Realism

[vyanvotts]

hey this game looks great, yet i was just wondering about the realism aspects...i know that some aspects of realism has to be left out for sakes of gameplay, but i was wondering how this will be done in KOH.

how will the damage for men in KOH be done? for instance will it be one arrow one kill.....or will it take a couple of arrows.

although stronghold was a great game i didnt like the way a knight could just keep walking after taking about 30 arrow hits.

also will each indavidual unit have hit bars? or will it be more like total war, where no units have hit bars and its kinda more realistic and random.

thanks for answers, and excuse my grammar please!

[@p0ph!$]

i hope that at lest no warrior can damage the walls, i dont like it if you can put down a big wall with a couple of soldiers

[Frujin]

Originally posted by vyanvotts
hey this game looks great, yet i was just wondering about the realism aspects...i know that some aspects of realism has to be left out for sakes of gameplay, but i was wondering how this will be done in KOH.


The realism, if used properly, can be real fun! Our aim is to recreate the special type of medieval aura one gets swirling around phrases like:
"... then they feasted for some time, burned the village to the ground and finally left ..."
or
"... the armies of the Duke chased them and slayed all whom they could catch..."
or
"... then he (The King) was forced to beg on his knees for peace ..."


how will the damage for men in KOH be done? for instance will it be one arrow one kill.....or will it take a couple of arrows.


You know, actually when arrow falls it doesn't look who's below. And usually kills. :dwink:


also will each indavidual unit have hit bars? or will it be more like total war, where no units have hit bars and its kinda more realistic and random.


I would say in KoH it is unique and very realistic, without sacrificing the fun. There is very detailed and informative "Battle System" feature in works, which will be published at offcial site really soon:

www.knights-of-honor.net

You'd be surprised of what we did to make the battles really "Medieval-ish" :)

[Overdose]

Frujin that sounds really promising :D Cant wait for the game :D

[Siegebreaker]

Ok, so we can safely say that the only way to bring down a wall is to use siege equipment, right?

That's awesome!

I couldn't stand those spearmen in Stronghold hacking down the walls. :(

[vyanvotts]

lol the spearman hacking down a fortified wall, was quite annoying but very funny.

pesky spearman

[Carcassone]

At least they did hear the gaming communities pleas of "strong walls" i.e. you could enable in mulitplayer or skirmish mode that walls had to be taken down via siege weapons.

Had anyone played a strong wall multiplayer game where the no-rush was engaged? I read that one guy had a 6 hour game that was mutually agreed as a tie. If you had enough farm land and a quarry, battles would last for hours.

[Kevin]

Originally posted by vyanvotts
and excuse my grammar please!

Don't be shamed.:D ;) :p

[Frujin]

Please, think a bit. In other games you do not play "siege". You actually play "castle assault". Siege is military act, intended to cut off supplies (mainly water) to the besieged town and possibly to starve out the defenders. In KoH we have both 'siege' and 'castle assault'. These two are very different thingies ;)

[Overdose]

Originally posted by Frujin
Please, think a bit. In other games you do not play "siege". You actually play "castle assault". Siege is military act, intended to cut off supplies (mainly water) to the besieged town and possibly to starve out the defenders. In KoH we have both 'siege' and 'castle assault'. These two are very different thingies ;)

wow this will rock !! Starv them to death !! moahahaahhaha :cheers:

[vyanvotts]

never really though about that.....but it does give me some good ideas...

[Greeny]

Yes, starve them....starve them so they have to eat the rotting flesh of there fallen comrades. :D

[vyanvotts]

is there somthing where if you commit to many bad things like starving people ect, your people will not like you and maybe rebel?

[Frank Fay]

Here comes the loyalty of your Knights in place and also it affects diplomacy. Other Kings might be scared when you try to threat them. Others who are as cruel as you are, may try to consider you as an possible enemy.

[Kevin]

Originally posted by Frank Fay
Here comes the loyalty of your Knights in place and also it affects diplomacy. Other Kings might be scared when you try to threat them. Others who are as cruel as you are, may try to consider you as an possible enemy.

Can you give an example? Like you have high taxes and then the loyalty drops? Or what is it then?

[Frank Fay]

Taxes, hunger etc. affect the population's happiness. Cruelty in war affects Knight's loyalty. But both can lead to rebelions.

Unfortunately I cant get too specific as we want to reveal more later.

[Gordook]

I don't mean to complicate the game here, but I wanted to mention some realism that faced fuedal society. The main commodity in fuedal times were peasants. The peasants worked the land and manned the battlefields, but before a couple of improvements in society, ie new plows and a change in diet, there wasn't much of a surplus of peasants, hence the reason you didn't have cities and town sprouting all over the landscape. Once the population started growing beans as the primary crop, you started having healthier people therefore MORE peasants, plus the improvement in plows meant it took less peasants to work the land. That is when you started seeing standing armies, cities and the rise of the middle class, but that is also when you saw the fall of the fuedal system and that was beyond the timeline of this game.

I hope you enjoyed the history class, now here is my point. There were not any standing armies in the fuedal system. A king granted a noble his lands and in return, that noble was obligated to serve the kings for a set period of time each year. A bit like our reserve service today. The noble would serve or send in knights to serve in his place. This would consist of guard duty at the kings court or such. In time of war, the king would call upon his nobles and raise an army. Depending on the loyalty of the nobles would determine the size of the army raised. Once the war was over, the nobles and peasants would return home to work the land. The king would grant new lands to minor nobles and knights.

Another factor, and this is my last point, was that the fuedal system was NOT centralized. The king's power was only as strong his nobles who ruled the actual territories. The further away a territory was from the king's court, the less power he wielded in that territory.

One game that represented this and may be a good model was Medieval Lords, Soldier Kings of Europe, 1991 by SSI.

That was my two pence. Anyone can build massive armies and steam-roll over their enemies, but then you have just another RTS 'strategy' game.

[Frank Fay]

Anyone can build massive armies and steam-roll over their enemies, but then you have just another RTS 'strategy' game.

Not so in KoH. The economy is defining the maximum size of your army, besides some other factors. Also the resource system is different than in any other RTS game, means you wont be able to collect, collect ..... collect your resources and build then a large army. The army costs an upkeep here....but more again later....:angel:

[Kevin]

Originally posted by Frank Fay
Taxes, hunger etc. affect the population's happiness. Cruelty in war affects Knight's loyalty. But both can lead to rebelions.

That's all I wanted to know. Thanks.:)

[Pioneer]

Gordook,

Soldiering was a profession. Where anything beyond castle defence or some form of police action soldiers were hired or carefully recruited from town militia or rural levies and given training - a select levy. 'Feudal host' - summoning a lord's men for battle - and similar terms are more found in history books than in the records of the time. A fief was a legal term not something related to the recruiting of men. Where men were summoned it was a fairly small levy of men - King Harold's fyrd for instance or the soldier farmers of Alfred the Great or Henry the Fowler - who had the equipment and training to fight as soldiers. If a simple peasant levy was used the consequences could be fairly catastrophic as happened when some men of the Rhineland were arrayed from the estates of the region to face the Norsemen. Abbot Regino of Prum writing in 882 states that 'they did not seem to be slaying men but dumb animals.' Feudal service of knights or peasants had little to do with warfare. Skills were needed that few peasants worn down by servile labour could ever have. The levying of men could perhaps be seen as a primitive precursor of conscription in the modern era.

Levying troops was something that largely disappeared by the later middle ages. Professionals paid for their service or let lose to rob and loot if funds were short became the norm.

What this meant is that the large levies that the Carolingians - 20,000 or more - or Anglo-Saxons might have raised comprising soldier farmers or even the large forces that a powerful late medieval ruler like Philip VI - 100,000 - actually gave way to smaller armies of paid men. But even those older levies were somewhat more than frightened peasants conscripted or summoned. Would sappers digging a mine under fire or pikemen in a tightly packed body of men awaiting a charge by a mounted opponent have survived for any length if they were simple peasants? Militia who manned a town wall or soldiers levied for war were carefully selected and trained.