illbe85

Hello everybody, reading and observing William's comments and Dev Diaries, I think that some of the criticism he moves to the actual "battle/siege" gameplay are interesting, and I agree with him, as in a previous topic in which more or less the focus was about siege and depth of automatic resolved battles. I'm not going deep as him but I simply want to say that some aspects he wish to be part of the game are crucial to have a less repetitive gameplay, and open up to a wider and, I think, funnier experience. Assuming that in game you'll not have more than 3/4 marshalls, it would be great to have the chance to focus on a strategy based on 1 marshall army's fast moves and quick incursions tring to damage enemies bigger armies while they are moving to a target, instead of tring to simply resist the siege to come, or waiting two of our marshalls to join to be able to face the above mentioned bigger army. I think having 3 or 4 armies widespread on the map fighting different battles with different opponents at the same time would be better than moving cautiously with 2 marshals together, or at least, I think theese two strategies should deliver different but equally profitable benefits. It would be great, not necessarily in a winning perspective, but in a multiplayer experience with friends focused on having fun, to open up to a high numer of small battles in a wide area instead of just moving war only when the chance of winning are high (you could always fail even with 2 marshall army, but you understand what I mean). I don't know if William's Idea of food consumption as a "fuel" for enemy speed is the right one (to me it seems great, but, as said before, don't have the experience to prove that) but it would be very important to not limit the gameplay making too risky to move around with 1 marshall armies, specially with army's strenght numbers well visible before the fight starts. These considerations open up to the fact we discussed in the other topic, about a more strategical approach during autoresolved battles. If I have the chance to attack a bigger army and then retreat at faster speed (at a high cost, obviously), avoiding to sacrifice completely my army and marshall, or modulating my efforts during a siege, instead of passively wait the yellow siege bar to fill the space, I think the gameplay, far from become too complicated, would benefit in terms of variety of possible approach for the players.

Thank you for your work, sorry 😄

Hello, I'm creating this topic knowing that there are much more important aspects of the game than the one I'm going to talk, but we're here to help improving the game, if possible. I'm from Milan, and seeing in some screens that there is a mountain nearby my city (East side) kills me :-D. I've never noticed it. I know there could be a difference between real geography and the game map, but this thing really stands out, to me. It's just the mountain at the right side of Milan, on the imaginary route that connects Milan to Venice. There are only flat and rural lands in that area. A simple wood without mountain maybe would be as interesting for the gameplay, without modifying the real world geography too much. I appreciate that you have covered more portion of the world with woods and forests, compared to KOH1. One thing that was a bit strange in the first game was that the world geography was "the same" in every country, more or less, except for the mountains position. It would be great if in KOH2 central europe would be covered with more greenish forests than other places, and center of Spain would resembles more the Meseta Highlands, which is partly less green and more desert. And speaking about Venice, a city famous because is built literally on water, in the game appears like it was built on the top of a cliff. I know there are less important details, compared to gameplay, but I think that these little things really improve the game immersion, especially because you created a magnificient and colorful world that's really eye catching. Thank you for your job, Devs!

Excuse me Ivory Knight, but I maybe miss one thing: you say that micromanagement during the battle (even if very simple) would be too much for the player (honestly I imagined something like 15 to 30 seconds, very few buttons to push and very few choices to make (attack/attack until annihilation/retreat ecc...5/6 options at max). It seems that this kind of solution appear to you and other people in the topic very "scary" (I read about 15/20 minutes to 1 hour to prepare a battle? Seriously nobody would expect/hope something this long). Then you say " 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. " How theese solutions are going to be manageable in less time than the proposal above? Unless you think that this kind of aspects are going to be considered/evaluated and aquired for your army 1 time for all, and never touched again, which is quite limiting.

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.

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 😄