Gameplay video impressions

[frujin]

2 hours ago, Menssie said:

I mean, Ai should counter Chivalry with spearman's if you have them in army...

It actually does this. And more than this.

[Field Marshal]

20 hours ago, William Blake said:

Autoresolve combat

After reading your idea for autoresolve for the first time I found it interesting, but after some thinking I came to a conclusion that it's actually uneccessary and not even better than current autoresolve. It doesn't even look to me as an autoresolve feature, but more like semi-autoresolve because it (sometimes or often) requires player interaction.
Now I'm not gonna say I know how current (KoH:I like) autoresolve works but I'll assume that there is some decent amount RNG in it. Now what your idea is is that you let player decide some of those RNG values with those Attack/Defend/Retreat commands and which one AI (or other player) picks too, problem is it is still pretty much based on randomness ie. doesn't really improve on anything. Why would I want to decide what happens in that semi-autoresolve if current autoresolve can do similar thing too without me even having to bother or think about it? IMO it'll get boring and more or less repetitive (especially because it requires player interaction) after a few dozen battles while I enjoy current (KoH:I like) autoresolve still to this day (altough it has its flaws of which I expect KoH2:S to fix). Now you might say that player doesn't have to pick command in every phase, it could be (somewhat) randomly decided, but does that make any difference with current autoresolve? I don't think so. The whole idea is kind of a EU IV battle system (which I find to be quite poor) with additional player management required (bruh).
Now if you have a weaker army you can simply increase your chances of winning by things like: having better skilled marshal, picking the terrain to suit your army better, catching enemy off guard (eg. river crossings) or deciding to lead the battle yourself.
As for splitting army to center and left/right flank, I don't think it has much use too, in auto battles it should be done automatically, but it would be useful to be able to "preconfigure" it for manual battle.

Now one thing I can agree with is food consumption for non full squads, a floating point value with simple formula like (CurrentUnitCount/MaxUnitCount) * UnitConsumtion is a good and logical solution.

On 4/23/2021 at 8:02 AM, BC Knight said:

Hey why these peasants are still peasants. What do I have to do to upgrade them.

I love the idea of upgrading units like that, it would be really nice to be able to upgrade units without need to disband them.

[DoVlaLegend]

I mean lot's of you guys are arguing about the stuff we don't have enough information of yet. 

I do agree on some things like:

- armies having time to train (Marshal in trainig for 1 min, basic spear man 5-10 sec, heavy cavilary 40 sec... for example)

- reinforcement should stay (it is both historicaly correct and fun to have your 2nd army come in last second and give you another chance to win)

- 2 Marshals is a good choice (again, historicaly there usually weren't more than 2 Marshals/Generals at the same place at the same time, since more than 2 of them would be logistical nightmare and with more than 2 of them at the same place you left your kingdom vounrable at the other end of it)

- 8 slots for army is more than enough (8 slots force you to think more strategically, if there wasn't a limit you could just buy every type of unit and be safe.. in this way you need to think about synergy of units you have and so on... which is fun aspect of it)

- fog of war (I liked it how it was in KoH1, where you could only see whats happening in the provinces you own and in the provinces where your Marshal is, they could potentionally add that you also see whats happening in the teritory of your Ally... anything beyond that would be to predictable ... maybe haveing an option before the game to set Fog of war on and off could be added .... I may be incline towards an option to hide your army in the forest (Marshal perk maybe??) and theoretically for example: "Germany can undetected invade Italy, if the forest continually runs trough Swiss teritorry and Switzerland is an Ally of Italy)

- auto resolved battles (i don't want to lead every army into the battle, so thats an option I loved in Koh1 and it wasn't done badly either)

 

Things I do not agree with:

- auto resolve stances/tactis (it's to micromanaging and as a casual player I don't want to spend 70% of the playtime around just clicking "attack/defend", let the algoritm calculate everything + frujin added that AI will use best counter to enemy units, if you have them in your army ... And this would be even more broken, since there isn't any drwaback if you only use DEF tactic ... in KoH1 your Marshal could beat 2 enemy Marshals if he was experienced enough and if your units had 3 stars and I believe this is a good choice, since you know micromanaging)

- food comsuption increases speed (it's nonsence since you have Marshal perks for that)

- diplomacy (you should care about everything happening on global map and I don't know what is the problem of Estonia and Algeria having an alliance pact??)

- any crisitism of the stuff we do not have enough information on ( I don't know why people b**** about stuff we have zero to none info about.... I hope the game will be "Easy to get into, hard to master" not "Hard to understand basic, even harder to master" since you can always add features and make game more complex to "simple" games)

 

Edited April 24, 2021 by DoVlaLegend

[William Blake]

4 hours ago, frujin said:

It actually does this. And more than this.

Heroes of Might and Magic III with autoresolve battles with AI doing everything most optimal way should have been a lot of fun, I wonder why they didn't add this could be such a great gameplay. They probably could not handle AI I guess.

From a unit pool of 8, an AI will always find most optimal counter to enemy counter. Enemy AI would do the same thing. It practically irrelevant how complex AI is if its fighting itself it will produce same results at the end.

 

1 hour ago, DoVlaLegend said:

I don't want to spend 70% of the playtime around just clicking "attack/defend"

Set default orders once and forget about it. What is the problem if you don't want to attend to you battles - don't. Do you find selecting a marshal which should attack also be a micromanagement issue? Would you like an AI to automatically select the best marshal around and order to move and attack? How about buying units? Is that too much micromanagement too? Would you like an AI to auto build army for you? Where the line is? How about city buildings? Should AI build your cities too so you don't have to spend 70% of your time upgrading provinces?

 

2 hours ago, Field Marshal said:

Why would I want to decide what happens in that semi-autoresolve if current autoresolve can do similar thing too without me even having to bother or think about it?

Well because you are playing a game. In a game you make good moves and bad moves and you can make mistakes or you can make a great play with different results. If I want to play chess then let computer play all my pieces and I'll just move a king that would be pretty lame game of chess in my mind. 

 

2 hours ago, Field Marshal said:

Now you might say that player doesn't have to pick command in every phase, it could be (somewhat) randomly decided, but does that make any difference with current autoresolve? I don't think so. The whole idea is kind of a EU IV battle system (which I find to be quite poor) with additional player management required (bruh).

The game supposed to have multiplayer on a global map. Competitive pvp multiplayer. This is a game about medieval kingdoms. Marshals, units and combat are the most extensive part of this game so far. Yet you take away all the control over battles from players. I don't see how it will fly. I don't think my solution with battle orders is a good combat system. I think it is a compromise to start moving with a minimal effort in a direction which is appropriate for the multiplayer medieval war game. 

There is already nothing to play in a multiplayer:

• Build orders and upgrades are linear one by one
• Units are linear upgrades with half of the game probably peasant armies running around
• Economy has no play, settlements are given, province resources are fixed, produced goods are too many to care
• Trade is nothing interesting at all... fine "nothing interesting in a multiplayer context"
• Battles are autoresolve

There is nothing to play. What are you going to tell you friend? "Buy this game, I've played multiplayer last night for 3 hours, had a blast with autoresolve battles! I'm going to play it again tonight, will build same 3 buildings in the same order having functionally same 3 provinces but my AI autoresolve battles is so good, it finds counter units to enemy units on itself, I was told, because all I see is just animations and a result. Awesome game!". 

 

 

[Lighthope]

12 hours ago, William Blake said:

the point was that mechanics that allow long battle on a global map to be reinforced from a far away by another full marshal army was bad for single player war and will be lame for multiplayer too.

I disagree with that point.  The possibility of reinforcement is something you need to consider before attacking or defending.

[William Blake]

56 minutes ago, Lighthope said:

The possibility of reinforcement is something you need to consider before attacking or defending.

Removing an ability to catch part of enemy army alone is worse. Reinforcing blobbing is bad for gameplay. Ability to reinforce from outside makes all single marshal moves dangerous forcing player to have max force all together, 2 marshals, 3 marshals.. if the limit on reinforce was 5 marshals you just made players move 5 marshals all together because there is no reason to risk weaker armies alone.

I'm puzzled how I cannot get this point across, but apparently I cant. I say make speed variable and food consumption variable to balance army sizes - everyone sees "micromanagement". I say make flanks fight flanks and center flight center to separate units from a big blob to a small groups - people see "micromanagement". I'm trying to find a way to fight strong force with a weak force and maneuver to get gameplay richer and all people see is "too much clicks, lets autoresolve".

All you do with reinforce mechanics in real games we saw in KoH is just increasing engagement radius from 1 marshal area to 2 marshal areas with second just joining in a moment. Ok fine, make AI understand this well enough and you will have never ending AI blobbing you can't win. Everyone wants autoresolve so they don't attend battles, but if AI will jump in with reinforce into these auto battles while you are not looking and defeat you all the time whole forum would cry "make game easier on autoresolve?"

 

[Calliope]

Thanks William for sharing us a full explanation of your thoughts, I really appreciate this (though I represent only myself), and thanks everyone for this (long) conversation.

I better see your POV and your suggestions, and in truth I wanted to propose you to give them when I wrote my first message. That's how we can make this game progress and question the devs team about each mechanic's pertinence.

I won't quote everyone's speech because there's much to read (a bit too much sometimes, so please everyone, try to keep this simple !).

So : I find the army stance a good thing to add to the game, as an "automatic" thing customizable by the player. It would be something between : Offensive, Balanced, Defensive, and Avoid conflict. I'm thinking of a similar system to EU4, where your army can't withdraw instantly, when the battle begins, but the player needs to wait a certain time. Avoid conflict stance would reduce the amount of time for the army to withdraw (like an organized retreat, something the marshal has intended to in case of an unfavorable fight).

By the way, retreats were not always due to heavy casualties : sometimes, this was something very planned by the general (I think Hannibal, or Belisarius, did this several times), and it was made to attract the enemy into a trap. And frankly I think this should be possible in the game to spice it, but only meeting certain conditions. In this case, retreat is made to fool the enemy's army and take advantage over it (by playing with overconfidence), let's say in a more suitable terrain, for example.

By reading all of the ideas and the pictures accompanying them, I realized there are stats to each unit. Before seeing that, I intended to make the suggestion of getting inspiration from a flawless game named 1066 Hastings, easily findable on the net, and free. In this game focused on battles, the player selects first his faction (Viking, Anglo-Saxon or Norman), his army composition right before a battle, then the position of each unit on the board, and finally the way they behave... each regiment had its own health (number of men), morale, attack strength, defense strength, movement range... from this, I suggest the team to add a morale value for each unit as well. Unless it's the resilience stat ? But I was thinking about a variable morale depending on the circumstances. Maybe it's already there... !

I'm keen on army's speed, and some sort of passive stance. I don't think the consumption of food should vary for that (I may be wrong), however I was thinking about bonuses or penalties depending on the speed. So here are my other suggestions : normal army speed should stay as it is. Quick march should indeed make an army increase its speed, but at the cost of morale, since an army gets tired from it. Remember what happened to king Harold of England when he had to face Norwegians and Normans, in 1066 ? He had victory in Stamford Bridge, but his army was exhausted, and he made it quick march again to face the Normans, where finally, he got defeated. On the other hand, slow march should be available and provide bonuses, such as a morale or defensive boost, and a better chance to withdraw without taking too many casualties.

In order to prevent spam abuse, each time a player selects a certain army stance, he should wait before eventually changing it, due to organization ability. Saying that, if logistics was a marshal skill, it should reduce that waiting time. Overall, there can be good inspiration of this from Total War Rome II and Total War Attila. I think it would be great to make stances, if they were added in the game (which I wish) more or less like in these games.

Also, it's great to talk about supply. I wanted to talk about it separately, but it's the right place. When I saw the food surplus / balance in gameplay footage, I was happy, because I had the same idea in the past, and I always thought food supply in the first game could be enhanced. It seems it gets better now ! To express my thoughts, I agree with making it more difficult for an army to be supplied enough the more it moves away from its own kingdom, or from an ally' kingdom.

☝️

Finally, I'm willing to present a small idea of mine, and I'm all ears to receive critics. Here it is : the number of settlements in each province is fixed, and for everyone who played the first game, that's normal. We cannot change this number, neither we can change the nature of each settlement in each province, the moment the player starts the game.

And what if... in every single province, almost every single settlement was already built... except the last one, so the player could have greater freedom of deciding a province' role, and choose the type of settlement to build there ? In order to make it strong and risky at the same time, this choice could not be reverted, unless during building construction time (player's changing his mind) : the player should then make his decision with great care. Afterall, this game is called Sovereign ! This building phase would require resources, such as gold,  plus maybe food for a village, wood, stone... depending on the settlement type.

If this was considered as a cool feature, it could become an selectable option before starting the game. I hope that idea will please you, dear fellows, and dear devs. 🤗

 

Edited April 24, 2021 by Calliope

[illbe85]

Hello to everybody, I'm following with real interest this game development, in my case I started playing KOH after the KOH2 announce, because what i saw in the few images at the time was too cool and intriguing.

I'm not a huge gamer, played in the past but nowadays the time is very little and I'm really hoping KOH2 will be the game I will play during my nights as a dad.

I find William's considerations to be really interesting, specifically because, especially in his first comments about the gameplay, I noticed how the playing experience needs, for him, to be meaningful for the player. I really agree with his point.
This is connected to the fact that I have not much time to spend playing, and to me it's important that player's choice have a direct impact on the game. The example about war battles is good. Or even the amount of food needed to an army to move faster during march. 
To me it would be more meaningful, and satisfying as a gaming experience, to lost a battle in 60 seconds in which I made one wrong decision, than to win 4/5 battles played in the same time, without putting any effort in them, trying to expand my territory as fast as possible. 
Maybe most of people only desider to finish the game and conquer the more territories in the less time, but to me would be great to play with long term achievements in my mind, maybe just trying to make my country to prosper in it's territory, and expanding slowly, enjoing battles.

One thing that I really don't like after a battle concluded  with enemy retreat, is the fact that I have often to chase after the enermy only to engage a new battle again.
I don't think that spend time chasing after an enemy 2x, 3x, 4x times just to finish him is a meaningful way to use my time as a player. Because these minutes I lost chasing after him is more than the time needed to chose between attack/defend/etc strategy before a conflict starts. When I have to chose a strategy  I'm playing, enjoying my time; when I'm just clicking to chase after the enemy running away  I'm quite sure that my brain doesn't feel this time to be really fun  (imagine if this happens very often). I would prefer I can chose at the beginning an attacking strategy standard and one aimed to annihilate the enemy, even if the latter would cost me morale and more casualties, for example. 

In a grand strategy game I'm aware that not every second could be superexciting (it's not pinball), but the more meaningful every choice we make is, the more rewarding the gaming experience will be.
So a system that gives me the chance move faster or slower, at a certain food/or else cost, I think it would be useful, because gives to me the ball again, the power to decide, and see the consequences of my decision. And I don't think it's very micromanagement, you just know that some movements (slower, faster) cost more than others.

Don't get me wrong, I really understand people sayng that in multiplayer skirmish (or even single player) there will be moments when you'll be engaged in 3 or 4 battles at the same time, but most of the time, especially in single player, you're not so overwelmed, and reducing the war strategy (in a game about conquest!) to the minimum, just to make easy to manage the worst case scenario (3 or 4 battles, when they occur) only risks to make the game less interesting for the rest of the time you play in normal conditions, which is presumably the most.

I'm happy to see the community is responding with many ideas and comments, I really really hope KOH2 will be a hit, but also the game that will keep me engaded at night, with a big smile on my tired face 😄

[William Blake]

2 hours ago, Calliope said:

In order to make it strong and risky at the same time, this choice could not be reverted, unless during building construction time (player's changing his mind) : the player should then make his decision with great care.

Yes, but the problem is with 300 provinces on the map, adding a single settlement to a player province... it is just feels strange on a scale. Well it is actually one of the cornerstone problems of KoH you start very small but expect to grow up too big and it is hard to find a balance of what is meaningful size and what is not.

 

1 hour ago, illbe85 said:

To me it would be more meaningful, and satisfying as a gaming experience, to lost a battle in 60 seconds in which I made one wrong decision, than to win 4/5 battles played in the same time, without putting any effort in them, trying to expand my territory as fast as possible. 

Can't agree more. I think there should be less meaningless battles everyone expects to avoid by autoresolve and more direct victories or losses based on a player actions. More importantly in the context of a multiplayer I hate even a possibility that in a military conflict between me and another human is all about AI autoresolve on both sides. I want to learn and master the fight so I would lose a lot but then learn how to win and overcome a human in a combat, see my mistakes to predict other people mistakes. Otherwise I would play single player on my own pace.

[Lighthope]

6 hours ago, William Blake said:

Ability to reinforce from outside makes all single marshal moves dangerous forcing player to have max force all together, 2 marshals,

Sure, if you don't mind leaving more of your land unprotected.  It's a strategic choice to have lots single armies or few multiple armies.

Take your two marshal army.  I'll take a single marshal army and stomp on your lands far enough away that you can't get to me in time.

6 hours ago, William Blake said:

I'm puzzled how I cannot get this point across,

Because it's not a point.  It's an opinion. One which I disagree with.

 

[William Blake]

1 hour ago, Lighthope said:

Sure, if you don't mind leaving more of your land unprotected.  It's a strategic choice to have lots single armies or few multiple armies.

Unprotected land is meaningless in KoH. What enemy can do to my land? Raze some settlements? I can't care less. Start a siege on a city? Well its a lot of time you lock an army into a siege for my blob to come and crush it.

Loosing a single marshal on the other hand is a significant blow. I can't risk a marshal and its units. You would have many provinces which are replaceable and conquerable back, but a loss of a marshal with good units is great blow. Why would I risk it going alone? Safety of my main army worth several provinces I can give away. Because if I have my marshals and my maxed out army I can take all that back.

 

[William Blake]

On a side note, about the gameplay video impressions:

 

Knights of Honor Logic:

• If you are light spearmen you eat half of rations (food upkeep) compared to heavy units, but you have most stamina 
• You get +2 attack (or +16%) and +1 siege strength (+20%) for double in price with triple defense going from Light to Heavy spearmen
• On top of that you need Heavy Armorsmiths upgrade to build Heavy Spearmen
• Yet, Heavy Infantry for the same buildings as Heavy Spearmen, same food upkeep is DOUBLE attack but LESS defense compared to Heavy Spears for just +30% cost of gold, same cost of food and men.

 

Yep, as expected - fill all the slots with lowest units you have they are most cost effective. Build better units ONLY if you have no free slots left in the army. Top units are totally better than medium tire for very little extra cost, while jump from cheap to middle tier is very significant.

 

But it will take you a while to get to that level: 

 

You need 1000 gold for barracks, then you need 1500 for swordsmith, spearsmiths or fletchers = 2500 gold  to get to 1 type of non peasant units. 

Which is a cost of:

• 47(!) Light Spearmen units at 53 gold each 
• 23 Heavy Spearmen units at 105 gold each
• 18 Heavy infantry units at 132 gold each

Let it sink in, a cost of barracks and 1 "smith" to get to FIRST non peasant unit army type is 2 full armies by 8 slots of TOP infantry and 2 units extra. Or almost 6 (six!) full armies of Light spearmen. Which means that loosing a single city with barracks and any smith is worth MORE to the enemy than 5 armies worth of units killed.

Then you might want to look at stables at 10k gold + trade good on top. Well in short, you could probably conquer half of Europe before you can afford any cavalry )

Or look at this:

 

2 armies full of peasants are same siege strength as 1 army of basic(!) sword infantry. But to get to that 1 army of 8 slavic axemen you need barracks + swordsmiths  and 8 x 105 gold unit cost = 1000 + 1500 + 840 = 3340 gold compared to.... NO GOLD, some food and 6 times more men from province.  Depending how population grows it might not be a problem at all.

Told you, it will be peasant wars all over again. You first several generations of marshals should never take any cavalry skills, cause you won't see any cavalry anytime soon.

All slots with peasants and this marshal skill:

 

Go conquer the world!

 

 

 

 

Edited April 25, 2021 by William Blake

[frujin]

Balance of unit types is by far not complete!! May be we should explain in more detail how exactly auto-resolve works and what the stats of units mean. Peasants are not very reliable (notice their negative resilience, the only unit type with such) in the long run. Hmm ...

We keep following this topic ...

[William Blake]

3 minutes ago, frujin said:

. Peasants are not very reliable (notice their negative resilience, the only unit type with such) in the long run

Even if peasant are all pure junk. A player has very little choice. The jump in cost between peasants and anything but peasants is too dramatic. In your own video you have marshals full of peasants. But it won't matter, cause the enemy will have roughly same economic issues and will also have to run peasant armies.

If you start with 3 provinces lets say. You invest in 1 barracks, gives you zero units. You invest in a smith, you start marking 1 (!) non peasant unit type. If you lose that province and these barracks you will never recover. Moreover your 2 other provinces can only make peasants for all that time.

The cost of buildings vs cost of units from these buildings is too dramatic. As I said, it would be worth for an enemy to lose 5 full armies of light spearmen just to take a city with NOTHING but barracks and spearsmiths and still it would be good move. This is too great of a exchange because real city would have other buildings and generates income. 

You unit ladder is wrong. You cavalry not only requires extra produced good (trained horses) which is not common everywhere, but it is 10x more cost for a building. It means that spear units as hard counter to cavalry are not required. If so you already take 2 types of units out of 4 from an early game - one is too expensive to start building and the other is hard counter to that class but enemy won't have it because economy won't allow it in a early game.

It is clear for me even from rough numbers that you make top infantry most cost effective while mid tier are least cost effective. This will make first kingdom to top tier units unbeatable on a long run. You can't just compete with that on resource scale. 1 tier units will be too weak for the available max slots and 2nd tire units are too cost inefficient vs top tier. 

Yes I do agree that all this is just fun and jokes because I don't know how battle work. But overall even now this make no sense to me.

 

[Zerg]

As far as I can remember, you (William) mentioned in another thread, that you did play the first KoH. That's why I'm puzzled by what you are writing here. The system is pretty similar and it worked very well in the first game so why would it be different in the new one? It's just a simple stone-paper-scissors system where every province-capital has to balance between 3 things: Ability to defend against attackers, ability to produce high quality units, ability to produce good and/or generate income. Peasent should have never been built in the first game, unless you really had to (e.g. the enemy is storming your last province, where you don't have any barracks/swordsmit yet).

I'm sorry if I'm misinterpreting things here, but it feels like you just want to have another Total War clone?

 

Anyway, I'll write down my impressions for the devs to read:

• I love the idea of having some sort of timer to build units. Maybe units could start out with 1/60 and slowy fill up over the next seconds. Of course, units which higher requirements should take longer to fill up (training time)
• I really really like the fact that armys do use the roads on the map.
• Please make it so that i can close popups/messages by clicking into the backdrop of the modal. I don't want to snipe the 'X'-Button all the time.
• Also, please let us build Buildings, like Barracks without opening the secondary screen where it shows the next upgrades (swordsmits, etc.). A little hammer on the top left right unter the '1' would be nice.
• Increasing the size of some symbols and texts would be nice. I don't know if they are so small because the footages was recorded on a 4K-monitor but it looks small for me. Some examples: Resource on the top left, coats of arms of allies, enemies, vassals, friends and so on; The "under siege" icons over sieged castles
• The font of the auto-battle-predictions is not in the "medieval" font but I think you know that already
• Categorizing the recruitable units would be nice

[DoVlaLegend]

18 hours ago, William Blake said:

Set default orders once and forget about it. What is the problem if you don't want to attend to you battles - don't. 

Like I said, there is no drawback in using only DEF tactic (at least the way you presented). 

And again, as a casual player I don't want to spend 10-15min on a single battle because of the ATK/DEF tactic. And setting default orders and then not changing them does not make sense, since every battle is diffrent agains diffrent units and Marshals with different perks/skills, so I my opinion letting algorithm do it job is the best choice (you will have your hands full with choosing the right units to make the best synergy as it is).

18 hours ago, William Blake said:

Do you find selecting a marshal which should attack also be a micromanagement issue? Would you like an AI to automatically select the best marshal around and order to move and attack? How about buying units? Is that too much micromanagement too? Would you like an AI to auto build army for you? Where the line is? How about city buildings? Should AI build your cities too so you don't have to spend 70% of your time upgrading provinces?

Well now you are just going into the extreme and don't really make sense.

- Do you find selecting a marshal which should attack also be a micromanagement issue? 

Thats why royal court has 9 slots,not to much micromanaging

- Would you like an AI to automatically select the best marshal around and order to move and attack? 

Thats why having limited number of Marshals and beeing able to reinforce him with one more is a thing, it makes the game fun and I WANT TO DO THAT, again it's not micromanaging it's charm of the game.

- How about buying units? Is that too much micromanagement too? Would you like an AI to auto build army for you?

As stated before, trying to match units and find the best possible synergy for army is the aim of the game.

- Where the line is?

The line/difference is "I want to make my own choices" vs "telling Marshals to litterally go right or left which is time-consuming and a hassle". 

- How about city buildings? Should AI build your cities too so you don't have to spend 70% of your time upgrading provinces?

No, but I would love the option to queue 2-3 buildings.

 

And again, nobody is forcing you to like or play the game. But what I get from your point of view is that we should not trust the AI/algorithm and if thats the case, why even bother to improve it? Let's just make the game for players only and wait in line for an hour so every kingdom (100+ of them) is chosen by a player and let's play it that way (which is not what I am proposing, but I will go to the extreme point as you did). 🙂

[Calliope]

Since I cannot react anymore with buttons on display for each comment for the rest of the day, I just want to share quick thoughts and impressions.

 

First, thank you Frujin, for the time you invest reading this topic, that means a lot. Totally agree with you, the game (to my mind) seems like a scientific experience on course because the team seems to explore everything it can do (and it's great !). I wished there was not that much "image proof" and talking over it done by everyone (I promise I won't do that in my reactions topic), because the excess of doing it reveals ignorance, as we are not behind the scene as you are.

 

9 hours ago, William Blake said:

Yes, but the problem is with 300 provinces on the map, adding a single settlement to a player province... it is just feels strange on a scale. Well it is actually one of the cornerstone problems of KoH you start very small but expect to grow up too big and it is hard to find a balance of what is meaningful size and what is not.

My precision here : to make it clear, if a province had 6 scripted settlements, and if the player took a kingdom owning that province, it should not add any settlement to it. My suggestion was to make it that way : among the six, five are already there (cannot be changed), and one is yet to be built. So that six stays six. Just like in Crusader Kings series, where player can decide to settle... a settlement (sorry for the word repetition). At last, if I forgot to mention that, I'll say it here : if the player could have the choice of his last settlement's nature, in every province he owns right at the start of the game, then it would be the very same for the AI, so that you wouldn't have to decide it for all 300 provinces, as time passes (only if the AI chooses a last settlement for each province it owns - remember, AI, though not always well-minded, is AI, and does calculate things quicker than what someone can do).

And that's why AI needs to be worked on, but let's not bring pressure to the team, and let's stay patient for what is currently being done.

Edited April 25, 2021 by Calliope

[Ivory Knight]

On 4/24/2021 at 7:19 AM, frujin said:

We are reading ...

Dear god there is soo much to read.. I feel sorry for you. 

[Ivory Knight]

aa

Edited April 25, 2021 by Ivory Knight
Didnt see other comments.

[William Blake]

6 hours ago, DoVlaLegend said:

Thats why royal court has 9 slots,not to much micromanaging

If you realistically have 3-4 marshals total. And they will not be constantly in a battle somewhere I honestly don't understand why adding few clicks or orders per battle would be such a burden. You already have to click at least once per battle "Auto", "I'll Lead", "Retreat" choice as it is right now. Why don't you want a bit more control and variety with battle phase orders?

 

6 hours ago, DoVlaLegend said:

No, but I would love the option to queue 2-3 buildings.

Yes, at a mid late game when you have resources and many provinces queue for the building order would be very nice.

 

6 hours ago, DoVlaLegend said:

Like I said, there is no drawback in using only DEF tactic (at least the way you presented). 

Well, lets throw it out and think of a better set of manual orders with better bonuses and drawbacks to each, I didn't think it was the best ever system, I though it would be a compromise to give a player control and variety with minimal effort.

 

5 hours ago, Calliope said:

My suggestion was to make it that way : among the six, five are already there (cannot be changed), and one is yet to be built.

Mmm, well ok. That would be five are given and 1 is a choice. Which is around 20% of production volume you can add. Would it change that much to have a whole new mechanics of building a settlement to be added and issues with finding place and changing map and graphics due to "empty place vs settlement which has roads in and out"? It appears to me it would be pretty hard to implement the way they have map manually created with roads and geographical features around it.

 

 

 

 

[illbe85]

I think Calliope's proposal would not go in the direction to change the map and the territory configuration, if I understood correctly at the beginning of the game, of 4/5/6 already generated places for settlements in a province, you only have already built 3 of 4, 4 of 5, and so on. So there is a settlement missing, (but the place, the road and conncetions are already there) and this one you decide to build from scratch according to your strategy. 

 

 

[Ivory Knight]

I have read through everything and wrote down the main points in my own words, I have organized them slightly and given my own opinion on each one.  Good Luck.

Economy

Point 1: Settlements are fixed and their production is static. Improvements likely will be quickly decided based on the main settlement type. The generation of the settlements determines the appropriate action the player should take on improving their province. More freedom is desired then just maxing out starting fixed conditions.

Opinion: I understand the concern, and I think the Point 2 offers a quick fix which helps grow the settlement dynamics a bit more. Whether more then this is needed is probably an opinion of taste and probably cant be decided until playing it for myself. I had offered in an earlier post to do the reverse and make settlements almost have complete autonomy (see Point 3), forcing the focus of the game onto other mechanics and I still think that could work as well.

Point 2: Have 1 settlement in a province not be decided, and to be developed by the AI or player at a later date to what they wish.

Point 3: Have settlements complete autonomy and improve themselves over time.

Opinion: This was my comment, and my thought here is as I mentioned above, if settlements don’t have a deep mechanic, then maybe just ignore them altogether and focus on growing other mechanics more deeply. There would need to be some balancing with regards to how raiding impacts the settlements.

Point 4: Resources are fixed. And there is no reason to not maximize the production of a strategic resource in a province.

Opinion: I do share this concern of how the resources are treated and how they are traded. I think its right that mimicking KOH 1 with regard to resource management may not be the best road forward for giving good dynamic gameplay. I think Point 5 gives a slight improvement, by making the basic resources very available and possibly the exotic ones, being highly ignorable.

Point 5: Most resources needed by a kingdom should be readily available. Fear of driving the gameplay towards players trying to attain all 65 resources.  

Point 6: Sack trade goods generated from settlements are traded in a simple linear manner for gold.

Opinion: I believe they have these sacks to represent the overall trading strength of your nation. Without increasing the number of types of trade sacks you have and their value, because I think that is adding too much. I think you can give trading many effects into diplomacy to give the whole system more depth. For example maybe giving 10 sacks of trade to France gives you +5 relations. So now you may want to trade with poor nations to win their favour.

Point 7: Add an extra garrison slot in the town to represent the castles garrison in the province.

Opinion: I don’t know how useful that will be, I think only a play test will tell me if adding that into the town interface will be useful. Perhaps you will find your self clicking the castle settlement whenever you want to check its garrison and find that to be perfectly fine.

Point 8: Que up buildings.

Opinion: I think this is a great idea. I would add also that the resources shouldn’t be diminished until the next building is started, and it also automatically cancels if you don’t have the resources for the next.  

Battles

Point 9: All the control over battles is taken away from players.

Opinion: How much control is too much control? How much control is too little control? Should you be able to win any battle by having complete control over all dynamics of the battle imaginable? Do you wanna feel that involved even for an auto resolve? Spend 1hr giving out orders during a battle to make sure you win or lose? Of course that is extreme. My thought in the end is this is a matter of taste, depending on what kind of game you want to play your answer to this will change. Deeper gameplay here will likely result in a lot more micromanagement. Not saying that’s a bad thing, but it needs to be play tested to get a good gauge on it.

Point 10: Army strengths predetermine battle outcomes giving the player omnisight before battles.

Opinion: So the solution is to either hide this from the player, which to me seems evil. Or to introduce highly random elements during a battle, which can also be frustrating to a player. I think every player wants to know if their army is in a stronger state or weaker state to engage (without having to hit the pause button and pull out a calculator after reading a bunch of unit modifiers). Numbers are more accurate, but the alternative is to not have numbers, and have less accuracy, which eventually turns into randomness. I think what everyone is looking for, is simply something that gives a rough estimate of strength. Ill leave it at that.

Point 11: Auto resolve battles have no tactics during the fighting.

Opinion: After considering many of the comments and reading, I think the theme of KOH 2 isnt to spend time during each battle applying tactics/strategies but to maybe set up some tactics/strategies prior to the battle engagement. If you want to influence the battle, during the battle, lead it your-self after all that’s what its there for. In multiplayer and if you choose to only autoresolve, this obviously means you need to play your game thinking that battles are not going to be the way I beat my opponents, I attain victory by economy, diplomacy or use of spies in that case.

Point 12: Battle orders during combat phases, such as attack, defend and retreat.

Point 13: Battles may be too micro intensive if we include battle phases.

Point 14: Auto resolve should feel appealing and interesting.

Point 15: Give something that makes the player feel that they can influence the battle, during the battle and not only before the battle.

Opinion for Points 12,13,14 and 15: This gets lumped into my comment under Point 11.

Point 16: Instead of battle phases included engagement stances that the army toggles on before battles. The army then requires some time (cooldown) before it uses that stance.

Opinion: I think this was a great suggestion, to help appeal to Point 13, without actually making auto resolve battles have tactics that the player must decide on during the battle. Rather you give your marshals generic stances, which give them bonuses and negatives into the combat in different dynamics ways, similar to how Total War series does it.

Point 17: Armies have flanks according to the army unit slots. With bonuses being applied if your flank wins its battle with the opposing enemy flank.

Opinion: I do think this flank idea needs to be given more thought and attention, I think it’s a very quick and easy thing to introduce which gives a cool depth and dynamic to how the battles auto resolve and how you can as a player influence your chances to win by setting up your army before a battle.

Point 18: Open battle orders should all be aggressive, leave defensive to building a fort and waiting for the enemy to engage you.

Opinion: I like the idea to keep defensive bonus tied to fortifying with your marshal.    

Point 19: I think that a battle should be much more meaningful with fewer units of different type and quality countering each other and a set of right orders from players to direct these armies.

Opinion: I agree and think this fits under the Point 17 very well. I just think those orders come prior to battle auto resolve and not during.

Armies

Point 20: Ability to call built units in the province to reinforce an army in the province.

Opinion: I like this idea, no complaints, as long as those units can be intercepted.

Point 21: Units should have Gold upkeep.

Opinion: I don’t see exactly what problem this solves. I suppose it allows you to disrupt an enemy army not just through food but through money. If it does get implemented I think I would expect this maintenance to be automatically increase and decreased during war time and peace.

Point 22: Food upkeep should scale with how many soldiers are left in the unit.

Opinion: Everyone on the forum agrees with this. I would add, maybe instead of having higher tier units consume more food, just make everything the same (for simplicity), aka have it be such that a 7000 army takes the same food as another 7000 army of different units. Then you would just need to balance how improvements and settlements give food.

Point 23: Like how armies use the roads.

Opinion: I think this fits nicely with army move speed and strategy there. So I am all for making roads have a significant move speed boost. Perhaps not too large such that you cant ambush people on roads.

Point 24: Do not like chasing enemy armies.

Point 25: Introduce different army speeds with corresponding food consumptions for slow and faster marching speeds. To help prevent endless chasing of retreating armies.

Opinion for Point 24 and 25: There is a common theme that everyone hates chasing armies. I think we all agree on that, but we don’t all agree on how to solve that issue. Whether it should be achieved through a speed toggle as suggested, or through a stance, is I think needed to be play tested.

Point 26: Army speed should influence morale not food.

Opinion: I disagree, since the point of toggling speed, was to catch armies running away, it is awkward if you toggle speed then find your army losing because they dropped in moral against an army 1 quarter their size. Im not completely against setting it up like this and I do think it could be done and maybe this will be incorporated into stances, but I think you miss the main issue point X was trying to solve, which was chasing armies down.

Point 27: Maybe increased supply for defenders offers their armies increased move speed in own territory.

Opinion: This was an interesting, idea, to give defenders some sort of higher move speed. The way this is done could be in many ways, but I do agree defenders should have more advantages other than being able to take defensive castle battles.

Point 28: Food consumption increases speed is pointless because of marshal skills/perks already do that.

Opinion: This was in counter to food and speed for armies, and I get that in KOH 1 marshals were skilled to give speed boosts, but the point is to give some sort of mechanic that allows marshals to quickly clean up a retreating army. If all marshals have the speed boost or skill then it nullifies the effect.

Point 29: Fear that multiple army blobbing will become the main military tactic.

Point 30: Army battle reinforcement should not be allowed.

Opinion about Point 29 and 30: This is a big point brought up, I can say is that I agree that spamming multiple armies obviously is something we want to avoid, but I think the recruitment time very quickly fixes that problem. Without preventing battle reinforcement, which I see to see that many people prefer to keep.

Point 31: A possibility of AI to jump into a battle you lead 1 on 1 or was on autoresolve from places you (player) didn't expect. (outside you vision). Such that a new player had to do something about it.

Opinion: I don’t see anything wrong with this, in fact this sounds fun and engaging if someone could surprise me with a quick reinforcement from some where I didn’t take notice of.

Point 32: This lead to "double marshal meta" which was human player having always 2 armies next to each and jumping to any battle with a second marshal to have max unit and morale

Opinion: I don’t see a problem with this, 1v1 both countries will have 2 armies and most likely 1 common border, the armies will meet and the big battle will decide everything. Yes this was good against AI but that can be fixed with better AI.

Point 33: In fact since a player would always have 2 marshal battles it threw marshal skill balance out of the windows because a player could focus 2 marshals on 2 different skillset and gain both advantages without downsides no matter if it is an open battle or a siege

Opinion: This is a good point, and I think it is a quick fix to make sure 2 allied armies in the same battle don’t stack their skills and tactics together. Or maybe that some skills and tactics do stack together!!??

Point 34: There was no way to deal with part of enemy army if there was a second AI marshal nearby, including AI ally or a city which could spawn a marshal

Opinion: Ya kinda like real life. If your badly outnumbered you better not be fighting. Retreat and go get a second marshal.

Point 35: Such that a player could not possibly hit and run or split and hit weaker armies and win before AI would reinforce with second marshal

Opinion: This goes both ways, would you want to play against this kind of gameplay style against a human opponent? It would be really really annoying if I had superior numbers and knew it, and then I lose to a human opponent that had some sort of hit and run gorilla warfare, defeat in detail BS.

Point 36: Since the loss of a marshal was very bad a player could not allow such mistakes and had to blob as much as possible making war very boring and limited options.

Opinion: I agree losing marshals hurts badly, this depends on the cost and time you sink into your marshals. Possibly a good solution is to make it so marshals RARELY die, and almost always get captured. (Which is very historically accurate.) That way the loss of a marshal means a quick ransom. (It does seem a bit odd that the enemy would give back your general during wartime, but at least this would solve your marshal loss pains.) And if your coffers are empty, then maybe reconsider the war if you are losing.

Point 37: Fear that army blobbing will be composed of only peasants.

Opinion: I think this goes to how the cost analysis of the upgrading is done and is a simple balancing fix.

Point 38: Upgrading units instead of disbanding them.

Opinion: This is a great idea as it feels more realistic to give your current soldiers better equipment then to be getting rid of your current soldiers and hiring new ones.  This may take a big adjustment to how the population/recruitable population mechanic currently works, but I think it is worth it. Likely you just need to lower the growth rates more.

Point 39: It should be more cost effective to upgrade vs create units.  

Opinion: I like this idea allot, as it helps combat the dreaded blobbing of armies. And connects nicely with the whole upgrading instead of disbanding.

Point 40: Units should gain experience with the weapon/armor/tech they have been upgraded with.

Opinion: Not a bad idea, I think this goes nicely with the thought that units should be more cost effective for upgrading and not for creating.

Point 41: Variable training time depending on the type of unit.

Opinion: I don’t agree with this, as I think the most important thing is to have the training time be long enough to prevent marshal spamming from towns to reinforce engagements. I think trying to make something even more out of the training time, might just be annoying and slow the game down and action for the player.

Point 42: Fear, that unprotected land will have no repercussions. Will raiding, hurt me? Will the siege of my town be so long that I can always reinforce quickly?

Opinion: I think this is easy balancing fixes, to make bonuses and negatives hurt enough to make the player care about raiding and sieging events in their lands.

Point 43: The unit cost analysis of peasants vs upgraded units may mean peasants are always the better choice.

Opinion: Then make it such that, that is not the case, and problem solved. Maybe adding hard rock paper scissors unit counters is what is needed, perhaps not. But I agree death stacks of 1 units types is no fun, and I am positive the devs think this as well.

Point 44: Now if you have a weaker army you can simply increase your chances of winning by things like: having better skilled marshal, picking the terrain to suit your army better, catching enemy off guard (eg. river crossings) or deciding to lead the battle yourself.

Opinion: I like the idea to include terrain advantages, maybe hills, forests and mountain buffs, and I think this is what needs to be explored very deeply to give the game more interesting battle gameplay, without having to put mechanics into the auto resolve battles themselves.

Point 45: Ability to hide your army in a nearby forest.

Point 46: Include line of sight system, which has benefits to army engagements.

Opinion Point 45 and 46: I think these two ideas pair nicely I am thinking something along the lines of, I pop out of a forest or from behind a mountain and if the enemy army is close I get a surprise bonus for 4 seconds or something, and if I don’t take the engagement or the enemy army gets away from me then I lose that bonus.

Other

Point 47: Diplomacy is too narrow with yes or no replies.

Opinion: I agree, a little more dynamics should be here, with gold always being a bargaining chip, but maybe other things like marriage, or trade goods ect… sure we can get clever here.

Point 48: Make popup closing very easy.

Point 49: Some icons are a bit too small and should be enlarged.

Opinion for Points 48 and 49: These kind of UI touches are more important than what people think, games can become tedious fast, and the less precise interface clicking you need to do the better.

[William Blake]

1 hour ago, Ivory Knight said:

I think you can give trading many effects into diplomacy to give the whole system more depth. For example maybe giving 10 sacks of trade to France gives you +5 relations. So now you may want to trade with poor nations to win their favour.

Yes, potently it could be much more interesting to shift focus of "sack trading" to be more of a political/ally support kind of thing rather than mostly straight exchange for gold (especially silly system of select furthest kingdom away to gain most gold). It should be more valuable to trade with allies you need a good relations with rather than some remote nation you have nothing to share but the total sacks to gold exchange is slightly better.

I also feel a bit awkward that sacks are such a basic resource but it is used for nothing else so there is nothing really to safe or balance with sacks consumption. It almost begs to be used in some upkeep for units or buildings, but at the time I have no good way to make a simple trade system within given bounds.

1 hour ago, Ivory Knight said:

If you want to influence the battle, during the battle, lead it your-self after all that’s what its there for. In multiplayer and if you choose to only autoresolve, this obviously means you need to play your game thinking that battles are not going to be the way I beat my opponents, I attain victory by economy, diplomacy or use of spies in that case.

Yes, but only if lead yourself RTS is available, which cannot happen in a multiplayer due to time constrains. If we were to have a combat system which would work for single player autoresolve as well as for multiplayer autoresolve we need to take into account that in a multiplayer with current system ALL battles would have no player input. And we can't have a multiplayer only separated mechanics for battles because it would mean people won't be able to use same understanding and skills with mechanics which are available in their singleplayer game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 25, 2021 by William Blake

[Calliope]

2 hours ago, illbe85 said:

I think Calliope's proposal would not go in the direction to change the map and the territory configuration, if I understood correctly at the beginning of the game, of 4/5/6 already generated places for settlements in a province, you only have already built 3 of 4, 4 of 5, and so on. So there is a settlement missing, (but the place, the road and conncetions are already there) and this one you decide to build from scratch according to your strategy. 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Ivory Knight said:

Point 2: Have 1 settlement in a province not be decided, and to be developed by the AI or player at a later date to what they wish.

Couldn't explain better than that ! 🤗 The point was to give player flexibility, freedom of choice, since he's meant to reign.

[Ivory Knight]

1 hour ago, William Blake said:

Yes, but only if lead yourself RTS is available, which cannot happen in a multiplayer due to time constrains. If we were to have a combat system which would work for single player autoresolve as well as for multiplayer autoresolve we need to take into account that in a multiplayer with current system ALL battles would have no player input. And we can't have a multiplayer only separated mechanics for battles because it would mean people won't be able to use same understanding and skills with mechanics which are available in their singleplayer game.

Of course I would never argue for multiplayer to have completely different battle mechanics then single player. I think everyone here agrees to that. "ALL battles would have no player input." I think you need to be more specific with that statement. Cause things that happen outside of the battle specifically can be very interesting and might give enough depth to satisfy players in multiplayer (consider battle engagements in EU4 where you tehcnically have no mechanic to do other then retreat once a battle starts, but before the battle you can do soooo many different things to increase your odds of winning that battle). Would you consider army attrition, flank composition, high ground bonus, defensive bonus, reinforcement lines, surprise/ambush advantage, food attrition, climate attrition, and skilling of the marshals. All these options offer lots of depth to gameplay and how one takes a fight without having to make the player do anything once the fight occurs. I think for KOH 2 this should be the focus of how we want to make army and battles interesting and dynamic. We need to think about ideas that happen before the battle that influence the battle which can easily be implemented to give the needed depth you and all of us are looking for.