Impressions of multiplayer tactics

[jakos2]

Hello Everyone

I'd like to write down my impressions about multiplayer. Since the remake is playable and great, i started thinking about strategies that i can use. I'm not the very best player, but i think that the game balance isnt really good in PvP. It's not that bad but i think some changes would make the game more fun.

Most of the players use xbows combined with some meele untis for example pikeman or milicia. It is the easiest and best working composition. I think the other mixies ar not that good. They cannot deal with the xbows. If i want to deal with ranged units properly, i have to make cavarly, but this takes too much investment, so we cannot afford it and we wont have enough ranged or meele untis. So now i can say that xbows arent the supporting units, they are the main army, and the few meeles are the support, cause the player who has the more ranged and can kill the support (meele) is the winner most of the time in direct engangements. Of course u can flank the enemy and some of the units can charge but because the game is slow and u can see everything, its almost never happens. So i want to say that we dont have too much strategic choices, just one working thing.

I dont know other people opinion, but as for me if i could use more options the game would be more fun.

To start making suggestions first some nerf on the xbows (or the whole ranged units) would be good, to make meele more important. Second there could be an option which could make our recruited axeman and swordsman to become cavarly (if we have enough horses) so if the enemy has a lot of ranged we could make cavarly much easier. Third we could make a thing what can fortify our meele to become less vulnerable to ranged attacks. It has to be a new building and it would need iron and 1 or 2 woods (so its not that easy to make cause those have to use iron who has only leather army too). And as i suggested before it could be done with recruited armies too. With theese changes u would have some option to deal with the xbows or crossbows and everyone have to make more meele units.

Other main suggestions are about sieges. When someone is attacking another town they have to use xbows or achers to deal with towers. Its not very good. Maybe we could bring back the catapult that can only attack buildings.

With theese changes more game would be longer and it wouldnt end in the first engangement.

There is another thing. In the last game one of my alliance had an idea so when he found his enemis iron, he built mines there so the opponent couldnt build an army from iron. Unfortunatley his main strategic was about using leather units, so it didnt work well but with it u can easily get ahead so a zone would be good where u cannot build in peacetime.

The last thing is that a little change in leather would be good, cause making leather units arent fast enough cause u can make iron units just as almost as fast as leather. So for example a bit faster pig raising would be better.

[Itlerion]

with all the respet, jakos2 is another example of player uncomfortable with the tactics used in the game, it is very clear that ALL PLAYERS DO THE SAME TACTIC and being a good players consist in who is faster thatn the other to spam that units, thats what you want from a realistic game? that there are only 3 or 4 units to be massed? pff

let me recomend you, the closed mind old gamers and developers to read some history or watch videos if you are lazy to read, or investigate in wikipedia how were the standar armies in europe in medieval ages, just IMAGINE:

AN ARMY OF THOUSAND CROSSBOWMAN and militia?? what? when? i cant believe that. if you saw or read that, plese send me link. battle in wich horses were not required, were? how many here make 20+ horses? or the same amount of horses and crossbow at least. you cant even make a good ambush with them because they are slow, come on, they have the same speed as a charging foot unit , how realistic at least they should have the charge ability, the horses, isnt that real?

so, horses are slow, there are always the same units massed, poor tactic in the cause of the lac of variaty of units, the fog of war.. there is some work to do, and you dont want to admit it, i will always say that is great the work you have done but is not finished, i might be new to the forum but i didnt born yesterday and i am not new to strategy games.

[batoonike]

Following previous posts, usually there are units that counter other units. Like pikeman counters scouts. And then players need to scout and adapt to enemy army. Once they have adapted, enemy has to adapt etc etc. This is obviously meant to be the case in KAM as well: pikeman counters horses, swordsman counters pikemen, horses counter swordsmen. Unfortunately if you make mass ranged, you don't have to adapt to anything ever again. Which makes the army composition part kinda dull. And is as much a bug as diagonal roads were. Then again, Kam is about that bug so it wouldnt be kam anymore if it was balanced.

[Lewin]

I split these posts out of the ideas thread because I think they are making a good point. I'd like to thank jakos2 for his post.

Yes, in multiplayer the number of tactics you can use are fairly limited, and archers are the most important unit of the game.
However, please keep in mind that this is a KaM Remake. If you could play KaM TPR/TSK online in multiplayer you would find the same problems. In singleplayer archers are also the most important unit. That is Knights and Merchants, whether you like it or not.
This project has always aimed to closely replicate the original games without many changes. Archers are already nerfed compared to KaM, (mainly to counter the smarter aiming) and if we reduce it any further it just won't be KaM.

HOWEVER, just because this is how Knights and Merchants works, it does not mean it should be the only way this game is enjoyed. I think we could implement something like a mods system, where in the lobby the host can select a certain "game mode" to play with. (Original, Multiplayer Balance, No Archers, etc.) Just an idea. Because I completely agree with jakos2, it would be great to see a bigger variety of tactics with less focus on archers. KaM really isn't well balanced for multiplayer games.
This is something for the future, we have a (mostly) working engine, so we can use it to make a KaM mode better suited for multiplayer to allow a bigger variety of tactics and tech choices
I'd also like to say that I've had a huge amount of fun playing with these "limited" tactics. (melee+archers and militia-charging the enemy towers) I think it's a great game already, but we can improve the multiplayer with a mode that changes things like jakos2 suggested.

there is some work to do, and you dont want to admit it

Given that our mission statement was to recreate KaM, we have succeeded. That is always what we have been focused on, and it is only recently that the engine is becoming complete and we've been able to divert our focus slightly to include things like multiplayer. Even so, we've still been doing a massive amount of work on the core engine of the game to fix bugs and improve things. It's a never ending task. Making a game is a massive engineering project especially for people with no experience writing game engines before.
Please don't be rude or angry with us, we are working very hard to produce this and it's not even close to finished. Of course there is still work to do. We're working our bums off to improve this game and fix it, and I'm amazed that we've managed to get it this far and there are people playing it online every day. (just the fact that you can play the game for hours without encountering bugs is a big achievement) Please be aware that even little changes can take a huge amount of work. I spent maybe 6-8 solid hours yesterday preparing the latest build, compiling the maps, translations, dedicated servers, writing the news post, compiling the installers, uploading the files to our mirrors, updating the master server, etc. etc. I could have spent that time working to earn money or with my family/friends. But I didn't because I love this project and it's an awesome hobby.

So it is hurtful when you (and other people) say things like that, implying that we don't put care into this project and we're making it the wrong way. Have patience, we can improve these things with time but we have our own lives too, we can only work on this in our spare time. Please try to be polite.

[GreatWhiteBear]

ALL PLAYERS DO THE SAME TACTIC

Yeaaaaah, nope.

Kill crossbowmen:
1. Get stables
2. Set distribution at 5.
3. Get a lot of corn by:
3a. Build a lot of corn farms with +/- 20fields/farm
3b. Build a market and trade other stuff for corn.
4. Train scouts or preferably knights.
Scouts use leather which requires corn.
5. Train other troops.
6. Attack the melee with your melee (preferably axe fighters or sword fighters because of their charge ability).
7. Flank the crossbowmen from both sides.
8. Win

I have another idea, make those with a shield better against ranged.
And, make cavalry move a little bit faster, from 2x infantry to 2.25x.
This way they can still out run charging infantry.
I am a little irritated by my cavalry being caught up by infantry.
Horses can run at least 10mph not going in gallop. Infantry in armor won't be able to reach those speeds.

[Mau5trap]

And, make cavalry move a little bit faster, from 2x infantry to 2.25x.
This way they can still out run charging infantry.
I am a little irritated by my cavalry being caught up by infantry.
Horses can run at least 10mph not going in gallop. Infantry in armor won't be able to reach those speeds.

Yeah, i really think that should be done. The way it is now, hardly ever you can get your cavalry into the enemy archers before the infantry come. The cavalry should surely have more speed (or in place of their charge button, a boost in speed for a few seconds)
@lewin/krom - really, i know maybe we have repeated this a bit too much, but i think u have to at least consider (im not saying you do not consider our opinions, nor trying to be rude)

[GreatWhiteBear]

another idea to balance things:
Have Iron troops movement speed decreased to 0.9 but increase defense if possible in the formula.
BTW, what is the formula?

[Siegfried]

BTW, what is the formula?

I know only the formula for fights:

A attacks B.

attack (A) * direction / defense (B) = x;
If x is larger than a random number between 0 and 100 then B loses one hit point.

The direction is a constant factor between 1 (attacking from the front) to 5 (attacking from behind). Attack and defense are the known ones from unit statistics. Each infantry has 3 lifepoints, each cavalry (and barbarians) have 4 life points. Ranged troops have 1 lifepoint and civilians have 2 life points.

[GreatWhiteBear]

That is simple...
so troops can have lim->0 defense.
So 1shield or sword was 25points?
that would mean that you can decrease the defense to a number which will ensure hits.

[Siegfried]

IIRC the statistics are the following:
militia and barbarian have defense 1 (which means no defense at all)
all other wooden troops have defense 2
all iron troops have defense 3

The attack values are basically the ones you find in wikipedia. 35% means 35 and so on.

[GreatWhiteBear]

I don't think that it shouldn't be like that.
I have the Dutch manual right in front of me.
Militia:
Attack: 35%
Defense: 0%
Required equipment: Axe

Axe fighter
Attack: 35%
Defense: 50%
Required equipment: Axe, Leather Armor, Shield

Lance carrier:
Attack: 25%
Defense: 50%
Required equipment: Lance, Leather Armor
Bonus against Cavalry: +55%

Archer:
Attack: 35%
Defense: 50%
Required equipment: Bow, Leather Armor

As you can see, the shield doesn't offer any extra kind of defense.

In addition:
Crossbowmen:
Attack: 100%(as much as a balista)
Defense: 70%
Required equipment: Crossbow, Iron Armor
(double reload time as archers)

This will mean that crossbowmen land every shot against a militia and 1 out of 2 shots against an axe fighter/Lance Carrier/Archer/Scout.
Again: As you can see, the shield doesn't offer any extra kind of defense.

Strange fact:
Rebel:
Attack: 25%
Defense: 25%
Required equipment: 1gold
Bonus against cavalry+60%(More than the lance carriers.)

Militia:
Attack: 35%
Defense: 0%
Required equipment: 2gold

Why is the Militia so much weaker but cost the double?

[GreatWhiteBear]

Either Siegfrieds formula is wrong or I stumbled on something inconvenient.

The following was tested 3 times from the front direction value is 1.(All hits are actual hits, no misses)
A single crossbowmen kills a militia in 4,4 and 5 hits.
A single crossbowmen kills an axe fighter in 12, 7 and 10 hits.
A single crossbowmen kills a sword fighter in 7, 25, 25, 10, 16 and 9 hits.(I tested this one 6 times)*Thank you captain obvious*

The following was tested 3 times from the side direction value is 3.(All hits are actual hits, no misses)
A single crossbowmen kills a militia in 3, 3 and 3 hits.
A single crossbowmen kills an axe fighter in 6, 6 and 6 hits.
A single crossbowmen kills a sword fighter in 19, 20 and 21 hits.

Strange outcome.

I also noticed that the crossbowmen shoots at a target positioned 8 squares to the left and 7squares to the top.

That is ((8^2)*(7^2))^0.5= 113 which is closer to 11^2 than 10^2 so it should be out of range.

[Siegfried]

You're right, shields don't give you extra defense. This already was the situation in TSK.

The explanation of the fighing formula (and the life points) comes out of the german strategy book (see here).

Also, the attributes described there were found in the decoded units.dat of kam, so there is some evidence the formula is correct.

The only thing we don't know is, whether the formula was implemented in a correct way in kam. We already know that the fighting system has a bug with the left attacking side, so we cannot be sure that the rest of the fighting system works.

Either way, the fighting formula is simple and good, so why not use it in a correct implementation?

[GreatWhiteBear]

I'd like to see shield carrying soldiers having more defense against arrows.

[Siegfried]

That's a very good test. Did you test it with TPR?

The crossbowman has attack 120. Attacking a militia from the front will result in losing one hit point each hit. In addition, you have to consider that life points are regenerated - but we have no idea when and how fast. In KaM Remake, I think the recovering rate is 1 lifepoint each 4,1 seconds.

So the 4 hits are plausible (3 shots take around 5 seconds, so 1 lifepoint is restored) ... but then it the attack from the side should also result in a death within 4 hits. This indeed is strange.

But there is one more thing that we have to consider: kam was programmed in a way to save cpu power, so many things were calculated line-wise. You see it in corn growing line for line. Maybe (I don't know this for sure) the life point regeneration is also update only every some seconds, so the deviations (4 or 5 hits) may be explained.

In the remake, the line-wise programming was not necessary, so each corn tile can grow on their own, independet from the line where it sits.

But I think your tests with the crossbowman attacking the sword fighter from the side are the most informative ones. The fighting formula gives 120*3/3 = 120, so each hit should decrease the sword fighters life points by one. Thus the sword fighter should die as fast as the milita (and it does in the remake <- this is one reason why so many people think the crossbowman is overpowered). But it survived quite long in your case.

And the results vs. the sword fighter from the front suggest, that there indeed is another bug in kam. 7, 25, 10 ... that doesn't make any sense.