Knights and Merchants.net Forum

PostPosted: **06 Sep 2012, 23:03**

Well there's clearly a lot of people who think towers are good right now given the responses here.

Currently towers kill about 3/5. In the last release they killed 1-2/5. I don't see the purpose in a tower that kills just 1 or 2 enemies. Why have towers at all in that case? There'll be a mutator to disable towers, maybe you guys should play with that instead.

I guess you want it to be gg as soon as one player has lost all his troops and the other player still has a few left. Well in that case you might as well play without towers. Towers are to slow the enemy down, and stop them from matching straight into your village unless they have enough troops to get past the towers. I like it that way, and others do as well. It gives you a chance to recover after a battle. It means you can have more than one battle before the game is over.

This isn't a balance issue, it's just that you want to play the game in a different way to other people, where towers play an almost meaningless role and there's just one big battle after pt which decides the winner.

As for "you should take our word for it", I dislike that kind of arrogance that your opinions are the most important just because you're highly skilled. You like to play a different style of game, that's all. Other people don't. It annoys me that you revert to "we are right end of story" rather than presenting counter arguments and providing evidence (IMO that screenshot doesn't show much) Have you considered that some people might even enjoy sieges and storming towers with 100s of militia? If those people enjoy playing like that it doesn't make them any less important than you. I've personally had some great fun doing that in the past, before r3392.
There's no right our wrong way to play KaM, your way is just one.

Defensive tactics will always give you an advantage whether there are towers or not. Camping is effective in most games, the defender gets an adverse over the attacker.

PostPosted: **06 Sep 2012, 23:14**

DEFENSIVE TACTICS > OFFENSIVE TACTICS (just becouse of towers, very very simple in my point of view, I have enought experience from game to say that)

You may have played more than me, it doesn't mean you're teling the truth :p It's not really an argument.
I believe that the "tower war" (secuing key areas of a map with towers) is a really interesting part of the gameplay, some maps are better than the others for that though, but it adds more strategy, and if towers missed more, it would be useless to do a few towers, so players tend to do more.

Do you want me to make a list of players that think its OP? I have at least 20 here.

20 players !!!??? That's almost the majority of the KaM Remake community ! Or not .. :p

The majority's opinion is that it is OP, especially To and Mully.

Judging by the server page at kamremake.com, I can see a peak of 88 players on the regular version (yes it's not the RC I know). even if we supposed that all these players were always the same online (which is totally not true), your 20 names aren't the majority. And it's without even considering the solo players, the huge amount of players that didn't play at the hour of this peak ... well, you can't say that the majority dislikes it, because the majority of the players didn't even touch the RC, so they can't have an opinion on this, your 20 players might be the majority on the RC (but not even sure), but don't think that your friends are the whole community (or the majority) just because they are "pro" players. You can't use this argument about the majority, because you know nothing about the opinion of the majority of the kam remake players.
Let's just take the number of downloads of the kam_remake_full_r3392.exe file.12355. Do you pretend to know more than a half of these players and are able to say that what the majority thinks ? I'm sure not. And please don't use the argument "but they don't play regularly, they don't play good etc...", because the tower's accuracy debate isn't only for you and the 20 persons you know they think the towers are OP, but for every kam remake player.

PostPosted: **06 Sep 2012, 23:24**

IMO better players's oppinion is more important.
Don't ask me why, but it just makes sense.

PostPosted: **06 Sep 2012, 23:26**

DEFENSIVE TACTICS > OFFENSIVE TACTICS (just becouse of towers, very very simple in my point of view, I have enought experience from game to say that)
You may have played more than me, it doesn't mean you're teling the truth :p It's not really an argument.
I believe that the "tower war" (secuing key areas of a map with towers) is a really interesting part of the gameplay, some maps are better than the others for that though, but it adds more strategy, and if towers missed more, it would be useless to do a few towers, so players tend to do more.

Do you want me to make a list of players that think its OP? I have at least 20 here.
20 players !!!??? That's almost the majority of the KaM Remake community ! Or not .. :p

The majority's opinion is that it is OP, especially To and Mully.
Judging by the server page at kamremake.com, I can see a peak of 88 players on the regular version (yes it's not the RC I know). even if we supposed that all these players were always the same online (which is totally not true), your 20 names aren't the majority. And it's without even considering the solo players, the huge amount of players that didn't play at the hour of this peak ... well, you can't say that the majority dislikes it, because the majority of the players didn't even touch the RC, so they can't have an opinion on this, your 20 players might be the majority on the RC (but not even sure), but don't think that your friends are the whole community (or the majority) just because they are "pro" players. You can't use this argument about the majority, because you know nothing about the opinion of the majority of the kam remake players.
Let's just take the number of downloads of the kam_remake_full_r3392.exe file.12355. Do you pretend to know more than a half of these players and are able to say that what the majority thinks ? I'm sure not. And please don't use the argument "but they don't play regularly, they don't play good etc...", because the tower's accuracy debate isn't only for you and the 20 persons you know they think the towers are OP, but for every kam remake player.

Dont be silly, I am talking about the new Beta release, dont post replies just to flame on me without reading what the topic is about..
do what you want, but I will still post my list tomorrow, Its up to Lewin and Krom after all anyway.

I call a vote!

PostPosted: **06 Sep 2012, 23:27**

- There are often more ways to get into one's village. In other words, the spammer has to build towers everywhere.
- Even if an entrance is fully blocked with towers, you still don't need to empty them all.
- Towers that are placed close to each other will often throw stones at the same target. I've seen 4 towers all throwing a stone at 1 militia.
- Towers slow down the builder's economy.
- In team games, massing towers is a bad strategy because the spammer will have less troops to defend his allies (his enemies are likely to target them, so yes, he is safe, but indirectly he makes his allies more vulnerable).
- You have map control because your army is bigger than the army of te tower spammer. So you can build towards additional resources while your enemy is locked in his village.
- If the spammer as a lot of towers, not all of them will be occupied by a recruit (because they have to eat, too).

IMO better players's oppinion is more important.

No it's not, everyone is equal here. No need to say more.

PostPosted: **06 Sep 2012, 23:38**

Lewin, what you are saying in your post is:
"I like this, lets do this!"
"You aint polite, things your saying arent good, even though you have experience!"
"Therefor your point is not valid"

Right?

The big problem is that we need to come to reasons..
A vote perhaps of those who played beta? something like that could work?

PostPosted: **06 Sep 2012, 23:41**

Dont be silly, I am talking about the new Beta release, dont post replies just to flame on me without reading what the topic is about..

Oh I read the topic, don't worry, it wasn't at all a post to flame you, it was a just something I wanted to say because you can't know what the majority of the players think. The beta testers selection isn't representative (I explained it on the post you quoted, so I won't re-explain) at all of a "majority". These players have been asked to give their advice though, that's why I don't say anything about your opinion, because I respect the way you see the things about the tower accuracy, but it's obviously a dividing topic, and saying randomly that the majority is on your side won't be helping the debate, it has nothing personal, I just explained that.

IMO better players's oppinion is more important.
Don't ask me why, but it just makes sense.

They might have a better idea on some topics from their experience, but it doesn't mean they are always right, and compare 20 "good players" to the number of downloads of the remake, I don't think that it's really representative.
Also, would you like in real life that a person who earn more money than you had 500 times the voting power you have, just because "he's so rich" ? I don't think so. It's not because you assume you're a good player that you can ignore the other players.
A game is made to have fun, so people who play for fun but don't have a lot of time to play don't have their word on the debate ?

Anyway, let's talk about the towers again, I really believe they're an important part of the gameplay, they kill an average of 3 out of 5 people in one shot, yes that's strong, but they can't move, so I don't think making weak buildings that can't defend you efficiently would be better, the game will be a lot more like "the one who wins the first fight wins", because if towers don't kill enough units, they will let a lot of people in, and it'll be so frustrating to have players inside your city just because the few towers you built didn't do any damage (I'm not talking about tower spam here)

PostPosted: **07 Sep 2012, 03:06**

It's an interesting discussion for sure. I like to respond on some things written here.

The spammer has a small army and some towers, that sounds balanced to me. If the spammer made crossbowmen instead of towers that would be a similar result, they still kill enemies from a distance. But nobody complains about crossbowmen campers.

To my knowledge there are no crossbowmen campers around so nobody can complain about it. The reason why is because of their main difference: hitpoints. The crossbowman has only 1 while a towers has 250. BTW speaking about 'some towers'. Yes I believe some towers are balanced. Are the 33 towers in the screen I posted some towers to you?

Well there's clearly a lot of people who think towers are good right now given the responses here.

Based on the responses here I count 7 people in this topic who don't like towers as they are now and 6 people who like it.

Currently towers kill about 3/5. In the last release they killed 1-2/5. I don't see the purpose in a tower that kills just 1 or 2 enemies. Why have towers at all in that case? There'll be a mutator to disable towers, maybe you guys should play with that instead.

Maybe you are right but for me it's not about tower accuracy, it's about tower spamming. I honestly have no problem at all with a tower that kills 5/5 as long as I don't have to break through an insane amount of towers to reach the enemy troops. If your goal is to get back to the original KaM please show me a screen of a mission in the campaign where the AI has builded this amount of towers.

I guess you want it to be gg as soon as one player has lost all his troops and the other player still has a few left. Well in that case you might as well play without towers. Towers are to slow the enemy down, and stop them from matching straight into your village unless they have enough troops to get past the towers. I like it that way, and others do as well. It gives you a chance to recover after a battle. It means you can have more than one battle before the game is over.

99% agreed here. It's just, nobody wants to play without towers because they serve a purpose. One of them is to prevent the enemy from scouting you. In multiplayer this is very important. And yes it makes it more fun if the game isn't decided in one big battle early after peacetime. The point is that there is no battle between troops before you find a way through the towers because most of your troops are killed in the process. As a reward your enemy can easely counterattack because you have no troops left. It's as simple as that.

This isn't a balance issue, it's just that you want to play the game in a different way to other people, where towers play an almost meaningless role and there's just one big battle after pt which decides the winner.

I think I speak for most of us if I say we rather want to win a game by clever use of our troops instead of facing a wall of towers we can't take down.

You may have played more than me, it doesn't mean you're teling the truth :p It's not really an argument.
I believe that the "tower war" (secuing key areas of a map with towers) is a really interesting part of the gameplay, some maps are better than the others for that though, but it adds more strategy, and if towers missed more, it would be useless to do a few towers, so players tend to do more.

It's likely a personal preference but I don't like tower wars myself. For the attacker it requires some strategy yes but I can't understand how it could add more strategy for the camper. And as I said before, with the improved food system armies are smaller and with towers being better they will be spammed alot more and that's exactly what makes them overpowered.

IMO better players's oppinion is more important.
Don't ask me why, but it just makes sense.

Yes somehow it makes sense but saying things like this won't make you more popular here I guess. I'm not saying we are better players but we take the time and effort to test this beta so our opinion should be taken seriously of course.

The big problem is that we need to come to reasons..
A vote perhaps of those who played beta? something like that could work?

I think it's a good idea to let the people who play the beta vote for it.

They might have a better idea on some topics from their experience, but it doesn't mean they are always right, and compare 20 "good players" to the number of downloads of the remake, I don't think that it's really representative.

I think it's really representative. Atleast I thought we as beta testers are here to help solve problems like this. Even if there are only 20 of us.

the game will be a lot more like "the one who wins the first fight wins", because if towers don't kill enough units, they will let a lot of people in, and it'll be so frustrating to have players inside your city just because the few towers you built didn't do any damage (I'm not talking about tower spam here)

I think it's really sad that you give towers such an important role to play in your gameplay, so without towers you expect yourself to lose the game? If so it's better to play against equally skilled players instead, I'd say. But maybe I didn't understand your point completely. If you mean you don't want to spam towers but the towers you have do decent damage I totally agree here. We only need a way to prevent people building all those towers.

To

PostPosted: **07 Sep 2012, 04:51**

Yes I believe some towers are balanced. Are the 33 towers in the screen I posted some towers to you?

You'll never have to fight your way through 33 towers, you can easily get to the village by coming within range of about 5 in that screenshot. If you sneak some troops in the right side you'll only go past 3 towers. And in a map like that you always have the option of attacking one of the spammer's allies, who will be at a disadvantage because the spammer won't have many troops to help him. Once you've defeated his ally you can just walk around the back of his village and all his 33 towers are useless. Only in the most narrow maps will you have to walk past a lot of towers, but I doubt you could ever be forced to go past 33 unless the player had built towers and nothing else.

Based on the responses here I count 7 people in this topic who don't like towers as they are now and 6 people who like it.

Which means it's unpopular either way, 1 person extra isn't enough of a majority to conclude much.

Maybe you are right but for me it's not about tower accuracy, it's about tower spamming. I honestly have no problem at all with a tower that kills 5/5 as long as I don't have to break through an insane amount of towers to reach the enemy troops.

As I said above you can avoid most of them, and I don't think 5 towers is an insane amount. As long as you're careful you can avoid most of them, then your enemy has wasted all that time and resources for nothing.

99% agreed here. It's just, nobody wants to play without towers because they serve a purpose. One of them is to prevent the enemy from scouting you. In multiplayer this is very important. And yes it makes it more fun if the game isn't decided in one big battle early after peacetime. The point is that there is no battle between troops before you find a way through the towers because most of your troops are killed in the process. As a reward your enemy can easely counterattack because you have no troops left. It's as simple as that.

Not if you use disposable units like militia to empty the towers.

I think I speak for most of us if I say we rather want to win a game by clever use of our troops instead of facing a wall of towers we can't take down.

Yes I agree, but I don't think it's like that. It just means you'll need a slightly bigger army before you can walk into the enemy village, you can't do it with just 6 troops now.

IMO better players's oppinion is more important.
Don't ask me why, but it just makes sense.
Yes somehow it makes sense but saying things like this won't make you more popular here I guess. I'm not saying we are better players but we take the time and effort to test this beta so our opinion should be taken seriously of course.

Everyone's opinion is equal in discussions like this. I'd say that experienced players will know more about the game so they can present evidence of what they have experienced to the others here, but just saying "take our word for it" is arrogant and doesn't help anybody else understand your opinion. You need to explain and demonstrate to us why tower spam is a problem and why our counter arguments are invalid, then we might come over to your side. But just saying "we're right because we're more experienced" without convincing others just isn't how this community works. Think of it as like a democracy, if you want people to support you, you have to show them why your policies/ideas are best. Just saying "I'm most experienced so I'm right" won't get you anywhere.

I think it's really representative. Atleast I thought we as beta testers are here to help solve problems like this. Even if there are only 20 of us.

We've sent the RC to over 80 people, and most of those people send it around to all their friends. I'd guess we have between 120-160 people who have the release candidate. 20 people is a significant enough number to take your comments on board, but not enough to say "we MUST change this because the majority wants it".

the game will be a lot more like "the one who wins the first fight wins", because if towers don't kill enough units, they will let a lot of people in, and it'll be so frustrating to have players inside your city just because the few towers you built didn't do any damage (I'm not talking about tower spam here)
I think it's really sad that you give towers such an important role to play in your gameplay, so without towers you expect yourself to lose the game? If so it's better to play against equally skilled players instead, I'd say. But maybe I didn't understand your point completely. If you mean you don't want to spam towers but the towers you have do decent damage I totally agree here. We only need a way to prevent people building all those towers.

I don't think that's what he meant, he was saying that if you lose a battle and have almost no troops, then without towers that hit more than 1-2 units you've lost the game. Towers means your opponent must significantly outnumber you before they can overrun your village. That doesn't mean you'll lose the game without towers, it means whoever loses a fight and doesn't have towers has already lost the game because the enemy can just walk into their village even if they only have a few soldiers.

PostPosted: **07 Sep 2012, 05:07**

Count me in for "those who want to leave Towers an element of the game that allows more varied tactics than simple 'who has biggest army after PT - wins' ". Now we have 7-7 ))

Seriously though, Towers mean that towns are more than a simple unit/weapons production facilities. You fight outside town walls and if your army got defeated you get that extra time that it takes to take 4-5 Towers down to hire some more troops and try to defend your town, which is IMPORTANT. You spend 1 hour building it and it does not feels right that after the first fight enemy invades the town and renders it dead in 5-10min.

PostPosted: **07 Sep 2012, 06:22**

Everyone's opinion is equal in discussions like this. I'd say that experienced players will know more about the game so they can present evidence of what they have experienced to the others here, but just saying "take our word for it" is arrogant and doesn't help anybody else understand your opinion. You need to explain and demonstrate to us why tower spam is a problem and why our counter arguments are invalid, then we might come over to your side. But just saying "we're right because we're more experienced" without convincing others just isn't how this community works. Think of it as like a democracy, if you want people to support you, you have to show them why your policies/ideas are best. Just saying "I'm most experienced so I'm right" won't get you anywhere.

Honestly it shouldn't. A good player's oppinion should be taken more seriously than a weaker player, this doesn't mean we're saying that you all just should take our word for it. My on-topic argument has been removed by TDL because it was 'offtopic', still it showed a similar way, so I can't show you how. But about showing how, To did, we were all in that game. We can even send you the replay, you'll see how much less troops Matt had in that game.

It just required +5 builders and +1 stone quarry.
We don't say that we're right because we're more experienced,
But hey since everybody is equal here I'll just call my grandma and the rest of the family, I'll explain it to them, and they will share their oppinion because their oppinion is AS IMPORTANT AS EVERYBODY ELSE.
I think it was Shadaoe who said that it's about a game and a game is supposed to be fun, so everybody is the same.
So there are people here who haven't played kam for 3 years, don't say I just suppose that,it is true.
I don't see here how the factor 'fun' can be an argument for 'everybody's oppinion is equal'?

But yes, what I think is wrong about your argument?
Here it's like about what you want, your style of game.
We're talking about balancing the game, for every style of game, and not for optimising our style of game.

PostPosted: **07 Sep 2012, 06:42**

Well as you can read, Lewin considers opinions equally important so you will just have to deal with that. You have to come with strong arguments to convince us, not with 'I'm right, you should listen to me' because obviously it doesn't work this way and you know that just as good as us.
Now enough about this, there was a reason I deleted those posts and I'm now in doubt if I should do it again. Next time I certainly will, so please go ontopic again.

PostPosted: **07 Sep 2012, 07:02**

We can even send you the replay, you'll see how much less troops Matt had in that game. It just required +5 builders and +1 stone quarry.

So what's the problem here? He has less troops than the others, but he has towers. So that's a trade off. Just think of towers as stationary troops. You made lots of normal troops, he made lots of towers. Either way you can both defend yourself against attacks. Your strategy is more risky, if you lose your troops then your village can be overrun. Matt's tactics are safer, if he loses his troops he still has some static defences left, but there's a tradeoff because he can't play so aggressively, can't help his allies as much and can't take as much territory. It's all tradeoffs and tech choices. You seem to think towers are not a valid tactic/choice, so I think you should just play without towers once we have the mutators implemented. As Krom said, what's the fun if you build for 1 hour then only fight for 10 minutes? Towers allow longer games, sieges, capturing territory, etc. It's much more varied and interesting than 1 hour of building and 10 minutes of fighting until one side loses. You don't have to like this style of play, and in that case you should play without towers if you want only 10 minutes of fighting.

Now if you had said Matt had the same number of troops as those who did not build towers, THEN I would agree there's a problem. But you said he had considerably less, so that balances it because he made towers instead of troops

But hey since everybody is equal here I'll just call my grandma and the rest of the family, I'll explain it to them, and they will share their oppinion because their oppinion is AS IMPORTANT AS EVERYBODY ELSE.

You could, but they wouldn't be able to provide convincing arguments because they don't know the game, so nobody hear would agree with their opinions. They wouldn't be able to respond logically to counterarguments, they wouldn't be able to provide evidence. Whereas YOU should be able to do these things because you say you say you are experienced. I personally haven't seen evidence of anything that looks like a problem to me, To's screenshot shows that you need to empty 5 towers before you can attack, and that Matt chose to make towers instead of troops, but it looks like it didn't pay off for him because he's surrounded by soldiers. So maybe next time he should try a few less towers and a few more troops. Where's the problem in all this? Making towers instead of troops is a choice, and it's not going to pay off if you spam lots of towers, there's a balance between towers and troops that is most effective.
I also don't think you've answered my counterarguments effectively. This forum is for debating, providing evidence, countering arguments. That's how you get people to understand your point of view, not by saying "what I wrote is right because I'm experienced."

We're talking about balancing the game, for every style of game, and not for optimising our style of game.

If towers only kill 1-2 units out of 5 stones then the game will be very badly balanced for people who like to be able to defend their villages with some towers, have sieges, and play a game that lasts longer than 10 minutes after peacetime ends. A lot of people here seem to like these styles of game. So how is it balanced for every style of game? I really do think you're just optimising it for a game with no sieges, where a player who wins a fight with just 6 units left can defeat his opponent by marching past the towers which won't kill them and destroying his barracks, and where there's no opportunity for more than one battle after peacetime, and no chance to quickly build up a new army after losing most of your first one. With weak towers your village is a big open door, people can just waltz in with only a few units and destroy you. With strong towers you need to have a reasonable number of soldiers before you can move in.

Maybe you don't find it fun to have to deal with enemy towers at all. Personally I like it, trapping your enemy inside his village, expanding your village to capture more resources across the map, building up an army then executing a massive attack that breaks through his defences. I think that's fun. Sure it's not the same as tactical combat where troops are the only important aspect, but IMO it's another aspect of KaM that is fun. If you don't think that's fun and want troops to be the only important aspect, play without towers. We're not going to make towers very weak just because you only like to play with troops, not towers. That's your choice, don't force it upon everyone else.

It's like the food change, some people don't like it because they enjoyed playing without food playing a noticeable role in the game. We got a lot of complaints about it when the RC was first released, including from a number of experienced players. But now everybody seems to be used to it. People will always complain about changes because their old strategies need adapting. People who don't like hunger can play with it disabled as a mutator. People who don't like towers can play with them disabled.

But yes, what I think is wrong about your argument?
Here it's like about what you want, your style of game.

What is this link supposed to be showing? I don't understand.

PostPosted: **07 Sep 2012, 07:10**

So what's the problem here? He has less troops than the others, but he has towers.

Bo means that he had quite a lot of troops.

PostPosted: **07 Sep 2012, 07:26**

Oh my gosh! Everyone here is so hot!

Even George Stain complained...

Long long time ago... I suggested an additional Bar at lobby, below Peacetime.
Towerlimit: from 0 to 40 (with 20 as the average = 60 pt with 120 minutes max).

My idea was ignored back then

(having even 5/5 hit chance), but as we know... Who were PRO back then?
Very few, so it never was a "big deal" till now where many players have seen it exploitable.

Those were the times of [3 quarries/16 labourers] -> PRO winner

Of course that even having the 5/5 towers, the few quarries/labourers never made it exploitable (tough I still saw this was possible).

Today, in the present, it is exploitable with the 3/5 hit chance, because most PRO players [6 quarries/+35 labourers].
However remember: This happens mostly in 3v3 or 4v4, because it's teamplay. And certain maps are better than others.
--------------------------------------------------------

My happy solution for everyone: Towerlimit Bar (from 0 to 40) in lobby, below Peacetime.
Slide counter starts in 40 as default (Tower spam allowed), different to Peacetime bar (which starts at 0).
Slide counter reduces -5 in each section (9 possibilities -> 0-5-10-15-20-25-30-35-40).

Host will determinate if max towers allowed should be lower, depending the map chosen and the teams available.
For instance, in 2vs2 (30 limit), in 4vs4 (15 limit). Mhhh! I'd like a match with max 5 or 10 towers, very strategical placing.

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