Knights and Merchants.net Forum

i really dislike this argument and feel we should look at it different(maybe it doesnt fit the aestethic or smthn)because its not realistic...no shit...its a videogame i can point out loads of things that arent very realistic even in knigts and merchants and while i see why people often use realism as argument for this game because of the fun way goods are processed i feel people often just throw the realism one out there to disagree with something that they dont like.

way more important is:would it be balanced/fun/fit the game aestethic


also u were replying to something about catapults/balista with this,so ur realism argument is completely unvalid as obviusly the creators of knights and merchants felt it was realistic enough to be put in the game.

Yes they did put it in the game, but in my opinion it was executed poorly, they where pretty overpowered and the production of them is just way too expensive. i think implementing ballista and catapults in the game would make it more unbalanced. i mean it could kill every unit within one hit.

an idea from me would be something that prevents people who left a mp game to join/start another till the one the were in is done/they are defeated.

this may be brutal and possibly could be abused,but yesterday some guy 40mins in decided his town wasnt to his liking and left.because of this someone else on the team left (he didnt wana 3v4) so we ended 2v4 and also left,when i got back to the main mp screen i saw the person who had left had alrdy joined another 4v4 game.if he had left and i knew he could not have joined another till the game was over i would have finished it even 1v4 just out of grudge :p

I guess thats just not an option. You'll also cause problems for people who had a good reason to leave or people who want to rehost.

yes i realize its not rly a perfect idea,and can lead to many cases where people cant rehost when they have good reason...at times just get rly angry about the leavers.specialy since this game often lasts long and if someone leaves halfway thought he just wasted up to 7 peoples time

you can always ask people on the forum chat or on teamspeak to play a game with you if you want a good game.

Zone Of Control - what is it and why do we need it...

Let's start with a little explanation, you might heard the name before in other games, if you want a example of what I'm thinking about, the Civilization (3 or 4 ?, don't remember ) might be the best. Long story short it's a invisible border surrounding your buildings in certain radius (probably the current building "vision" would work best), it will only affect enemy and/or neutral structures. When two "opposite" ZOC collide they are resized to have roughly the same range but not less than e.g. 3-4 (so you can't "push" your ZOC by building closer and closer, with exception of building already in production).

The main reason behind this idea is to limit any kind of "harassment" by using builders. I was actually thinking about it for a some time but the game I played yesterday finally made me do it.. (see the attachment, especially the minimap). So, how does that work - the idea is simple: you can't build anything in the ZOC of your enemy, so no more using your builders as meat shield for towers (yup, I'm also doing it ), no more gaining advantage by abusing the map and "building" something in your opponents base to gain vision, no stupid tower rushes (The Same Rocks/any small map) and finally a big no to the "strategy" you can see in the attachment. You will still be allowed to build in "no man's land" and your allies ZOC so it should not affect the "normal" gameplay and it should be ok with the game "spirit". Well, tower rushed will still be a viable option on smaller maps but it's usage should be limited now.

The second reason is the implementation of fog of war. The idea is roaming around the forum but there are options that is doesn't fit KaM, personally I think it's a bit tricky, since knowing the enemy troop movements is important but there are no specific units designed for scouting purposes (KaM it's all about managing "banners" not individual units), so it will be generally a pain in the ass. That being said, if you have vision of your opponents town (or he has yours) then it's a big advantage. So, why not limit the fog area of effect to ZOC of specific player, i.e. once you "depart" from the enemy town the area will get shrouded, no necessarily immediately, perhaps after some time like minute or two. That way you still have the general vision of the explored area but not your opponent's base.

So, what do you think about it ?


PS:
For the record, the reason why our opponent decided to "spam" fields was because his ally left the game but before that he build mines in his coal fields. Personally I don't care, it's still BM (and there is still leather..).

I think nice farms.

Fertile grounds.

I'm against FOG and I'm not sure about your other idea since only a small amount of people actually do stuff like that. Trolls will find another way to troll.

i would love a zone of control as ive encountered my first active troller yesterday(edmatt/crazyhorse who r one and the same),who had started the game by placing several dozens of farmlands in a rly big square to keep his starting workers busy.then he proceeded to camp my town and place road tiles at the entrances of buildings or in the middle of a road i was building(i set 2tiles and he quickly before i can place the 3th puts his there)ofcourse i couldnt see whos tiles these were so at first thought i was plagued by some weird delay bug anf was wondering why my workers were just standing there when instead of digging up my roads.i

when his workers several minutes later were finaly done with his farmfields he quickly deleted the road squares to try and hide his trolling,but he fucked up and forgot to delete on that was covered almost entirely by a tree,so i saw his worker come to my base and dig it up.maybe they should only be enforced up to peacetime of half of peacetime or smthn.

pretty sad that people who are even active in the community and on the ts feel oke with adding to the ruination of this community by trolling games.

lukily the ts wasnt all horrible as dicsoupcan was there and turned out to be very friendly person

gues theres just some bad apples...

maybe a nice welcome message would be nice,something like:come say hi on the communty ts so the regulars can join ur game under a diff name and fuck with u...

Yeah unfortunately such people exist.

Matt failed at trolling. Don't touch it baby if you don't know how to deal with it. Trolling is no for noobs!

I'm for Zone of Control proposal, it will permanently prevent such stupid situations.

Zone of control is very usefull for small maps like 1v1 etc.. and fog of war imo may be, but with big LOS for buildings and units.. KAM doesen't fit with fog of war and map in left top corner is verry cluttering for this change

I think FOW could realy be great. But it's hard to imagine it with kam.
So before saying 'it doesn't fit kam' I think we should test it.
With enough LOS for buildings and some units it could add some new ways to balance. (Example: Very high LOS for scouts, very low for xbow, higher for axefighters than lances etc.)
In the end if it changes the game too much it could always be a mutator.

It's time for some more random ideas

In my opinion, the worst thing about tower spam it's not the damage they deal but the fact that it's hard to get to the other side, making advancing units a perfect target practice for enemy. While you can poke at the towers limiting their number it doesn't really help if there is a lot of them. There are two proposals (afaik) addressing that matter (a hard limit for number of towers and damage reduction), both have pretty strong cons and I agree with them. There is however another way - how about we increase required "spacing" between towers from 1 (which is basically default for all the buildings in the game) to 2. This might affect only neighboring towers, if there is a danger that it might "break" some maps (so it's min. 2 distance if it's towers next to another tower but only 1 if it's tower and other building). I'm not sure if it will solve the problem but it might limit it while not making any big and scary balance issues in the process.

Have you ever encountered situation when you can't build (squeeze) another building because the exit is facing a rock/whatever ? Well, how about ability to flip building direction (right/left) ? This might also allow some cost reduction of building new roads and shouldn't be that hard to implement, oh.. and the Shift key finally might have some use