Knights and Merchants.net Forum

And one more complaint here as well: serfs still do not prioritize feeding soldiers, even when I close my inn. It is extremely frustrating to see sword fighters and knights dying because my serfs are too lousy.

Bring your soldiers to your storehouse and then feed them, you'll be fine.

Haha yeah you are right completly right, that newer games arent Settlers
However he is right,too that the player can set settings like in the picture also in SIII and SIV.

Not sure if anything has changed since the new RC, but so far the following still applies: I think bringing gold to the school should be the only thing more important than feeding soldiers.

Feeding troops? I normally don't have spare food to feed troops in multiplayer. I ordered my serfs once to feed them stones but they refuse to eat it for some reason.... don't tell me bread was much better in real life those days... But seriously, In the original I stopped feeding them since I saw my serfs bring precious sausages instead of cheap wine to hungry militia...didn't it made you almost cry like me?

Anyway what I read here is that gold is taken to the school with high priority which is good but what about gold ore to the metalurgist? Schools are most likely close to metalurgists but goldmines are often outside of your base. I noticed that goldore is a very low priority for serfs which can be very annoying on certain maps. No goldore = no gold = no extra serfs. I'm very curious now about what in theory, lets say, the top 10 priority tasks are for serfs.

Respect feeding troops... I have 1 more concern, probably another annoying mechanic that should be reworked.

Serfs feed all troops in squad having 80% or less condition (I tested this in Editor).
From my POV, feeding is not bad, but feeding almost full condition troops is something that should be reworked.

Beyond serfs city priorities, lets say "troops feeding" need certain priorities as well.

Feeding troops should have SAME level of priority as "refilling tower's stones"
1º: Feeding first those with lowest condition bar.
2º: Picking from lowest food condition available (wine, bread, fish and last sausage).

To the "gimme food" limit, I suggested long ago 33% -> Units with +15 minutes condition won't be fed... yet.

This is my complete suggestion to improve the feeding mechanics of KaM Remake.

Delivery priorities work like this: There are two priority levels, normal and high.
High priorities:
- Gold to school
- Food to inn
- Food to soldiers
- Building materials to labourers/construction sites

Normal priority: Everything else.

High priority deliveries are always taken in favour of a normal priority deliver. Deciding which delivery to take with a priority is quite a complicated algorithm (e.g. prefer house->house over house->store), but there's no rules like "gold matters more than iron". Serfs will prefer deliveries closer to where they are standing (obviously that's more efficient) which means if you don't have enough serfs your mines can sometimes get left out a bit.

@Jeronimo: As we've said before we'd like a way to only feed hungry soldiers while still allowing you to feed all of them if you want to (if you're preparing to send your troops out for a siege on the AI or something), but this isn't a high priority for now.

If not high, then normal priority developer script.

Neither do I; but I still prefer to spend 1 gold on a new serf than 1 gold, 1 horse, 1 sword, 1 shield and 1 iron armour on a new knight. But instead I see serfs bringing food to the inn. Please consider this (speaking to Krom and Lewin).

@TDL: You mean that feeding soldiers should be more important than bringing food to the Inn, right?

Yes, that's right.

Implemented.
Now deliveries are as follows:

diHigh1 //Gold to School
diHigh2 //Food to soldiers
diHigh3 //Food to Inn
diHigh4 //Materials to workers
diNorm //Everything

Awesome! Thanks.
Saves me a lot of I-close-my-inn-so-my-soldiers-might-get-food-but-I-should-not-forget-to-open-it-again-otherwise-my-whole-town-dies-and-if-I-open-it-too-soon-my-soldiers-still-won't-get-food micro.
Also, players still can choose whether they feed their soldiers or not, so they aren't forced to 'make use' of this change.

Edit: negative consequence may be when players accidentily click the 'feed troops' button. Didn't think of that before. Do you think it's a major problem?

This will look the same when inn has still higher priority. Although, I'd like to have a solution for accidental feeding, but can't think of a good one now (except confirmation window? or moving the button in a less-used place? because you usually accidentally click it when bringing your troops out of the barracks and mashing the 'add column' button )

Yes exactly. I was thinking about a confirmation window as well but this might be annoying.