Marshall/Army Suggestion

[Bjarni]

I saw another player make a similar post in the forum with a similar theme, but it didn't really touch on the specifics I had in mind so here goes.  I think it is a very good idea to get rid of the landlord/builder knights as they were underused, and this allows us to focus more on the more interesting knights.  That being said, in KoH 1, once your kingdom got to a certain size, you are no longer playing KoH, you're playing Kingdom Micromanager 2004.  Using my merchants efficiently(switching who I'm trading with or starting new trade agreements with now prosperous nations), or spies creatively(checking which kingdom didn't have an heir, and would likely destabilize of their king was assassinated) wasn't possible, as the vast majority of my time was spent micromanaging my marshals on the warfronts, adopting populations, and converting.  For this reason, I have always wanted an option in the game where my marshals could act independently.  Naturally the player would decide what they would be limited to (can they pillage or not, should they siege or not, can they leave the nations borders or just hunt rebels, etc...)  I was worried this would be a big ask, but then I considered the fact that we already have AI for the enemy nations, and every king has a different temperament which determines how they will use their marshals, so hopefully this is already implemented into the game to some degree and wouldn't require too much work.  That being said, I believe that this small improvement to the game would improve the player experience drastically.  I wasn't going to make this post as I've never written on any gaming forum, but this is the only game that's stayed consistently good over the past decade and a half, and I hope the development team considers adding this feature.  

 

P.S.  If the developers were able to add this feature, it would be great if they could expand on the pillage/no pillage option.  Example: Marshal can pillage, but not/only farms/villages/monastery/etc.  This way you could have your marshal to have specific strategies such as burning down all of the farmland, making it harder for the province to hire new soldiers, allowing for an easier assault on the city.  It wouldn't add much complication to the game, but would give it much more depth.

 

P.P.S.  When choosing where to send a knight, in KoH the list of possible provinces was sorted by oldest to newest, meaning you had to scroll all the way down every time you sent a priest to convert/adopt a newly conquered province (which was the only time I ever sent a knight to a province).  Please sort them from newest to oldest.  It's a small quality of life improvement, but it was always so annoying when expanding.

[Lighthope]

On 5/26/2020 at 4:41 PM, Bjarni said:

For this reason, I have always wanted an option in the game where my marshals could act independently. 

I don't know about this.  The whole point of it being a real-time game as opposed to -- say -- Total War puts the time pressure on the player. He has to make choices as to where his focus was going to be.

If Marshalls are automated, that removes a great deal of that pressure that is intrinsically part of the game.

I get what you're asking.  You feel like you're spending too much time as a general and not enough time as a king.

I really don't have an answer for that without fundamentally changing a core aspect of the game.

[Bjarni]

If warfare in KoH was more of a challenge then I would agree, and perhaps a more challenging AI would get rid of the boredom of late-game conquest, but I always play on hard, and not once have I lost a province; its just too easy (given were talking about 2004 AI so...).  Once you become one of the strongest nation, all you have to do is send two marshals to assault a city, adopt population, convert population, and then repeat this 100 more times until you conquer Europe.  As they said in their dev diaries, they want to keep conquest as a key play style as it was the heart of the original KoH, and I agree, which is why I dont think marshals should be completely independent from the player, the player should be able to choose if they want to control them manually or have them automated (kind of like how you can automate battles or control your units yourself).  I just feel that as long as you have to micromanage all of your marshals at all times, conquest will be the only way to play the game, and after a couple hours, once you understand how the AI works, there will be no challenge to the game.  It would just be nice if we could have another way of conquering Europe, where you could actually act as the king of a nation and not a manager of marshals. 

[DoVlaLegend]

3 hours ago, Bjarni said:

It would just be nice if we could have another way of conquering Europe, where you could actually act as the king of a nation and not a manager of marshals. 

I believe they said that there will be more than one (conquering) way of winning.

[Lighthope]

15 hours ago, Bjarni said:

It would just be nice if we could have another way of conquering Europe, where you could actually act as the king of a nation and not a manager of marshals. 

Someone posted that they conquered the world using only spies.

[ÆternaTristitia]

It would be good to have some unique mechanics and additions to the gameplay style of KoH but I think It's very good and important that this game is meant to be a somewhat casual and sandbox experience rather than an insanely detail literal historical simulator. As long as It's fun and dynamic, it would be lovely to have such new mechanics.