View Full Version : The thing I fear most about this game...
"You are afraid that several battels are due at the same time, on the other hand you are crying out for different realm collors, supply wagons, weather and so on to enhance the realism, but on the other hand you wanna be abel to command several battels that takes place at the same time."
In "real life", medieval battles did not last long. A couple of hours, a day, not long. In comparaison, Hiring and training troops, moving them across the country, marrying your daughter with a king's prince, etc could take several months. If you make a "realistic" game in real time, you have to make battle automatically done or they just take too much time in comparaison to all others events. It's not what the designers of this game decided.
They have (or had) a couple of options :
1. Freeze the time when a battle happens. It's perfectly possible. Especially since the campaign is single player only.
2.1 Make us fight only the first battle. Others battle are played by the ai. They can also decide to let the player decide if he wants leave their current battle to fight the new one instead.
2.2 Make us fight only the first battle. The game is artificially blocked so that no others battles involving you can occur while you are fighting.
3. Have the battles so quickly done that the chances of having this problem happens are very low.
4. Make us fight only the battles where the king is physically present on the battlefield.
If you can think of anything else, tell me about it.
Personally, I prefer the No 1. The No 4 is the most realistic option. But this would affect the "fun" factor way too much. You can have several armies in the entire europe and your king is only present at one place. If a decisive battle happens where my king is not, I would feel cheated to lose half of my kingdom because of the ai fighting for me.
From what I read about this game, I suspect the dev folk picked No 2.1. That's why I made this thread. No 1 make the game not pure real time as they claim it is. No 3 and 4 are too bad on the fun factor and by the screenshots, we can be certain that it is not what they decided. No 2.2 is too artificial, unrealistic. And it means that an enemy army can walk across your whole kingdom as long as he doesnt try to attack you.
For people complaining how what I want is irrealistic(fighting 2 battles at once and blablabla. Keep in mind that first of all, if the control over your troops was realistic, you would have very little control over the troops that are not with your king. I want the game environment as close as possible to the real medieval one. But the game control... it's another matter. Games where it is as if you were the man on the big chair, like Majesty(You have no direct control over your heroes) or Sim city(You have no direct control over your police, firefighter, what building is built exactly, etc) are great, but that's not how they planned KoH to be and it's just as great.
"You will have an option of having the knight fighting the battles for you or having you fight the battle."
Just curious, where did you get that? It sounds likely to me that when a battle begins, you have the option to take the control directly or let the ai do it for you, but I don't remember reading a confirmation anywhere.
Having a such option is great, afterall as someone said, I might not want to do every fights, but I would not want have to "Must use ai knight" to fight in my place just because I'm busy fighting another battle.
Richard Plantagenet
16-12-2003, 04:31
for realism, I would suggest fighting battles only when the king is present.
as people have pointed out earlier, its impossible for the king to be at 2 places at the same time, and hence we should not be able to fight 2 battles at the same time.
This restriction will place higher emphasis on the 'upbringing' and 'education' your knights receive, as they will be the determinant of battles which you cannot personally par take.
e.g Napoleon would never have sent in his heavey cavalry as Nay did. Richard III would have never placed the Stantley's as his reserve
about King are they play any role of batteles?
Are they concedered as knight or not??
greywulf
16-12-2003, 06:08
Once again I agree with vanedor. I want game control to be unrealistic in that I can control all battles taking place in my kingdom. I think that's a major thing that attracted me to a game like Medieval Total War, and while I would still buy this game even if I can't control all the battles, it would take a lot away from my fun.
I mean, most of what I've seen already about economics and resource gathering is unrealistic, along with town development and so on. There's not much point in making this game too realistic, otherwise we would have little to do.
Originally posted by vanedor
Just curious, where did you get that? It sounds likely to me that when a battle begins, you have the option to take the control directly or let the ai do it for you, but I don't remember reading a confirmation anywhere.
I could have sworn i heard the mods say that before. I spend like 1-2 hours reading every post releated to this supject and didn't find anything. btw when i say Knight fighting the battle for you i pretty much mean a.i. fighting the battle for you. I know i am not imagening this. i Just which the mods would anwser this thread.
:bash: :sad: ;( :( :scratch:
Originally posted by Cork2
I could have sworn i heard the mods say that before. I spend like 1-2 hours reading every post releated to this supject and didn't find anything. btw when i say Knight fighting the battle for you i pretty much mean a.i. fighting the battle for you. I know i am not imagening this. i Just which the mods would anwser this thread.
:bash: :sad: ;( :( :scratch:
Yeaaahh, i'll agree with you coz i also feel that this thread are beginnig to go out of our hands, so it would be nice if the devs would comment this thread before it's going to pieces with speculations.
I am all for one battle at the time, it makes game harder(which is always good ) and should offer some very interesting strategic choices.
Of course it depends how well developed the autoresolve feature will be, will it produce realistic results?
we're still getting nowhere with this thread.....devs where are yoooouuuuu :p - answer.....or we'll send out the dogs :D
greywulf
17-12-2003, 21:09
The auto resolve feature will always be horrible, and no amount of technological advance will help it until we are able to create AI programs that mimick humans. Auto resolve is based on numbers and variables, like unit strength, morale, and so on. It has none of the human characteristics, such as luck, ingenuity, experience and so on. If I take Medieval Total War as an example, my brother auto resolves every battle in that game, whereas I fight every single one. He just sends tons of guys and the computer resolves that he won, but when he plays me, I can almost always out fight, out maneuvre, and out wit him no matter how many guys he has, no matter what the computer's numbers say.
Auto resolve should be an option for those who like its braindead or realistic appeal, but for people who want a real challenge, we should be able to fight every battle.
The autoresolve feature just cannot be as good as the player.
If they make the autoresolve too good(by always artificially boosting the player's unit stats, for example), players will start using it at will instead of fighting battles. And since these are not fun, the game is going to lose lot of players. And the player lose the rewarding feeling of winning a battle outnumbered by using his brain to outwit the ai opponent.
If Age of Wonder 2, I rarely use the autoresolve feature. When I do, it's that I have a lone level 1 or 2 scout getting attacked by a hord of enemies outside of the zone I can cast spells to cause at least some significant damages to the attackers, even if my unit is doomed.
Although the devs haven't managed to reply and comment on this issue I think it would be safe to bet on that they are including an option fight the battles personally or have the computer do it for you ! but then again we may be dissapointed on this one afterall.
Angryminer
18-12-2003, 14:24
Greywulf:
"The auto resolve feature will always be horrible, and no amount of technological advance will help it until we are able to create AI programs that mimick humans."
Already done. That's easy.
Angryminer
greywulf
18-12-2003, 19:01
negative.
#1. Any AI programs that can mimick human behaviour so far in any way are expensive, generally reserved for research purposes, and involve too many processes to make their use practical on a home computer.
#2. Unlike the rest of the computer world, advances in AI over the past 20 years or so have been limited. Even algorithms based on neuro-computing (self learning) processes have not advanced as far as most people would have hoped.
#3. If you're talking about a game where, for example, I shoot at a guy and he ducks behind cover... well I've never played or heard of a game where you can't beat the AI. It can always be tricked because it is very limited. For example, you can generally tell when a guy is going to shoot at you, either because of the way he looks or acts. I have never ever seen a game where each encounter is different, where every guy reacts to a situation in their own "human" and therefore individual way. You shoot, he yells for help and starts shooting. They all do the same thing because of the limitations in AI.
Frank Fay
18-12-2003, 19:09
Okay here are some quick answers:
- You will have multiple battles
- You are sitting in a virtual throne and you cant be everywhere
- It is up to you to decide which battles are more important for you
- We have a lot of battles and lot of different type of battles. Some you will battle on your own, some are too unimportant
- You can say your Knight to lead a battle
- Battles lead by Knights are of course never the same result as by human
- One lost battle means not lost game or lost realm
- You can jump on world view between the battles to for instance:
a) order a retreat
b) reinforce
c) to assault after you sieged a while
...
greywulf
18-12-2003, 19:16
Sounds interesting Frank, thanks for the info! :D
Frank Fay
18-12-2003, 19:17
sorry that these answer is short ... the time you know :angel:
but we read :)
Angryminer
18-12-2003, 19:33
I want to make sure I understand that right:
Your kingdom is in war with two other kingdoms. One of your knights is waiting in the south, because your spy told you that there will be an attack soon.
In the east another knight sieges a town.
You zoom in to the siege. You change unit positions and prepare for the final assault. Shortly after you gave the attack-order there's a message "An enemy army is attacking from the south". You tell the knight in the east to take the lead for a while and command the knight in the south to attack the enemy there.
You zoom back to the siege and say to your knight "okay, I'm back" and command your units again (the unit positions have changed, because the AI-knight gave commands by himself). After a while there's a message "Battle near XYZ! Do you wish to take the lead?" You answer no and lead the assault while the knight in the south gives his best to hold the enemy off.
When the town is nearly yours you tell the knight "Finish him off, I have more important things to do" and look after your knight in the south. He did his best but the enemy nearly took all his men so you command the units in the near town to assist him, while he is still fighting. Then you jump in, tell the knight "Okay, I'm here, let me handle this" and command a retreat to reenforce your army...
etc.
etc.
Is that the way we are going to play?
Angryminer
Frank Fay
18-12-2003, 19:55
You zoom in to the siege. You change unit positions and prepare for the final assault.
No the siege happens only in world view and is like a siege was, camping in front of the castle letting no one in or out.
At one point you say "ASSAULT" or enemy decides to "BREAK OUT". You will be asked to in both cases if you want to lead or let the Knight leading the battle.
You tell the knight in the east to take the lead for a while and command the knight in the south to attack the enemy there
This will be different: You leave the battle (if you decided before that you wanted to lead) and jump to the south to battle this on our own. Also you could send reinforcements to the north before jumping to the south.
You zoom back to the siege and say to your knight "okay, I'm back" and command your units again (the unit positions have changed, because the AI-knight gave commands by himself).
Currently there are different solutions / ideas for that which we will have to test before deciding about the final solution. So I can not tell yes or no
After a while there's a message "Battle near XYZ! Do you wish to take the lead?" You answer no and lead the assault while the knight in the south gives his best to hold the enemy off.
Yes exactly.
When the town is nearly yours you tell the knight "Finish him off, I have more important things to do" and look after your knight in the south.
No you do not need to tell him that. Once you left, he "knows" his task, to win the battle. Some Knights fight til the end, some retreat when they think there is no chance to win.
He did his best but the enemy nearly took all his men so you command the units in the near town to assist him, while he is still fighting. Then you jump in, tell the knight "Okay, I'm here, let me handle this" and command a retreat to reenforce your army...
As said above, we will test different systems about returning to your battle.
But I think you got the main points :cool: about how the battles are managed. :cheers:
Angryminer
18-12-2003, 20:51
"Once you left, he "knows" his task, to win the battle."
Won't I be able to give a set of commands in close view, zoom out fast, give some commands to other knights and zoom back in without having the knight change anything to my plan?
As I understood you the knight will think "okay, the king's gone - now it's my turn", intead of "the king told me to command the units, so i guess i should do so - no matter if he's standing beside me and picking up flowers (or just watch the battle)"
All-in-all:
Will there be an option "hey Sir XYZ, please don't give any commands and leave everything the way it is" / "hey Sir XYZ, would you please command my units now?"?
Angryminer
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