New KaM Remake Demo r2411

[Lewin]

- Trade (or just tributes like age of empires) will be added. Check the thread "Market" if you want more info.
- Co-op missions and campaigns will be implemented eventually. You can play co-op missions right now if you make a suitable mission script
- I think people can just use the chat room on the website. I'm not sure that an in-game "global chat" would work that well
- Banning a username (and probably IP address) from your lobby will be allowed, but it will only apply to that lobby. This means you can stop an annoying person from constantly rejoining when you kick them, but does not lead to some kind of global "black-list"
- Your other multiplayer ideas really require an accounts system, (so you must create an account before you can play online) and I don't think I want to go down that path. In fact it really sounds like the kind of thing Steam would do very nicely. People would have to leave the game running if you wanted to be able to send the messages or contact them, and I don't think anyone will want to do that. So for now you'll just have to use the chat room and other forms of communication to contact people

To be honest I've never liked the town hall, making troops from gold always seemed a bit easy and kind of odd. Also it was painfully slow to train a reasonable group because you had to wait for the gold to arrive, and this seems to be the only reason it cannot be exploited, as gold is quite easy and quick to produce. Of course this is just a personal opinion.
I'm not sure what Krom's opinion is but I don't think we have immediate plans to implement the town hall. When the time comes we can have a good discuss about it to find out what you all think.
Same with the siege workshop, I would much rather see siege equipment be tactical weapons that can destroy enemy towns and buildings, but are very slow and weak (and quite expensive to make) In TPR they are basically "super bowmen" that kill units with 1 shot. In my opinion they should not be able to shoot units, they should just be used to destroy enemy towers etc. Once again this is an opinion and it will need to be discussed before any decisions are made.

Thanks for your suggestions.
Lewin.

[CuDi]

To be honest I've never liked the town hall, making troops from gold always seemed a bit easy and kind of odd. Also it was painfully slow to train a reasonable group because you had to wait for the gold to arrive, and this seems to be the only reason it cannot be exploited, as gold is quite easy and quick to produce. Of course this is just a personal opinion.
I'm not sure what Krom's opinion is but I don't think we have immediate plans to implement the town hall. When the time comes we can have a good discuss about it to find out what you all think.
Same with the siege workshop, I would much rather see siege equipment be tactical weapons that can destroy enemy towns and buildings, but are very slow and weak (and quite expensive to make) In TPR they are basically "super bowmen" that kill units with 1 shot. In my opinion they should not be able to shoot units, they should just be used to destroy enemy towers etc. Once again this is an opinion and it will need to be discussed before any decisions are made.

Thanks for your suggestions.
Lewin.

Nor have I. The troops I would like to make within are way to expensive. Which is why I suggested adding the barbarians to the barracks. Thanks for the quick feedback on everything! I know not all these ideas are not the best but I just write them down as I think of them. Would love to see some more insight from other people! Looking forward to seeing your opinions

[GreatWhiteBear]

me neither, but I do like the vagabonds, so if they could be added to the barracks then that would be nice.

[Danjb]

I always thought troops from the town hall were way too easy to make. They just seemed like a bit of a cheat.

Never really used siege weapons much, but it makes sense that they should only be good against buildings.

[GreatWhiteBear]

Siege weapons can wait until you have implanted the walls.

[Litude]

To be honest I've never liked the town hall, making troops from gold always seemed a bit easy and kind of odd. Also it was painfully slow to train a reasonable group because you had to wait for the gold to arrive, and this seems to be the only reason it cannot be exploited, as gold is quite easy and quick to produce. Of course this is just a personal opinion.

I have to disagree with the Town Hall being overpowered in any way. Other than the fact that it is painfully slow to hire a bunch of soldiers from there, I think gold is quite a valuable resource since you need coal to produce it and access to coal is quite limited in many missions. And if you start creating a huge army from there you will quickly run out of gold. Rogues and rebels are the only soldiers I think are worth their cost.

Same with the siege workshop, I would much rather see siege equipment be tactical weapons that can destroy enemy towns and buildings, but are very slow and weak (and quite expensive to make) In TPR they are basically "super bowmen" that kill units with 1 shot. In my opinion they should not be able to shoot units, they should just be used to destroy enemy towers etc. Once again this is an opinion and it will need to be discussed before any decisions are made.

Siege weapons are quite broken. Something that could help slightly would be to make them considerably more inaccurate by making it so that pretty much every time the target unit has moved between the time the siege weapon fired and the projectile reaches its target, it would miss. Since there's a lot of stationary combat though, that in itself wouldn't have enough of an effect. Adding some random "misfiring" might even things out. Just a suggestion no idea how well it would work in game. Don't really like the idea of making them unable to shoot units altogether.

One thing I'm wondering (and quite surprised no one else bought up), any plans on adding the middle mouse button scrolling thing? Never realized how much I used it until now

[CuDi]

One thing I'm wondering (and quite surprised no one else bought up), any plans on adding the middle mouse button scrolling thing? Never realized how much I used it until now

Yeah I'm always using that now! Very cool feature.

Idea/suggestion

-Build-able walls that archers/xbowman can man and shoot from.

[GreatWhiteBear]

That idea is already accepted.

[Ben]

This may have been mentioned before, but I was wondering if you are going to restore the unit's "power" back to its original strength?
I'm sure most of us have noticed how units are much more powerful then before.

Personally, I like it! It makes the battles quicker and makes one rely on ranged units less (Before, melee units were more of a "meat Shield" but they can actually kill pretty quickly, now)

Also, are archers going to be missing their targets so much in the final version? I've seen lots of players kill their own soldiers with their ranged units. It isn't a huge deal, but what really drives me F'in crazy is when I spend 10 minutes trying to tear down a tower, and the my enemy just repairs it in fifteen seconds. In KaM, ranged units NEVER missed towers. The reason for this was almost certainly because towers would be too hard to take out otherwise. I have spent many hours trying to defeat an entrenched opponent. I think camping is too easy at the moment.

[Lewin]

Thanks for your opinions. I think you're right Litude it's not overpowered, but something about it doesn't feel right in the KaM universe. Given that it takes so much processing of goods to make all the other troops, being about to make them from gold is very quick and easy, and more something you'd expect from a game like Age of Empires. I don't think moving them to the barracks is the right option at all. If you could train barbarians they'd stop being special. I still remember the excitement when I started mission 9 and being able to control barbarians for the first time! I spent 5 minutes moving them around and making them charge.

I think that if in real life you fired a catapult or balista into a battle you'd kill almost as many of your own as enemies. But it would be stupid to make something that hits your own troops all the time. I really want to separate their role from archers, and I also find that I end up destroying a lot of towers with archers, which seems strange if you think about it in real life.

I had never noticed the middle mouse scrolling until someone pointed it out a month ago. It's on the todo list.

Walls are also planned.

@Ben: We haven't changed the unit statistics like strength, hitpoints etc. I think the problem is that the actual KaM fighting system is not quite the same as it was described in the German guide book, which is the system we're using now. So I have no idea how we could make battles closer to KaM anyway as that's what we've tried to do. But I agree that it's quite well balanced now.
There's a problem with archers shooting into your own soldiers due to predicting the target's position. (so if you are being charged, the archers shoot where the enemy would be if there was no obstacle, which is often into your own men) We'll fix this.

Yeah I agree that tower camping is too easy, and arrows do seem to miss buildings a lot. I think archers are balanced well against troops at the moment, but maybe they should hit more often against buildings.

[CuDi]

That idea is already accepted.

I didn't know.. My bad.

This may have been mentioned before, but I was wondering if you are going to restore the unit's "power" back to its original strength?
I'm sure most of us have noticed how units are much more powerful then before.

Personally, I like it! It makes the battles quicker and makes one rely on ranged units less (Before, melee units were more of a "meat Shield" but they can actually kill pretty quickly, now)

I thought it was just me! They do seem a bit more powerful and as Ben said, I also like it.

Suggestion/idea

- I've noticed online you can place blueprints pretty much where ever you want. What were to happen if you have some flaming rager just covered your area in blue prints rendering it impossible for you to continue building?

[Lewin]

- I've noticed online you can place blueprints pretty much where ever you want. What were to happen if you have some flaming rager just covered your area in blue prints rendering it impossible for you to continue building?

This has already been discussed here

[CuDi]

Sigh.. I need to read around more. Either way I like the idea of only being able to see your ally's blueprints.

[The Dark Lord]

So far I haven't had trouble with people who were tower camping. I don't think that it's too hard to take towers down.

I agree that siege weapons are too strong. Especially the ballista. I'm not sure about the catapult, because it also hits your own troops frequently.

And I do think that getting units from the town hall is too easy. I'm especially referring to rebels since they only cost one gold.
Sure, gold is a valuable resource, but there is one HUGE difference between hiring soldiers from the town hall and recruiting them in your barracks:
You don't need recruits.
Think of it: to train a recruit in the school takes you 1 gold. Then you still need weapons to equip him with; an axe in the least place.
All you need to hire a rebel is 1 gold in the town hall. It's like training a serf or a labourer, but this goes even faster. There is no training time. As soon as a serf brings in the gold you can start spamming.
So 5 militia will take 5 gold and 5 axes (that cost timber which is quite valuable in the beginning + it also takes time to create them and bring them to the barracks) + training time for the recruits, while 5 rebels will only take you 5 gold...

The other units seem quite fair to me (although the slinger unit is too cheap. 2 gold for a ranged unit is not enough in my opinion, but on the other hand 3 would be pretty much ).

[Ben]

I've shared much of your insights in my playing before, Dark Lord.
I think that Catapults are very fair (They tore down buildings like monsters in KaM TPR since they couldn't miss) but they also hurt your own men. Ballista, on the other hand, are stacked. Unless your opponent can get around you, they will have a hard time destroying them without huge losses (and the AI is too dumb).
As for the Town Hall, I hate it. Took the "Real" feeling out of KaM. I wouldn't mind taking it out all together, but that would ruin many missions/ ideas for missions.
I never thought about the "Waiting Time" that the school as in relationship to the town Hall. It is a very good point. What if The Town Hall worked like the School where there was a "Waiting Time" (Perhaps one could consider it the "paperwork" of the hiring process)?