Medieval II Total War Demo

Darth Quorthon · Post by **Darth Quorthon** » 2006-10-08 11:56pm

I just finished playing through this demo, which was included on the disc with the new PC Gamer magazine. The demo has a tutorial, which is the Battle of Hastings, and two historic battles: The Battle of Pavia and The Battle of Agincourt. No campaign map.

Unfortunately, the only way I know of to acquire the demo is on the PC Gamer disc, although I'm willing to bet it can acquired through other sources.

Naturally, I wouldn't make such a topic without some pics:

Opening screenie from tutorial. I prepare to select Rufus, a Norman general.

My archers fire on the Saxon dogs.

Armoured Seargents prepare to skewer some Saxons.

Battle of Agincourt: Some French Knights charge the line of my English army.

Battle of Agincourt: An overhead view showing the scale of battle. My army of 1,000 squared off against a force of about 1,500.

The demo ran pretty smooth on my system (Athlon 64 X2 4400+ and Radeon X1950XTX) at 1280 x 1024 with antialiasing and anisotropic filtering on. One thing I noticed that I liked was that there appear to be several character models for each unit, so each soldier in a unit doesn't look exactly identical.

I can't wait for this game.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-10-09 12:06am

Thanks for the heads up! I have no idea a demo had been released!

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2006-10-09 12:33am

Excellent. Now I just have to get my PC Gamer, which is incredibly inconvenient to do while I'm up at college...

Ypoknons · Post by **Ypoknons** » 2006-10-09 12:45am

It's incredibly easy to do at NYU, but after 12pm it's a little harder and I'm just too bloody tired, if at least somber.

May I ask how fast the units move, whether they fly like in RTW, and if battles are slower or longer than the original vanilla RTW?

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-10-09 01:07am

"Medieval 2 Total War Demo SE.exe"

Darth Quorthon · Post by **Darth Quorthon** » 2006-10-09 01:22am

Ypoknons wrote:May I ask how fast the units move, whether they fly like in RTW, and if battles are slower or longer than the original vanilla RTW?

The three battles were not too long. I haven't played RTW in quite some time, but I don't remember much difference in the length of battles. The three battles in the demo were probably a little shorter than normal, since the troops were already deployed and in formation. In the Battle of Pavia, combat occured very soon after I was given control of my army. As for the speed of the units, I didn't really notice a difference, but like I said, it's been awhile.

Count Dooku · Post by **Count Dooku** » 2006-10-09 01:56am

Does anyone know how many characters you will be able to have on-screen in the final version of the game? I remember hearing something like 10,000, but that was over a year ago at X05...

wautd · Post by **wautd** » 2006-10-09 02:19am

You're lucky I just got Company of heroes or I'd hate your guts right now

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-10-09 03:42am

I've heard that you won't even be able to play the demo or the game if your system has a CPU that's incompatible with some program or something. SSE2? Dunno.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-10-09 04:08am

Vympel wrote:I've heard that you won't even be able to play the demo or the game if your system has a CPU that's incompatible with some program or something. SSE2? Dunno.

Every modern computer will be able to play it.

SSE2 instructions have been bundled into PCs for the past...half decade or so?

DLing from torrents as we speak.

AniThyng · Post by **AniThyng** » 2006-10-09 04:11am

Vympel wrote:I've heard that you won't even be able to play the demo or the game if your system has a CPU that's incompatible with some program or something. SSE2? Dunno.

If that's true, anyone with an Athlon XP is out of luck, as AMD didn't put in SSE2 until the athlon64.

P4'll be fine, though.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-10-09 07:09am

Fun demo, played tutorial so far. 6800GT + 1280x1024 = abit slow but fun tutorial.

I like the gimmick where the loading screen smoothly transitions into gameplay.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-10-09 09:19am

All I can say is my copy of PC Gamer damn well better come today!

Dartzap · Post by **Dartzap** » 2006-10-09 09:39am

I can only assume this will appear on Gamespot in the next few days? Torrents suck for that kinda thing

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2006-10-09 11:16am

ARRG Matey, you just not be 'nowing the right winds! Over at our little bay, we've got got 'em fine wind charts! Our fine ship, the Twomegbits be sailin' splenditly at top speed.

Or somesuch

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2006-10-09 04:06pm

Fuck fuckity fuck. Bastards. Demo doesn't work without SSE2. And I have an Athlon XP. Which doesn't have it. Fuck.

If they do this with the entire game they should be crucified. Sure, on the Intel side non SSE2 procs arent an issue since everything P4 and up has it, but on the AMD side they would be screwing over a lot of people if the final game requires SSE2. They aren't some fringe company which doesn't have the resources to get it working on non-SSE2 stuff.

Damn and fuck yet again. Sorry for venting, but I was really looking foward to this.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2006-10-09 06:44pm

Fuck them then. I have an Athlon XP too. Fuck them hard.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-10-09 06:58pm

Is there any indication that this will be a requirement for the full game? The demo filename indicates this is the SE-enabled version of the demo...

Darth Quorthon · Post by **Darth Quorthon** » 2006-10-09 08:58pm

On a lesser note, I read the readme.txt file, and the demo also does not support ATI's CrossFire dual videocard solution. Not a big deal from where I stand, but those who shelled out big bucks for two videocards are going to be ticked if the final game also doesn't support Crossfire. Hopefully the disclaimer "this software is a demo and is not representative of the final product" foreshadows some changes, although I'm not sure how many changes can be made with the release date being targeted for mid-november, unless there's a delay.

I took two new screenshots with the graphics settings cranked to see if I could improve on my initial ones. Both are from the battle of Agincourt.

The max AA the demo allowed was 6x, and the max AF was 16x. At 1280x1024 it ran fairly smooth, but my X1950XTX's "leafblower" fan fired up fairly rapidly.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-10-09 09:24pm

I'm a bit disappointed that the game doesn't support SM3.0. Oh well. Here are some of my screen shots, taken at 1920x1200, 2aa and 8af. Pretty much everything was cranked to the max, with the exception of shadows being set to medium and unit detail (its the LOD setting, you can watch it change in game, which is cool) set to Super High (second highest setting). These settings were very playable on my 7950GX2 (15 to 30 fps), and I expect performance will get even better once Nvidia puts out a multi-gpu profile. Anyway, to the screen shots, Battle of Agincourt as well (I got my ass kicked at Prada, so I'm not posting those!).

King Henry V

Rabid Screaming Frenchmen

Melee
Ok, that screen shot doesn't begin to convey how fucking awesome this game is. These guys were putting the beat down on each other, just like in the preview trailers.

Results

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-10-09 09:26pm

Dartzap wrote:I can only assume this will appear on Gamespot in the next few days? Torrents suck for that kinda thing

They do in fact NOT suck for it. On my AU-standard shit ADSL, only two hours to torrent. Damn PC Gamer.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-10-09 09:27pm

Does the Athlon64 have SSE2?

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-10-09 09:29pm

Darth Wong wrote:Does the Athlon64 have SSE2?

Yup. If you really want to verify it, download CPUZ. It will list your CPU's instruction sets on the first tab.

Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba · Post by **Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba** » 2006-10-09 09:56pm

Very pretty. Very, very pretty. I'm pleased and have lost most reservations.

Fun missions - using my General's bodyguard to charge a cannon battery at the Battle of Pavia certainly wasn't the best idea, but it was very cool. I got some 'Charge of the Light Brigade' feelings.

Still, Agincourt is fuckin' tough. There are just too many goddamned Frenchmen!

Alferd Packer · Post by **Alferd Packer** » 2006-10-09 10:06pm

Blech. The game locks up every ten seconds for ten seconds, then calls up the game shell and the keyboard options, which I have to close to do anything. Makes it, naturally, fucking impossible to play. Oh well, hopefully that problem will be resolved when the game goes gold.