mission 20 tsk

[cmowla]

pawel95,
Could you just post the fixed mission 20 here for everyone to play? I really want to try it out, despite that I'm not a qualified tester. I promise, I will behave (or at least I'll try).

[pawel95]

pawel95,
Could you just post the fixed mission 20 here for everyone to play? I really want to try it out, despite that I'm not a qualified tester. I promise, I will behave (or at least I'll try).

Nah sorry not yet There are already 3 different fixed versions. So even that mission I have sent to Lewin and I will send to you, aren´t the same, because I get feedback constantly and so I have to update it all the time. Btw I don´t want to make it that public, that really the whole world can use it I mean, in like 3 months, everyone should have the fixed version in your new kam remake version
I have sent you a pm with the actual fixed version. (Added attack from mid player. Thx vatrix for replay again. Not sure if those xbows should be fixed).


Pawel95

[cmowla]

Oh, okay I understand, and thanks for the mission. I will play it soon and post a replay.

Speaking of which,
I just went to the remake page, and I read the topic about the impossibility of mission 18 in r5503 and how some people have beaten it (or did I misunderstand and no one has beaten it yet...or proved/shown/explained how they have beaten it?). I told Alex in the comments that it's a very easy mission in r4179 and the original game, but when I played it in r5503, I can understand what people are talking about.

However, the mission is still quite easy (although still stressful, I give everyone that, at least).

I just beat it in 33m32s (without losing my northern storehouse), and I only lost 9 troops.

TSK 18 (r5503).zip

I know this is a little off topic, but I wasn't sure if anyone posted a winning replay of this. I thought those who think it's impossible to beat would be interested to see how.

EDIT:
With several more saves, I finished the mission in 27m4s losing only 2 troops (the minimum amount of troops one can lose with saves with this version is 2).

TSK18 (r5503 2 Losses).zip

[cmowla]

Hey pawel95,

I played the v1.3 you sent me. I won the game in 1:13:17 (definitely a new record for me), and this replay proves that you can win TSK20 with your initial army (to be fair, I did use a lot of saves)!

TSK20 (cmowla).zip

Did the AI behave as you intended?

Also,
Am I the first to win this mission this quickly and essentially with the hands of the initial army?

[pawel95]

First of all, splitting up Knights in groups with one soldier only is cheating
With that thing, you can nearly win all missions easily and with your starting army, specialy when you have sth like a bridge.

I know that it works in the Remake, to get an advantage from that, but it´s not the idea behind the KaM Fighting system to have single soldiers, but sure you are allowed, to make it like that. It´s just very easy and somehow boring to play like that in my opinion, when the mission is winable in "normal" ways


Well about the AI attack on the left side, I wanted to avoid that thing, like you did (to run away with your barbs). Maybe I should change it rather to "attack storehouse after 5 sec", so when you run away, you get attacked from those sodliers


Maybe Lewin has a better idea, because the point is:

When you only kill 1 group of pikes for example, and I set in the code "attack with 2 pike groups and 2 swordmen groups", they won´t attack because one pike group is missing That´s why I decided to make 1 swordgroup and 1 pikegroup, but the problem then is, when you run away completly without any fight, only the half soldiers will attack you

And I can tell you, with no barbs left (only few), you wouldn´t win that quickly

Haha and that sneak throw soldiers, like you did at 0:30:00 looks very funny, but it should be fixed XD (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1254&start=30#p34222)
One last thing about savings: It was obvious that you had to load lots of time a saved game, because it happens pretty often that a knight doesn´t kill a xbow by one hit


However good time. Let´s see how I can fix this left side one more time.




Here for everyone now 1.4 of TSK20, the final version :

http://www.speedyshare.com/yGb25/TSK20.rar


And here a replay "how it should work" by my idea of that starting attack, and it worked when running away with barbs

How it should work.rar

[cmowla]

I'm glad you had fun watching. I found it entertaining myself. Most importantly, I'm glad I helped you make proper changes, and I sincerely believe that KaM has never been easier (the campaign, at least) because of what you mentioned (among other things), the AI aggressiveness setting not being available for units.

First of all, splitting up Knights in groups with one soldier only is cheating
With that thing, you can nearly win all missions easily and with your starting army, specialy when you have sth like a bridge.

So someone has already beaten mission 20 with their initial army? Who and when? I would love to see the replay(s)
Also, I didn't use this technique that much (just 2 instances quickly following the initial battle), and I'm positive in those 2 instances in which I did use it, it didn't help me very much in the long run.

I feel like you're giving me a challenge. Would you be interested to see if I can win v1.4 as quickly as I did in v1.3 with my initial army only splitting my troops into single leaders for "teasing" maneuvers and not for meat wall combat and without saves?

[cmowla]

Hey pawel95,

I played v1.4, and didn't lose even one barbarian in the initial battle, and I didn't split up my troops into single leaders.

I destroyed the left, right, and bottom-top village and had: 6 knights, 7 pikemen, 3 sword fighters, and 22 barbarians remaining...I did this without any saves (I got semi-lucky with the knights killing the xbowmen on the 2nd swing, but even if I didn't I had plenty of knights to spare considering how many barbarians I had). The following replay was made without reverting back to any saves:

TSK20v1.4.zip

I think the knights which come after the initial attack should be made more aggressive, besides the AI aggressive intensity feature (which as you guys said, will be implemented later).

Maybe I shouldn't be a tester anymore. It looks like I can be ready for just about anything with some investigation, and therefore I don't see the point in me being a tester except for missions which are questioned to being possible to beat. Sorry for wasting everyone's time.

[pawel95]

Heard sth like "random" before? Really no offence, but this is no competition if it´s winable, like I said everything is doable and winable, ai are way easier enemies than human in multiplayer games, in nearly all games that I know

[cmowla]

Heard sth like "random" before?

Of course. If you watch the replay, the strategy I use guarantees losing very few to no barbarians every single time if you play correctly. No luck or chance there.

In addition, I used an old technique of mine to bypass the knights which attach after the initial attack every time, guaranteed. This error should be fixed somehow so that the human player cannot bypass it so easily every time.

ai are way easier enemies than human in multiplayer games, in nearly all games that I know

It's quite interesting then that you couldn't beat "To the Capital" and "Vortamic" in SP even with saves (I will be fair and not really mention Zombie Apocalpse-without autofeed-which is 10x as hard as both of these maps combined to me even after I found a good setup to beat it)...but the AI is not just a little bit easier, but "way easier" to play than humans to you?

I don't think anyone, including myself, can beat every beatable SP mission on their first try without saves (since MP is similar to a no save win in SP) and/or simply starting over (which you can't do in MP), and so therefore the AI cannot possibly be "way easier" than MP. A difficult and well-designed but beatable script will kill any human player on his or her first try.

After all, a SP AI map is in essence playing against the intent of a human player. So playing the AI for the first time can be as difficult as MP.

[pawel95]

ai are way easier enemies than human in multiplayer games, in nearly all games that I know

It's quite interesting then that you couldn't beat "To the Capital" and "Vortamic" in SP even with saves (I will be fair and not really mention Zombie Apocalpse-without autofeed-which is 10x as hard as both of these maps combined to me even after I found a good setup to beat it)...but the AI is not just a little bit easier, but "way easier" to play than humans to you?

That are just overpowerd missions, thats all. Btw where I didnt won zombi apocalypse, propably never played it Seriously, stay on topic please. I can also make a map with 2000 knights vs your bowmen group of 20 bowmen. Maybe you will find a brigde with one tile, where you can send a bowmen and shoot with the others on the knight then, but that´s only because AI is not as intelligent as a human,right?
Yeah exactly it´s "way easier" than against humas Give the same amount of soldiers to a human and play 1vs1, have fun....


Btw that is for 100% not a good definition for "random" -.-

Heard sth like "random" before?

Of course. If you watch the replay, the strategy I use guarantees losing very few to no barbarians every single time if you play correctly. No luck or chance there.

Sometimes a knight can kill 3 axefighters, sometimes 1 pikes, sometimes 2 swordmen, and sometimes he dies by a milita That´s what random is about. Same with results of sp missions in single initial ai attacks.

Thank you for your help, when I will get from other players feedback, that it is also too easy in their mind, I will think about to add an initial attack like in vortamic....

[Lewin]

@cmowla: The campaigns should be winnable (meaning not too difficult) without resorting to tactics like splitting groups into individual units. The campaigns should be no where near as hard as Vortamic and To The Capital. As I've said before, an experienced player like you should find the campaigns easy. That's not a problem since the original campaigns are designed for beginners (they're probably the first thing new players will do after the tutorial). Even TSK20 shouldn't be too hard, because a beginner who has played through the other 19 missions still isn't anywhere near as experienced as you.

How did you bypass the knights at the initial attack?

[cmowla]

@cmowla: The campaigns should be winnable (meaning not too difficult) without resorting to tactics like splitting groups into individual units.

In my replay for v1.4 I didn't do this, as I mentioned (the replay is in the my second to last post before this one) because pawel95 frowned upon it in my v1.3 replay.

How did you bypass the knights at the initial attack?

The knights after the initial attack (the ones that come around 5 minutes). I just built two building fences by the iron mountain opening (one for each group of knights). When they came, they destroyed the fence and went back home.

Lastly (to Lewin), I don't intend for this mission to be too hard. pawel95 was concerned about the left groups not attacking your storehouse if you flea your barbarians, so I just assumed that the knights which attack at the 5 minute mark should attack your storehouse, no matter what trick you pull at them to bypass combat. That's the only reason I mentioned that. I was hoping for some consistency in design.

pawel95,
You are the one that started to go off topic when you mentioned MP. The off-topic part of my post was a response to your off-topic reply. I wasn't just rambling about those three hard SP maps for no reason.

After reading my post, you bring up the scenario that if a human player outnumbers another human player by several degrees of magnitude, the human player will utilize the large army better than the AI...and that proves that MP is harder. No where did I imply this wasn't the case, and you insisting that MP is always "way harder" than SP missions is nonsense. Why are you all of a sudden substituting human players for AI in SP maps? AI are always given an advantage over the human SP because the AI isn't as smart as a human...how much of an advantage the AI has over the human player is what potentially makes SP maps more difficult than MP. In fact, my post was contrasting between SP maps and MP games, not saying that the AI is more skilled in battle tactics than humans

Try rereading my post and see if you understand it now because clearly you misunderstood me at first.

Lastly,

Btw where I didnt won zombi apocalypse, propably never played it

Really?
http://knightsandmerchants.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=29559#p29559
If you lost so badly having three teammates, how can you be assured that you can beat it if you play by yourself, considering that you said when you fought with a team of 3 other players, and I quote you, "but the final is impossible xd ike you can see at the army graph".

I'm not saying that you couldn't beat it (but I doubt you could beat it any time soon unless you watch how I beat it) if you put enough time into it, but I wouldn't be so cocky based on your on words and history with this map (it IS the same AI that I played).

[Lewin]

Thanks for the explanation. It would be nice to make the knights not simply go home after destroying the fenced houses. The attack target could be set to the coordinates of the player's storehouse instead of the closest house maybe?

I don't think it's possible to compare SP and MP skill or difficulty level. SP tactics and skills are extremely different to MP tactics because you are playing against the AI not a human. AIs have fairly static/predictable behaviour, but SP can still be extremely challenging by giving the AI a superior army/situation (requiring the player to discover the best tactics/positioning/timing to win). Humans are completely unpredictable and will react instantly and intelligently to everything you do, meaning MP involves mind games of guessing what you opponent will do. Singleplayer and multiplayer can both be extremely challenging in different ways. Saying one can be more difficult than the other is silly because you are comparing apples with oranges in terms of the skills and tactics required.

Someone who is good at multiplayer might not be good at singleplayer because they don't know the tactics required to outsmart the AI, or survive battles where the enemy has 100x more soldiers than you (not something you encounter in MP). And vice versa someone who is good at singleplayer might not be good at multiplayer because they aren't used to fighting against humans. Neither skill is better or more "noble" than the other, they are just different.

Also: Lets not let this topic get personal. Improving the campaigns is a very important project and I'd hate to see it sidelined by pointless arguments or skill boasting. Please stick to the topic.

[cmowla]

The attack target could be set to the coordinates of the player's storehouse instead of the closest house maybe?

That sounds reasonable to me. I don't know why it wasn't like that in the first place. And you're very welcome.

I don't think it's possible to compare SP and MP skill or difficulty level.

I totally agree with this. pawel95 was the one consistently saying how much harder MP is than SP when I wasn't even debating on that at all. I guess I just failed to say such a clever response as yours to try to make sense to him. I mentioned that SP can be as hard as MP, but I guess he was thinking that I was saying that SP can be as hard as MP in the same exact manner, which I never said and I didn't imply on any level. But enough said. Thanks again, Lewin, and I too hope that together as a community, we can make this game better and better!

[pawel95]

Comeon. Stop posting any random thing here. Maybe I played that map, but I don´t remember it. Btw You started to go offtopic. It´s a topic about "tsk is not winable"^^ and you started to ask "Did I beat the top time with my 1:xx time? Or was someone fast than me?" So please! Don´t start offtopic discussions about your skills, whatever.

I know this is a little off topic, but I wasn't sure if anyone posted a winning replay of this. I thought those who think it's impossible to beat would be interested to see how.

EDIT:
With several more saves, I finished the mission in 27m4s losing only 2 troops (the minimum amount of troops one can lose with saves with this version is 2).