They're still the same size as the first shot, it just so happens that the last ship is one of the smallest.

First of all, I don't see much of a difference anywa.

Secondly, the newest screenshots are apparently unoffical, from an old build of the game, etc etc

Thirdly, there are many types of ships. Are you sure that's a frigate? Maybe it's a teenie tiny doger ship.

The small last picture is of a caravel I believe. Frigates are quite a bit larger.

Quoted from Elpea:

You mean the ship in the first screenshot is a frigate and the latest shot isn't?

Quoted from Scorpi:

Let me resize the picture to scale, so you can see the difference.

Quote:

The older the build, the bigger the ships.

I think Some Es guy said some ships have too bee smaller,so that the really BIG one will be cooler or something.

---Ghost Trains, Fixed trade routes, Not so big ships and buildings, Teleported shipments, Very small farms, Shot thought Walls, No Men on Walls, 1 Acc per cd-key, units taking multiple pop slots...

In the other hand...

+++Siege now have crew, infinite farms, no drop points for resources, trade routes, natives, mercenaries, good graphics, natives / merc dont take pop slots, home cities, experience, round map, ragdoll, units have a secondary siege attack...

Now, looking at that, i noticed that almost everything i disliked in Age 3 avoid excessive micromanagement:

Ghost trains: if werent like that, i couldnt safely send my expensive cannon units to battle without fearing losing them in a stupid way.

Fixed trade routes: what would stop the players to spam trade routes between markets placed on odd areas of the map? fixed trade routes and neutral tradesmen will make for a better game (IMO, trade routes should go through all players starting town center).

small ships: if they took half the screen, they would be able to shot to the other side of the map... thats a problem. Maneuvering as well wouldnt be fun, and you would have to zoom in and out while messing with soldiers and ships.

teleported shipments: what if you lose the water to your enemy? do you deserve to not receive any shipments at all only because your opponent build a dock before you? And not every map has water.

no men on walls: to take them out, or to put them in, more micro... (but that would look cool...).

I still think this game could have "solid walls", bigger (but not so much) buildings, larger farms, no multiple pop slot units and more than 1 acc per cd-key...

But im far from disappointed. If you were really dissapointed, you wouldnt buy the game right?

Quoted from bahari:

If you could provide me a link to that, I'd appreciate it.

Quoted from sexypanda:

I would like to keep this on the ship topic, but I'll reply to some of your other points.

About the ghost trains: they don't have to be ghost in order to not kill your units. Let them hit the units, but dont let them do damage.

Quote:

What would stop them? How about a group of 20 raiders for starter?

And speaking of fixed trade routes and phantom trade units, another problem with this is that it took away the strategic element of raiding enemies' trade units, putting a major blow into his investments. You no longer can do that when your men can walk through them as if they were holograms.

Quote:

Unless the size of the map is two screen in width, I don't understand what you mean.

Quote:

Remember that naval battle would no longer involve fleets of 40+ ships as in AoK. Naval battle, as ES have stated, will involve on average around, more or less, 4 ships.

Speaking proportionally, that's 10 times less ships, meaning that the ship in AoE3 can be technically 10 time as big (not that it needs to be) and still be maneuverable.

[This message has been edited by Alexandergreat3 (edited 08-26-2005 @ 05:23 PM).]

There are different sized ships -- that is one way to be able to tell them apart. Caravels are small (though still larger than any ship we've done before). Galleons are medium-sized and Frigates are huge.

We have not shrunk ship sizes as far as I can remember.

There have been no screenshots or videos released as of Aug 26 of ship combat animation. It just went in a couple of days ago.

This is not a surprising development. Large ships are impractical from both a design and gameplay perspective.

I am not so much disappointed that ships have been reduced in size, but that naval combat looks relatively unchanged in comparison to Age of Kings and Age of Mythology.

Quote:

Unfortunately, naval combat can be improved on so much.

I don't know, something's definitely not right about the last ship. In the first pic everything seems proportional:

Even in that really small ship it looks like people will fit normally. But in the last pic the people are clearly too big for the ship, unless there's a race of giants ES isn't telling us about...

So what's going on here? Are ships and people going to look okay when they're in the same screen except for one ship that, for some reason, wasn't resized correctly? Or are ships going to look like those toy cars built for toddlers when compared to infantry?

There is already another thread with ES replies, its title is "Again ES", go look there.

Also, you are talking about screenshots released from a preview build from which screens were not supposed to be released.

I still don't see a grand difference in the ships except highlighting the fact that the last screenshot wasn't taken at max settings with everything on.

closed,

KS