've got to say though, and I hope the Lordz both old and new are listening, NTW2 was and is excellent, really, a masterpiece when you think about it. Look what they had to work with and look what came out the other end. CA would do well to take a serious peek at NTW2 to see why their game (ETW) is generally rubbish and NTW2 is a great work. With only a couple of changes at the games engine end which was the cause of the issues we all suffered with NTW2 the game would have been definitive.

Its the prospect of getting a similarly high quality game from The Lordz in NTW3 that keep me playing ETW today as I'd like to think I'll understand the game better with more play/familiarity - plus, right now, its all new and visually pretty fabulous, but this feeling won't last with me, ultimately the game has to play really well and be -balanced- for my interest to continue.

Now, back to my game with CL. Well, despite having my ass handed to me, which was fine, this game gave me considerable hope. I'm extremely likely I must say to restrict my future MP games to nwg members. Decent players using Napoleonic tactics can transform this game from a weird Rome type spam/rush/blob type game into something really fun and decent.

Moo.

As Dougie says, with the right players it CAN be excellent, it has the potential (in mod form) to make ntw2 look pretty poor.....it's that good.

Dissapointed a bit.
Siege Battles are bad, very bad. Very buggy and of course AI really bad. RTW was much better from what I remember.

Played some MP battles and didn't get the feel of NTW.

Don't remember the word Gunner used once to describe the mash, or mush, but that's what one gets a lot.

And yes, units move too fast.

Oh well, will keep at it but was expecting something better.

Ah, yes, forgot, lots of pretty scenarios but cannot distinguish units well with the background. In NTW everything was so much clearer damn it!

Haven't myself played any siege battles and don't intend to, i had 1 game against the AL that was enough the AL was poor.



I think you mean the blob when a mass of units all on top of each other charge your lines, i would guess you have been playing against random lobby players, games against NTW players so far have been excellent.
We have a NWG steam group mate i don't think you are with us ??




There are lots wrong with ETW as has been discussed everywhere but for me on MP it plays fantastically well and has massive potential.



Yes mate totally agree this needs changing urgently seeing what units you are controlling in the unit panel is unbelievably difficult.

I'm quite getting into the SP Grand Campaign I must say. I'm surprised because this type of thing is not usually my deal, but its quite interesting and because you can ask the computer to look after all the small details and just concern yourself with state matters (war, sabotage, diplomatic relations, etc) I'm not getting bored and bogged down in the small stuff like how many corn cobs got grown in outer Siberia this year (hehe).

However, as one might expect, the grand campaign involves many many sieges and the computer AI hunkers down in major cities trying to resist your will. As you say GCG, the seiges are bad and I hate playing them, but leaving it to an auto resolve is a recipe for disaster as well - last time I did this I had a slight disadvantage in numbers...maybe 100 guys, but the results were laughable, I killed 5 the enemy killed -all- my guys, so, no more auto resolve for me.

Anyway, as you suggest, the AI in siege games is just awful though I think ultimately this is a problem with the pathfinding engine as all the houses and clutter of having a town on a map means there are too many 'no go' areas for your troops and general choke points and blockages.

The AI will likely never be a decent opponent on the field...which is fine...however I hold considerable hope that an MP campaign using the existing campaign/tactical engines could in fact be really quite interesting.

Has anyone tried the reinforcements option thing thats available in the campaign game? If we can unlock this as part of a mod it would be great. You can come to the field with 20 units as normal, but, if you have an allied general in the same region he will assist you by bringing his extra units onto the field as yours start to be destroyed or rout. Its not perfect but offers some tiny hope against the constrictions of the 20 unit maximum.

Cheers, M.

Reinforcements in the field:
While in campaign mode you have to place the reinforcing units adjacent to your main force. Once you start the battle in tactical mode, after a while you will receive a notice that some recinforcements of yours have arrived.

NWG group in Steam: Wasn't aware of it, will look to see if can find it. Is it called NWG?

Its here:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/NapWG

Cheers,
Moo