About the different views

[Huwie]

Since the local realms will be managed by the knights, and I gather most of our own decision-making will be made on the Europe map, about how much time will be spent in each view? How necessary will the close-up view be?

[Frank Fay]

The World View represents the strategical layer of the game, while the Close View the tactical.

How often you will use Close View depends actually on your personal preference. You can play the entire game with never going to Close View. However, if you want to upgrade your castle, see your villagers performing their daily duties or you want to lead battles then you do this in Close View.

[Mesh]

So the player can do as much micromanagment as he/she thinks is appropriate, and the computer handles the rest?

Of course I don't know the details and I don't intend any criticism, but didn't MoO3 try to do something similiar?

[Moorkh]

*warning: overlong post*

Yes, MOO3 tried something similar. Still, I don't think this was where that game ultimately failed. It's rather a matter of balance.
Micromanagement should offer the player an extra something that might just make the differnce in a difficult situation. It should not be required work for the player deciding overall victory or defeat. Take Medieval, for example. That game could be won without fighting a single battle yourself. Of course, you could have fought every battle and gained a distinct advantage from it, but at some point it would always become repetitive, taking too much time away from actually progressing in the game.
MOO3 tries to offer the same in every aspect of the game, the AI making decisions wherever the player wouldn't. Even on a strategic level. As a result, you could actally win the game (if you were lucky) by just pressing the 'end turn' button often enough, without doing anything yourself. :) Boring to most of us, granted, but not necessarily a problem. I agree that it should be the player's actions that should decide between victory or defeat in a game, but you have to consider that MOO3 played on a random map, where starting positions could be very decisive.

Where MOO3 did go wrong, and where I am confident that KoH will do better, is that not only was the AI very much faulty and made idiotic decisions both regarding micro- and macromanagement, leaving the serious player with exactly the huge amount of micromanagement it should have spared him. In fact, the designers counted so much on their AI taking over the burden that they felt safe to allow player control down to a level that no player could possibly find fun if left to do it all by himself!
What made it even worse was that they failed to offer either a decent interface or at the very least a working tutorial that made it clear to the player what he actually had to do.

My hopes are that Black Sea studios have gotten all the right lessons from MOO3. AI governors are a really neat thing in any strategy game. No great general ever fought without his lieutenants, and every player should be able to decide just which roles he wants to take over. However, he has to know exactly what it is they're doing and they have to be worthy of his trust - i.e. not buggy.

[Mesh]

Originally posted by Moorkh
*warning: overlong post*


Very informative (is that euphemism :) ) post. I haven't played MoO 3 myself but the chief complaint I heard from a friend are the graphics. Although he mostly plays shooters, and as a great man once said: "It's Strategy, why do you want graphics?"

[BINGFA]

How can one player be thousands of units at the same time.... the Art of RTS game design.

[Huwie]

I thought that the AI governors in Civ/Alpha Centauri were implemented rather well. Although, granted, they only ran cities and did nothing else. Useful though.

[Lord Sandman]

When during the play takes places many battles it will be possible to jump between the battles? Or maybye like in Imperium Galactica or Star Wars: Rebellion the time in Worlds View will stop and we can lead all of battles in turn?

And what with many battles, when the time does not stop? What with possibility to jump between the battles? When we left one of them, can we back to it lately?

And one of most important ones: Will the time is slowing in Close View, when we lead the battle and time in World View also is slowing to speed of Close View?
I hope that one battle doesn't to last an week:confused:

[Kevin]

Originally posted by Frank Fay
The World View represents the strategical layer of the game, while the Close View the tactical.

How often you will use Close View depends actually on your personal preference. You can play the entire game with never going to Close View. However, if you want to upgrade your castle, see your villagers performing their daily duties or you want to lead battles then you do this in Close View.

Nice! This is all great news we are getting.