Go download from Microsoft the DirectX SDK (2010) and install it running as administrator. All other DirectX 9 files are automatically disabled by Windows 11 security and these are the only ones left remaining on Microsoft website just for this purpose as these have upgraded security to be more than the cracked old sha-1.

Even if you get it running without this, it will not display correctly.

THEN open the properties for the exe file and turn off fullscreen optimizations and set compatibility to XP svc pack 2.

Do keep in mind, it only runs in a 4:3 and 5:4 resolution setting. That means you have to keep scaling in your video settings completely turned off as well.

I Installed it using this link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=6812

And did the steps but still did not work. It opens but as soon as I hit continue it crashes and gives me that same error. I tried doing custom scaling on display settings and setting it to 125% as well.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=8109

No, this one if Steam allows me to post the link. I also made an error above which needs correcting. The games does allow widescreen in the form of 1920x1080 32 bit color.

Set your monitor resolution to 1920x1080 and turn off scaling totally to play

Still no luck... The game launches but as soon as I hit continue on the campaign it just crashes and gives me that same error

Originally posted by Ahriman:

I have this thing called humility, and am not even remotely desperate for either game to succeed, aka I don't have a chicken in this race, so I don't care if I am right or wrong.

My momma said---> Humility Is as Humility Does

If I say you have made some very good points that make sense.
Would this be an example of humility?

Side Note: the quote you took out of context from my post over in Warno was praising both games and hoping for a Win -Win -Win for Warno, BA, and the fans of all things RTS. So thank you for that; not to mentioning getting "it will be so" and "potential" mixed up some. ;)

Originally posted by Ahriman:

But I know how this goes. On launch week, you are going to see probably 10+ threads proclaiming that WARNO is dead, BA has won, all because people don't know how statistics work. All you have to do is go check Manor Lords Steam Charts and you get my point on this. Game that was among the most wishlisted games on Steam, 3.2 MILLION wishlistings, player count peak of 173.1k on launch. 1 month later. Just 1 singular month, down to 17k.

It's kind of stretching the theory of statistics when you are comparing two very different games. Come on now, lets be honest, Manor Lords had a lot of hype based a lot on the developer and his hard work for a niche game that honestly did not have a ton of replay-ability compared to games like SC 3, AOE 4, CoH 1-3, DOW, etc. And this is because? I know the answer, but I would love for you to answer it. ;)

Originally posted by Ahriman:

WARNO, hovers under 2k, up until the very first Army General is released, jumps immediately to 2.8k, falls off 3 months later to the stable average it has been since EA, spikes to 3.9k upon launch, 4 months later drops down to 2.4k.

Current Players: 758 (evening PDT timezone) earlier today and yesterday more like 1150-1300.
30-Day Avg: 1,089.6
30-Day Gain: -43.6
30-Day % Gain: -3.85%

I would not say hovers under 2k, that is very misleading.
It's more like hovering between 1000 to 1500 daily.
I think there was a day recently where it had 1700'ish, but not was rare based on my monitoring and the recent Steam Chart Numbers back that up.

Originally posted by Ahriman:

BA will have its core playerbase, which will be a fraction of its total players and owners. The reason for this is the nature of the MP mode, as many games have shown prior, an RTS game focused on 5v5 team-based tactical gameplay does not in fact attract a lot of casual players which make up the vast, vast majority of a game's actual customer base. Note, a customer is someone that pays to buy the game, not necessarily someone that actively plays it.

To be fair this is conjecture as is a lot of what you have to say, my apologies if this soudns rude, I know you mean well based on what you've seen, but not accurate in this regard.

What RTS games are you using as an example of a 5v5 team-based tactical game in MP?
Most RTS games are 4 vs. 4 max. I have pretty much played them all, what games am I missing here?

Warno is balanced around 1 vs. 1.
BA has a few elements that makes it play out very differently than any other RTS game in times past which is basically World in Conflict & Wargame combined having a baby with a Scoring System that is designed to play out more like a Dota 5 vs. 5 Experience.

Can you not see the potential BA has with this 5 vs. 5 game design?
***** BA has the potential to bring in gamers that have never played an RTS game before.

Originally posted by Ahriman:

Thus what you will see is massive spike in active number of players on the first weeks, as these said casual players that will never even touch the MP tab, come on in and have their fun in the SP side of things, then move onto the next game after they are done. Once they leave, we get the realistic numbers, a mixture of primarily MP players and what remains from the SP crowd.

True, a lot of casual players might not touch MP and stick with SP.
---> But based on the Skirmish Mode, Scripts people will create, the potential for Modding (devs are open to it,) Current SP Campaign that is very re-playable we are looking more into a SC 2 and DoW Longevity here...... this is not your typical RTS
---> I see this game having more potential to bring in more casual RTS players into the MP fold based on it's design than most other RTS games since it is balanced around the 5 vs. 5 mode similar to Dota bringing in so many new players to the genre. ;)

Originally posted by Ahriman:

MP in RTS games is not as attractive as people like to imagine it is. That is my point, especially if it is heavily team-based and meta driven. This was a problem in Red Dragon, and it will be a problem here as well, worse so because of the focus on teamplay by the game.

---> "heavily team-based and (team) meta driven"
Thank you for mentioning this.

---> Red Dragon did not have the same point system and neither does the SD Series or Warno.

---> I understand exactly what you are saying (I am sure many others do to) but again, the opposite could happen here because it provides more of a Dota Team Environment Experience vs. your normal RTS MP Environment which includes Red Dragon/SD/Warno.

---> The numbers could get larger and larger as time goes on and word of mouth gets out. I am not saying BA will be Dota big. But I've yet to see an RTS game in the history of the genre (with just a few adjustments) play the way BA does. It's like tweaking grandma's recipe slightly to produce "Grandma's Cookies" and start selling them like hot cakes, might take time, but they will sell.

Originally posted by Ahriman:

And for that last part you can 100% blame the community, not the devs, because it will be the community that makes it extremely unwelcoming to new players, let alone casual players, when the toxicity and gatekeeping begins, as it always does no matter what game. Players don't want to carry around deadweight, and this means that they don't want people bringing in subpar decks into their teams.

This will be a tough cookie to crack for sure.
But again, if the RTS Recipe can so slightly tweaked to produce more of a Dota Like Team Experience it might be so much fun for some players that they will fight through the toxicity and gatekeeping.

Originally posted by Ahriman:

The best part is that all of this hinges on the optimistic outcome that the devs have managed to implement a full fledged server infra in 6 months. Without one, no anti-cheat will prevent cheating if the servers only work to sync players into the same session. On that part I am not even an armchair ICT person, as that is quite literally my job. When it comes to cheat engines, it is a blessing if you don't have to go around a server first before you can do anything, because it is a lot easier to fool the server everything is alright after you have done the tampering locally. That is the real reason why cheating became such a rampant problem in the previous tests, not because of the lack of anti-cheat.

Server Infrastructure
Agreed, so very important and I do not see any argument against this point.
This could be a big issue if it was not addressed & fixed.
We still could have local lobbies with friends, but we all know how tough that is to do and the numbers would suffer so much based on this point.

---> So this is for sure, a strong factual point, if this problem was not addressed, it will show up as you said.

_____________________________________________________

I am huge RTS fan, so for me and many others why would we not want to see Success in both Warno and BA?

It makes no sense not to hope for the best and even have a strong invested interest in seeing these games (others too) and the RTS Genre as a whole succeed.