Improve Warfare Diversity

[BaggyJeans]

Let's start this rather long post by saying how fond I am of the KaM Remake. I think it's awesome you
guys improved the multiplayer experience of Knights and Merchants. Also i can't wait to see what good
stuff you are transforming the single player too!

Now on to my constructive criticism


I have played some online matches now (and a lot of single player too) and I feel the game doesn't
allow for much warfare or combat diversity. I noticed how the only way to win or at least hold your ground
is to build crossbowmen as quick as you can. Going for iron at the start seems the only way to win or play
a decent match. In other words; a military focused strategy seems to be the only way to win.

Now i'm just going to share my thoughts on how I think the current game prevents warfare diversity. But I'd be
harsh to just point out the problems and not come up with some ways to solve it. So after pointing out what I
think is problematic, i'll point out how - again, I think - these problems could be solved.



*Some of these points might be impossible to implement - I don't know. But you guys have done awesome work so
far already, so I'm going to write this thinking you guys are almighty!*

*Certain suggestions have been suggested before, but for the sake of the 'completeness' of this post and my reasoning
I am going to suggest them again - please don't get annoyed by it!*

*Note: I use the word archers to group together the longbowmen and crossbowmen.*


1 Problems
1.1 General problems
Knights and Merchants has some great potential, that isn't being exploited as much
it could be. For example take the positioning angles with which military units are moved
and placed. These positioning angles already add to warfare, but not much. At the moment it
only means the difference between getting shot at and being safe.

You'd say it makes the longbowmen and crossbowmen vulnerable to attacks from the rear,
but it doesn't; the direction in which they fire can be changed in 2 seconds.
And militia sneaking in from the back while be shot dead in a couple of seconds.

A second problem is, to my opinion, the fact the enemy can always see your movement. Even if the enemy hasn't
explored the territory yet, they'll see you coming in time to turn around their units. Now I think this is especially
evident when militia succesfully get behind archers rears and when they march in all of the militia get shot before
getting anywere near the archers.

A third thing is the difference between metal and leather military units. First off I find it rather
strange how metal units (for example: crossbowmen) can be produced way earlier than their leather counterparts.
Taken that metal units are stronger. Now if crossbowmen could be produced earlier than longbowmen, you'd say
longbowmen should get something in return right? (i'll get back to this later).

An exstension of this is that there is nearly nothing that can withstand metal units. I think there should at least
be some way to withstand them in early gameplay - except for using exactly the same build en combat (warfare) strategy.

Another thing is the amount of servants wandering around in your camp. After, say, 40 minutes of gameplay your camp
is probably already swarming with servants. At a certain point they and their paths become unmanageable. To be precise
building more servants seems to become counterproductive; they'll only slow down other servants and make it impossible
for your army to move from one side of your city to the other side. Not mentioning the amount of food and wine they consume.
Now I see how having servants adds to the game, but at a certain point (let's say 60 servants or more for now) it simply doesn't add
to the game anymore. It's not making the game anymore fun, instead it rather seems to do the opposite.



1.2 Minor problems.
Towers. They only seem to be useful to keep single enemy soldiers out of your town (taken it's not an archer type). During
the game you find that most of the towers you build had simply no more function than keeping the enemy at a distance for a few
minutes.

Now those few more minutes can be helpful indeed, but that usually is the function of a wall, not a tower.

Archers, mainly the crossbowmen are over powered. It's just weird when having only crossbowmen in an (early) combat
they can still easily win from a group of militia or berserkers twice the size. I can't see how it is fair or realistic

With large armies there often is little maneuverability. This also implies when the enemy has a large army and you don't. There's
just no way - on most maps - that you could get some spies, knights or vagabonds past the enemy and harass some archers.



1.3 In short.
Little room for different warfare (that means both constructing en combat) tactics.
Positioning angles not making the game as interesting as it could.
Metal units produced to early.
Leather units are produced later and get not a single advantage for that.
Nothing withstands metal units.
To many servants wandering about.
Underpowered towers.
Overpowered crossbowmen.
Large armies = little maneuverability.



2 Suggestions.
"Little room for different warfare (that means both constructing en combat) tactics."
you might have noticed that all the other mentioned problems - in my opinion - create
this inflexibility. So that's why i have few words for this specific point and rather
make suggestions for the 'building blocks of this problem'.


2.1 Fog of war.
Would help with the following problems.
"Positioning angles not making the game as interesting as it could."
"Overpowered crossbowmen."
"Nothing withstands metal units."
"Large armies = little maneuverability."

It would increase chances of cheaper units (take spies or vagabonds) being able to
take on metal units. For example an enemy using early metal units (that most often means: crossbowmen)
can now be countered by some spies or vagabonds maneuvering around and assaulting from the rear, instead
of only being able to counter the enemies crossbowmen with your own crossbowmen.
Thus balancing the power of archers.

It would not take the archers strength, but it would add some weaknesses to them. Making combat way more
fun and interesting if you ask me.

In addition it would allow players with smaller armies to cut off the food supply from the enemies larger
armies. That way there are more ways to win a battle than just building a large army. Making the game
extremely interesting i think.

2.1.1 Great line of sight.
On your website you suggest attributing a large sight radius to units when implementing fog of war.
On it's own this is not a bad thing, but I do think the center of the radius should be moved. So that
their main visibility is in front of them.

This would help using tactics where one attacks archers from the rear being more succesfull. Which is
balancing the archers, adding to the amount of combat strategies one can use and completly realistic
in my point of view.


2.2 Town Hall.
"Nothing withstands metal units."

Now i'd suggest adding the city hall, but with only the weaker units like the vagabond and rebel.
(Leave the barbarians and stone throwers out.) These weaker units allows a more economy orientated player to withstand early
crossbowmen rushes. Later on in a match the town hall will become useless this way, but did allow players
to use a different play style.

I am aware that a lot of you are oppossed to the idea of the town hall being added again. But this would seriously
balance the odds in early warfare (if you remove the barbarians and stone throwers from the town hall),
and makes the town hall worthless later on as most would like to see.


2.3 Longbowmen range.
"Overpowered crossbowmen."
"Leather units are produced later and get not a single advantage for that."

Increasing the range of longbowmen allows players to build a counter for crossbowmen. However since all
the other units have way more defense than archers, this shouldn't overpower the longbowmen when fighting
other metal units. For example knights can still easily march in with out to much casualties and massacre
the longbowmen.


2.4 Tower range.
"Underpowered towers."
"Nothing withstands metal units."

I think the range should be taken to a width were they could should the front row of a group of crossbowmen.

This is fair because;
The crossbowmen that are left can take steps forward after losing the front row and make sure no new stones
can be brought to the tower. Thus allowing a tower to at least kill 4 or 5 archers before being burned to the
ground.
Again it is more than realistic that a defense tower can hit an archer, in fact a tower should be able to shoot
much further in the real world. So just making them able to hit the front row is more than fair.


2.5 Movement speed of leather units.
"Leather units are produced later and get not a single advantage for that."
"Large armies = little maneuverability."

As metal units are stronger and can be made earlier than leather units, it would be more than fair (and realistic)
to make up for the weaknesses of leather units by increasing their movement speed.

It would also make scouts or vagabonds more capable of countering longbowmen with a frontal charge if my earlier
suggestion of increasing the longbowmens range is accepted (Just to balance out this increase of the longbowmens
abilities).


2.6 Movement speed of servants and workers.
"To many servants wandering about."
"Large armies = little maneuverability."

If you'd increase the walking speed of servants by, for example, factor 1.5 it would mean that less servants are needed
for the same amount of work. Thus lessening the need for servants. Less servants means less bloccades through town
, which would increase their efficiency and speed even more with out having to take their speeds to unrealistic limits.
This would increase how manageable a town is without having to give more control over the economy.
Next to that less, servants would also mean that your own soldiers can cross town easier - something i'd highly value.

Another consequence is the fewer need of roads. This would allow players to use their space more efficiently.
And perhaps leaving more space for combat maneuverability.


2.7 Even bigger maps
"Large armies = little maneuverability."

I don't think i'll need to explain this? It would simply leave more combat zone.


2.8 Conclusion
As I said before; Knights and Merchants has come with a lot of potential. However most of it remained
unexploited by the original programmers. I feel the changes suggested here will improve upon what was
already there, rather than change the game.



Well that's about it!
Please comment and critize! As long as you think about it, i'm happy!

I hoped i have been able to bring a coherent story and draw 'the big picture'.
I hope it helps define goals to improve the game (and with it warfare diversity) above all!



Keep up the good work remake team!
BaggyJeans



P.s. I know it's my first post and I'm not trying to be a know it all. Most of you
have been round long, and I humble in your presence

[Shadaoe]

Hi Baggy Jeans !
I think the military aspect, while it is one of the most important of mutiplayer gaming, needs to be changed really carefully.
Your post explains really well every idea that you have in mind, that's why it's interesting !

Something before reacting to your ideas :
fog of war is already planned as an option. I think like you that it'll add a lot to the game !

So :
-fog of war : your idea to have more line of sight in the front of the units is very interesting, I think it would add more tactics and allow backstab to counter archers.

-town hall : well I dislike the town hall, my point of view won't be good so I won't say anything :p

-increased range for bowmen : I think it would unbalance the game too much and make the archers overpowered (even with all the ideas you had to counterbalance it). For exemple your idea of towers being able to kill crossbowmen, if bowmen had a better range, you would only have to attack towers with them and you wouldn't have any casualties.

-tower range : I always thought it was strange for a tower to throw rock (it was used in medieval times, but only when someone was a close range of towers/walls of a castle, and archers were more important), but the advantage of the rocks is that it gives an explanation of the low range of the towers.

in fact a tower should be able to shoot much further in the real world

As you can understand, I don't think so, try to throw a rock as far as an archer's range in real life :p
Also, towers are already quite slow to kill, if in more they could kill your (quite valuable !) crossbowmen, it would be horrible :p Although I see your point, someone the towers reveal themselves useless, but I think the towers are one of the most balanced things in the game.

-leather units moving faster : good idea, it shouldn't be a huge bonus, only a slight increase (and should not apply to cavalry, they're fast enough like that, and nothing would stop them !). I'm in favor of such bonuses, also this one is quite realistic.

-movement speed of servants and workers : I don't think it's a good idea, it would change the game too much in my opinion. Although I see your point, making more servants after 60 is like it does nothing, but Krom and Lewin are planning to improve the delivery system so it won't happen anymore, that's why I don't think such a huge refactoring is needed.

-even bigger maps : I think it is planned (not sure), but you can already have 192*192 maps, wich is quite huge (although it can be narrow when you're up to 8 players). There are some maps already where you have a big room to fight but indeed it would be welcome to be able to do bigger maps (I'm aware of the problems with the minimap for a bigger size, these are just ideas :p )

Multiplayer. Players disconnecting after playing for 40 minutes. It can often seriously imbalance the match and make you feel
like you've just wasted 40 minutes of your life because you'd probably have to start over again.

The great thing is that the remake supports another player taking the leaver's location, in almost every game I played, when it happened, we found another guy to take the place ! I also dislike people leaving after a short time, although I can understand someone to leave when a game is longer than expected (I already did that). I think it's not a huge problem since they had the good idea of allowing player changing.


To finish :
I think like you that KaM's potential is not completely exploited at the moment !
Thanks for this interesting post with ideas well explained (people often just throw a few words in a post, without any explanation and saying "You must do that !"). There are some very interesting points to discuss here !

[Czacki]

I think it needs one thing: cavalry doesn't get locked in combat & is a little faster. That way, the horses (which have a very slow breed time) will be a valuable tool to counter ranged armies and you will have to keep halberdiers nears them to protect them. Which is all the diversity you need.

Not sure how to fix the leather units though. They are just doomed to be inferior, I guess.

[batoonike]

You said you have played some online matches. No offence but I suggest that you play more. I used to see lot of mistakes too Many of my worries about KaM have diminished as I just play'd more games and saw what really works and what doesn't.

*towers are not underpowered, they are already majorly annoying if combined with crossbowmen. Ranged units shoot one tower forever before it goes down, so the real counter is militia.

*Leather troops are useful, once the iron runs out. On quite a few maps iron is also in very bad spot so it's safer and faster to make leather. Or there is so little iron you can pretty much make only 1 army of it. IRONicly, I think about half of the games that last longer than first battle are decided by leather troops. The iron troops just massacre eachother. The transition from your first iron army to leather army becomes decisive.

*Crossbowmen rush is not the only tactic, militia is equally useful on most maps, especially with 45 minute peace time or lower.

*Village with 75 serves can function nicely, if you have many storehouses and very nice road network. Big food production and several Inns in different areas in your town will prevent starvation. It wouldn't make sense to keep producting serves infinitely anyway.

[BaggyJeans]

Ah thanks for your reply shadaoe!

Let me start by saying that i in fact was more interested on your opinion on the ' problems' that I pointed out.
For example do you agree that metal units and especially crossbowmen are over powered in early combat.
That it's odd a crossbowmen can be produced easier and earlier than a longbowmen?
That the positioning angles should be exploited more to make combat more interesting?
That the towers are nearly useless?
Disbalance between metal and leather (that one should not be better than an other, but rather have different utilities, like strength vs speed - if one wishes to be both as easily produced)?
and all that

If you don't agree with me on the causes for the low warfare diversity, there is little point in discussing changes i think.
I read the suggestions messages (in the sticky topic - yes all 30 pages ), but most of them point out isolated problems
to my feeling. With this topic I hoped to discuss the more general level, like warfare diversity.

Anyways that was the philosophy

To respond more specific to your reply:
Fog of war.
Yea i was aware the plans were already there. I wrote it for it's completeness
and my main point was actually right after that - about the center of a unit's
sight radius being moved forward.

Townhall.
Actually I hate them to the way they are now.
That's why i suggested removing the barbarian and stone throwers,
which were mainly the problem to my opinion.
When someone tries to assault an enemy camp with vagabonds or
rebels they'll be easily countered by towers. As gold is low in most
maps people wouldn't be able to produce that many soldiers from
the start any way. Just enough to counter early crossbows.

Increase longbowmen range.
At the time one can make longbowmen, one can also make mounted soldiers (at least it's easy to if you try to make them as fast
as you can). How ever crossbowmen can be build before any mounted soldier and thus only be countered with another crossbowmen.
But perhaps you are right.
i still feel however that it's unfair that crossbowmen are both stronger and easier to produce than longbowmen.

Tower range.
I geuss you're right.
But still I think they don't add as much to combat as they should.
However perhaps with the implementation of fog of war this can be solved, by giving them
a larger line of sight.

Leather units.
Thank you for agreeing
' bout the mounted units. How about slightly lowering the knights speed? They have strength,
for that they should lose speed i think.

Movement speed of servants.
Thinking it over again, that probably is better yes.

Multiplayer.
Ah okay, that is a plan that I did not read. Well nevermind what I said then


My apologies for another long post!

[BaggyJeans]

@ batoonike

Probably true xD (that I need to play more matches)

Early militia are easily countered by towers, if a player
takes time to construct a few.

I feel that in a certain way you conform my point that current way the game is
you' re best bet is to go after iron as soon a possible. This exactly why I think there's
so little combat diversity. Because there often is no other way to hold your ground
the first 90 minutes or so.
It would be way more interesting if not every one was forced to fight with the same strategy
on a given map.

Tower.
Yea after your post and that from shadaoe I think I should withdraw it.
I think you both are right here.

[Shadaoe]

Ah thanks for your reply shadaoe!

Let me start by saying that i in fact was more interested on your opinion on the ' problems' that I pointed out.
For example do you agree that metal units and especially crossbowmen are over powered in early combat.
That it's odd a crossbowmen can be produced easier and earlier than a longbowmen?
That the positioning angles should be exploited more to make combat more interesting?
That the towers are nearly useless?
Disbalance between metal and leather (that one should not be better than an other, but rather have different utilities, like strength vs speed - if one wishes to be both as easily produced)?
and all that

I agree on almost everything (except towers, servants, and this bowmen range thing)
However I can't judge every impact it could have on the game, there are so many factors, that's why I prefer giving opinions on ideas (pros and cons). I also prefer that because sometimes a problem is true, but the idea doesn't fit.

I like to discuss such changes, I thought my post was in this way but well. The problems you pointed out are true, some are more important than others, for exemple it's true that many people go for iron at first, however I've seen some people focusing on leather troops at the beginning, they often have a bigger army and have all their chances to win. I also see a lot more iron troops at the beginning since the apparition of the market.
Lewin said something interesting to me earlier today : maps without iron are pretty interesting to play. I agree on that, it often makes it more fun, hard, and less relying on archers. It's obvious that the actual system doesn't really fit the multiplayer gaming, however in a game, each change can make unexpected effects and totally break the balance, that's why even if I agree with a lot of your pointed problems, the ideas to fix it are really difficult to see, and that's why I liked this topic when I posted, the fights need a topic for the balance because it's a really important point to me.
Even if this game's fighting system is not perfect, we should be happy that it works quite well in multiplayer for now :p

[caykroyd]

2.1 Fog of war.
Already going to be done. Nothing to discuss


2.1.1 Great line of sight.
"On your website you suggest attributing a large sight radius to units when implementing fog of war.
On it's own this is not a bad thing, but I do think the center of the radius should be moved. So that
their main visibility is in front of them."
- I agree totally. The units should see in front of them majorly. That would better the problem "Positioning angles not making the game as interesting as it could." besides increasing the "sneaking" tactics.


2.2 Town Hall.
- I don't dislike the town hall, as many people do. I think that if the units are weak enough, like you suggested (they could also be weakened) it will be stupid for someone to spend all their gold to hire units when they could have a great unit production or could even trade that gold for skins, for example.
- It could be optional though.


2.3 Longbowmen range.
- Sorry, but i'm not a fan to this idea


2.4 Tower range.
"Underpowered towers."
- People have already been complaining that towers are OVERpowered. I don't think there is anything wrong with them.
- If the range were to increase (though thats not wise), the rocks should miss more the further away they are thrown.

2.6 Movement speed of servants and workers.
- I'm not sure about that. IF it were to increase, id say 1.1 or 1.2x
- If we are to increase leather units speeds, i don't see a reason not to increase the other units for the same amount.

2.5 Movement speed of leather units.
- I don't think its a bad idea. As long as the increase is not too great. Like i said earlier, 1.1/1.2/1.3 at most.

2.7 Even bigger maps
- It is nice, the idea, but the minimap issue has been discussed. I can't find a solution for it myself (maybe increase the side toolbar size? or maybe make the map pop out from the toolbar...)

[BaggyJeans]

Ah thanks for all the replies so far.
I've already taken the problem about players disconnecting out of the original 'problems & suggestions page'.

I will take the tower stuff out too if a few more people respond negatively. I myself already got persuaded by
shadaoe en batoonike to their point of view (not making them stronger). However i'd like to hear a few more opinions

@ shadaoe
In no way i ment to say that your first reply was missing the point. My apologies if it did seem that way.

I simply was curious about your opinion on what I thought to be 'problems'.
However you completly answered my question now -
thank you for that!

and yes I agree; i think it's awesome mp is working

@ caykroyd.

townhall.
The optional thingy! Good idea I think!

longbowmen range.
Perhaps i should suggest this the other way around?
Having crossbowmen lose 1 tile of range?

[Shadaoe]

Ok no problem BaggyJeans
I'm a bit tired so I'll only do a short post :p
The fighting system is totally different from any other game I think that's why it's hard to find a good balance, the archers domination isn't that much a problem for me, but I think that there is some progress to make but I can't find exactly where.
In my opinion, the archers aren't overpowered, but some other units are quite useless, for exemple I dislike making lance carriers/hallebardiers (don't exactly remember the english name), because the enemy doesn't often makes cavalry (though I do some of these counter-cavalry sometimes), it's just a personal taste though. But I think the "rock/paper/cissor" game is broken somewhere, there's a flaw (maybe an unit is not powerful enough, something like that) that makes the fights unbalanced, the problem is to find where.
It's only my opinion, maybe it's not the way it needs to be fixed (adding other units/buildings ...)

[Lewin]

Thanks for your post BaggyJeans.

I don't understand what you mean by "positioning angles". Are you saying there should be more angles you can position troops at? (currently there are 8) That's not possible in KaM geometry, because units stand on a single tile and only have 8 facing directions. If you positioned them at some other angle the other units in the group would not be standing on a single tile, they'd be half way between. It would require redoing the entire tile system to change that, which seems pointless.
Also, a militia sneaking behind archers SHOULD die in a few seconds if the player notices and spins them around. It's pretty stupid if 12 archers can be killed by 1 militia and the player can't do anything about it. To overwhelm archers you need more than 1 soldier, and that makes sense plus it's realistic.

I don't see why units should see further in front of them than behind, I don't think it would work in game. If that were the case I would simply put a single unit behind each group facing backwards so I can see in all directions. In real life people glance around them from time to time and see in all directions, especially when you are a soldier and on alert. Do you really think it's possible to sneak up to 10 meters behind an alert group of 12 soldiers before they notice you? One of them would have surely glanced around and see you. They aren't statues that only face forwards. I'm also not sure how it adds to gameplay, if people could easily sneak behind your archers it would be very annoying. It is already possible to do that, if you engage the enemy's melee units then you can charge their archers and force them to retreat and stop firing. Have you seen that happen in multiplayer or done it yourself? It can be very powerful because you can force the enemy's archers to stop firing and run, meaning they have a big disadvantage in the battle because you still have archers.

Towers are not underpowered. They are a passive defence to discourage the enemy from marching melee units straight into your village. But if they enemy has archers and you have no soldiers to attack the archers then the towers should be useless. If towers could shoot the same range as an archer they would be way overpowered. We get complaints that towers are overpowered, people want a "tower limit" so each player can only build 5 towers or whatever... So other people clearly don't think they are useless.

Iron units should be better than leather units in my opinion. They are made from a limited resource, and rebuilding mines is costly. They pay off in the short term but leather will give you a very steady production of troops in comparison. Take a look at the latest video on the KaM Remake Youtube channel, the player David made a huge number of axe fighters/bowmen, he had more units than the players using iron by 1:30. I think this is because he only built leather weapons production. If you try to build iron and leather you won't end up with much of either. It's usually better to focus on one or the other early, then diversify later. I think the problem here might be that the maps sometimes have too much iron/coal in easy positions so it's easy to make massive numbers of iron troops. In the big 8 player maps where players are grouped together, it works best if one player makes iron and the other player makes leather. The leather guy will usually end up with more troops but the iron guy will have some elite troops.
I'd like to add a "no iron" mode to the game, similar to the campaigns, where in some missions you don't have iron. The other problem is that people often want to have 60-90 minute games but no longer. That's not possible in KaM running at normal speed, you'll never have a really interesting game that way. People tend to rush things and set peacetime to 45 minutes or whatever... I find the game works well with 60-75 minute peacetime, that way all players have some defences and you will get a longer game. (I hate short games where one team hasn't finished their defences and is destroyed, that's not fun) When we add a speed changing option to multiplayer (maybe peacetime could run at 2x speed or something) this won't be such an issue as you can have 60 minutes peacetime over in 30 minutes real time.

At the moment large villages don't work great because deliveries are not very smart. You end up with serfs walking a long way from one side to the other. Once we optimise these you'll be able to have larger villages that function better. Even so, you are wrong if you think that >40 serfs doesn't help. I usually end up with 60-80 serfs in long games and it works fine. You must design your village efficiently, and block delivery of wares to the storehouse so you can control the flow and stop traffic jams. It's not hard to make a big village with 80 serfs and no traffic jams, although you'll need a 2-3 storehouses and inns. I dislike the idea of making the walk faster, it won't fix traffic jams anyway if your village is badly designed. Also changing unit speed will mess up the animation steps and units will appear to be sliding their feet along the ground. Therefore it's not really possible for us to change units speeds, although I see no reason to anyway.

I have made archers less powerful since the last release, I found they were aiming 1.5x as fast as in KaM (so shooting arrows faster than they should) I think this might balance them a bit better, because I do agree they are a bit too powerful currently. But they will still be a powerful unit, as they should be. If I was a guy with an axe and no armour running at a guy with a crossbow or longbow, I would certainly expect to die.

The extended view radius was only going to apply to fog. Units would still see the current distance through unexplored blackness, but they would see further through fog. To be honest I think it would ruin KaM if you only saw your enemies when they were 12 tiles away. Part of the fun is seeing everything going on and lining up your army against your opponent. Think of the Total War games. They would be very stupid if you could only see a small area around your solders, right? For this reason fog of war will be optional we'll add the extended view radius and probably the outpost to reveal a large area of fog around it.

Making leather units move faster will mess up the animation as I said previously. A very slight change might be possible without making it look bad.

I think it needs one thing: cavalry doesn't get locked in combat & is a little faster. That way, the horses (which have a very slow breed time) will be a valuable tool to counter ranged armies and you will have to keep halberdiers nears them to protect them. Which is all the diversity you need.
Not sure how to fix the leather units though. They are just doomed to be inferior, I guess.

Horses do not have a slow breed time. It takes 4 corn to make a horse, so it is not a factor of time, it's the amount of corn that you give to them. Make sure you have enough farms and set the distribution of wares high enough.
Did you know that a pig also takes 4 corn to breed? Pigs/horses are the same. If you supply your stable with enough corn you can make a huge amount of horses. I think cavalry is already fast enough, and I think they'd be unfair if they could pull out of combat.

[batoonike]

@ towers counter early militia:
The sole purpose of making early militia is to counter towers in my opinion. We can schedule a game with 45 minute peace, you make towers + crossbows, I make militia.

[BaggyJeans]

Thanks for taking time to reply Lewin!
In return I'll give you a thought through answer

Low warfare diversity.
Do I get you right if I say you just said that when peace time is 90 iron won't do the job,
but rather force players to use leather units?

If that is true than i'll restate my original statement to:
The amount of peace time dictates what warfare (that's both build and combat strategy) style players need to adapt,
in order to have any chance of wining.
* With pt at 90 the focus should be on leather.
* With pt at 60 this should be iron.
* With pt at less then 60 this should be militia.

Wouldn't it be much more fun (and less predictable) if there was another way to keep early crossbowmen invasions at bay for enough time,
to produce your own leather units. Thus allowing players to adapt different warfare styles - or say build and combat focus' - in the same match?

Now I think there are two ways to allow for this:
Townhalls
Fog of war (with sight mainly in front)

Townhalls.

2.2 Town Hall.
- I don't dislike the town hall, as many people do. I think that if the units are weak enough, like you suggested (they could also be weakened) it will be stupid for someone to spend all their gold to hire units when they could have a great unit production or could even trade that gold for skins, for example.
- It could be optional though.

I think the implementation of a townhall (in weakened form! - without barbarians or rogue's/stone throwers) could allow for more different warfare types in
the shorter matches, with pt's of 60 and less. There is no way a player could easily build a large army in early combat, because there simply isn't enough gold
to allow for that to happen.

However I do think, like caykroyd, it should be optional - even in it's weakened form. Because certain maps have enormous starting resources (including gold) and in such maps it would create for imbalance and with that low warfare diversity.

Positioning angles.
Yes I mean the angles with which one can position his troops. But no I did not try to say there should be more angles.
What I was trying to say was that it hardly influences combat right now, or at least not as much as I think it was intended
to.

For example take the battle tutorial.
The first time you are to engage archers (with militia this time) I get this message saying that I should attack
keeping in mind their respective angle in which they are positioned. Suggesting flanking or trying to attack the rear side,
would seriously lower my casaulties. Now when fighting an enemy computer this is true, but if I am battling with a human
opponent this isn't true at all.
The archers firing direction (being dictated by their positioning angle) can be changed in a mere second. With that I lose
80% of the advantage (taken that the archers had some melee in front - otherwise it'd be 100%) of maneuvering around against any human opponent.
Besides that the influence of positioning angles were next to zero - in any game without the positioning angles it would have had nearly the same effect.
This makes me assume:
1) That this was not the original vision of how the positioning angle would influence combat.
a) yes I am aware the battle tutorial is not from the original game developers.
2) It should be and was suppossed to be more exploited.

Fog of war.
If however the implemention of fog of war came with a change were units would mainly see in front of them, positioning angles would all the sudden
have more dranatic effect on combat and tactics.

You comparison Knights and Merchants with the Total war series on the fog of war.

Think of the Total War games. They would be very stupid if you could only see a small area around your solders, right?

I don't think one can comparison them on the point of fog of war - perhaps on other points, but not fog of war.
Because Total war does give you a way to hide your soldiers from the enemies view, though be it not fog of war.
In the total war series, when your units are behind hills, in woods, the enemy won't see the units on it's radar or
in it's view. Allowing you to sneak in from behind.

Since such a system probably can't be implented to Knights and Merchants, I think fog of war (with the sight mainly in front)
would do the job.

But if you're going to implement it as optional anyway, i don't really think there is any use in discussing fog of war itself.
The only important thing is how it should be functioning when chosen to play with fog of war if the things stated above are
true.

Now about the building a single archer backwards thingy - good point!
I'd have to think about it, but perhaps there is a way to solve such a thing.


Now let my close and side with Shadoea's point that the fact that multiplayer is working is awesome as it is already.
And emphasize that I by no means mean to critisize your work.
I am simply trying to help think of how KaM's potential could be fully unlocked!


@ batoonike
as I have so far only been trying to find another way to win a match than using crossbowmen in early combat, I haven't really got any experience on
making crossbowmen fast. (I do have quite some experience building militia and towers within 30 minutes however, but haven't been able to make it work against
the crossbowmen rush). Thus beating me in such a battle would only proof that I am no good with those kinds of warfare tactics. Rather i'd see a replay where you
beat someone who pro with the crossbowmen rush - that would proof your point I think.

However i sure would like playing a match against you;)
if you don't mind me building militia instead of crossbowmen xD