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Calliope

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Calliope last won the day on December 23 2021

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  1. To my mind, an engineering skill could be great, if indeed it allows your marshal to build more advanced siege weapons. Without the skill, a marshall having engineers in his army could craft rams, onagers, tower sieges maybe? And with the skill, depending on its level, maybe he could make his engineers craft ballistas, then trebuchets, and finally, if he's a true genius, why not cannons? Like a true Jean Bureau. That would make a lot of sense to craft more advanced siege weapons depending on that Engineering skill. The main thing here would be to have Engineering, Medics, and other options available in an army behaviour, independently from commander skills that could enhance them further more. 😃
  2. First, I wanted to share some ideas here. For instance, we know that if one can produce horses in a province, and if he wants to create horsemen, he can do that in the appropriate province. But then, what annoys me is the same can be done in the WHOLE kingdom, right? I believe that's how the game currently behaves. Since the last comments shared ideas about situational advantages in battle, and that I find nothing to add to them, I admit I would also like to see situational advantages when gathering an army - not necessarily with all trade goods. The game should allow the player to recruit horsemen only in a province that fits the associated requirements. That would be far more logical than the wide kingdom advantage when building an army. Then if someone wanted to put some cavaliers in his army, he should bring his marshal in a specific province to recruit there some squads (or wherever they may be garrisoned). I know this involves some kind of micro management, but I think it wouldn't be too complex, regarding both gameplay understanding and technical implementation. And if I'm wrong, tell me, because there may be something I'm missing, ah-ha! 😅 Second, some reactions to the whole dev diary (#27): - Visually, I've noticed some UI improvements (number of settlements in a province, very useful, though the province features and the local trade goods produced haven't been separated as I've suggested about a month ago). Also, is it me, or is the main screen landscape still being enhanced? Maybe I find it too gorgeous every time I see it ha ha. 😉 - Linked to my saying just above, isn't there any hills in the game? There are plains, mountains, forests or so... rivers, sea.. but no hills? Or maybe I don't notice them... - How is the Additional Troops mechanic considered a military equipment? I understand the necessity to have different ways to play the game... but I find no logic in it. At least no logic at all to consider this as a military equipment, instead of supplies/wagons, and siege weapons. Though, as I said somewhere, on the Discord: siege equipment was (almost) always built on the spot, otherwise it would slow down armies and it doesn't help to transport them on long distances. However it would be VERY interesting to have some engineers mechanic, that would allow to craft siege weapons, or that would allow to speed up their fabrication. Engineers that would also be able to set up some tunnels, galleries below a castle or a city? Which would help winning a siege, or reduce the time it takes... ---> This leads me to suggest some ideas; instead of "army equipment", it should be renamed to logistics. Then, indeed, displaying options impacting the role of an army would be great. So there would be, as showed, Additional troops, Supply wagons, and why not as I suggest Engineers? Instead of being able to craft siege equipment magically and transporting them on long distances, which makes no sense, sorry. It doesn't mean in its current state, I won't enjoy the game actually! Just that it could be enhanced so it demonstrates how it can be both original and serious, compared to several other games. C'mon guys, give us some incredible stuff we won't see anywhere else, just like KoH 1 did! Have some audacity! 😃 Finally, I want to make some more suggestions about which options could be added in logistics ("""army equipment"""): - 4th (according to the way I've counted in this whole comment) = Organised camp/Organisation. This would allow your army to fight more efficiently, being more prepared, whether you attack or defend. And here I'm not talking at all about the knight's ability called fortified camp. This is my point: generally, in the Antiquity, Medieval times and until this day, military operations are launched from a base. Yes, you can have battles "unprepared", being on the move, but two enemy armies often had their own military camp, where they put all their equipment, food, treasures, which they left (or not) to fight their opponent. And if having an organised camp should allow your army to fight more efficiently (not being caught on surprise in an attack), it should also allow for better retreats. Otherwise if you lose a battle, your retreat should be more disastrous. - 5th option: Medical staff. I know there's an option too in the knight's skills, that allows to preserve some of your soldiers, and heal the wounded ones... but that shouldn't be only a knight's ability. It should be available for an army, independently from the knight leading it. Then, you can want to stack the bonuses if you wish so, but that's another topic. Here, I think it is necessary to allow the player to have some medical staff in his army, if he wants to take care of his men, because it doesn't depend on the general only, but on logistics too! And that would also be more realistic I think. There could even be more options, more ideas, etc. It's late here, and I prefer to let everyone react to these ones if he wants to. Otherwise, this dev diary hypes me, I find it great, very interesting... and, yeah, I believe there could be much more improvements so that the game would be even greater than what it may currently be. Can't wait for the Devstream! And for a sneak peek of this live Orchestra! 😉 Please, dear devs, make Knights of Honor II: Sovereign like its predecessor: a true masterclass. 🏆
  3. Reading at all this... I wonder if I really like the current buildings system. I mean, the one in the original game really satisfied me, but I can understand the team wants to make and play on a polished, new version, maybe more balanced, I don't know. About trade goods, the pictures right above my comment makes me a bit suspicious. The first implies, in order to have salt, that you absolutely need to have barrels before producing salt. But I totally disagree with this kind of setting. Don't get me wrong, this is logical IF you wanna trade salt abroad, or if you send salt to other provinces in your realm. But what about local goods? If a province had salt mines, it would exploit that resource, and stock it in an administrative center, right? But it wouldn't necesary need barrels to be transported in some near location, it would need only carts. Let's imagine you have a town about 5 km distant to salt mines. Would you really need barrels that much if you only had to stock them in some building? But barrels would be needed for long distances, transport, for global, or even provincial trade. I think this lack of accuracy gives a flaw to the game, because it prevents a province from making salt, even if it doesn't have barrels. That's my opinion. Just like the Deep Forests needed for making glass, I don't really get the idea behind needing minerals, in order to produce glassworks. The description of the building itself is very thin and leaves the player in the blur. I know it might still be on works but... hey, I'm not really satisfied with it. Am I the only one here? 😅
  4. Interesting dev diary! Thanks for these infos! Although, like William Blake, I'm wondering about the real sense of this complexity, if it's really useful the way it is now, not in its deepness but in it's behaviour. But maybe it's very complementary and everything runs well so that it gives real flavour to the game. 🙂 May I ask this: How much do relatives matter? I mean, for instance, two brothers, or an uncle and his nephew, are historically ruling two different entities (with a separate administration). In this kind of cases (which are historical), would they still be considered relatives, though not being in the same court?
  5. Greetings, dear Brad, dear devs, and dear fellow fans! First I want to say I wish everyone's great and has had good holidays! I'm so happy with what is published there, about the many different ways to configurate a game... I love especially kingdoms descriptions, it can truly help a player when choosing a kingdom! By the way, is a kingdom's description the same for the three starting dates, or not? And if not, can it be modded so there may be three different descriptions? 😄 The minimap, and all the visuals, even if they might be on works, they all look gorgeous, it's still so pleasant to the eye! Also the possibility of creating a kingdom, coming out of nowhere, based on whichever province you want, I find it's a nice idea! And same for the possibility for a player to switch to another kingdom if their first is defeated! Can't wait for the devstream!!
  6. I agree with your post, and especially with these lines, except for the last one. But only a personal preference (to rule is to choose what you can, and compose with what you can't choose).
  7. Considering the map, maybe paganism could be split into two branches: a "Nordic" or "Eurasian" one, and an "African" one. The first could mix Norse, Romuva (I think that was Lithuania's religion before they converted to catholicism) and Tengri (Mongolian) faiths, the second one could represent the fetishist realms of Africa. I think that would be cool and add even more depth, while keeping things simple. Actually, current paganism reflects the "Eurasian" non christian or muslim faiths. If the devs like this idea, and if they have time and resources to spare, things may evolve this way... or another! :-)
  8. It's great to see this new part in the game, fantastic! It feels like playing all three major religion groups will feel exciting though with different gameplays, I love it! By the way a small question about modding: for instance, if I wanted to add another faith (in one of these religion groups), how easy would it be? Because I may have an idea for the time period... 👀 Thanks again for this dev diary, indeed the content is very promising!
  9. As William said, the game implies a lot of work. And as many said, one of the problems usually is the lack of communication. But when we ask questions, sometimes we get answers, and we got them recently, about what was going on. Given the discussions on the Discord server, especially the precisions Veso/Frujin brought us, KoH2 is not abandoned at all. And that's good news! Though I wouldn't be against another devblog. :-) Same as William, from what we know, and from what we see, there are chances the game will be released next summer (mast spring, I expected it to happen in spring 2022 at max). That's a realistic vision. And most parts have been done. Tactical battles, balancing, bug fixes (Veso told on Discord about a game where some weird situation that shouldn't have occured, but which did)... recording voice lines too. Among others. That's not a devblog but I'm totally fine with such infos, about which part of the game is being worked on, which progress the team makes... it's my own opinion, but I like to hear from the devs, from time to time.
  10. Interesting! Both gameplays look cool and a bit more diverse than in KoH1. Can't wait to hear from the team in next devstream, and to dive more into that topic! Several questions: - Will Papal States be playable? - If the Pope owns Rome and another province, but eventually lose Rome, does the Papacy still disappear? Does the Papal States remain? - Will it be easy to add and modify Religious Centers, so that catholic clerics do not only go to Rome, but also for example to Santiago de Compostella, or to Canterbury? Same for Orthodox, with Antioch or Mount Athos for instance? - What about peaceful pilgrimages (to Santiago, Rome, Jerusalem...)? Is there a mechanic for it, or do you plan to make one? I mean, regardless of one's religion, but as a mechanic available to Christians and Muslims, depending only on their own religious centers. See you Thursday! Thanks again for the mechanics unveiled! I and the other fans hope everyone's fine!
  11. Knights of Honor II: Sovereign - Judicates Dev Diary #3 : Teambuilding Hello there, and welcome to the third development diary of Judicates. We hope you are fine during these first days of Autumn, or Fall, as the 'mericans say. In the previous diary, I was expecting to write a topic on a new region of the map, but instead, the mod made a nice progression, and its map, though necessary, is not the only thing that matters. Today, we're going to dive into a sort of subreality, on which rest great hopes. Without further delay, let's talk about it! The mod was initially planned to be focused on the sole island of Sardinia, as it was explained in the first diary. At that moment, I felt it was too little for a mod, because except historical and geographical research rendered on a single picture, there was almost nothing yet behind. Back in early Spring, there was not enough information known about Knights of Honor II. We could only rely on still images in order to guess and try to find how the game was going to be played. Then, everyone waited a couple of months to discover gameplay footage, internal mechanics, and all sorts of features, to learn a bit more about the way the game behaves. Military units, buildings, battles, knights special actions, among other parts of the game, are now less of a secret (though all of this is still a bit unknown). Actually, it led to the mod's general improvement, for the best. As I wrote it in the previous dev diary, I thought about the possibility of creating scenarios focused on a specific area, instead of a huge map. Thus, with some help, I was convinced it could be great to work on one of these. This led to the development of a new project, which won't replace Judicates, but rather launch it, and possibly make it grow. As such, we are proud to present you: The Beginning. Judicates: The Beginning is a submod for the main project, or a demo if you prefer. Its purpose is to allow the player to discover and familiarize with the world of Knights of Honor II: Sovereign, on a manageable map for a first mod, which is not divided into hundreds of provinces, since it will put the player on the sole island of Sardinia, at the head of one of its realms. This decision has been taken because creating an overhaul extending on a larger scale implies lots of efforts, time and motivation. These can go off at any moment, and slow down, or even stop the project. Yes, you have to be aware that until the mod comes out, anything can influence its process of creation. This is why, as non professionals, we definitely want and hope we'll be able to achieve this one! Then maybe we'll have enough energy to create the main mod. Concretely, the goal of The Beginning is to offer the player different interesting features, such as additional interface languages (German, Russian and French), so that the mod has full coverage and is not intended only for English speakers. We want to allow both Single player and Multiplayer (up to five players). Although the submod only allows you to start on the first start date (around 1100 AD), we want to offer different experiences, depending on the starting location chosen by a player, because each realm has a different situation and each king available right at the start will take the role of one of the five knights classes. But beware, selecting a large judicate does not necessarily mean your game will be easy; actually, it may be the contrary. The overhauled political situation of Sardinia in 1100 AD, recalling the classic colors of a board game. Though work has been made on several features we will cover in a future diary, here we want to present you another part of the mod that has known progress too: visuals. This part concerns essentially flags and portraits for the moment, as we wanted to represent each judicate with its historical emblem, and as we also wanted to extend the amount of portraits available. Right now, we don't know how many portraits will be available in vanilla game, but as you will notice with our two examples, the ones created below differ by far in their style. Noblemen drawn by a mysterious man whom we do not know but is very human. To say it in a few words, these pictures are obtained through a random generation of men's and women's faces, then it requires artistic skills and passion to obtain these realistic people... or are they actually real people? We can't affirm it. The flag which represents the judicate of Gallura. Cock-a-doodle-doo! Most flags for the submod are already done, and we're having quite a nice amount of portraits, especially for men. As the mod grew, it was decided to launch a mod specific platform, in order to be able to work more efficiently on it, upload, download and exchange files, or talk about Judicates and everything related to Knights of Honor series, in lounges set up for this purpose. Thus was set up a Discord server, initially quite simplistic and sometimes chaotic, but which quickly gained in organization. Being a modder or moderator is a rewarding experience, but becoming an administrator allows you to discover unsuspected things by seeing them from another angle. Similarly to Knights of Honor, it allows you to develop certain skills, and to gain confidence in what you're doing. We'll talk a bit more about this later in this blog. But Judicates and its Discord server wouldn't be the same without a special guest that helped a lot in this project, notably on arts, but overall in every aspect of it. Because Judicates is no more the project of a sole man, but of two now. Therefore, I present you Heragoga, who joined the team this month, and is co-ruling the server with me. Heragoga, I give you the floor, so that readers can discover your multiple talents. Hello there everybody. I am a German game development student with quite some modding experience in Hearts of Iron 4. My skills mostly lie in coding, technical knowledge and 3d modelling, tho I am able to create 2d art up to some extend as you can see. My main motivation for joining this projects are my high hopes for KoH2 and the desire to greet it "with open arms and a bucket of flowers", in a manner of speaking. Thanks Heragoga. As you have noticed, the arrival of Heragoga brought a lot to the project. However, we are still looking for more people who are passionate about the game and who could contribute to the development of Judicates. A varied team, made up of various nationalities, would indeed be beneficial. Speaking anything other than English, Russian, French or German would be a great asset, since we want to put additional languages to the game and to the mod. These are the ones we are looking for essentially: Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Polish and Korean. If you speak any of these and want to help the mod or the game, notably with translation, you are very welcome; and so you are if you speak any other language too! Whether you have talents in graphics, writing, coding, research, drawing, musical composition or anything you think can improve the mod, we will prepare and make a place for you. We don't mean to compete with Black Sea Games, but rather honor their job and what they're creating, as to show the passion Knights of Honor II community has for this game. Thereby, we invite you to join the team, if you are interested to take a part in it, or even just discover a bit more of the project. However, since there are rules on the Forum and on KoH2 server, and since we want to respect them, we cannot publicly display the link to Judicates server ; otherwise, this would be considered advertising, repetitive, aggressive, self-promotion, and we don't want that, or any conflict at all. A solution has been found with the Forum and Discord moderators: if you want to join Judicates server, you need to send Heragoga or myself a private message and ask for the link that leads to it. Then, we will send it to you discreetly, so that you can access the server. Our tags are #8147 and #9916, respectively, if you ever need them to find us. This blog is now finished. We hope it is still a pleasure for you to read us. In the next diary, we may talk again about historical details, or about concrete, internal work we're preparing for the mod before the game comes out. Have some patience! We all want to discover it after this long waiting. Meanwhile, rule well, sovereigns. See you next time!
  12. The devs explained they didn't want too much sort of empty land (or very large provinces which weren't that much populated). So yes, map expansion would be great, but only if essential I think. By the way, the map link does not work for me, it seems the picture has been removed... I hope I didn't provoke any feeling of shame or blame to the team, because of my post. It wasn't the purpose. It just amused me to see how tiny Arabia was! I hope the devs laughed with us... To be frank, they probably did. 🤗
  13. Wow! I never noticed how much developpers meant they distorded Arabia's peninsula...
  14. Thanks! Glad it pleases you! Map progress is still on work, and there aren't many regions that have been explored, apart from Sardinia and Sicily. Though I could say which will be maps' edges (it has been uncertain for several months), I'll keep it secret for now, because we're still on early stage of mod development. Yet, it is possible that this region may appear in the future...
  15. Interesting dev diary ! Indeed, that would be very cool to add this feature about inviting knights that have been abandonned by their kingdoms. I don't know for the western part of Europe, but in the East, the Greeks used it a lot (that's part of espionnage war in which they excelled). Also, I have a question... what are the conditions for a knight to betray you ? Is it only when he's a foreign spy, or is it also if the relation between him and you doesn't shine ? What do you think about adding a character opinion / loyalty modifier ? Would you find it's a good idea ?
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