Knights and Merchants.net Forum

PostPosted: **05 Jan 2012, 15:02**

One thing I often find annoying is that when your serfs are delivering planks and stones to a construction site, as soon as 1 plank is there your entire idle builder crew starts to work on it. Often they'll block the "entrance" to the construction site, causing serfs problems with delivering the other needed planks and stones. (happens especially with a gold mine but with other buildings too).

Also, your builders will often start running between two or more construction sites because one plank doesn't take long finishing up, and if the serfs don't deliver the second plank in time, the builders will go to another construction site that perhaps also has only 1 plank lying there. And then they're going back to the first. And back to the second. And so on.

It slows your building process down. It would be nice if there would be an option to make your builders wait until every ware needed for the building has been delivered so that they can finish it in one time without often going back and forth between several construction sites.

Of course, the regular method should also stay in the game. It would have to be a player's choice, maybe a bit like the new "Fell & plant" or "Fell only" options for the Woodcutter's. It could be like "Build as soon as possible" or "Build when all wares present" or something.

I agree.

Anyway, what I'd like, is if we could give the construction of one building priority over another.

PostPosted: **05 Jan 2012, 15:30**

Krisdw's comment made me remember something I noticed during some games. In KaM TSK (and I guess TPR too), serfs are able to supply buildings from 3 tiles:

Code:: XXXX XXXX XOXX --HHH------

X = house
O = entrance
H = possible positions for serfs to deliver timber or stone
- = road

In the Remake, it's like this:

Code:: XXXX XXXX XOXX ---H-------

So only directly in front of the entrance, NOT the diagonally adjacent tiles.. Why is this?

PostPosted: **05 Jan 2012, 15:36**

In the original KaM in multiplayer there was a choice for starting with buildings and units or just buildings. So even if the map had predefined starting units, you could not take those. It would be awsome to have this option in remake. There are quite a few maps that could be sometimes better without those starting military units.

Yeah this was removed because I thought we could do better. The person making the mission could define his own modes, which then alter things like starting resources, troops, buildings, etc. instead of just having 3 fixed modes: none, troops, troops and buildings. But I never really thought about it in detail, it was just an idea.

One thing I often find annoying is that when your serfs are delivering planks and stones to a construction site, as soon as 1 plank is there your entire idle builder crew starts to work on it. Often they'll block the "entrance" to the construction site, causing serfs problems with delivering the other needed planks and stones. (happens especially with a gold mine but with other buildings too).

Also, your builders will often start running between two or more construction sites because one plank doesn't take long finishing up, and if the serfs don't deliver the second plank in time, the builders will go to another construction site that perhaps also has only 1 plank lying there. And then they're going back to the first. And back to the second. And so on.

It slows your building process down. It would be nice if there would be an option to make your builders wait until every ware needed for the building has been delivered so that they can finish it in one time without often going back and forth between several construction sites.

Of course, the regular method should also stay in the game. It would have to be a player's choice, maybe a bit like the new "Fell & plant" or "Fell only" options for the Woodcutter's. It could be like "Build as soon as possible" or "Build when all wares present" or something.

I think it's adding too much micro management if you can tell laborers when to start building things. KaM is an indirect control game. You order stuff and then it happens out of your control. I think it should stay that way.
We're currently rewriting the code for the construction queues so we can add more control and rules. We can make laborers choose closer tasks rather than always making roads before building houses. (so if you have laborers on both sides of your village, they will keep building stuff there rather than switching between) Also, we can add things such as limiting the number of laborers to each building site, depending on the size of the building and the number of resources that are available.
See, I'd rather do things like this fix the problems without giving too much micro management to the player.

So only directly in front of the entrance, NOT the diagonally adjacent tiles.. Why is this?

Basically because to do it like that the code would have been very ugly (entire special WalkTo case just for this, with special pathfinding rules etc.) There is no other case where you want a unit to walk to an adjacent tile (walking to a unit like a laborer with stone or a soldier with food is different, that's another special case of walking to a unit)
I think we might add it eventually, it's just very annoying/harder to maintain to have a special case and lots of extra code/conditions just for this one situation.

PostPosted: **05 Jan 2012, 16:02**

No, I didn't call you a noob, not a pro either.
On occasion, I have the same problem.
Make sure you have the first building site accessible a good time before the next one and make sure to have enough building materials.
Leave the final piece of road or the building site to make sure your laborers will not be able to start on the second one before the first one is finished.

PostPosted: **05 Jan 2012, 19:56**

We can make laborers choose closer tasks rather than always making roads before building houses.

Always building roads before houses is a very good and simple rule. If distance would be considered, it should be only dependant on distance and totall ignore whether it's a road or a grape field or a building. Mixing the 2 principles together would get extremely complicated for the player to control. Currently you can easily build roads AND buildings at the same time: just make sure you have more laborers than you are placing new road tiles.

Limiting the number of laborers to each building site, depending on the size of the building and the number of resources that are available.

That sounds extremely good.

By the way I never had this problem of serves not being abled to bring resources to construction site cause it's blocked by laborers. Also workers running back-and-forth between construction sites seems to be the cause of bad planning and lack of "maximum numbers of laborers per construction site" limiter.

PostPosted: **06 Jan 2012, 01:03**

Always building roads before houses is a very good and simple rule. If distance would be considered, it should be only dependant on distance and totall ignore whether it's a road or a grape field or a building. Mixing the 2 principles together would get extremely complicated for the player to control. Currently you can easily build roads AND buildings at the same time: just make sure you have more laborers than you are placing new road tiles.

The plan was to make laborers take a building instead of a road when the building is >20 tiles closer. (the number 20 can be tweaked) In my opinion that will always save them walking time in the long run, and it allows you to build on two sides of your village at once without laborers running between them so much.
You raise a good point, it will give the player less precise control of what the laborers do in some conditions. I don't really think it's a problem if we use the 20 tiles rule. Building a house doesn't take too long and it's better than walking 40+ tiles to the road, then back to the house once the road is done.
Of course if it doesn't work well we'll change it.

PostPosted: **06 Jan 2012, 12:44**

If the number of laborers per construction site would be something like: min(number of laborers that could possibly fit around building / 1.5; number of unused resources at construction site * 3)
it would already allow you to build on both sides of the town. The max laborers number could be even lower. Something like 5-7 laborers build house almost instantly, compared to the time it takes to walk there. 20 tiles sounds also good, if limiting number of laborers doesn't work out.

PostPosted: **07 Jan 2012, 16:07**

I'm a fan of adding new buildings and the Marketplace is nicely implemented but I have some balance issues.

Just now I played a game, and while I didn't have an army at the ready after PeaceTime (50 minutes I think), I still thought I was doing fairly well and it wouldn't take me much longer to create an army.

Suddenly my ally, who doesn't have anything but that's not the point, gets overrun by a group of 9 knights. My barracks is almost ready, and I already have about 10 crossbows and, 30 armors, 10 pikes in my storehouse, so I start pumping out recruits, to get them all out there in time.
But alas, it is too late, the enemy knights defeat my ally easily and find me fairly close to him, with my barracks just completed and the wares just being distributed to it.

I manage to make about 6 crossbows and 2 pikemen but I get overwhelmed by the knights, and after those followed a group of 12 pikemen: it was a lost cause.

I looked at the replay to find out how he managed to do it so quickly.

Basically his camp looked like this:

2 wood cutters
4 stonemasons
12 coal mines
1 gold mine
1 gold melter
2 iron mine
2 iron melters
2 weapons workshop
2 arms workshop
1 barracks

He didn't build a single food providing structure. He used his spare coal and stone to trade for food and horses.
While I am not one to complain or whine about strategies used and to call it lame, I still have some thoughts at this gamestyle.
The core of KAM to me is to produce your own food and materials. Getting a finished product is something that goes through several steps and costs you time and effort.

If you want to train a cavalry unit, you better construct a stables and supply it with grain.
If you want to prevent your citizens from starving to death, you better produce some food for them.
This is the core principle of KAM as a game, and without this logical process, a large part of authenticity is removed from the game as a whole.

Offering the players with an opportunity to -completely- avoid those steps seems like an unwise idea if your goal is to keep the gameplay of KAM Remake as close as possible to the gameplay we all love so much in original KAM.

I'm not opposed to the idea of the Marketplace, as I said: it is a nice addition. I would however love to see its use limited in a way: perhaps make certain materials more expensive, or just restrict certain materials altogether. Something to think about. If you would like the replay file, please send me a PM and I will send it right over. (with some description as to where the replay file is located because I do not know). Thanks for listening

and this is not a rant! Just some concerns I have and hope you can understand.

PostPosted: **07 Jan 2012, 16:48**

Well if you AND your ally together can't beat 9 knights after 50 minutes...

But yes, I agree with you. I've never really liked the concept of trading goods for other goods that 'come from nowhere'. So far I've only used the market to trade for stone when all stone mountains were gone or for gold when all gold mountains were empty or taken. I'd rather see the market used for trade between players.
Perhaps it would be an idea to restrict people from trading end products (like bread, wine, weapons, horses, sausages, etc.) or even restrict them from trading anything except raw materials/primary resources (so they can only trade coal, gold ore, iron ore, trees, stone, wheat). This way the player STILL needs to make buildings to process those resources. Only problem is: this would interfere with the building tree (for example: if you want to trade your coal for wheat, you will still need a farm to construct a mill to process the wheat). Personally I wouldn't mind though, because it is unrealistic anyway to have a mill + bakery without a farm. Imo the market should only be used to prevent you from running out of a certain resource.

PostPosted: **07 Jan 2012, 18:29**

(...)
I'm not opposed to the idea of the Marketplace, as I said: it is a nice addition. I would however love to see its use limited in a way: perhaps make certain materials more expensive, or just restrict certain materials altogether. Something to think about. If you would like the replay file, please send me a PM and I will send it right over. (with some description as to where the replay file is located because I do not know). Thanks for listening and this is not a rant! Just some concerns I have and hope you can understand.

Hmm... I must agree. Or maybe making the food more expensive as you keep demanding it. Would also make it more realistic for supply and demand matters.

EDIT: I also think the building time and cost of schools and inn's should be decreased. The first few buildings just take up so much time.

PostPosted: **07 Jan 2012, 20:38**

Offering the players with an opportunity to -completely- avoid those steps seems like an unwise idea if your goal is to keep the gameplay of KAM Remake as close as possible to the gameplay we all love so much in original KAM.

I already think the market is enough expensive as it is. I see it differently - for me, it adds to the variety of the KAM style, and i don't think who uses that style gains anything from it really.
Example: the other day, i was late in my production when peace time came to an end. I had just rushed my armor workshop (leather armor), however i had just finished my farms (it had just began giving corn), swine farms (had no skins ready) and tannery. So what i did, i traded stone for skins. I had over 100 stone and 4 quarries (i think), and soon i had a few leather units and my stone was going low. It costs 11 stone, for one skin. So if the guy was trading his goods for food, i say let him. He traded coal, ok. In well balanced maps, the coal quantity needed to produce iron and gold until depleted is about the same as available for extraction. So if he uses all his coal now, what about later??
And in 50 mins gameplay you could already have all weapon production and begin building food. You could have made enough units to repel him, and hold your base with watchtowers and other units, and then, soon you would gain advantage against his poor coal supply.

Though the idea of increasing price each time you purchase could be interesting.

PostPosted: **07 Jan 2012, 22:51**

If 2 players go for same unit, 1 uses market, 1 uses natural means, the one with natural means should win. If they both go directly for that unit. If that is not the case, market trade is not expensive enough in my opinion. Which one is more KaM:

1) 1 lumerjack ,1 sawmill, 6 coal mines, 1 market, 5 sawmills, 6 weaponsmiths, 1 barrax => 140 militia in 60 minutes
2) 3 lumberjacks, 1 sawmill, 9 lumberjacks, 5 sawmills, 6 weaponsmiths => less militia than the coal-trader guy

Number 2 makes only axe-related buildings, makes more of them and ends up worse. Not even considering how much building space one needs for 12 lumberjacks and how much for 6 coal mines.

PostPosted: **08 Jan 2012, 08:35**

I don't think that's a problem. If you throw all of your resources into the market then you might get a few more militia in the short term, but then you've used up the coal and you can't use it to make gold, and you'll have to keep building new coal mines.

It takes a little while to setup a weapons producing economy, but once you have, it will always beat trading. Also, I think militia are a bad comparison. By the time that guy makes 140 militia, you could have 20 crossbowmen and 20 pikemen (or more) which would easily defeat the militia. (because they can't all be attacking you at once) If that guy tried to make crossbowmen/pikemen by trading coal, it would never be faster than by building the iron mines.

I agree that with renewable resources, the market should never be a faster option. So I shouldn't be able to make more wood by trading corn than by having the woodcutters, for example. But if you feed coal, ore, stone, etc. into your market you'll find you won't have these resources later when you really need them.

If someone wants to do this then maybe occasionally it will work for him, that's just KaM's version of the zerg rush from Starcraft

I think it just makes the games more interesting because there are some varied tactics you can use. And like the zerg rush, if it doesn't work out, you're completely screwed because your entire economy is focused on making militia and not food/other weapons.
But I seriously doubt this is a more effective tactic than others, and I think it's easy enough to counter.

Of course I'm assuming you're using peacetime in everything I wrote above. Without peacetime then yes the market is powerful because you can trade all your starting resources for bowmen by 20 minutes. (but then of course you'll starve after that...)

PostPosted: **08 Jan 2012, 13:07**

Well if you AND your ally together can't beat 9 knights after 50 minutes...

Well, to be fair, my ally had an especially bad game. He really had nothing, no towers, no weapon makers, no barracks, nothing. So he was just crushed like a defenseless sheep, making it really lmore of a 1v1.

I would have been more prepared if I had about 5 more minutes, but well, "if if if". I lost, simple as that. I don't think I should make too much excuses for that.
But, you have to understand, NOONE can get 9 knights + 12 pikemen after just 50 minutes of peacetime, without using the market. Just try it.
12 pikemen, and maybe a few crossbows, sure. But knights, _the_ most difficult to make military unit, the most powerful one at that, getting those out should always be an accomplishment.
So yeah, that IS an unfair advantage, and that is a big deviation from the original KAM gamestyle (IMO).

And a militia doesn't really compare to a knight

I should really post up the replay, so you can see for yourself. But I don't know how to

(don't know where the file is saved)

PostPosted: **08 Jan 2012, 13:13**

Ooops, did it.
12knights, 15pikemen and 6sword fighters in 50min.

Knights and Merchants.net Forum

Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

Re: Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

Re: Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

Re: Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

Re: Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

Re: Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

Re: Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

Re: Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

Re: Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

Re: Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

Re: Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

Re: Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

Re: Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

Re: Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

Re: Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

Re: Official KaM Remake Ideas topic