Before i wanted to say anything about the new release i wanted to test a few things myself. I apologize for the wall of text, because it shall have no mercy for the readers.
about the new RC:
+ fog of war for each individual player in replays, wich will give a great insight in what someone can see and why he made certain decisions;
+ new statistics look very nice and orderly;
+ i like the new message system, it is not quite a mess now and i am not bothere it is not streched all over my screen. I can see more of the game this way.(minimal hud's are always nice);
+ farms work very efficient now, too bad the replay is broken otherwise you could have seen it;
+ map editor, you can make very custom maps now and editing is easier;
+ overal small improvements, like the buttons;
+ you receive a message when a woodcutter is on cut only and has nothing to cut anymore;
+ the building you get a message for is highlighted when you click on the message, no more looking what building is meant;
+ ranged units will be fixed as far as i could read here, right now they are really inflexible indeed.
Now for the things there is already a heavy discussion about, wich will provide the wall of text. I will mainly write about the unlocks of buildings.
I can see both points in this discussion. On one side you got a lot of things to do early in the game, but on the other hand maps get really easy. I made a build today on golden cliffs loc 5, simply because that is the map used most as example and loc 5 is my favorite loc, so i had many replays i could compare it with. What is a shame is that the replay got broken because i crashed ( the report ahs been sent) so i cannot give a comparison. All i can do is describe how it went. To start off i did set the pt to 55, and wanted to play untill 60 to see for myself what i could make and compare what i would not have gotten at 55 pt.
Because i knew the school would unlock the woodcutter and the inn, i made a road to the forest instead of making a road for the inn. After the school i made my woodcutter and starting building stonemasons + a road for the sawmill. As you can see i have a lot of things to do, but on the other hand i already got wood and the cutters alreayd started planting. This also resulted in earlier farms that i normally build so i got my first corn earlier. I did have gold at the same time as i usually do, just because i timed it like that. I was at my iron 2 minutes earlir then normal, even though i did not really rush towards it. i had to build my pigfarms earlier because my earlier farms produced corn earlier, and on a sidenote i saw the difference in the efficiency patch since my swinefarms worked a lot better. I also needed an earlier 3rd sawmill because the woodcutters produced trunks earlier, on wich turn i also made earlier wooden weapons and the 4th sawmill, wich would expand my wooden weapons faster. While i was doing that my 2 armorsmitties were working already and i was just finishing adding a second ironsmelter and started making the weaponsmitty. I was also making a 4th farm already and added one more swinefarm + 2 fisheremen to reduce food problems. Then all i needed to do was add a 3rd ironmine + ironsmelter and my base was done. since i had 13 minutes left till pt on 55 pt i added 1 more farm 1 mill and some towers, and i was a bit too late with my baker, wich came right after pt.I also could add a 3rd goldsmelter 5 minutes before pt with added coalmine. the only problem i had was a late barracks, wich caused a large stream of weapons fmro the storehouse to the barracks, causing my town to be idle for a few minutes.
My conclusion is the following:
Yes the early game has sped up, but maps also got way easier to build on. during this entire building session i had no worries about wood at all, wich i normally would have. also i had no food problems since i got my butcher the moment bread ran out, but i still got fish. normally i would have only wine left. I think this has both to do with the earlier unlocks (earlier farms) and the more efficient farming (my swinefarms worked way better). I also had an earlier wooden weapon production and i still had wood to keep on building. It really seems like a small change, but it is a snowball effect into a big impact.
As for the pt army, in the shield patch release i would have gotten 20-25 swords, 30-35 (in exceptional cases 40) bowmen and 15 militia at 60 pt. In this release i had 25 swords (nearly 30 armor and shield) 10 militia and 40 bowmen + some jackets at the armouries at 55 pt. As you may think the pt armies are the same with 5 less pt. But i also had no starvation while i normally had starvation at pt, and my base was even larger then normal. My game crashed at 0:58, so i cannot know what i could have at 60 pt.
also it is a shame i cannot hand a replay to back up what i just wrote here, even the crashreport replay was not functioning for me.
suggestion:
My suggestion is to add a mutator ''classical unlock order'', because i can imagine that you do not want to revert the change, but the players who do want to have the extra challenge in their building can set this mutator. I think this is the best solution that can be made and it will statisfy a lot of people.
edited for some spelling errors that were bugging me.
Call me a conservative, but KaM has always been a slow game and I like it. There's now an option to increase the game speed, so I don't see the necessity to speed up the game even more, and, what's worse: compulsory! We have no choice.
