it's the little things that make great games

[ldepointe]

well hello to the sunflower team...i am a great fan of rts games...and throughout the years i can say that i made a list

with "must be included in a game ideas"....i'll be brief and i am looking forward on comments about my requests...
1.the game must have an realistic day night cycle with dusk, dawn...and of course anyone knows that a battle was

not fought continuously untill all of the soldiers were dead...at night the soldiers were retreating to camps...trating

injuries..raids were done then....getting reinforcements...to have a game where a battle lasts untill all units are dead

would be stupid and not real.a siege and a battle often lasted more than weeks. remember saguntus? the siege lasted

8 months..troia 21 years...and the battles....the battle of catalunian fields lasted 2 weeks....and so on.
2.something that i must disapprove is the burning of the siege equipments...it is quite stupid not being able to burn a

siege tower...i mean it is not at all realistical!!!!!!c'mon.....who are you kidding?????
3.a must have is the leaders and the flag carriers. the flag carrier at least was the main morale motivator of a battle.

entire battles have been lost because in one flank the flag carrier was killed and no one could pick up from the dirt the

flag! i mean is the motivation for those soldiers....a deffinetly must have!!!!
and the leaders for the army groups to shout orders...no ordinary soldier knew what to do what position to take if no

one told him.
4.the pillage village option is a must have.and i am not talking about the world view!!!!!villlages and entire craft fields

were burned down beacuse the armies often relied on villages for refilling their supplies.
i think it is enough for now :) i'll get back as soon as u post more news about the game. best wishes

[Bagpipe]

Hi, Idepointe.
I'm also a great RTS fan from the times of AoE. So, colleagues. :bday:
I agree flags look very nice (look at American Conquest) and makes clear distinction of nations in battlefield. But in KoH flagbearers aren't so essential, coz it's medieval game with ~150 different realms and nobody could make so many unique banners. I only hope to have at least unique-coloured flags.

But I have doubts abaut day-night circle. Wouldn't it cause too much complexity in time counting?

[Nike]

I also hope that flags will be included. And that you can capture enemy flags, too.

[ldepointe]

hello to you bagpipe and nike. i don't agree with the banners of the flags...i mean it is not a difficult thing..and if they wanna make a realistic real time strategy game...well i must say that i have missed the flags and their importance in a whole lot of great titles...now...for the day-night cycle..look at "against rome" a great title wich has it very well implemented but..what i mean is that an invading army would enter a realm....go to a strategic place...supporting on the way many raids and ambushes..but once arrived they would set a camp....with palisades and then they would keep reinforcements in there...medci tents and they would offer the fight to the enemy army who is supposed to have the same camps, somwhere between. this is realism! at night time they would be also engaged in some minor fights..but the main armies would be back in tentes...no soldier could fight for more than let's say 4-5 hours for they would be exhausted...and they would retreat in the camp and send the reinforcements..also u can keep that point until u gain more reinforcements...u cuold let a siege untill all resources from the main city are done and then u could win more easily if the raids against your armies would have let u with enough soldiers and if u have enough supplies. u could raid towns with the reserves for more food and so on.also there must be the possibility that cavalry in a wing formation that charges a flanc with poor morale troops can brake through them and arrive somwhere behind. it is not realistic to have them attack in a charge and stop to that group and start fighting. in real combat they could braake flanks and arrive somwhere behind...that was the purpose....anmd commanders is a must have! just for the accuracy...hearing them giving a formation order let's say and the soldiers repeating...almost like in caesar3 not having each group an annoing sound like..yes sire..ok sire...it is stupid i think it would make a lot of a difference...
i must come back again with the burning siege equipment...wich must be burned!!!!!!it is accurate...i don't need to capture a siege equipment in a siege against my castle but i must destroy it!!!!making raids at night in camps and burning down their trebouchets...o don;t care how difficult it is to implement...they should care about our needs as gamers to make a great game not to release it sooner and to have reviews saying..yeah nice but similar to the..and the...games nothing new!think at this. i wanna play a revolutionary game not a clone. wouldn't u agree?

[Elewyn]

Revolitions mostly causes some anti-revolution. I wanna say when you implement all the things you mentioned, the game will become unplayable.

Flag/banner-bearer f.e. I must agree that having this unit will be damn good and realistic, but it needs inteligent soldiers to defend him in the middle of formation. I liked system of Knights and mechnts where every formaton-squad has it's own flag-bearer and after hi was killed, another one replaced him untill there was only one and died. It runs automaticly and this FB was first man leading the squad. Maybe it's better to have him in the middle of formation or frobably in front core of squad. When he dies, morale of squad disgrease and you have to do something to replace him. So the squad will be still one squad, but without a leader, you have to click on it and "make new leader" and morale increase again when soldiers see the flag. But it depends on testing, how will this work. Imagine, you lead your army to a battle, having 3 squads of pikemen, 2 of archers and 2 knight-cavalry squads.
You lead your "knights" against enemy infantry, but their archers kill both your captains(flagbearers). Simultaniously your archers are under back-attack of enemy horse archers and you also losts both archer-captains. Then 4your squads ar in disorder and you must "name" new leaders to them. But, to be realistic, does army leader do that? No. Formation created it's own natural leader then, the most curageous one to carry the banner without marshall orders. So the way of "automatic" remaking of leaders should work better, because if not, it's better for you then to let AI knight to lead your army instead of you. Don't ya think? And I don't wanna play a game where is better to leave it to AI, but totally realistic.
Remember PLAYABILITY!!!

I agree with you and burning siege equipment. And I hope Frank and Frujin are going to change it.

To day/night cycle. This game includes it, just see official site. I don't know how does it work, but devs said sth like you can't march for whole day and night, because if yes, army morale drops down, what means it's tired and don't wanna follow you any more. So they need rest, so camping. Frank also promissed battles won't last very long, so I guess battle wont last 2days and night. Probably when one army has some remarkable loses, it's better to pull back (or retreat), renew it's strength (do something to increase the morale, get reinforcements, reorganize your troops) and engage the battle again after some time if the enemy is near still.

[ldepointe]

it is not so...the remaining units must automaticly pick up the flag and continue...a problem will be with the capture of the flag by enemy forces...and about battles....they should last long!!!! i mean the diplomacy of the game isn't going to be revolutionary we all know that...the ai isn't at that stage of development...instead they should focus on having ebassies and controlling the informations that pass through there...giving fake info to states...being able to make them fight each other with fake info of attack...that depending on bribes of high council members...being able to bribe villages members to find out how much supplies are being sent to the cities and stuff like that. in all games the diplomacy sticks to the pc having no problem assasinating your leaders and finding out where and when u are going to attack and u failing on killing their leaders(wich by the way is not realted in anything with the real espionage)and when u have enough problems and u are not able to have a military force large enough to protect yuor provinces they all atack! i am afraid of this for it is not real at all....they should focus on crating fake informations, collecting informations and making people exchange...i mean their villages having loyal to me people working in there...spies and also on bribing and motivating yuor spies with money...and why not their spies??? counterspying...
now...there should be more than a way to end a battle must have a white flag carrier wich is a non attackable unit that negociates the terms of ending a siege. it is more than enough for me to capture a province and let them rule like they did but paying a fee and letting a fort be built..and in time i'll assimilate it by their own will after enough of my troops have made enough contribution to their people:P i mean babies. battles must be long! it is no other way than being long an invading army isn't invading for just one 3 hours long battle an then bingo! the province is mine..this is kindda not real
i have a few more ideas but i'll tell them later

[Lamaz]

Too many details can also make the game too hard to play but it requires huge number of details :p

[ldepointe]

i am very very surprised...so what? it can be done! there are a few titles that have some of this things and are not impossible to play or requesting high-tech computers...u want to play something that is nice....a clone or do you want to play a revolution?. and the details i mentioned do not make the game unplayable i must remind you that these are only a few of the problems a real comander dealt with? i really don't understand u people....

[ArmosaDrako]

Humm...this topic is way too serious...check this out...

My comic strip of KOH... (http://home.cogeco.ca/~gdaoust1/kohcomic.html)

[Angryminer]

If you defeat the enemy army you still don't have any control over the current province you are in...
You can then begin to besiege the town or assault it (or just walk on). And if your management was right the enemy-town will surrender either after some months (siege) or the next day (assault).
The duration of a siege is influenced by the food-reserves in the town.

And you can surely fight longer battles than just some hours (ingame). But that requires a "retreat" so your troops can set up a camp in a safer place than the battlefield (...just as you described).
Of course you can always send in your troops until one side has won...

And I don't care about flaming siege-towers. It's really not that important if I see a pile of ashes or some planks lying on the ground... As long as I can destroy them I'm fine.
BTW: Siegetowers would loose their advantage if you could incarnate them with one salvo of fire-arrows.

Oh, and it's a real nice idea to include military outposts in peace-treaties. That would force your enemy to build outposts for you where you can place some of your troops and from where you can keep track of the enemy's troop-movements.

Angryminer

[Bora]

i must say the flag idea is not bad, but i have experience with that in the game american conquest. the flag carrier and the drumplayer died so often that i decided in many missions to do it without them. it was just boring to have to build these guys in big massproduktion cause to have an accurat looking army.

also the formation thing didnt really braught fun. it was a similar system to knights and merchants, menas you build the man by man and put them yourself in formation. but when they retreatet, they got seperatet and you have to search them all over the map,... really boring. in K&M it worked better, as i see on the pics of KoH it also will work better in this game!
it also makes not fun to make formations when the enemy doesnt do it. so the fight rifle to rifle, like you see it in the movie "the patriot" doenst ever happen in a game playervscpu, cuase the cpu simply puts out his soldiers and attacks unformatet.
dont know if i needed a pacth, but thats the trueth it happened all the time.

next thing the day and night change. its in KoH ofr 2 reasons
1. it looks awsome and bring much flair to the game
2. you have the chace to surprsie your enemy with a attack by night

i agree to elewyn, if you include all the features that idepoint describes, the game could be unplayable, and to not forget, it takes tine to inegrate and test it. and the game should be released in about 3 month and i like to play it THIS year :)

i also take back bigger ideas of mine and wait for the demo. then i see if my ideas would fit. then i post here again. :)

[ldepointe]

well i must say that everytime i play a new game i wish i had an game creating studio and i am sure i could make something never seen before and also not as hard as most people think to play. anyway there are so many things that i wish to be possible in this game that probably it would mean making it from scrap:P.well now i want to insist on the cavalry running through enemy low morale lines and actually braking them and passing in an iresistible charge getting to the rear of some troups. it is stupid to see that in other games though u put them in wing formation and u give them the order to go behind some flank or some group it stops and engages them.cavalry were the tanks in medieval warfare!they would brake a line.remember the blitzkrieg strategy?(i don't mean the game).in there panzers would pass through enemy lines like butter and attack them from behind in some points. i really should pay attention to this. any more ideas about little things that would make this game a great game?

[Rnett]

Originally posted by ArmosaDrako
Humm...this topic is way too serious...check this out...

My comic strip of KOH... (http://home.cogeco.ca/~gdaoust1/kohcomic.html)
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: That is great work!!! Keep it up, I look forward to the next edition.:go: :hello:

[ArmosaDrako]

Thanks :D

[Bora]

Originally posted by ArmosaDrako
Thanks :D

i like that comic too :D