Ivory Knight

If your manpower replenishes slowly then that province wont have much manpower to draw upon. Yes you may be able to squeeze out a unit more or two, but that doesnt equal huge army spam.

I think ur absolutely correct. It may even be balanced by simply having larger consumptions on manpower. More then 1 way to skin a cat.

Obviously there is a balance for how long a unit should take to build.. To not slow the pace of the game. But its clear that the unit build time should be w.e time it takes to prevent army spamming, in the circumstance when 1 huge army stack wipes you (battletime) and then goes straight for the town center (travel time) and seige time. So rough estimate ( battletime+traveltime to town+siege time = time to build units)

Sorry if I didnt make my self clear or if I still dont understand you, what I was arguing for is an auto resolve system similar to EU4, where All of the battles outcome is determined by interesting effects prior to combat. In your first example, depending on how you take the engagement would change the outcome. See my comment above about, weather, surprise, hills, defense stance ect.... You can have very deep and dynamic engagements without having to micromanage the auto resolve EU4 and HOI have this. I believe KOH 2 should also follow suit, because as you mentioned above during multiplayer deep management within battle engagements, can easily become too much. Yes, it is possible to have, and might not be too much once all is said and done, but I think at the present moment Apriori bonus before engagements seem to me to be where the game should focus. If they add a few internal battle mechanics, I will be fine with that, but in truth those mechanics cannot go very deep without it becoming taxing. While mechanics before combat, which effect combat, can go very deep, because of all the DEAD time between engagements.

You can make it so when you recruit they will travel to your army once they are ready. Also I dont see your exploitable problem as that big a problem. Yes players could do that, but then you as a player should know when it is safe to recruit and when not to. If anything it just adds strategic planning to the game of when you should recruit and not. Also I state again that the point is to prevent army spam.

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.

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.

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

If time is the problem, with the cheezing, just make it so recruiting a general will take a minute or something, before he gets spawned in. Done problem solved. no more ability for someone to just spawn an army close by when a unfavorable engagement occurs. Also I you seem to indicate both that you dont want long battles because you hate the idea of reinforcement, but then offer having long battles as a solution to the intense micro management that will likely follow with the attack phase system you wish to introduce. Unfortunately you cant have it both ways. But as a solution to help improve your battle phase system, I suggest having it so you can have a kind of Auto Setup.. So you tell your general in everybattle automatically pick def, att, def, retreat, for the battle phases. That way you can go an do something else if u have overwhelming numbers and dont want to micro manage but still want to control how your army behaves in the battle phases to some degree. Or maybe even have the battle phases pop up on the right side of the screen like the buildings do, and show the actions u can take and the timer attached to the battle phase. That way you can manage multiple battles at once easily. Here I attach a picture of kinda what I mean.

Idunno that unit is fully healed so that still could be the fractional amount. But I am inclined then to believe you are correct, but it is still speculation.

I dont know if dividing up the garrison into flanks makes much sense? But I do think your ideal for flanks and attack phases may be a nice thing to implement. Might take a decent amount of balancing before they can get it working in a good way. I dont know how I feel about different army speeds being dependent on food production. I see the problem your trying to solve, but I am worried about the large micro management which will be added by players constantly jumping back and forth for speed boost toggle. But then again since you will only ever have maybe 6 armies max, maybe it isnt too taxing for micro management. "Remove food upkeep from unit level. Calculate food upkeep ONLY as a combined actual solders per marshal. 8 units with 1/50 soldiers cannot consume the same food as 8x 50/50." Are you sure you dont have a copy of KOH 2???? Because I do not know how you deduced this from the game play footage??? Yes the units types had associated food upkeeps, we see that in the footage. But how do you know they didnt scale that consumption with how filled that unit is. AKA 50/50 spear man consumed 1 food and 1/50 spear man consumed 0.02food? How do you know thats not what they did? Time Stamp? "It appears that fixed settlements are too restricting for player development options at a given territory. There should be more freedom to direct economy in different ways rather than just maxing out starting fixed conditions." I actually have thought of going in the other direction. Instead of giving more building depth to settlements, maybe just take all of that out of the picture, and just have the settlements improve themselves automatically over time (reducing the micromanagement there). These are after all kinda the base production that keeps the kingdom afloat. Also it would give an interest to raiding and attacking countries which maybe havent been at war or raided for a long time as their base settlements would be all juicy and be producing lots of loot. (And of course the loot should outweigh the over time gain of capturing the town and living off the province with all settlements intact) I do agree with you that international trade needs to be interesting and I think they can grow the depth there more. So I think I would be more interested in the management of the Towns and of the empire at large, I think micro management at the settlement level might be a bit too much. 5) Diplomacy Here I just disagree with you fully.. Firstly I dont know where you get this idea that Serbia in the gameplay footage was approached by kingdoms it had no ties with. So in the footage they make a trade deal with Naples.... And later Naples asks Serbia to join a war against France..... Trade partners asking for help? Nothing strange to me about that... Especially when FRANCE!! attacks you I dont know about you but I am calling everyone and anyone to help me in that war. And about the messages at the bottom of the screen, I actually find it useful to know things about far off countries in order to keep tabs on maybe a Giant growing too large off in the distance. Especially useful in a multiplayer games. I am sure they will have a sorting mechanism for the chat so you can prioritize the distance relations ect.... Or just keep it on everything. If not then this is a suggestion of course.

Its more about the time to respond which can be larger then the siege time, (at least this was the case in KOH 1 when your empire gets big and being able to move onto other objectives and not getting setback by a quick capture. Basically a surprise attack on a larger Kingdom that doesn't expect it, or using the line of sight blockers to quicker sneak up to a castle or town and capture it before the enemy can shuttle their army to defend. It also makes for fun multiplayer hidden army shenanigan's. Of course if ur army is already in position to defend, then it makes almost no difference having line of sight.

Interesting Comments - At (36min43s) We notice the garrisoned units can only be 5 instead of 6 as was the case in KOH 1. At anytime, we see a crown and two hands on the bottom left of the screen. What is that? At (37min48s) we see something called Kinship at the bottom right in the politics tab. What is that? Some sort of additional boost to relations if you have a dynasty member in another kingdom? At (39min4s) we see that battle engagements start with a timer, that I assume will resolve to auto resolve the battle if the player doesn't get to them in time. This is a nice feature to stream line gameplay compared to the clunky KOH 1 popups for every single battle engagement. At (40min2s) we see the zone of control or something for the town center. At (40min21s) we see that plundering is more like a battle, where you take causalities as opposed to KOH 1 where it was just an action your marshal did to a village. At (40min42s) we see that one can see an enemy army approaching in the fog of war even before it crosses the province boarder. Lastly the peace deal at (41min31s) actually didn't transfer any gold? LOL must have been a bug or something? Ideas for Improvement - At (38min30s) we see the political map, and how its colored coded with 6 different colors (presumably). Of course with time this will become second nature to read for most players, but to help with that learning time, maybe color code the Font for the types of relations under the political tab to match the color on the map. Here is what I mean, Allies, Enemies, Vassals, Friends, Threats, Kinship. I noticed that a quick player (39min4s) would save some precious seconds of time by rushing to battle engagements and clicking auto resolve early to trigger the battles early. This will become micro intensive in competitive atmospheres and really might lead to the conclusion that the better players are the ones which can get to and click the battle triggers the fastest. So I suggest to have some sort of setting which can be toggled to make all battles auto resolve instantly. Maybe this is already in the game? Fogot to add this.... Soo adding it now.. Small and Large rivers would likely be a nice feature to have in the game too. With the size giving different negatives to armies, or maybe even large rivers can only be crossed with bridges, or very long periods encouraging bridge use. FOG OF WAR I really really hope you devs read this and consider it. So Fog of War. In the gameplay seems to be done the exact same way as it was in KOH 1 , except for that early warning of seeing an enemy general close to the border that I mentioned above at (40min42s). So what I purpose is a sort of Fog of War vision system which extends out from your towns and settlements and of course armies (this is what you can see aka line of sight). And that your line of sight is blocked by trees and mountains in addition. I think roughly speaking most of the province should feel like its in your line of sight, but some parts of it should feel kinda unknown especially parts of the province which have line of sight blockers like trees and mountains infront of your Towns or settlements. Of course provinces which have a ton of territory (and few settlements) , may need a scaling of line of sight for the units and towns and settlements, so that those provinces dont feel like they are covered in fog of war. Here is a picture of kinda what I mean. So where the red lines are is where your line of sight from your settlements and town cannot reach because of either distance or line of sight blockers like the forest. What is really cool and fun about this, is you could then in theory hide an army very close to an enemy town if there was a forest for example the center Green square and you could even hide an army technically inside an enemies territory!!!! See the Green square to the left of the image. Gives the game a bit more depth into how someone might want to engage on an enemies province. Especially in multiplayer !!!!!

Comments to William Blakes Comments. 1) Economy - Yes they modelled their economy similar to what has been done in KOH 1, if you liked KOH 1 then I dont see how you are so upset about the economy shown here. Unless you have never played KOH 1? Or you hate KOH 1? Then why are you following the development of KOH 2? lol ( just a side note) 2) Trade- Perhaps it is done like that because there will be other bonuses that come into the picture if you trade with Friends and Allies, gold isnt the only worth wild resource that is acured from trade. Perhaps one can trade with someone whom gives them less Gold for their trade good but by trading with that ally, they gain more relationship with that ally? Yes this is also speculation, but the trade you have witnessed doesnt have to be all doom and gloom. Also This was the same in KOH 1... 3) War- Here I think I agree with you, the battles seemed a bit stale. and lacking of some more in depth content, like you mention battle tactics or such not. "And in a multiplayer it will not be available at all." I wouldn't be too sure of that. Yee of little imagination. "all you do by attacking a castle or a settlement with an army is locking yourself in place to be hit with a stronger army. It is useless. " This is true even in real life... So I dont really see your point there. "Armies even march around with a same speed." I really doubt they wont have marshal bonus for movement speed. So I am guessing, but I think your just wrong here. "The units you build are way way way more dependent on what you can build and upgrade and really matter piratically nothing at the military gameplay. Yes over time you will have more and more elite units, but it is kinda irrelevant with combat like that." This comment I think best summarizes your whole point, and I very much agree, and I hope the devs take some time to think a bit about it and spice up the gameplay around it. So that the building of army units under marshals isnt soo narrow and straight. A possible idea may be something like big unit bonuses depending on how your marshal is skilled that make building certain units pointless and others not. Kinda pushing u to build army compositions differently? 4) Conclusion- Ya maybe the game isnt designed for you? Not every game fits everyone cest la vie. You seem really big into deep game depth and many features, maybe Europa Universalis or Hearts of Iron is your cup of tea then? I will post my thoughts comments and ideas from the gameplay shortly, with the time stamps for others to see as well. Interesting points William as usual.

Nope you are incorrect here. You can come watch our gameplay of no Merchants and no building of economic buildings and see how things played out. It is rough, but you do get very quick bonuses from sacking early on and its easy to pull off with peasants early in the game. and the additional marshal skilling you get from the plundering helps give your marshals early stats.

1. If what you say about the UI is true, then I agree the way they have it makes it a little too merged. They should have a separate panel for the produced goods vs feature resources. 1.1 I think your jumping the gun a bit on speculating that the amount of resources is huge... I dont think we have a clue, but I suspect they are well aware of having too many and swamping the player. 2. I think you are mostly correct, with a tinge of incorrect, I have played KOH 1 rounds where I would specifically check the resources map and plan my wars towards those critical resources. You are true to say most of the time other factors almost always come into the way of that so those planned wars tend to never happen. So I agree with you on this one and I think it is an important criticism of their statement. 3. Yes not having a boolean system of goods is probably more realistic and gives more depth. But tasks the player with allot more information. Trading systems can get complex fast and I think what your asking for is something that scales trade and resource output with size ( like bigger kingdoms demand more resources of a particular good and produce x amounts of a good) all of this can become very taxing for an average player. But with that said I do agree with you, but I dont see many ways to find a common ground of simplicity vs complexity with trade goods. Then again I havent thought about it all that much. (maybe trading vs owning a resource gives you different effects?) 4. I think I completely agree with you here, and I would take it even further, by saying different outcomes may happen when raiding different settlement types. Maybe different LOOT? And maybe different negatives as well? 5. I dont think it would be in theme of the game if you could just make a province have any settlement type you want. I can see how that would be really abused, and kinda take the realism out of the game. Like your playing a role playing game in medieval europe... You cant just turn all the settlements in France into only Monasteries. Or just shuffle settlement types around your kingdom at your own will. Your kingdom is what you got, and what you got isnt changing my boi. Always like reading your comments (you are highly inciteful and dig deep into ideas). Please dont take anything I say as confrontational. Sir Ivory Knight from Kings of Honor

Oh Jeeze lol some how I got total tunnel vision on the images and totally missed that.... I am embarrassed.

Thanks for the Diary, as I understand the settlements and some features to provinces are randomly generated with some restrictions. This sounds great especially for multiplayer games and playability. I do believe this should be the default setting. I also suggest to include a setting option giving fixed settlements and features resembling what they would have been like historically "Historically Fixed Settlements". I do understand the fear that players might only select this option if given it, so I think the default should always be set to randomly generated, to encourage players playing on that. What are your thoughts on that? And can we see what a castle settlement looks like?

I suspect they are designing it in theme of the first game, where it was kinda a background event that really only mattered once u get big enough and that the AI almost never achieved. Have you not played the first KOH? I do agree with you there may be some worries about how this all balances in multiplayer, and possibly how it affects incentives in multiplayer. You do make many bold statements about how it will play out in multiplayer and in the game in general do you have the beta or something already to know this??? Also what part of the internet hurt you my son. Some people will indeed play with each other in a sort of friendly "honest" manner, not all people in the gaming community are trolls and back stabbers. I do not know what the devs intention is with regards to multiplayer if they want it to be a completely competitive natural selection game experience or a more play with your friends experience.

You mention that "In the process, voters are not all equal, as each kingdom votes with the value of its prestige." Does this mean that if you have more prestige then all the GPs below you put together, that you can automatically win?

Is the number of troops the actual number of visual troops on the instant action battle fields? Or does it scale down, ex. 100 troops is in truth 1 visual troop on the battlefield? I recall you previous images of instant action battles showed unit groups of 30-50 troops.

I think you may be right to say people will lose track and misunderstand which classes are important in order to retain the moral of the army high... Even if it is only 2..... It still feels somewhat wrong to me to include an "army social class" when it can readily be incorporated into two classes but perhaps your right to keep the causes and effect very linear with respect to where they are coming from. I do disagree with Lighthope and Yavor, where they believe that their is an important distinction between a military peasant and a non-military peasant. I just iterate again, that most of the army was conscripted from peasantry whom most of the time had ordinary jobs and would serve the military for only a few years or so. Sure they are during that time "military peasants" but I think most of their attitudes, beliefs and desires of what makes their social class comes from peasantry life and not military life. Which is to say most of your army`s attitudes, beliefs and desires comes from peasantry life, and not some military culture. ( I am not ignoring that there was a military culture but it was amongst the nobles and knights of society which composed a much smaller fraction of your army and arguably were the ones leading it) Regardless, I think William brings up the main issue with my idea, that it may be somewhat more tedious to follow the causes and effects of the social classes, if the military is incorporated into two classes. Idunno I like to think people whom play this game can handle it, but then again it is suppose to be very accessible. I think this issue is something that truly needs to be tested before a good decision based on real gameplay impressions can be made.

I think you may be right to say people will lose track and misunderstand which classes are important in order to retain the moral of the army high... Even if it is only 2..... It still feels somewhat wrong to me to include an "army social class" when it can readily be incorporated into two classes but perhaps your right to keep the causes and effect very linear with respect to where they are coming from. I do disagree with Lighthope and Yavor, where they believe that their is an important distinction between a military peasant and a non-military peasant. I just iterate again, that most of the army was conscripted from peasantry whom most of the time had ordinary jobs and would serve the military for only a few years or so. Sure they are during that time "military peasants" but I think most of their attitudes, beliefs and desires of what makes their social class comes from peasantry life and not military life. Which is to say most of your army`s attitudes, beliefs and desires comes from peasantry life, and not some military culture. ( I am not ignoring that there was a military culture but it was amongst the nobles and knights of society which composed a much smaller fraction of your army and arguably were the ones leading it) Regardless, I think William brings up the main issue with my idea, that it may be somewhat more tedious to follow the causes and effects of the social classes, if the military is incorporated into two classes. Idunno I like to think people whom play this game can handle it, but then again it is suppose to be very accessible. I think this issue is something that truly needs to be tested before a good decision based on real gameplay impressions can be made.

Ok I will summarize my reasoning for removing the "Army social class" and incorporating it into Nobility and Peasantry. 1. It is arguably closer to historical accuracy. Historically, the army was composed mostly of the peasantry which would disband after war time and go back to farming and other peasantry activities with nobles leading the army itself. 2. It makes a clear direction towards mercenaries, since if your nobility or peasantry social classes are extremely unhappy expensive mercenaries can temporarily act as your army. (Which is also very close to historical events where Kings would hire mercenaries if they didnt trust their standard army to perform their duties. 3. The armies abilities to fight would be controlled by two social classes as opposed to 1. This was pointed out as somewhat of a counter point, but being that the game is focused heavily on armies and fighting, I would argue that making the armies ability to fight slightly more involved (balancing two class opinions vs balancing 1 class opinion) creates greater depth to the main part of the game, compared to just having a single social class to balance. 4. The way the nobility and peasantry class effect the combat readiness of your armies can be done in very different ways. Just an example, Peasantry effect moral mostly, whereas nobility effect tactics. (This makes the game even more historically accurate, cause nobility would often fight a war lazily if they hated their ruler, and the armies would disband during combat if composed of grumpy peasants.) 5. This would open up the potential to add another social class, which arguably could be craftsmen/guildsmen, which indeed played huge roles in medieval lives and would open up a new dimension to the game. 6. Or you do not need to add another social class, reducing the attention the player spends on this part of the game. 7. William here suggests assigning each unit type to a specific social class and applying class bonuses from each social class opinions to each unit separately, but I believe this is taking it too far to achieve historical accuracy, and believe my approach to be a good middle ground. Keep it just between the nobility and peasantry opinion and independent of the units within the army. 8. It seems like the main argument I have heard against this idea is that people wanna know if their army is combat ready or not simply by looking at 1 slider, I think this issue is readily solved by proper interfacing of how the nobility and peasantry boost or hurt army ability. Further more I want to point out that games like HOI4 have such complex army systems yet people dont really mind, and yet still enjoy the combat experience of the game even without knowing exactly how their army will do in combat. Obviously I do not want this, but my point is that I think people are caring too much about this.