View Full Version : KoH2 ideas
Maybe it's crazy to be so optimistic, but let us play this game. However, we should understand that there's not much of a chance to witness The Secong Coming in the nearest years to come. So, it's no use making up every little detail. Also, there's no point suggesting things that can be done in a mod.
What made me starting this thread is some thoughts on the knight system.
1.
A feudal knight's supposed to have a feud, a fief, his own little state. I think it can be implemended. We can (well, the BSS guys can, anyways) split the knight slots into two categories. Let us call it "Royal Court knights" and "Kingdom knights". "Royal Court knights" must be the same as now, but the number of slots should be drastically reduced. Down to four or even three, maybe. It's purpose is letting the smaller, one province kingdoms still have some knights.
The rest of the knight slots should be "Kingdom knights". Each knight there must be provided not only with pay in gold, but also with a whole province to own and rule. So the kingdom won't be recieving any taxes, books, piety or goods from this province anymore. I think, there can be as many "Kingdom" knights as a player wants, but - having too many knights will inevitably weaken the kingdom.
There are many ways to enreach the gameplay with this fief system. Knights (AI) can build buildings according to their own tastes (marshals can build military buildings, clerics - churches and libriaries, merchants - goods etc.). Knights can develop affection towards their land and rebel or declare independence if you try to give them another province instead of the old one. Or they can rebel if you try to give them a province, that doesn't suit their tastes (give a cleric a city with no church and no free slots - and he leaves you).
Some knights - I'm thinking of marshals - may require more than one province to own. Or they can demand more when they gain experience. Et cetera, et cetera.
2.
Immortal knights bug me. I think it worth making them _families_, rather then persons. Experience can be transferred from father to son, so why not let them die and leave their offspring to take their place - maybe with some exp. penalty, but not too big. No need for tracing down their marital status or arranging marriages, just make it simple. It's still artificial, of cource, but it's better than having a bunch of immortals while the kings are passing away on a regular basis.
(NB. I'm not sure it cannot be done in a mod or a patch. If it can be done - it should be done.)
3.
There's a number of other things I'd like to see in the sequel, but I didn't put that much thoughts into them. I'd like to see a random map generator, but it's sure a big work for the developers, so I don't even hope.
And I'd like to see the Armenian church to be Monophysite, as it's supposed to be. Also, the possibility of an Uniate Church would be nice. (I know it's outside of the KoH time period, it's just about the possibility.) But I have no ideas for in-game religion mechanics.
So, what do you think? Is it all nothing but sleep deprivation driven nonsense? :)
You don't want multiplayer on Europe map?! :) I can't believe :)
anguille
6 Sep 2007, 14:37
Great Idea!
i'll just post one of my wishes...i would like to have also, apart from the Europe map, very specific regional maps with more details (mountains, passes, rivers etc) like:
- England/Scotland/Ireland
- France
- Switzerland
- Italy/Sicily
- Bulgaria of course ;)
- etc...
Either per se or within a specific historical situation.
And on this maps, we should be able to place castles (not like stonghold where you build everything) on specific places (strategic positions)where they have an area of influence. The form and strength of the castle would depend of the money invested. Area of influence: if an enemy army wants to go further, it has to take/destroy the castle.
2 types of strategic positions i see so far:
- Hills with long view (larger area of influence)
- Narrow places
Ok that's a first bunch of Ideas...
You don't want multiplayer on Europe map?! :) I can't believe :)
Well I'm sorry, I'm not much of a multiplaying person and I simply didn't thought about it. (A multiplying person? ;)) ) So yes, I don't really want it. But I don't prohibit people to share ideas on it, you see. At least, I hope there will be some workable gameplay ideas, not a mere wishlist of cool features to have in the game. Like a desired mappack or something. It's too early to actually wish anything anyways.
And on this maps, we should be able to place castles (not like stonghold where you build everything) on specific places (strategic positions)where they have an area of influence. The form and strength of the castle would depend of the money invested. Area of influence: if an enemy army wants to go further, it has to take/destroy the castle.
2 types of strategic positions i see so far:
- Hills with long view (larger area of influence)
- Narrow places
This Zone-Of-Control thing looks a little too wargame-like to me. Maybe it worth making fortified camp-like fortesses instead, so they can fire at passing enemy armies and damage them heavily, way stronger then a fortified camp does.
Sultan Osman I
6 Sep 2007, 22:22
It shouldn´t only be Europe to be conquered, maybe Europe and a little bit more of Asia.
Or maybe some parts of Europe where much wars were. I think about Missions in Jerusalem(Crusades), Turkey( in the near of Konya or somewhere else in Turkey( third Crusade)), Balkan(Otomans), Normandy(England against France) ans some other places. I don´t really want 3D Graphics, 2D is ok aslong the game is very good. And mybe more time periods like 900-1000, 1000-1100, 1100-1200,1200-1300 and 1300-1400. It isn´t important if is 2 or 4 Gb big, I want very historically and good game.:D ;)
More of North Africa, And lots more of Asia, if possible even stretch to Mongolia to re-enact the Mongol/Tatar invasion, Silk Road, Umayyed invasion of Central Asia etc.
When a war of succession breaks out and your country breaks in two, you should be able to side with one side (Two princes dividing the land to become king), one would be seperatists and the other loyalists (To the crown prince).
Multiplayer.
More religions, Judaism, Shiite, specific Pagan branches etc.
Re-enactment of the Viking raids of the British Isles.
More provinces, more kingdoms etc.
Expanded Royal Court, more knight slots, different knight types to do several tasks in towns and foreign relations (Ambassidor improves relations, knights to improve morale, give towns the ability to fight rebels in the region without asking a marshall etc.)
Emphasis on the Fuedal system, the ability to manage the different ranks of the people (Serfs at the bottom, then merchants, knights, lords etc.)
Religious conversions should be easier, crushing an opponent should give you the ability to force them to convert.
Expanded Diplomacy, more options to intimidate foreign kingdoms, ask for vassalising etc.
Inhertiance could sometimes just improve relations and make the country a vassal.
The ability to annex vassals at will if you are larger, stronger, good relations, royal marriage etc.
Releasing vassals or resseructing countries that have been eliminated.
Naval combat, Different ships could be built for fighting on sea, with pirates, privateers etc. being at large until you gain control of huge coastal areas that would starve the pirates from raids they would normally do.
anguille
7 Sep 2007, 12:07
This Zone-Of-Control thing looks a little too wargame-like to me. Maybe it worth making fortified camp-like fortesses instead, so they can fire at passing enemy armies and damage them heavily, way stronger then a fortified camp does.
That would do for me as well. ;)
I know i am dreaming but it would be great to have an Asian side of the game (Japan, China, India, Mongols)
I have three main wishes:
1. Sub-provinces - let's say there's the province of Thrace with its seat at Constantinople. You go and take Constantinople and whole Thrace is yours, as it is now. But if the province of Thrace includes not only the main city of Constantinople, but also f.e. Adrianople, Tsurulon etc., you can go and take these cities, thus chopping off Thrace bit by bit, without having to assault the Great City's walls. I.e. there's the province's city (Constantinople) and the province's towns or forts (Adrianople, Tsurulon etc.), which can be taken separately (a bit similar to the battles themselves - you can try to directly chop the head of the enemy marshal or to beat his units first and then deal with him).
2. Population's cutlure - IIRC, there was something like that in the Paradox games - the province of Hellas is with this and that percentage of Greeks (mostly), the province of Turnovo is with this and that percentage of Bulgarians etc, which would also mean that in the province of Turnovo you could hire Bulgarians (Bulgarian units), in Hellas - Greek units etc. After all, it's quite ridiculous to hire Vikings from Turnovo or Mameluks from York (unless you've somehow "assimilated" those provinces, which would also be a nice idea).
3. Climate - connected with the above point's idea for origin of troops - i.e. Vikings, born in Sweden, going all the way to Sahara and fighting there as if they're born as Africans (i.e. no penalty) doesn't make much sense. But if f.e. they've conquered warmer regions (f.e. Central Europe) and from there they hire troops, which conquer even warmer regions, then hire more and conquer more and so on, then it would make more sense. But if the Norse Vikings directly go to fight in Sahara, then they should also expect all kinds of diseases appearing among them (or at least fighting ability to be greatly decreased, especially if they're heavily-armoured troops).
P.S. If it hasn't been re-mentioned here (I remember it was in the old SF forum) - enhanced diplomacy (f.e. not only the option to force somebody to start a war, but also to stop a war (against your vassal f.e.)) and "local marshals" (to help deal with rebels, but at the expense of some autonomy (but not complete, as maks` idea - after all, the king still received taxes from those lands)).
That would do for me as well. ;)
I know i am dreaming but it would be great to have an Asian side of the game (Japan, China, India, Mongols)
This is something that was similar to my suggestion to include Eurasia as a whole, that would be nice.
And some Artic too?
I can't believe they don't put Islandia (that's they spell it right?)
And maybe the map can be streched to North Vikings area
And some Artic too?
I can't believe they don't put Islandia (that's they spell it right?)
And maybe the map can be streched to North Vikings area
You mean Iceland?
And some Artic too?
I can't believe they don't put Islandia (that's they spell it right?)
And maybe the map can be streched to North Vikings area
In the medieval ages the arctic had almost no importance at all, so what would be the use of adding an enormous area of water in the game just to put in some very far and useless areas?
In the medieval ages the arctic had almost no importance at all, so what would be the use of adding an enormous area of water in the game just to put in some very far and useless areas?
I think he means Greenland, Iceland and possibly Northern Canada which were conquested by the Vikings in the early Middle Ages.
I strongly recommend a 3Dized KOH2 after Worrldshift makes a hit (maybe engine availabe? don't kow how), if not completely so at learst semi-3D. With the current battle scale of KOH, I suppose it is possible.
And I don't mind AIs in KOH2 cheat, the more the better. I acutually welcome it if they do.
I think he means Greenland, Iceland and possibly Northern Canada which were conquested by the Vikings in the early Middle Ages.
yes that!
And some inuit too
I will only repeat my main singleplayer wishes:
1. the AI has to act rationaly, it should be equal or in some cases even better than player what IMO is possible, it's expansion shuld follow some goals which could easily be set up, but they should depend on more parametres (so it would not be so easy for the player to forsee AI strategy
2. military victory should be on a same level with other types of victory. How to achieve it? to have more spheres where player is scored (not only number of provinces, gold in treasury etc.) - military advantages may disable achieviing diplomatic or religious scores. That means - "total conquest" could bring you victory with lower total score than f.i total economic or diplomatic (or other) victory
KoH is the first game I know where resources are not only to serve warfare. Deepen it and get closer to reality: subordinate warfate ot other goals - make it just one of tools to get one of advantages that can lead to final victory. Make collecting resources much harder than conquering a province. Make some "resources" that cannot be achieved through military expansion.
3. Population and food should play much more important role, they should not be there only to serve as recruits for soldiers: lack of food or bad province governance should cause emigration and economic collapse. Particulary in this case the AI should be better than a player, as the player doesn't have time always to be everywhere and check everything.
Give player possibility to delegate his power to local rulers (AI beneficiary governors of player's lands) and this way make his lands flourish and concentrate on diplomacy, warfare, technologies or religion
4. I think it is not necessary to repeat my wish for multiplayer on the map or at least on regional maps, as well as extension of the map at least to Persia and Arabia (Iceland and lands west of it were so unimportant for European medieval history that I'd prefere them not to be included)
5. provinces shold remain a basic tool for governance but should be much more flexible like in reality - large empire should have choice either to merge them in larger ones (and if a city is lost a new province (re)appears) or delegate the government to it's vasals or feudal governors
6. much wider and deeper diplomacy. Vasalage should be a true tie, as well as kinship..
and many many more ideas I have but I think it's useless to voice them now...
I think he means Greenland, Iceland and possibly Northern Canada which were conquested by the Vikings in the early Middle Ages.
Yes and so do I. Vikings didn't have much control over those areas and it was quite isolated from other Europe.
Yes and so do I. Vikings didn't have much control over those areas and it was quite isolated from other Europe.
Very true, I think Iceland and Faroe islands are the closest to Europe and if they play a role in the game, it would be very insignicant.
I will only repeat my main singleplayer wishes:
1. the AI has to act rationaly, it should be equal or in some cases even better than player what IMO is possible, it's expansion shuld follow some goals which could easily be set up, but they should depend on more parametres (so it would not be so easy for the player to forsee AI strategy
2. military victory should be on a same level with other types of victory. How to achieve it? to have more spheres where player is scored (not only number of provinces, gold in treasury etc.) - military advantages may disable achieviing diplomatic or religious scores. That means - "total conquest" could bring you victory with lower total score than f.i total economic or diplomatic (or other) victory
KoH is the first game I know where resources are not only to serve warfare. Deepen it and get closer to reality: subordinate warfate ot other goals - make it just one of tools to get one of advantages that can lead to final victory. Make collecting resources much harder than conquering a province. Make some "resources" that cannot be achieved through military expansion.
3. Population and food should play much more important role, they should not be there only to serve as recruits for soldiers: lack of food or bad province governance should cause emigration and economic collapse. Particulary in this case the AI should be better than a player, as the player doesn't have time always to be everywhere and check everything.
Give player possibility to delegate his power to local rulers (AI beneficiary governors of player's lands) and this way make his lands flourish and concentrate on diplomacy, warfare, technologies or religion
5. provinces shold remain a basic tool for governance but should be much more flexible like in reality - large empire should have choice either to merge them in larger ones (and if a city is lost a new province (re)appears) or delegate the government to it's vasals or feudal governors
6. much wider and deeper diplomacy. Vasalage should be a true tie, as well as kinship..
I really like these ideas, although i can see that some of them are extremely hard to utilise in the game as we know it now. I'd like to specifically support the thoughts on resourses in "2." and on population in "3."
firepowerjohan
13 Sep 2007, 13:54
Firstly, I would like to say this game is the best game of its kind. Like Lord of the Realms III, this game focus is easy going gameplay instead of micromanagements. KoH reminds me greatly of Lord of the Realms III :)
1) Game speed options needed. If the current is 100% I would like one 200% and one 300% option
2) Zoom levels on campaign map. If the current is 100% I would like at leist a 50% zoom level because the map is huge in this game :)
3) Bad harvest, plague and other local or global events should occur. Food has to become more important in game, as of now having many farms instead of monasteries or villages just hamper you. Maybe the population capacity should be affected much more by the number of food produced per turn
4) Randomized startup needs to be made less random because it affects the diffculty too greatly. The problem is great for countries that start with just 2 cities.
i) The natural resources alocation should even out per nation so that with 2 cities you do not get 2 first time and then 5 second time, affects the difficulty too much. Formula could be (1+numtowns) plus a random factor that adds 0, 1 or 2 extra resources for the country.
So, with a 2 town startup this would mean 1+2=3 resources as minimum and then with maximum luck you get +2 on the random factor so get 5 resources spread randomly on your 2 cities.
With a 5 city country it would mean 1+5=6 is minimum and means 6-8 resources on startup.
ii) The urban areas also too much random. With say 2 cities at start and total of 8 urban areas having a bad luck with 5 of those 8 being farms will hamper your country forever
5) MULTIPLAYER:
It was done in Lord of the Realms III and that game was played on Gamespy (anyone still playing it? I would love to have a game pls contact me). However, since this game takes several hours and that ppl can cooperate and wipe each others out why not use the approach of the game Risk? Each country has a mission, you can set missions to "easy, normal, hard" and if you set easy mission the game should maybe end when someone has trippled their empire size (so starting with 2 cities when you have 6 cities you win).
Cooperation and diplomacy needs to improve to restrict multiplayer games from becoming "team up against one person" style. Maybe the one who declares war on the other gets faster increase in war attrition penalty than the one defending. Means the attacker somewhere down the line has to make peace
Firstly, I would like to say this game is the best game of its kind. Like Lord of the Realms III, this game focus is easy going gameplay instead of micromanagements. KoH reminds me greatly of Lord of the Realms III :)
1) Game speed options needed. If the current is 100% I would like one 200% and one 300% option
2) Zoom levels on campaign map. If the current is 100% I would like at leist a 50% zoom level because the map is huge in this game :)
3) Bad harvest, plague and other local or global events should occur. Food has to become more important in game, as of now having many farms instead of monasteries or villages just hamper you. Maybe the population capacity should be affected much more by the number of food produced per turn
4) Randomized startup needs to be made less random because it affects the diffculty too greatly. The problem is great for countries that start with just 2 cities.
i) The natural resources alocation should even out per nation so that with 2 cities you do not get 2 first time and then 5 second time, affects the difficulty too much. Formula could be (1+numtowns) plus a random factor that adds 0, 1 or 2 extra resources for the country.
So, with a 2 town startup this would mean 1+2=3 resources as minimum and then with maximum luck you get +2 on the random factor so get 5 resources spread randomly on your 2 cities.
With a 5 city country it would mean 1+5=6 is minimum and means 6-8 resources on startup.
ii) The urban areas also too much random. With say 2 cities at start and total of 8 urban areas having a bad luck with 5 of those 8 being farms will hamper your country forever
5) MULTIPLAYER:
It was done in Lord of the Realms III and that game was played on Gamespy (anyone still playing it? I would love to have a game pls contact me). However, since this game takes several hours and that ppl can cooperate and wipe each others out why not use the approach of the game Risk? Each country has a mission, you can set missions to "easy, normal, hard" and if you set easy mission the game should maybe end when someone has trippled their empire size (so starting with 2 cities when you have 6 cities you win).
Cooperation and diplomacy needs to improve to restrict multiplayer games from becoming "team up against one person" style. Maybe the one who declares war on the other gets faster increase in war attrition penalty than the one defending. Means the attacker somewhere down the line has to make peace
1. It's already there! use the numpad + or -. + to fastering the game. - to slowing it.
2. well it can be in KOH2 but for now you can use Political map than the main.
3. Modder can make the events. Laudan in his Mod(Mod Hard Invasion) have use the event. Famine, Plague, Religion Down, Ect. The event is great altought it only text. If only we can put picture or video in it. Oh yeah, there are also other quest. For all the list, look at the questinfo.ini at Defs\quest folder.
4. That's good. Because the active player at the forum mainly "searching Hard Difficulties"(can someone correct the term because I forget) . If you look at the Player Mod Section here and at the Sunflower Archive most Mod made the game more hard. MOD H.R. ,Hard Invasion, Hard Economic, GoG, and RoME to name a few.And some modder sayed that there are a params that define the recources somewhere there. I think KOH randomized because the BSS Programmer make it randomized in there.
5. I'll pray for this in ADD-ON, EXPANSION, OR SEQUEL
firepowerjohan
17 Sep 2007, 12:40
The Merchant Boost Strategy:
In the game, I find it is too easy to do a early boost of trade. You can use a merchant boost strategy and become the wealthiest nation in just say 200-300 turns cashing in 170+ money per turn. The fact that you can have like 7 merchants that early, signing deal after deal has to be restricted. It makes the game too easy, I had trouble spending my cash fast enough playing scotland (without using mod and with hard difficulty level) to avoid inflation.
I think the formula for deciding if nations want trade agreement to be weighted differently. Factors that should affect trade agreement success, rated with the highest weigted factor first.
1) Number of trade agreements:
Means the more agreements you already have the higher the bar is set for them accepting you. Makes sense, say you have some goods to offer and alot of countries wanting it, you cannot expect to make profit proportional to the number of countries wanting it.
2) Number of goods produced
has to be weighted more heavily than before, means it will prevent early trade boost since you have 0 goods produced at start you might only get at most 1-3 trade deals. You might actually have to pay money to squeeze out that third deal.
3) Wealth
Wealthy means you have abit higher chance so maybe a rich nation would be able to have 5 deals when a poor one has 4 so it should not be too big a factor. This factor is weighted heavily in game currently, which means once you get over the bar you can sign up all the countries you need to maximize trade.
4) Relationship with the country asked
Of course, trading with hostiles wont work
Question:
Is the trade formula in any script?
The Merchant Boost Strategy:
In the game, I find it is too easy to do a early boost of trade. You can use a merchant boost strategy and become the wealthiest nation in just say 200-300 turns cashing in 170+ money per turn. The fact that you can have like 7 merchants that early, signing deal after deal has to be restricted. It makes the game too easy, I had trouble spending my cash fast enough playing scotland (without using mod and with hard difficulty level) to avoid inflation.
I think the formula for deciding if nations want trade agreement to be weighted differently. Factors that should affect trade agreement success, rated with the highest weigted factor first.
1) Number of trade agreements:
Means the more agreements you already have the higher the bar is set for them accepting you. Makes sense, say you have some goods to offer and alot of countries wanting it, you cannot expect to make profit proportional to the number of countries wanting it.
2) Number of goods produced
has to be weighted more heavily than before, means it will prevent early trade boost since you have 0 goods produced at start you might only get at most 1-3 trade deals. You might actually have to pay money to squeeze out that third deal.
3) Wealth
Wealthy means you have abit higher chance so maybe a rich nation would be able to have 5 deals when a poor one has 4 so it should not be too big a factor. This factor is weighted heavily in game currently, which means once you get over the bar you can sign up all the countries you need to maximize trade.
4) Relationship with the country asked
Of course, trading with hostiles wont work
Question:
Is the trade formula in any script?
Yes there is in Econts.ini
I have changed that TG also influence Trade again,
firepowerjohan
17 Sep 2007, 13:31
So what mod do you recommend then if I want higher difficulty and high realism?
The Merchant Boost Strategy:
In the game, I find it is too easy to do a early boost of trade. You can use a merchant boost strategy and become the wealthiest nation in just say 200-300 turns cashing in 170+ money per turn. The fact that you can have like 7 merchants that early, signing deal after deal has to be restricted. It makes the game too easy, I had trouble spending my cash fast enough playing scotland (without using mod and with hard difficulty level) to avoid inflation.
I think the formula for deciding if nations want trade agreement to be weighted differently. Factors that should affect trade agreement success, rated with the highest weigted factor first.
1) Number of trade agreements:
Means the more agreements you already have the higher the bar is set for them accepting you. Makes sense, say you have some goods to offer and alot of countries wanting it, you cannot expect to make profit proportional to the number of countries wanting it.
2) Number of goods produced
has to be weighted more heavily than before, means it will prevent early trade boost since you have 0 goods produced at start you might only get at most 1-3 trade deals. You might actually have to pay money to squeeze out that third deal.
3) Wealth
Wealthy means you have abit higher chance so maybe a rich nation would be able to have 5 deals when a poor one has 4 so it should not be too big a factor. This factor is weighted heavily in game currently, which means once you get over the bar you can sign up all the countries you need to maximize trade.
4) Relationship with the country asked
Of course, trading with hostiles wont work
Question:
Is the trade formula in any script?
I guess, it would make sense if any tradable resourse of one nation, including gold, could be given away only once. I mean, if a nation export a resourse to another nation, this resourse (incl. gold) can't be traded to any other nation. Thus, it's the resourses that are restricted, not the number of trade agreements. You can have the agreement with a nation, but if all its resourses are already traded, you can't benefit from it - apart from diplomatic consequenses of breaking it, of course.
But maybe it's not enough for preventing the early merchant boost. Maybe, the export routes to other nations should be redused to one - for all resourses. I.e. if a nation exports any resourse or gold, it can't export any other resourse. (But it's still possible to import as many resourses as you wish.)
The general idea is that if you want to benefit from a trade agreement, you must force the trade partner to break the agreement with a nation that already imports the desired resourse.
firepowerjohan
18 Sep 2007, 18:16
Maybe trade is just simply too beneficial in game and that a Merchant should cost 2500 instead of 1000 which would mean you do not get this quick pay off. After all, many of the city improvements pay off in like 500 turns but a merchant cost 1000 to recruit and give rouhgly 10 gold so only 100 turns.
firepowerjohan
18 Sep 2007, 19:11
Ok, I agree. Then it is simply just that trade is too large part of the total wealth in the game. You can as a tiny country be wealthier than Germany+Italy+France combined by simply investing in merchants for the first 300 turns. All you need is to get over that bar where countries want to trade with you and if you succeed there you can have maybe 7-9 merchants ready in a decnet amount of time.
Maybe 10 gold profit per turn and 1000 gold price per Merhcants should be 3 and 300 instead to balance it better. If the AI also would follow this strategy to be able to gain 200 per turn instead of say 40 then the map would get stacked with units bought from all that cash so I think trade is too large.
I think there is a similar thing in the EU3 by Paradox that you could do a merchant strategy and become the wealthiest country in a few decades just learning that strategy.
firepowerjohan
18 Sep 2007, 21:05
Still, I would recommend this game to anyone. It is a complete and stable products that will offer many many hours of fun gameplay so it is worth the money. I will probably play this game from time to time for a long while. :)
Concerning the trade. Without a real economic system with supply-demand and prices you cannot simulate things so having some country like Venice being wealthy without being big is hard to simulate. As you say also, theoretically the AI could use the same stratetgy and match the human player so changing the trade to become less part of the game would in fact make the current AI stronger since human cannot boom so much.
Maybe it would need an extra layer of technoloy as I Paradox where you have research and higher tech levels means your merchants work better. But I do not think I want any research in this game, this is a fun game already.
I hope that the sequel will be called something more original than Knights of Honor 2.
Maybe a subtitle?
Imagine, Knights of Honor 2- Conquer the Eurasia!
anguille
4 Dec 2007, 09:11
I hope that the sequel will be called something more original than Knights of Honor 2.
The name is always a bonus...Knights of Honor 2 will ring a bell at everyone who enjoyed the first game...if you take a new name, you'll have to redo the entire marketing. It could be called Knights of Honor 2 with a specification, like Knights of Honor 2: rule your dynasty...(just as an example)
Yes. I remember that some time ago in the old forum there was a suggestion for an Asian sequel, something like "Samurai of Honour", but even that would be somewhat of a distraction. But the original title (Knights of Honor 2) with a sub-title (Europe Evolved or whatever) is indeed a rather good decision. But the most important is the game itself, the name deciding should be left after the game is nearly done. ;)
One of my dissatisfactions with Knights of Honour was its battle system; when I got the game I trully looked forward to battles, and the like, even though I absolutely love the economic and diplomatic system in the game. Nonetheless, I think they dearly need to improve the battle system, and it does not have to be like the total war games, or like the Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings games; but just more enhanced; possliby more men in armies, and just more lucrative battles.
One more thing, among many other thins, is that KOH 2 simply needs more detail and options when it comes to economy and diplomacy; for example, allow provinces to be split into districts owned seperatlively by counts, allow for roads to be built, more diplomatic options, and etc. The game basically should have more detail and options in regards to politics, economy, and military.
my idea is, that there should be more then just one city per province.
So that there is one mayor city and many little towns, where you just build 6,7 buildings.
And there should be a oppotunity, that you can build a road between two province with a trader, so that ressources can be transposed.
At last, in Provinces like Arabia, the exotic stuff should be bought without a admiralaty.
And I'm sorry for my english. Don't know how some things a called in the english KoH version.
shtopor
13 Dec 2007, 04:49
Guys Angryminer in his mode GOG1.6 has made trade less affecting overall income, try it, you will be surprised . It works with 1.05 patch.
Frankoman
13 Dec 2007, 06:02
:D
Love the Ideas floating around, and those pictures. Some Idea I like the most
Campaign Map in Multiplayer.
I definitely agree! This would be so much fun, and much better then the Save File Sending.
Disaster in Map.
This would add more excitement and challenge :) I agree.
Maybe Multiple campaigns? IE Play on Europe, Play on Asia, Play on Americas etc.
Maybe make a Map Editor? Then we can make our own maps, and maybe have Heaven Games let us use there Portal so we can upload and Share maps, and have them all over the internet, bringing KoH2 more Popularity? :P
That is, if it does come out.
saneeel
17 Dec 2007, 12:28
i have also some nice ideas. first of all we should have the historical events,like the plague,mongol invasion,discovery of gunpowder,....and when you conquer city you can exterminate the population or take them to slavery,...the armies should be bigger so we could have bigger battles,and if someone attacks you vassal that means he also attacks you,becase vassal is under your protection....we could have also few new agent units like assasin and a diplomat....and when there is crusader state established you could have the option to donate the army or the money to them,even you could send your general for a few years to serve them,...that would make the koh2 very realistic. it would be also good if a player could build some fort or small castles in a good strategic places.and the problem about the number of knights,...i think that you should recruit as many knights as you can,but you wouldnt find them at the top of the screen,but you will find them on the map.so the cleric,merchant,spy,assasin,diplomat,should freely move on the map.if there is anything you dont like about my suggestion or i forgot something please comment on my post. best regards
saneeel
17 Dec 2007, 12:32
[QUOTE=Maddin;3450]my idea is, that there should be more then just one city per province.
So that there is one mayor city and many little towns, where you just build 6,7 buildings.
And there should be a oppotunity, that you can build a road between two province with a trader, so that ressources can be transposed.
great ideamaddin,if there is no more space to build in a city,you can build in other smaller towns near the city.
Gunpowder does not belong in Knights of Honor.
i have also some nice ideas. first of all we should have the historical events,like the plague,mongol invasion,discovery of gunpowder,....and when you conquer city you can exterminate the population or take them to slavery,...the armies should be bigger so we could have bigger battles,and if someone attacks you vassal that means he also attacks you,becase vassal is under your protection....we could have also few new agent units like assasin and a diplomat....and when there is crusader state established you could have the option to donate the army or the money to them,even you could send your general for a few years to serve them,...that would make the koh2 very realistic. it would be also good if a player could build some fort or small castles in a good strategic places.and the problem about the number of knights,...i think that you should recruit as many knights as you can,but you wouldnt find them at the top of the screen,but you will find them on the map.so the cleric,merchant,spy,assasin,diplomat,should freely move on the map.if there is anything you dont like about my suggestion or i forgot something please comment on my post. best regards
Uhm... There's Medieval 2: Total War for that. While changing KoH that way would just make it a real-time copy of M2TW (which, I think, we don't want)... :rolleyes:
Not exactly, here it's a bit better developed.
P.S. I really love the idea for the sub-provinces (or "smaller towns"), though I imagined them not simply as towns in one province, but as "mini-provinces", which can be taken a bit easier, if you can't take the main city (and thus the political maps would have a better flexibility too). Of course, the question then is - if you take such a town, but not the city, would the town separate politically from the city's province (I guess it would remain administratively in the same province though) and vice versa - if you take the city without the town, would the town change its ruler too? :rolleyes:
saneeel
17 Dec 2007, 22:01
koh must be good for everyone,not for a bunch fat dudes who sits entire day on the internet and chat on forums. medieval is better game,because is more realistic,and its made for all kind of players,..you want koh to be game for guys whole dont have anything to do,just to sit on the computer and watch how the armies and countries fight each other without any reason or logic!!!!!!!!!!!
Denisold
18 Dec 2007, 02:37
"........good for everyone,not for a bunch fat dudes who sits entire day on the internet and chat on forums........."
WOW!!!! :o :o :o
Keep cool man.
saneeel
18 Dec 2007, 03:15
why should i keep cool???? you dont even know who i am?? if you would know,you would offer more respect,i guarantee that to you hehehe cccc kids....dont you have any other hobi than being the whole day on the web? have some exercise, join some sport club,for example boxing is very good sport for fitness and you self defence,....go out with friends,,...dont make fun of other people on the web,because you dont know who is sitting behind other computer. Sellam
Who made fun of anybody?
And why try to make KoH into MTW? There is already MTW, if that is what you like, go play it. Just leave KoH alone. Maybe you haven't figured out how to have fun with KoH.
And that turn based crap called MTW, talk about sitting and watching the computer screen, watching the computer cycle through telling what happened in each province every turn. It is so boring telling every component where to go and waiting on the troops to train so they can be added to the army and then waiting while it cycles through each individual move then waiting on computer to take it's turn. At least with KoH something is happening all the time.
What makes you think that the folks here spend their entire day on the web? You come on here spouting this garbage about our activities and you don't even know us. You talk about us offering you more respect! What kind of respect have you offered in return? None. You come on dissing everyone, telling us how we need to get a life. Most of us here have lives outside the forum and outside the game, most of us are in school of one sort or another and only come here in our spare time. Many of us are involved in outdoor activities, but have you taken the time to find that out before you go about spouting your self righteous get a life outside the computer garbage? No, I don't think so. Take time to know the people before dissing them and they will be more likely to show you some respect as well.
why should i keep cool???? you dont even know who i am?? if you would know,you would offer more respect,i guarantee that to you hehehe cccc kids....dont you have any other hobi than being the whole day on the web? have some exercise, join some sport club,for example boxing is very good sport for fitness and you self defence,....go out with friends,,...dont make fun of other people on the web,because you dont know who is sitting behind other computer. Sellam
"hehehe cccc kids" - Excuse me, but actually your own reaction is the childish one here. Probably even IWM, who's 12, would react more mature. As for respect - first, respect is earned, not given, and second - nobody disrespected you before, but with such a post, I believe you've lost all respect by yourself.
P.S. Oh, and I'm not fat, I exercise everyday, I go out with friends when I can and I'm online for a bigger part of the day simply because that's my job. Does that answer you well enough?
saneeel
18 Dec 2007, 14:55
hahahaha nikebg, i earned my respect in the ring and on the training field in the army, not by the "smart" posts on the web. it must be very good job you have,chat on the forums :D well i have other thing to do.you guys who are here more often,...try to make koh2 better and more realistic. Selam
Not exactly, here it's a bit better developed.
P.S. I really love the idea for the sub-provinces (or "smaller towns"), though I imagined them not simply as towns in one province, but as "mini-provinces", which can be taken a bit easier, if you can't take the main city (and thus the political maps would have a better flexibility too). Of course, the question then is - if you take such a town, but not the city, would the town separate politically from the city's province (I guess it would remain administratively in the same province though) and vice versa - if you take the city without the town, would the town change its ruler too? :rolleyes:
I just had a vision of all provinces being tiny sized and containing only 1 village/farm/monastery. And a city was a single-villaged tiny province with _other_ tiny provinces under it's control. And a player/AI could readminister those tiny provinces to other tiny provinces. When a tiny province has less then 3 others under its control, it loses a city status. And if a tiny province gets 3 or more it becomes a new city. And a province not assigned to any city is a fortified encampment - stronger if with 1 or 2 tiny provinces assigned to it.
But I do realise it's not a valid KoH 2 idea, it would be a rather different game.
"hehehe cccc kids" - Excuse me, but actually your own reaction is the childish one here. Probably even IWM, who's 12, would react more mature.
Well said, good sir. Having sir Saneeel before my eyes, I am getting a better appreciation of our fair, well-mannered, serene sir Indonesia War Minister. ^^
hahahaha nikebg, i earned my respect in the ring and on the training field in the army, not by the "smart" posts on the web. it must be very good job you have,chat on the forums :D well i have other thing to do.you guys who are here more often,...try to make koh2 better and more realistic. Selam
Good for you! However, this is not "the ring and the army's training field", so if you'd want to have respect here, you'd have to earn it all over again. That's how things with respect for unknown people usually go. Here's a military example for a better understanding - if my father, having earned his respect in the Bulgarian military academy, had to go to f.e. an American military position, he would still have to prove himself and his worth again, no matter of the previous experiences. Of course, they can still be of use, but they don't directly influence the new environment so much...
And, yeah, it's a good job - not too hard, good salary, pretty great conditions.
@maks - Now that's what I'm talking about! The main problem for me would be how to make this in an easy to control way of gameplay... :rolleyes:
Mephistopheles
18 Dec 2007, 18:32
I always thought provinces should be something dynamic. I never really agreed with the provinces that were mapped into the game and stayed that way forever.
I'd scrap the current concept of provinces completely and rebuild it like this:
1. There are settlements where people live.
2. Settlements can be of various types and sizes: Villages, towns, cities, monastries, castles, etc.
3. Settlements provide different functionality based on type and size.
4. Small settlements are joined together to provinces, based on the name of the biggest settlement of the area. The purpose of a province is that the player can issue a command to the province and the command is executed all over the area of the province. E.g.: The player commands "Build more farms in the province of Prague!" and thus all over the area that is under the control of Prague farms are constructed.
If the player desires so he can still address small settlements seperately. E.g. the player might want to recruit some sort of infantry only in a castle near Prague because he doesn't want workers to be drawn from all over the province.
5. The concept of "The player addresses one big entity to act upon many small ones" can be repeated. Small settlements are joined into provinces, which are addressed by the name of the biggest settlement in the area. Provinces are joined into counties, counties are joined into kingdoms, kingdoms are joined into empires.
E.g. the king of Germany could issue the Count of Brandenburg (correct title?) to construct a university. The Count of Brandenburg thus commands the Province of Berlin-Cölln to construct a Church and the administration of the province Berlin-Cölln decides to construct the church in Berlin.
Alternatively the player could've taken all the decisions above by himself and issued the construction of the church in Berlin expressively, but this way he saved himself a lot of trouble while not losing any possibilities. How to get all those levels of administrations on the GUI in a structured way is a different topic though...
Good for you! However, this is not "the ring and the army's training field", so if you'd want to have respect here, you'd have to earn it all over again. That's how things with respect for unknown people usually go.
Well said, Sir Nike!
To add my own comments. I am a well respected man in the community in which I live. I am a well respected student in the school I attend. I am a well respected worker in the field of work in which I am employed. I was a respected member of the old Sunflowers forum. I have earned that respect over the 52 years of my life, however, if I move across country or even to a neighboring state, I will have to rebuild that level of respect within the new environment in which I find myself. Sure I may have resume's I can present that outline my accomplishments, but I will still have to prove to the new people that I deserve their respect!
@ saneeel, With the start you have made here, you have lost respect and now have much further to go to prove you deserve respect. Apologies to those you have dissed will make a good start toward earning respect here.
Richard
18 Dec 2007, 22:17
koh must be good for everyone,not for a bunch fat dudes who sits entire day on the internet and chat on forums. medieval is better game,because is more realistic,and its made for all kind of players,..you want koh to be game for guys whole dont have anything to do,just to sit on the computer and watch how the armies and countries fight each other without any reason or logic!!!!!!!!!!!
"koh must be good for everyone,not for a bunch fat dudes..."
So, in order to be for "everyone" games need to be nothing but eye candy graphics, the rest is pretty much useless. hmm, maybe that's why most games now-a-days seem not to be a challenge. Oh, that's right, the Ai doesn't matter, only graphics to attract ignorant 7 year old kids that do not care about realistic and logical accuracy do.
1. Are you sure you have played MTW??? Because all the things you said about Koh are exactly what make MTW nothing but eye candy crap for the average power gamer. MTW "realistic" and "logical"? please......
If you like the total BS that is MTW, then go play it, I heard there is a sequel that is even buggier and crappier than the first.
And 2
I simply smiled, Since you have a "life", I wonder why you waste your time flaming in the internet? I wonder who really is the "fat guy without a life" here...
guys, why don't you ignore that crap? we all have own lives and some of us waste tome on KoH, some on MTW, some on posting on stupid internet forums. And who cares? I don't care that you waste your time, I don't flame anyone, it's your choice so I leave you alone with your time and forum posting or whatever
I see no reason why to make KoH a copy of MTW, it might get some inspiration, but keep it's originality and uniqueness. go deeper where KoH showed potential, possibly make the warfare more epic, bbut not to ruin the whole game, those who want rough warring leave them with MTW...
as to the provinces, I think Meph an I are both close in our concepts. I think that there should be prssibility to build provinces up, found new villages, upgrade them to monasteries or castles or even towns that could after all make an own sub-province, but on contrary make it possible to merge various lands into provinces, delegate government to AI controlled local nobles or state governors...
but number of settlements would be somehow limited by varisou factors, the main being food - extension of existing castle or town requires free villagers from villages, that require enough food prodction in vilages and thus the entire "province"...
and so on..
good stuff
as to the provinces, I think Meph an I are both close in our concepts. I think that there should be prssibility to build provinces up, found new villages, upgrade them to monasteries or castles or even towns that could after all make an own sub-province, but on contrary make it possible to merge various lands into provinces, delegate government to AI controlled local nobles or state governors...
but number of settlements would be somehow limited by varisou factors, the main being food - extension of existing castle or town requires free villagers from villages, that require enough food prodction in vilages and thus the entire "province"...
and so on..
Yes, that would be great indeed, but I'm afraid that it might make the game a bit too complex, if it's not done the perfect way. And I think that one of the reasons for the well-acceptance of KoH is exactly the easy to use gameplay. IMO, that's the big problem - how to include those things without burdening the player with too much decisions? I sure am glad I'm not from BSS, having to really worry about such things in the (hopefuly) near future! ;)
I believe there IS way how to make it working well while leaving the gameplay not too complex (but still much more complex than current KoH) Now, complexity and depth were sacrifised to very simple gameplay, and what was the most criticised point? that the game is too simple and easy!
I tend to disagree with it. The most critisized point is not simplicity, but easyness alone. Don't mix those up. It's easyness of leading wars, gaining gold fast, training all-experienced marshals that make the game losing points. The only game aspect that _really needs_ some deepening is, probably, a little more flexible system of diplomatic offers. The rest is wishful thinking rather then necessity. Lightweight gameplay is, in fact, the strong point of gameplay, as it allows the player to pay better attention to foreign relations, alliances, global politics.
I'm not saying, though, that BSS must make the second part just like the first. It's up to them to make it as different as they see best. I was telling mostly about the first KoH, and as far wishful thinking goes, I'd rather see some heavy patching or even an add-on rather then sequel imitating the original.
well, but do you think it is any profitable to make a patch or ad-on for almost 4 years old game? furthemore this thread is for KoH2 (sequel) ideas, it is to draw possible new concepts, possibilities where KoH can move, not how to improve actual KoH (it would be waste of resources - they need new game and money from that game, not another free patch for so old game, don't you think?)
True, true. Of course it's pointless to wait for it seriously. I put it just as wishful thinking, a glimpse of fantasy of sorts. I'm sorry if it seemed like I demand patching on the expence of a new game, not so at all.
saneeel
19 Dec 2007, 15:35
the thing about crusades,....it needs to be improved.more realistic.the key of crusades in middle east was the jerusalem,....not the tunis or the seljuks,like its often to see in the game. i suggest that,when pope declears crusades,you decide to join or by your will,you voluenter,...crusaders were voluenters right? and they need to be more massive,not only one general.i suggest that we could make some crusaders camp in the europe,from were then the crusades would launch the invasion of the holy land.and about jihad,i think that is stupid that when you decleare jihad loose all your kingdom power,because jihad is honorable decision,not bad.
Mephistopheles
19 Dec 2007, 18:21
The basic thought behind adding elements to KoH should be:
"How do you add detail without adding complexity?"
I realize that the structure of settlements, provinces, counties and kingdoms does add complexity, a lot of it. I simply can't think of a way to graphically present all that levels of structure to the player without completely confusing him. Simple test: If the average player needs a tutorial to understand a gameplay-mechanism it's too complex.
I was thinking about introducing zoom-levels to the political map so you can see different levels of organization, but I don't think that thought goes anywhere because the amount of levels changes depending on what area you look at (e.g. not every county is part of a kingdom). Of course dynamic organization-levels are much more powerful than the current system and would be able to simulate many real mechanisms that played a role in history (which is why I voiced my opinion), but I can't think of a way to transfer the system to the player so he can apply his real-world knowledge to the game.
By the way that's why I like the innerpolitical goals so much. If the game tells me that a certain Count in my kingdom says loudly I should really make a trade-agreement with a certain kingdom and many other nobles support him it's completely obvious what I have to do, why I should do it and what happens when I don't do it - all that without ever reading the handbook or playing the tutorial.
Yes, that could indeed be implemented well with another KoH2 wish - feudalism and personalisation of the "counts". I think Elvain had proposed something like this before. F.e. you have 5 small villages/towns, which you want to merge into a bigger province. One possibility is that in order to do so, you'd have to appoint a representative of the Crown or a feudal lord to govern it. Or simply you create a new province under your direct rule (the ruler's possession), but when you grow bigger and bigger, you'd just have to appoint feudal lords to rule the many provinces under your rule (there should probably be a limit to the provinces). But once you've given a land to someone, although he can govern it himself, which makes it easier for you, you should also pay attention that he doesn't get too dissatisfied and rebel (which, of course, is not the same as a peasant's rebellion - in this case, the peasants in the province might even decide to overthrow the rebel, if the real king (you) has been good enough). So, basically, as your empire grows, you'd have to make a choice between governing everything yourself or appointing governors, who you'd have to keep a watch of (though, which could eventually be used as advisors).
Mephistopheles
19 Dec 2007, 20:56
@Elvain:
My definition of "a noble" is a bit soft at the moment. It depends on how much detail the persons in the game will have. I tend to like KoH's system where you assume that there are nobles in your nation but you don't have to bother with them, their names, their traits etc.
Under that assumption the game could e.g. tell the Emperor of the HRE:
- The Governor of Brandenburg publically expressed his opinion that our bad relations with Poland are unacceptable and should be improved immediately. Many other nobles support him with that view.
- The Duke of Pommerania has repeatedly tried to convince other nobles that you didn't support him in the construction of a strong agriculture like you are oblieged to by your title. He even threatened to break his oath to you and declare independance! Most nobles disagree, but the noblity of Pommerania is likely to support him.
- The Bishopry of Bavaria has released an open letter to all nobles in your empire stating that they view of the clergy of Bohemia as not true to the faith and heretic. They demand that every godly man should stop trading with them. The nobility of Bavaria in particular supports their views very strongly.
- etc.
- etc.
The idea is that this way the game gives you hints to things you've negelected but also gives you goals to meet that go beyond "Kill everybody!". Some goals may be caused by a one-sided play-style, some may be caused due to spy action (in the example above: the Duke of Pommerania might've been bribed by a spy from Poland who wishes to annex Pommerania as soon as it becomes independant), some may help you to notice problems in your empire, but some may also cross your plans (in the example above: when you planned on an alliance with Bohemia).
This requires a lot of text-work so the player is always informed about what went wrong and what might be a possible solution to the problem. In the example above you'd have to improve relations with Poland, e.g. through a royal marriage, and finance the construction of farms in Pommerania. Either that or you unseat the Duke of Pommerania for revolting against you, which will however cause everyone else to look down on your actions, if it wasn't a well reasoned action (in the example above the results would be mediocre, since most nobles would understand your decision).
Richard
19 Dec 2007, 22:55
the thing about crusades,....it needs to be improved.more realistic.the key of crusades in middle east was the jerusalem,....not the tunis or the seljuks,like its often to see in the game. i suggest that,when pope declears crusades,you decide to join or by your will,you voluenter,...crusaders were voluenters right? and they need to be more massive,not only one general.i suggest that we could make some crusaders camp in the europe,from were then the crusades would launch the invasion of the holy land.
Not entirely correct. The crusades were a holy war against all that weren't Christian, but directed mainly towards Islam. However, we usually think of crusade as Christians gloriously fighting for Jerusalem against the "evil" Muslims, which is nothing more than another of Hollywood's inaccurate picture.
Also, crusaders weren't exactly "volunteers". Back then, if you were a serf you did what the pope and landlord told you to do or you died. Also, most of the people(specially the higher classes) that went on the crusades did it because they thought their sins would be erased for killing Muslims as well as for economical and political opportunities.
Anyways, I would prefer the crusades to be modeled similarly to the way Crusader Kings does. When the pope calls for a crusade, all christendom has the option to declare war or not, but if you don't you lose piety and prestige.
@Mephisto
Well, that's almost what I expected. I think that to some level it could be part of game, but keep in mind that what makes the game very annoying in later phases now are constant demands and offers from other monarchs, rebellion notifications etc.
Mephistopheles
20 Dec 2007, 00:57
Actually, that's what it's supposed to be. :)
In the end, no empire should be able to achieve the Crown of Europe simply because all those demands cannot be fullfilled at the same time and either you shrink back to a manageable size in a controlled way or everything shatters to pieces at once.
The main purpose was to make the game difficult during the end-game (as said above, by giving you other tasks than mopping up the poor rest of opposition that's left on the map).
saneeel
20 Dec 2007, 11:14
it would be also good idea,that you could donate the troops to your ally,and when you deliver them,they are not anymore under you control,but the ally controls them.you could also demand in a peace contract that your enemy must deliver you 20 years eacy year one unit of feudal cavalry?
you could also demand in a peace contract that your enemy must deliver you 20 years eacy year one unit of feudal cavalry?
So the enemy's nobles become Your soldiers?
saneeel
20 Dec 2007, 17:47
no.they send you 15 men(one unit of feudal cavalry).
no.they send you 15 men(one unit of feudal cavalry).
and what about muslims? they don't have feudal cavalry.
I thought about various payments in vasalage, to be honest it was never practised this way. Just the souvereign had right to call his vasals in arms in time of danger, and the vasals had similar right: they could ask their overlord to help them ;)
saneeel
20 Dec 2007, 20:57
yes thats also good. what i try to say,you can demand in peace contract that they send you some troops,...you choose what they have to offer.and when someone attacks your vassal thats automaticly in war with you,because vassal is under you protection,for which he is paying.
no.they send you 15 men(one unit of feudal cavalry).
You shouldn't forget that feudal cavalry usually means nobles, the richer people, who mostly rule over some areas. In this meaning sending feudals to other kingdoms doesn't make any sense at all. Giving any other troop to serve another king is also weird. Instead of that there could be mercenaries, which are already in the game. All in all, trading units is useless, because it's almost the same as giving gold and much less convenient.
saneeel
20 Dec 2007, 23:34
look,in almost every battle that played in history,allied helped each other.they send help to their allies,which they used it properly for their win.
Allies is a different thing and in KoH you already can have allies fight on your side in battle (at least if there's a free slot for the second general, who's nearby and is an ally, of course). But that's another wish (more like a dream) I have for KoH2 - to be able somehow to co-operate actions with the AI. F.e. to be able to tell him "At this or that time (or on this or that signal), you attack the country X from the north, while I attack them from the south." But I don't really see how it can be done (programming-wise).
look,in almost every battle that played in history,allied helped each other.they send help to their allies,which they used it properly for their win.
Well, that settles it. I thought you were talking about war reparations.
Well, I think there already is an option to ask the other side in the negotiations to attack another country. What I meant was, however, to be able to co-ordinate actions against the third country together with the second (your partner), i.e. when and where to attack, since this would naturally be much more effective.
About the vassalage - what is asked here? That the vassal should send troops even in times of peace or that the vassal can be obliged to serve his sovereign in times of war? For the latter there are historical examples (f.e. the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans), but I can't remember such for the former...
Mephistopheles
22 Dec 2007, 12:26
When thinking about coordinated attacks, remember that back then the information-technology was slightly inferior to today's standard. That means, if you tell someone to attack a country you could only pin down the actual time of the attack to +- 6 months.
The other side had to muster the financial means by taking loans, draw soldiers from the population, send messages to vasalls to bring their troops along, get all troops equipped, argue with vasalls that they really do need to send troops, argue some more, gather the troops finally and march for a month before their first soldier set foot on hostile territory. When you consider that every message that gets send takes two weeks +- one week due to wether conditions then launching an attack is a huge effort that simply can't be timed precisely.
There's basically no way two armies could start from different locations and meet at the target location within the same week. Not even in an absolutistic monarchy, much less in a feudalistic nation with so many political issues to solve.
However, we should definitely improve the player's ability to influence the AI. We really should be able to talk our friends into having better relations with someone else, etc.
Well, I think there already is an option to ask the other side in the negotiations to attack another country. What I meant was, however, to be able to co-ordinate actions against the third country together with the second (your partner), i.e. when and where to attack, since this would naturally be much more effective.Yes, but attack=declare war while invade=move a marshal to their lands what is much more effective and it mean they invade your enemy some time soon after your demand, that means simple coordination ;)
About the vassalage - what is asked here? That the vassal should send troops even in times of peace or that the vassal can be obliged to serve his sovereign in times of war? For the latter there are historical examples (f.e. the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans), but I can't remember such for the former...in O.E. it wasn't a vassalage payment, the devsirme was something else, it was a "human tax" of the population, not a vassalage payment. But Ottoman vassals were sending their troops on Ottoman campaign, what - again - is something slightly diferent (again, ask your vassal to invade your mutual enemy does the same job)
I wasn't talking about the devshirme, especially since it was a tax on the conquered population. I mean exactly the vassals, like f.e Krali Marko, who died fighting alongside the Turks against the Wallachians.
As for the coordination - that's why I'm talking about strategical coordination. Not like "I'm telling you - attack them right now", but like "Next year, at spring break, gather your troops and march south along that river to conquer the enemy's northern provinces. In the same time I'll attack from his south, thus splitting his forces." I don't know for feudal societies, but at least concerning Byzantium's history there are many somewhat similar examples. And speaking in historical aspect - it doesn't need to be in a matter of week, since the defender also has to gather and move troops, which also usually doesn't happen for a week.
chalicek
28 Dec 2007, 01:58
What about improving King's familly? For example more children, sophisticated relations, courtyard etc...
All courtmen should die - just like the king (and queen)
My idea, similar to this, is that each "basic province" (provinces we know from recent KoH) would have certain amount of pre-defined places where new settlements could be founded. Some of them - those on strategic positions as described by Anguille - could be upgraded to castles and some (pre-defined*) could even evolve into a new town.
You know, this is actually an awesome idea! Because with time and the progress of the campaign you can actually build and develop more and more such towns, i.e. it's like you're moving from agrarian to urbanistic style, which is what happened in most of medieval Europe during the Middle Ages.
Of course, this can be further developed with another aspect similar to TW - population (because, right now, at some time (and rather easily) Turnovo or Toulouse do become as big as f.e. Constantinople, which is pretty funny in the best case). However, if population is implemented, I'd like it to be further developed by having a culture of this population - f.e. some percentage (and/or number of people) are from a certain ethnos, some - from another etc. And this can also help in another imperative change - full AoR (area of recruitment) with having culture-specific units being able to be trained only where there are enough people from that culture (i.e. you can train Vikings in Spain only if you settle some Scandinavian population in that area). And this could also influence the mercenaries and many other aspects...
Mephistopheles
29 Dec 2007, 21:39
to finish my reaction to this post, I think that the end-phase shuold be made more difficult not by messages poping up every 5 seconds (extremely annoying thing leaving you no space for autonomous policy), but rather by improved AI.
The way to stabilize it and make it more challenging could be done with very complex net of logical orders, limitations and conditions, that would after al give the AI an advantage over the player, because the player is not able always to watch everything.
some examples:
- AI expansion is logical and led by various factors such as (religion and culture of province, numbers of borders it has in common with possible target, technical development, economic importance (holds trade goods), strategic position (number of land/sea borders), strength of the owner etc.
- mathematic consideration based on various factors that tell the AI who is an easy target of expansion, who is more valuable to be an ally, who is too powerfull so he should ally against him etc..
This system should be "evolutionary" rather than "revolutionary" to avoid constant changes such as: kingdom A conquers a province so kingdom B finds it's former ally a threat, so kingdom B breaks all agreements with kingdom A. kingdom A loses the province, so it is again a valuable partner of B, so B signs a trade agreement.First: Innerpolitical goals aren't important enough to be popups, at least 80% aren't. Only very few events should require an immediate message to the player.
Second: What you consider a problem is the greatest beauty of the system to me.
Let's go through a campaign-game:
- The player starts out with a small kingdom and grows in size. He fulfills innerpolitical goals to earn his governor's trust and to manifest his rule mostly. As a result his dynasty is firmly in power.
- The kingdom thus grows to become a medium sized nation. The number of open innerpolitical goals has risen and now it's much more likely that there are goals that contradict the player's plans. Also it now happens once in a while that two governors desire contradicting goals where the player has to decide which party to disappoint.
- Despite such problems and through cunning use of diplomacy the kingdom grows into a big kingdom. By now there are more than 7 innerpolitical goals open at any time and it's difficult to keep track of everything. Governors demand contradicting goals, there are almost always goals open that contradict the player's plans and a large portion of the player's time has to be dedicated to the innerpolitical goals.
- Obviously that is a difficult task and chances are that some provinces will declare independance sooner or later. To counter that and to have more time for expansion the player decides to create vasalls from some parts of his kingdom. Instead of dealing with 15 governors he now deals with 2 dukes and 5 governors, which reduces the number of open political goals back to a medium level. However, the innerpolitical goals demanded by dukes and earls are more important to the player now because if a duke declares independance a large chunk of the kingdom can go lost. But chances are that now less goals will contradict each other and things should work out now.
- Having used vasalls to his advantage the player continues to expand and now controls a large empire of epic scale.
Now the player hits a road-block. Either he deals with a huge number of relatively powerless dukes which causes the number of open goals to be too high to keep up with, or he has to deal with a small number of extremely powerful vasall-kings that are difficult to keep at bay because each of them is powerful enough to declare independance at their will and get away with it.
I defend this system so much because military power isn't everything. Wether or not the AI is good, the player will always be able to build a huge empire some way. But history teaches us that not even once any nation ever has seized control of the whole planet. Why didn't that happen? I think it has something to do with inner politics and the conflict with foreign politics.
By the way, here are two other possible thoughts regarding the goals-system:
- There should be a different penalty to not listening to goals than losing provinces. How about giving each vasall (that is each province in the beginning, each duke later on) a relationship-bar called loyalty? Good loyalty means you get the full advantages (gold, books, etc) of the province/vasall and bad loyalty means that you lose a part of the advantages because you can't exert full control over the province/vasall.
- All AI identities should have goals for themselves. When the province-governor of Prague wants a big silver-mine, why shouldn't the King of Poland want Lithuania to break the trade agreement with Sweden?
Right now we never know what the AI-kings want to do. Why isn't there a tab where the kings around me say what they want and what their agenda is? Then I can choose to do something to please them (read: fulfill a 'outer-political goal') so I can get advantages from that.
That expands the goals to be a game-wide concept that has to be learned only once and delivers most of the dynamics of the game.
I like that thought because it means there are very few rules to learn ("Click the 'Goals' button and switch between the inner-political and foreign goals-tabs to see what other rulers think and want") but these few rules result in a very deep gameplay.
Denisold
30 Dec 2007, 20:53
............Only very few events should require an immediate message to the player...........
Mephistopheles - I'm in agreement with your comment - only those events having a significant influence on the player (at that moment in the game) should be communicated via an 'immediate message' (ie likely in the form of a pop-up, or voice message).
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In KoH the level and ease of communication between AI and player is already rather incredible. As we play we can access, on demand, the current status of AI progress as the AI plays against us. Just looking at items such as:
· the various forms and colors on the ‘political view’ map (showing kingdom sizes and locations – with manual pop-ups on economy, rumors, relations; relationships between kingdoms – hostile, calm, good…..; stances between kingdoms; rebellion risk, town sizes; province features, trade good locations; units, locations; structure locations), or
· tables showing your kingdom wealth – piety, books, gold balance sheet, or
· tables showing kingdom rankings of all kingdoms, or
· the event log instantly auto-logging all events between kingdoms, or
· manual pop-ups giving causes for current happiness grade, building availability for each city, or
· auto pop-ups giving demands to attack, peace offers,
gives the player the current status of game play. By frequently referring to the available information, and remembering the values when the player last looked, the player has some idea as to the direction that the AI is taking the game. But done manually all this is rather tedious.
IMO KoH is so complicated, so large, and so involved, that the average player (all those who aren’t prepared to spend the time to become experienced hard-core players – likely the vast majority of game purchasers?) really can’t keep ‘up-to-date’ with the activities of the AI. Average players fall behind manually ‘tracking’ the progress being made by the AI as it continually updates and attempts to defeat the player.
A Suggested Improvement for KoH2 re. Communication to the Player
In KoH2 there needs to be some system that alerts the player that significant events are occurring within the AI that will play against the player in the future.
Perhaps the player needs an ‘advisor’ that appears automatically as a pop-up to give the player info that the AI is now making significant steps that will be negative to the player’s game play. For example the AI has assembled 8 provinces in one kingdom over the past 20 minutes, the player has added only 2 provinces in the same time span – the player is obviously falling behind rapidly; or an AI has assembled a kingdom’s army at 3x the pace of the player – again the player is falling behind; or etc etc ………. The ‘advisor’ appears to suggest that the player pay specific attention to the growing crisis. This would add tension and drama to the game (which would be a good thing for game play). The game set on easy the advisor appears often; on hard seldom – and it could depend on how advanced the player had made his spy.
How Could Game Design Work to Make an ‘Advisor” Appear at Appropriate Times?
In the overhaul of KoH for KoH2, the design could include a section that was logging ‘rate of change’ (ROC) for preset significant variables. Say (for the variable 'kingdom sizes') that every 5 minutes the system looked back 20 minutes and calculated growth (ROC) for all kingdoms, and compared growth rates of the various kingdoms – if one kingdom was growing (over the current 20 minute ‘window’) at more than say 2x the player’s ROC then the ‘advisor’ could pop-up and state “pay attention – the size of Kingdom C is in high growth” or something to that effect. The variables tracked might be size, wealth, military,……..perhaps the same that are displayed in ‘kingdom rankings’.
Anyway I’m sure that the bright minds at BSS could work out something along these lines – they have already demonstrated their advanced skills in game-player communications in KoH. This would be just an add-on to what has already been developed by BSS.
Denisold
30 Dec 2007, 23:31
Hi Elvain – thanks for your comments.
1) How can the AI see what is really important for me?
The AI wouldn’t know of the player’s goals as he plays the game. The information given by the ‘advisor’ would be general in nature (ie it would cover all of the major variables included in the overall game play). The player would be informed of AI developments – the player would decide if he wanted to react to that information.
In your example (being an "economic player" or a “religious player”) you would like to know if another kingdom was gaining wealth faster than you, or if another kingdom was becoming much closer to the pope than you, etc. Also if Sweden was gaining was rapidly expanding you would sense that you had better take actions to counter Sweden’s growth (if not then when Sweden decided to ‘take you out’ at end game than it is your own fault for inaction).
2) Would it really be important message for player ruling England which consolidates his holdings in Britain, that Fatimids rapidly expand to Mesopotamia?
Yes it would be important to be aware – eventually you will have to deal with the Fatimids (ie see Sweden above) – it would be better to begin to counter the Fatimid’s developing power early rather than later.
3) I think the interface should be changed a lot.
Yes me too – but if BSS take on a version of KoH2 I would expect a full overhaul of all aspects of KoH with the good parts retained
4) The advisor as you proposed it could be not of a pop-up character
Your suggestion is good – rather than an advisor, a noble stepping forward at the periodical meetings of nobles and giving the latest info (on AI progress) would work well. The nobles message could be influenced by the sophistication that you have developed in your spy network.
Mephistopheles
31 Dec 2007, 14:36
@Both 1 and 2:
Try asking "Why?" for the result of these game mechanisms (type of government-system and area of sight) and model the reason for this "why?" instead of proclaiming the results as a fact. That way players can use sense to understand the game.
Regarding the government-systems, I'm not quite sure what the player should do with them. I mean, the player sets the one he likes most once and forgets about them. Still you have to teach the player each system's advantages and disadvantages. In short, you give the player many stats and rules to learn but he interacts with them about once every 5 hours of gameplay.
Regarding the area of sight: Why do you think the King of Ireland has a bigger area of influence than some earl of an irish province? The title "King" isn't magically connected to the ability to see stuff happening in far away countries, to exaggerate my point. The mechanism behind this is propably that Kings are more likely to invest more money into diplomats travelling to other countries and using agents to keep track of stuff.
In other words, if an area of sight should be included in the game it should be based on royal marriages, spies and diplomatic relations. That makes sense to everyone, without explanation. Send a spy to Denmark and you can see where the danish army is currently marching. Marry of your daughter to the Prince of Sweden and you can see the trade-ships travelling between Sweden and Lithuania, etc.
Players will be able to memorize that very well because, when you tell them about this in the tutorial, they'll think: "That makes sense!"
what about "Kings of Honor"? :) or Knights of Honor 2: kings of the Old World
Or "Knights of Horror"? ;) :p
Btw, you realize that even only half of all the great ideas here would make the game several times more complex than it is now, right?
Mephistopheles
31 Dec 2007, 19:22
Generally I think we're just brainstorming in this thread. Most of the suggestions are way over the top and would make KoH2's manual bigger and more confusing than the bible. However, ideas are seldomly harmful, they just have to be selected carefully when KoH2 is actually designed.
A few more comments:
- Are kingdom advantages worth the toil? They add a lot of rules and offer few possibilities to interact - either you got them or you don't. I'd rather like to see an improved trade system with a visual representation (e.g. traders actually sailing across the baltic sea and earning money at each harbour). Trade goods should however have much more of an impact on the economy. Trade goods being moved about should be a requirement to earn money. Next to everything should be a trade good, food, iron, silk, etc. That way a player can put a lot more effort into trading and building a powerful-trade-network.
Traders shouldn't be limited in their number, however they should cost upkeep and have experience. They should be similar to marshalls, in that regard, however without 'skills', just stars.
- We should be able to put political pressure on other countries. By doing so we threaten to drop the relations significantly unless the other party does what we want. The drop in relations should worsen trade and decrease our knowledge about what happens in the other country.
Denisold
31 Dec 2007, 21:42
4) The advisor as you proposed it could be not of a pop-up character
Your suggestion is good – rather than an advisor, a noble stepping forward at the periodical meetings of nobles and giving the latest info (on AI progress) would work well. The nobles message could be influenced by the sophistication that you have developed in your spy network.
2nd Thoughts On This
The purpose behind the suggestion to include ‘rate-of-change’ comparisons between player and AI (for selected game variables) is to automatically alert the player to increased activity that is starting within the AI. If the information is to be most useful to the player then it is important to give the player the information as soon as it is detected.
Waiting for a periodic meeting of nobles before giving the info to the player would not be in the spirit of the suggestion – giving the info via an 'immediate message' (ie likely in the form of a pop-up, or voice message) would be more useful.
2nd Thoughts On This
The purpose behind the suggestion to include ‘rate-of-change’ comparisons between player and AI (for selected game variables) is to automatically alert the player to increased activity that is starting within the AI. If the information is to be most useful to the player then it is important to give the player the information as soon as it is detected.
Waiting for a periodic meeting of nobles before giving the info to the player would not be in the spirit of the suggestion – giving the info via an 'immediate message' (ie likely in the form of a pop-up, or voice message) would be more useful.
Well, that could be done easily - if it's concerning a neighbouring country, an "immediate message" could appear, while if it's about a more distant state, it could wait for the annual meeting of nobles. ;)
Elvain, I see that many of the suggestions aren't too interface-heavy and can even be rather "hidden", but in such case I think they're getting a bit less "useful" (if they exist, they better be available to be controlled some way by the player, if he wants to). Of course, before the start of a game there could be a simple option "detailed or simplistic game", which could define the level of details in the particular campaign (I've always dreamed to have a game, which is so variable that even offers different gameplay styles based on different levels of details).
Mephistopheles
2 Jan 2008, 13:56
If I take just my suggestions, I always think how and from where they could be controlled by the player, and to be honest, I don't really think it can make the gameplay too complex and confusing, but that's just my opinionGeneral rule of thumb: If you can't explain a game-mechanism in one sentence it's too complex.
It may all appear so very simple in ones own head, but someone else, the player, has to learn all that stuff and it should preferrably take less than 5 minutes because that's about how much of attention the average tutorial gets.
That's why I always point towards real life sense. If the player can apply his real life knowledge to the game you don't have to explain it to him, which means you can use complex game mechanisms without the cumbersome learning-curve.
(e.g. "Cavalry hurts unarmored infantry" - everyone knows that, even if it's only from the movie Braveheart)
Try to avoid background-knowledge you learned during your studies. The background-knowledge you demand must be accessable for all players, not just the history-cracks among us.
Note: There are exceptions to this point. If the interface is done in a smart way it can teach the player about history as he plays and as he discovers new functions. First teach the player about the historical background, then tell him about the game-representation. An example for this method are the units in KoH with their tool-tip explanation. This method causes a huge risk of turning the game into a text-based game though. Best stick with the one-sentence-rule.
Also, a very good guideline to avoid the learning-curve is to avoid mathematical formulas. E.g. revenue shouldn't be calculated by population or amount of available resources. If the town looks big (graphically) much money should be earned, if it looks small few money should be earned. Similarly, percentage-bonuses are very obscure to the player until he has spend a lot of time learning the game and should really only be used where every player expects them (e.g. defense bonus of cavalry against infantry).
I'm sorry if I sound a bit like a broken record here. You have a lot of good ideas but put them in a too complex format. While everything you say is historically correct and propably a lot of fun to experience, it'd take even me weeks to fully understand.
That's why I repeat - the game should be able to have a "simplistic" and a "detailed mode". If somebody's either too (excuse me) stupid or just doesn't care much and wants an easy relaxing game - start the simplistic mode where most game mechanisms are either automated or even removed/simplified to minimum. Thus he wouldn't have to be bothered by two sentences of explanation AND in the same time the detailed mode would allow for a more advanced player to enjoy the game even more after he's mastered the simplistic mode.
Denisold
2 Jan 2008, 19:00
Maybe they really are way too complex so I'll keep them for myself, because all you want is simplicity in one sentence :p
Hi Elvain – I hope you don't get too discouraged by comments related to the complexity of your suggestions.
After all – these suggestions are really meant for Frujin and his group of designers at BSS – they need some depth of explanation in order to fully understand what you have in mind. In the end BSS will be the persons ‘culling’ out the better suggestions to possibly include in any rebuild of KoH, not the general public.
Keep your suggestions coming, please.
Mathyas Rex
2 Jan 2008, 20:30
I think if all these ideas would be used in KoH2, after a period of playtime, people would still come up with mods, and ideas to make the game better. :D In the future 'KoH3 ideas' (who knows?:rolleyes: ) will be twice as many posts:D
Mephistopheles
2 Jan 2008, 23:52
I hope I only misread the angered tone in your post. My target wasn't to make your suggestions appear bad, I was trying to encourage you to rephrase your ideas.
To avoid another mammoth-post I'll pick up the core-point:
I really wonder what of my ideas makes them so hard to understand and so incompatible with "simple logic" tell me pleaseIt's the same what also makes 95% of my own ideas too complex. It's what restricts the EU series to a very small user-base. It's that you can't transfer the idea in few simple words.
For example, despite your explanations I have, to be honest, no clue on how the technology-system or the govermental-systems you proposed should work.
I'm sure your ideas are logical. You should work on the format you put them in though. That means you either have to fine-tune the explanation or you have to reconsider the game-representation to become more straight-forward.
That sounds good, but why would technologies be influenced by the "bad boy factor"? First, technologies are made not necessarily by wise, but by intelligent men and intelligent doesn't necessarily mean good-willed. So those intelligent men might even have nothing against a "bad boy factor". Second, even if they're not "bad boys" themselves, they may be neutral. And people tend to overcome their "neutral doubts" with the help of some coins. Only idealists would just pack their stuff and run away from you. And even then they can be forced to stay and still eventually persuaded to change their mind. But even if some of those intellectuals is too idealistic and f.e. dies without giving up to you, there would probably be others who wouldn't. The main problem would be if the inventor of the technology is such idealist and doesn't give his secret to you (and hasn't shared it with anyone else). But if he already has and f.e. there are now bookprints in 5 of your 13 provinces, it would be pretty hard for all bookprints to just disappear without a trace only because you've razed a city somewhere far away (and especially if it's an "enemy" one, it might be even considered good by some people). So I don't think technologies should be connected to such behaviour (and a historical example - ancient Rome was technologically very advanced and still was pretty "bad boy" (f.e. Carthage, Alesia come to my mind)).
But maybe it would be good if it could be thought how the technologies could be sponsored somehow. This could also be connected to the government types - f.e. bookprinting could be developed even individually and in a state of free market it could spread indivually too. But in a more despotic state with lack of personal and market freedom, such technology would have to be comissioned by the state or at least some powerful figure (noble). An example, which comes to my mind, is the Glagolithic alphabet of Cyril and Methodius - at first they were accepted in Moravia, but then the German-influenced (IIRC) clergy persecuted their disciples and if they weren't well accepted and heavily sponsored by kniaz Boris I, their "technology" would have vanished.
Mephistopheles
3 Jan 2008, 14:29
I also can't follow on the "be nice and have much technology, be bad and have few technology"-train of thought.
Technology is where investment is, regardless of moral issues. It's true that a few bright heads will tend to go somewhere else when things get out of hand, but as long as there is investment there will be others to do the job just as well or even better.
You want technological achievements to retard military advances, but I don't think science and military are mutually exclusive. Quite the contrary, quite a lot of technologies in our history only came up due to the military.
The only way science restricts military is financially. Research costs money, military costs money, money is finite. That's how it works in every game, because that's the way it makes sense.
However, I don't think technologies are worth the toil. If you want a proper technology-tree you'll have 30+ technologies, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, or in other words, quite a lot to learn for the player. I've always disliked tech-trees as much as I disliked kingdom-advantages. Either you don't yet understand all technologies and just achieve technologies randomly or you've understood them all and know which ones you want to achieve from the start of the game. In my opinion technologies don't provide interesting food for thought during the game because they are always the same, each game.
you know what would be good also? that every kingdom should have one advantage that other wouldt have. i dont know,..ammm england should have the best navy, spain should have inqusition(that means that they can much easier convert province),arabians have better tehnologies,...that should be at the beggining of the game.when you play of course,the things can go another way.
I even have some examples from history:
Ummayad emirate/caliphate in Spain was one of the most tolerant countries, I don't remember it any acts of ruthlessness against anyone - and it was by far the most flourishing country of the time/region. Once Spain was taken by fanatic Almoravids, Almohads and then Catholic majesties, the cultural advantage was gone.
Kingdom of Sicily - it did expand, but it's power wasn't based on brute power, and it did became the most valuable part of Frederick II's realm.
How many "famous artists and wisemen lived in Mongol courts? How many did in courts of Crusader states? I think there is some logic connection between these.
I meant: if a kingdom is powerfull in military, it's ok, it's even ok when it sometimes uses it's force, but not when it's widely known as brutal and despotic kingdom. At least not in middle ages.
Elvain, that isn't connected with their military brutality, but with their investments in technology. As I said - the Romans were quite brutal too (heck, they took most of their realms by military conquest), but they were also the most advanced civilization of their time and not even only technologically. Why? The difference is that although they were a militaristic nation, they also gave priorities to development. Mongols just didn't care about such things. This is more a part of economical behaviour than military one, IMO. I think it would be better if there are other ways to "distract" the player from the "bad boy" gamestyle.
Oh, P.S., about the regionality recruitment - it might be even possible to have some "climate compatibility". F.e. in history, the Cumans were often used by the Bulgarian tsars from the Second Empire as allies and mercenaries, but the Cumans always returned to the north of the Danube during the Summer, as they couldn't stand the heat on the Balkans then. It's also logical that if some Scandinavians go to North Africa, they would have a pretty hard time to adjust, even epidemies might start...
I myself like the idea of certain kingdoms finding it harder to fight in climates they wouldn't normally have been in. Such as, say, an In-land kingdom like Bohemia having to fight on the British Isles.
Idea One
Which brings me to another thing: Different Ship Types. Well, only three really. The normal Transport ones you get already, and a sort of... 'Sea Defender' and 'Sea Attacker' sort of thing....
Say for example, you held the province of Normandy. Well, a portion of the ocean around Normandy could be included with that province. (This would include the idea of having to be able to trade only with kingdoms you'd actually be able to reach). Now say, the enemy have ships in that part of the ocean under your control. Oh dear, now you can't continue trading with Wessex! You want to do something, but often, you're too busy handling other stuff. That's where this 'Sea Defender' comes in!
You can build them if you have an Admirality constructed in a coastal province you wish to build them in. They would cost a fair bit, and you wouldn't be able to control them directly, but they'd protect that part of the ocean from hostile 'Sea Attackers'.
'Sea Attackers' are virtually the same thing, except they're what you use to attack the seas owned by your enemies and they too, can't be controlled, however, you can select which enemy you want them to target.
With a balance of both, you could effectively disrupt an enemy's trade route, whilst protecting your own.
Idea Two
Watchtowers. Yes, simple idea really. Your Marshal could obtain a Skill that allows them to construct Watchtowers for a moderate amount of Gold. These Watchtowers would stand in the location in front of the Marshal for a short amount of time, and would work like a Fortified Camp, which means they could attack enemy Marshal from afar and it wouldn't be required for your Marshal to remain there.
However, Watchtowers can be attacked in the same way that Villages, Farms or Monasteries are plundered. And if the army is able to finish 'plundering' the Watchtower, their kingdom would earn a small amount of money and the Watchtower would be destroyed permenantly.
Watchtowers could also be destroyed via two other ways: Watchtowers require a small upkeep, of say, 20 Gold. If you can't afford it, the Watchtower is destroyed and you aren't refunded.
However, if the Watchtower lasts for a day and a night, it is destroyed anyway, but you are refunded 50 % of the cost.
These ideas don't seem too complicated, although it did take a bit of time to get them written down. That's one of the things alot of people appreciate about KoH. It's simple but fun. It's easy to play and you get alot of enjoyment from it, simply because anything can happen, and so much does. That's why I'm afraid of the fact that, with alot of the complicated ideas I've seen floating about this topic, KoH 2 could just end up as another MTW, a rather complex game which is so stretched out and filled with things that I'm not interested in, or don't matter, or simply overcomplicate things, makes me want to do this: :bash:
So please, although I'd like a few ideas to be implemented into the game, I'm really hoping you only take a few of the simpler ones and just strive to improve the things that made the first game great! :go:
Mephistopheles
4 Jan 2008, 13:56
@Elvain: Above you cited a food-military conflict, but I think you'll have a hard time getting the production of food and consumption by armies right to make science large exclude military advances. I agree that there's a money-military conflict, which thus creates science-military conflict. However that doesn't mean a country can't be at least somewhat successful in both areas, which was the impression you seemed to create in the posts above.
Regarding trade-goods, I'll draw how I imagin trade:
- A player has a number of traders at his disposal. Each of them cost upkeep. In this example player A selects one of his traders and orders him to trade between how own town A and the town B of a neighouring nation.
- When the trader sets out to town B for trade he earns money once he arrives there. The revenue is split up between the two nations. B's owner get's 60%, A's owner gets 40%.
- Each trade-good has a value. The value of e.g. silk is higher than the value of wood.
- The revenue of a trade is calculated as a product of the value of the tradegoods B has and that A doesn't have and the average population of the towns A and B. The trader's experience adds a bonus to this.
- When the trader has arrived at B and the trade is complete the trader 'carries' the trade-goods he just traded with in his convoy and sets out back to town A.
- Once the trader successfully arrives at town A he drops the trade-goods and town A is now temporarily (for a few minutes) in posession of these trade goods (so A itself can now trade with these goods for a limited amount of time). A more experienced trader increases the duration of the effect.
- The trader sets out towards town B again.
I like this because the core-points can be easily presented to the user:
1. A town with a large population looks big. "More population equals more income" is a well known concept.
2. Desireable trade-goods increase revenue. This is a sensful concept, but should definitely be supported by a tooltip to inform the player that this concept applies in the game.
3. By clicking on the trade-convoy the player can see which trade-goods were actually traded (basically the trade-goods are in the interface where you'd expect the units of a marshall). Every somewhat intelligent player should realize quickly that the traded goods are the tradegoods that B has but A doesn't.
4. When town A temporarily gains trade-goods from trade the respective icons should appear over the town (KoH1-style), perhaps with a visual effect on them. The player should pretty quickly be able to work out that the town gained exactly those trade-goods the trade-convoy had on it.
There are a number of possible variations. E.g. you could imagin that instead of a 40/60 split there should be a default 50/50 split, which is modified by a trading-tax that is defined by the trade-agreement. So when the trade-agreement defines 30% taxes town A only earns 35% of the revenue and 65% stay at B.
Also, this system allows trade within a country. It also allows the player e.g. to react on famines by bringing a trader. The system is also capable of delivering trading-lines across a complete continent, if large enough amounts of traders are dedicated to keep it up.
Trader's experience could also affect the amount of trade-goods a convoy can carry at once. That would make experienced traders extremely valueable. Also, when a trade-convoy is attacked the attacker could earn money based on the value of the transported trade goods.
As said, many many variations are possible. Some of these are too complex, but the core-points can be presented well and should require few learning.
Basically it comes down to: "More population and more expensive trade goods equals more revenue" That's how much you need to know to be successful.
That way trade-goods are a very dynamic thing and the player can use quite a lot of thought on creating worthy trade-connections.
Aw, Meph, your big wall of text pushed my post out of sight back at the end of page 12. Still, you bring up an interesting point, and I wonder what you think of my ideas? :confused:
Mephistopheles
4 Jan 2008, 14:18
Yeah, sorry for that novel there, but I felt that I needed to explain the full concept I had in mind to explain what position trade-goods should have.
Regarding watchtowers, what would stop a player from 'spamming' watchtowers? E.g. a player comes to a country with two or three marshalls and makes all of them continuously construct watchtowers to nerf the enemy.
It's the same problem as with the fortified camp in KoH1. Either they are over-powered or you decrease their efficiency so much that no one bothers with them.
Have you thought of using 'castles' as defensive structures instead? If a player thinks he needs to defend a certain province he could place a camp on the map that provides basic defense and costs few. Later he can upgrade it to a well fortified camp, a stone-tower and at the end a castle. That would provide a similar military cause but it's restricted to defense and stops the whole spamming-camps issue we had in KoH1.
...Just brainstorming.
Uhm, Angry, considering you complained about complexity of ideas, I have to say that your own post is pretty... complicated itself!
Bern, a lot of options doesn't necessarily mean a too crowded interface and complex gameplay, especially if you can choose the level of details before the start of a game. So I don't see anything wrong with proposing many ideas, be they for "idiots" or for "Einsteins". ;)
Mephistopheles
4 Jan 2008, 17:04
Uhm, Angry, considering you complained about complexity of ideas, I have to say that your own post is pretty... complicated itself!You think so? Talk me through it where I missed out something in the explanation.
I realize it's a lot of text, but only one third of it is the explanation of how the trade works. Another third talks about why the player doesn't have to fuss about the mentioned explanation and the last third is about what one could possibly add on top of the trade-system.
I meant the first third, though the other 2/3 aren't very clear either, especially for the same dumber people you were talking about - if they can't understand Elvain's ideas, they'd look at your post probably even more stupid than me, as we say - "like a calf on a railroad". So, a suggestion from me - always use practical and easy examples (f.e. the trader leaves from Novgorod, reaches Vilnius, spends some time trading there (and because Novgorod is a big city and the merchant is experienced, makes more money) and then returns to Novgorod, where he leaves some additional goods)! This way you can be more sure that people like me know what you're saying. ;)
Regarding watchtowers, what would stop a player from 'spamming' watchtowers? E.g. a player comes to a country with two or three marshalls and makes all of them continuously construct watchtowers to nerf the enemy.
It's the same problem as with the fortified camp in KoH1. Either they are over-powered or you decrease their efficiency so much that no one bothers with them.
Have you thought of using 'castles' as defensive structures instead? If a player thinks he needs to defend a certain province he could place a camp on the map that provides basic defense and costs few. Later he can upgrade it to a well fortified camp, a stone-tower and at the end a castle. That would provide a similar military cause but it's restricted to defense and stops the whole spamming-camps issue we had in KoH1.
...Just brainstorming.
I like your Castle idea, and I suppose there would be a way to include both ideas. Each Marshal could only have one Watchtower at a time, so if one Marshal made a Watchtower in, say, York and then tried to make one in Orleans, then he'd build one in Orleans and the one in York would disappear, and the kingdom that the marshal was under would not recieve a refund, which would urge the player to think before they placed a Watchtower.
I suppose Watchtowers could also be destroyed if the Marshal that built it was taken prisoner or killed, and if the Marshal happened to rebel, then that Watchtower would simply switch allegiance from the kingdom to the rebels.
Oh, and NikeBG, it's not that I don't like the ideas, it's just... some of them seem to complicate things for a pointless reason. Like, I would rather deal with building armies and construction myself, because it was easy enough to handle in the first one, rather than trust an AI to manage it for me.
Aw, Meph, your big wall of text pushed my post out of sight back at the end of page 12. Still, you bring up an interesting point, and I wonder what you think of my ideas? :confused:
End of page 12?
End of page 4, for me!
Not all of us have our post per page set at the forum default of 10. When talking about a post, using page number is not a very clear method to use.
Mephistopheles
5 Jan 2008, 17:46
I really don't understand why then you disliked my ideas that much :sad: I don't dislike your ideas. We have a lot in common regarding key-concepts, but I gave criticism because you always only release small bits of information of what you imagin at a time. That makes it very hard to make sense from your thoughts. At least I have the feeling I'm looking at puzzle-pieces and I can't see yet wether they'll fit together in a senseful, intuitive way or wether you're planning on a 300-pages manual. Earlier in this thread I was really under the impression you wanted to fill the gaps I could still see with hard rules and special-case-exceptions. Now that you've dropped more and more thoughts in this thread things start coming together, but it's a bit cumbersome, I think.
It seems there was also some misunderstanding about the way I think about complexity:
Personally I like it when I have few rules to learn but I can solve a very complex task with these few rules. Simple rules, complex gameplay. Quick to learn, hard to master.
That means the knowledge the player needs to aquire should be few and simple, but the possibilities should be many.
Denisold
5 Jan 2008, 18:17
I'm affraid it's simplicity what people ask, so my suggestions are not worth the toil...
just look:
Isn’t there two sides to the ‘complexity’ issue?
Complexity in the ‘playing of the game’ – yes I suspect most of us would request that game play be as simple as possible (too complicated and we probably won’t play for long)
Complexity in the underlying ‘game design’ – this aspect is by nature excessively complex, and attempts to write about game design is very difficult (so difficult that most of us have a difficult time trying to follow just the entry level explanations)
If we are trying to put forward suggestions that will improve a rebuilt KoH then most of our comments and explanations will fall under ‘2’ above, and will hence start complicated (and become more so as the discussion expands). IMO we should not worry to much about ‘1’ complexity – we should trust BSS to only put forward an interface that is built on simplicity (BSS have already demonstrated their advanced skills in this area in KoH).
Maybe we should just plow ahead with the great suggestions for game design (and the explanations) and accept the fact that complexity comes with the territory?
Just to let you know - we are following the discussion with great interest.
So in language of my concepts decline of Rome could be described by:
1) governmental systems (corporative switched into centralized),
2) technologies (corporative or republican system gives bonus to find new technologies, while centralistic needs state-support which was decreasing after the 1st century CE, so Rome was losing some technologic advantages)
3) demography-based economy (crisis of work-power which was being solved by imigrations from "Germania", lack of food so the army could not be fed enough)
So you're suggesting that "income of technology points" would be influenced not directly by a "bad boy factor", but by government types? With that I agree fully! :)
Personally I like it when I have few rules to learn but I can solve a very complex task with these few rules. Simple rules, complex gameplay. Quick to learn, hard to master.
Meph, I like "quick to learn, hard to master" too, but I like it a bit more like this way - easy to get the basic hang of it and be able to play that way good, as long as you like (without delving into details), but still being able to do even more things to improve your mastery. ;)
P.S. About population - if it's implemented, it would be great if it has a really important effect on the "power" of the country, since that was among the most important factors of "strength" (some rulers didn't title themselves "rule of the many ..." for nothing ;) ).
1. build armies and conquere the world, that is what the people want.
2. So, what is the diference between the castle idea and watchtower idea?
Somewhere above we discussed (or maybe I just scetched it just for myself?) that the castle would be form of settlement that you build in your lands (would have hard time building castle on someone elses territory). Some villages could be upgraded to castles so they protect your land. They could be built on strategic positions and in some cases a castle can even be upgraded into a town (but that would IYO make the game too complicated, so better stick just to static map without towns-creating).
When having such castles, why should there be also some watchtowers - wouldn't it the game too confusing - you'd have to check which watchtower belongs to which marshall. Marshall Gabriel has watchtower in endangered province so he should not build new watchtower in other province, so it would be better to send there another marshall across half of the map? and how would it work with the AI? how would you make the AI to place them rationaly? Look at fortified camps in KoH.
1. When did I say that? I just pointed out that I'd rather do some things myself rather than spend time going through several pointless options just to get the AI to do it for me, that was just an example I made. Please don't make me sound like some... Total War fanboy, please?
2. Yes. Yes, you did discuss about that, and I agreed. You said it yourself, Castles would be mainly for your own territory. Watchtowers would be more for invasions, and they last for only a short amount of time anyway. And the reason it would only be one Watchtower per Marshal, is because then you'd have people spamming Watchtowers. There were also a number of ways for the Watchtower to be destroyed, as I explained before in my first post about it, so there'd be little opportunity to worry about that in the first place.
But your example brings up a decent enough point for me to counter anyway. It's like Fortified Camps, really. Let's say... Marhsal William has made himself a Fortified Camp. Oh, but the enemy is approaching from another direction. Marshal William now has to move and build the Fortified Camp elsewhere. Generally the same thing with Watchtowers, except the Marshal doesn't have to stay with the Watchtower. Same problem, same solution.
Also, there would be no way to make the AI do it rationally, not that I know of anyway. But then, it was the same with the Fortified Camps, yet KoH was still a decent game and it wasn't exactly too big a problem, so I couldn't really see this being too big a problem either.
well, you are partly right, but it's not that "simple" as always with my proposals. There would be a table with ingame things and each would bring some positive or negative "kingdom technology points" (KTP), "bad boy points" (BBP), "total power points" (TPP), "diplomatic prestige points"(DPP), "religious points" (RP) etc.
Ok, that sounds pretty good actually, making a bigger difference in the player's gamestyle. But I don't think that it should be hidden from the player - as you said, but in the opposite way - if the AI can know it and use it, then the player should know about it as well, since that would be a pretty important thing for his game strategy (if he has one, of course). It's another matter if he'd care about it or just go on playing like before. ;)
And about the alphabet - how many nations in this area had an alphabet of their own, how many alphabets? The Latin, the Greek, the Cyrillic, the Glagolitic (left to use in a few places like Croatia), the Arabic, the Armenian and Georgian, eventually the runic alphabets (Futhark and the Orkhon script, if somebody still uses them in the time period). And how many of these alphabets were newly-made? The Glagolitic and the Cyrillic (both made with one purpose - "for all the Slavs to read"). Not to mention that the creation of a new alphabet in such a case would create an extremely complex situation - look at Cyril Philosopher's missions to defend the right to preach on Slavic and although he finally got the permission of the Pope, his work still hanged by a thread (so, at the least, an alphabet would decrease the diplomacy and especially the religion points (because of breaking the trilingual dogma) drastically).
Mephistopheles
6 Jan 2008, 15:16
I consider Elvain's point-system similar to the diplomatic relations-development in KoH1. The game has a table of the effects of certain actions on other nations, but the player never gets to see them.
That's because the game is pointing towards comon sense here: "Backstabing an ally drops the relations dramatically." That's enough info for the player - we didn't need to know that there was a 500 relationship-points drop associated with breaking an alliance in KoH1, and I don't think the player should be bothered with the exact details in KoH2 either.
But in diplomacy relations were only on one-two dimensions - a good/bad relations and eventually religion line, while here it affects five dimensions (high/low technology, dread, power, diplomacy and religion).
OK friends, this is very good. I also following this thread, anynomyusly, as my account was banned. Still I got some comments:
To Elvain: I think I can understand what you are thinking, it is not that complicated. But yes, complex it is.
PS: I must go quick, my father will be mad. I'll resume this later (I have an idea too)
Ah, so you mean alphabets as "importing/exporting cultural influence"? Ok, that sounds interesting...
Some "scores should have rankings visible to the player, but some not. However, even if the player wouldn't be aware of his actual score, he'd be more or less generally aware of his situation visualized on some score-bar, but without the exact score (unlike the AI, the player shouldn't know that if he builds one church that provides 2 tech points, he can afford to buy a technology, it't meant that player should know that building advanced structures provide technology points that open the door for new technologies -> possible alternative victory.
I don't know about the others, but I personally would prefer to be able to plan my strategy in good enough details, so that I don't "waste" more than the necessary points. But since indeed the original KoH was more or less such too and yet probably that's one of the reasons why it was with such an easy interface, I guess it can work out pretty well if those stats are hidden too. Of course, in such case it should be made clear enough that if you do this or that, you could get these or those consequences.
I think the player (and AI) should can choose their investment of technology, example England, which is want to win Religiously, should invest in Military and Religious techs. While Norway, who want to win Diplomacy, should invest in Trade and Diplomacy (and Spy!) techs... This breakdown should be fair...
Ah, I agree with your ideas now...
still, it should be an option to the royal spirit to have the noble make him remember things or not... I don't want to be mad because the nobles kept wanting things that's impossible, such as Fatimid capture lowlands, etc...
Also, the AI progamming should be made in common languanges! So anybody skilled enough can edit that! And also, things that in KoH1 is hard-coded, please make it soft-coded...
[Of course, this lead to a great degree of Modding, even better, the BSS wouldn't have to provide the patch, the community make it's own... ]
Was up all night formulating my list and ideas :)
NOTE: *For single player only
INTRO: The premise for the bulk of my ideas is that history is formed around economics and hence economics should be a important factor in the game (although micromanagement is undesirable). Also, the following ideas would most likely increase the system requirements a lot, but nowadays that shouldn't be so much of an issue.
OPINIONS/BASIC IDEAS:
Tech: I think technology should NOT be introduced into the game. It unnecessarily complicates things, and I've never seen a tech system that really feels genuine because you always know what techs are coming.
Game speed: Should be changeable. Period.
IDEA OVERVIEW (MAIN POINTS)
- MULTI-LEVEL INTEGRATIVE ZOOM
- LIQUID BORDERS
- ECONOMIC SPECIALIZATION
- WAR CAMPAIGNING
- MORE STATISTICS
ELABORATION:
- MULTI LEVEL ZOOM
- Zoom ranges from actually zooming in on cities, towns, and villages, hence much
bigger map once zoomed in. I'll try and make a image that conveys this idea later on. This ties in to
my economic ideas later on. Zoom out completely to political map.
- LIQUID BORDERS
- Borders and regions should not be set (except for of course at the very
beginning). Similarly to RoN and the Civ series, settlements expand sphere,
conquering settlements changes who sphere belongs to. Fits in nicely with my war
ideas.
- It should therefore be possible to build forts which can protect territory and extend
influence.
- ECONOMIC SPECIALIZATION
- Resources should be spelled out, meaning with the zoom function (being able to
zoom in very far in, should do research and show where resources lie on the map,
so you can plan trade routes, etc (next point). This is opposed to the KoH1 idea of
regions having only three resources.
- Using this resource idea, towns and villages can come under the player's control.
By this, I mean say you have a resource nearby that is untouched (horses). You
send workers to the resource, and they settle down there, becoming a hamlet,
which after time grows to a village, then a town, then maybe even a city.
- I think trading should be more complex in the way of being able to determine
trade routes. If a port lies far away or in dangerous territory, it is going to be less
profitable to try and trade. Trade routes (sea or land (roads)) should develop over
time after you have made a trade agreement. If there is some food source
nearby, water, and protection, a village can grow along this route, which will also
grow.
WAR
- First of all, war should not be declared so easily without any rationale behind it.
- Once you declare war and want to mount a invasion, a war campaign screen
should open, in which you can plan which marshals go where with what troops.
This is much more realistic, as once they're sent you can't call them back, except
by message, which takes a while to get there. You can also ask allies to coordinate
attacks.
- In actual battle, you should have to plan an attack before the actual battle starts.
- You should also be able to extend forts (see LIQUID BORDERS above), castles,
etc. manually to make the game more customizable.
- When you recruit soldiers, you should be able to draft citizens from the city and
train them (which takes time), and you should be able to visit towns and villages
to recruit. Population cap therefore should increase per marshal.
- When an enemy enters your region, or you enter theirs, or you're using the war
campaign module, you should get scout reports on the strength of the enemy and
their location in a scroll from your 'scouts'. Then, maybe you can choose to double
your scout patrols to get better information, etc.
MORE STATISTICS/POLICIES/CUSTOMIZABLE COURT/ MORE INTRIGUE
- I read this idea a few pages back, and it makes sense to integrate earls, dukes,
etc. into the game and get them involved in the politics. They can raise armies as
well against enemies or against you.
- There could possibly be a new level called the court map, in which you zoom into
your court and your advisors, members of the court that are there, etc. tell you
things of interest and give you information about succession, etc.
- When upgrading knights, you should be able to choose which knight, and therefore
have access to a report about him, whether hes disloyal, where he has fought, etc.
- Specialization is something that needs to be addressed. If you build a hundred
ships, you become better at it, and the longer your soldiers spend at sea, the
better they are at it. Over time, this should translate to bonuses in certain areas,
and therefore specialization. Same goes for resource production bonuses.
- There should be more policies that you can make to make each time you play seem more unique. I
don't know exactly what you could change, but I'll come up with something later.
That's all for now. Hope some of you agree with most of my ideas. I think all of these ideas make it more realistic, a more unique experience each time, and more eventful.
Thanks for reading.
Emm, good...
How about the tech is random, with many 'hidden' stats to choose which tech to be given to the kingdom?
I don't like the idea of Technologies. It can overly complicate things for a needless reason, and the game would no doubt become just a 'Technology Race'... :crushed:
Eh? But technology is really important one.
How about to sustain a technology, you must pay a price?
That would complicate the matter even further, and it wouldn't really make any sense. You'd have to pay a tax just so your people remember how to write?
Emm, YES! The tax would be in the industry of ink and papers, and the teachers! Come on, how can one be educated without an educator?
That wouldn't explain why the people that were taught how to write just suddenly forgot, when you couldn't afford to pay the tax.
I don't know... but a mix between M2:TW and KoH would be THE BEST :O Great Graphic and great diplomacy
tomilis
10 Feb 2008, 23:33
I think that technologies could be in the game, but should look like something completely diferent from the way IWM imagines it... and I already described it.
btw I like the ideas of tomilis, they are very nice and deserve further evaluation :) on the other hand it would move the game very close to other already existing games, right? how would it be diferent from say Settlers or Civ?
better diplomacy, better trade system, right?
Anyway, I'm not sure if I understood your military system. What military window or what is it? one separate window for military, wouldn't it make the interface too user-unfriendly? consider that wars are always important part of game, there would be a window that would deserve to be opened for almost entire game, but would be a special window that has to be always opened and closed, too many clicks just to see your military/economic part of game, don't you think? or did I just misunderstood it?
Thanks :D
About the 'military window', what I meant is that wars should be planned out like they would have in the medieval ages. As in as soon as you want to invade other regions, you have to open a war campaign planner in which you click where to send which troops, including asking help from allies, and coordinating time of attacks, and routes to attack, and long term plans. This makes each war seem a lot more unique and realistic as well as requiring more brains and planning I think.
Hope that sort of makes sense.
Also, as to the technology issue, I like where IWM is suggesting... but I wouldn't know where to go with that... I mean, what hidden stats? trade routes, luck, etc.? and what techs would come out of it? random ones? or do you mean unspecific ones, ones that give you bonuses for different things, for example with my trading ideas, if you traded with the Arabs who trade with the Chinese and Indians by sea, you get ideas for shipbuilding via transitive?
If not, I think not having technology in KoH is what made it enjoyable. It becomes too complicated if there is. Within the actual divisions (Early and High Middle Ages) there was very little by way of change in terms of technology. In terms of governance, on the other hand, thats a different story, but those were developed over time as more of a natural development. I wouldn't know how to make the 'discovery' of those techs seem genuine. By this I mean, I'm sure you've all played AoE, you always know what techs are coming, and it takes resources of all things to get it, its not real at all, and it becomes as someone pointed out a tech race, which is not the point of KoH IMO.
Just my two cents :go:
Also, how would it be different from other games? Well, I guess it becomes very similar to the Total War series, but what that doesn't have is the economics system I suggest and its turn based.
saneeel
11 Feb 2008, 00:36
I don't know... but a mix between M2:TW and KoH would be THE BEST :O Great Graphic and great diplomacy
that i also recomended.
tomilis
11 Feb 2008, 11:27
Damnit! I made this huge-ass reply, previewed it, and forgot that it was only preview so I exited the screen and lost the whole post! :o
Anyways, I'll try and repeat the gist of what I said, Elvain,
Basically, what happened when I posted was I came up with several new ideas thanks to this great discussion going on (thanks :go: ), so it should be easy to condense it, but ask for elaboration as I don't really feel like repeating the whole thing (gods I'm pissed right now)
First of all, what I suggested was that there be far less wars for no reason, so each one seems to have bigger impact (which was generally true in reality). Also, I think marching times in KoH1 is already pretty accurate as its scaled to the bigger map. We can't really tell, though, because we have very little indication of time in this game (which is one of my new ideas, introducing times)
So, what I was getting at was that the whole beauty of the war planner is the example you give.
If you recall my advisors idea, I think as soon as you're about to declare war, in your example Aragon, you should be given a report saying who they're allied to, where their armies are, who they have defeated, nearest armies, weakest positions, etc. so you can weigh in the first place whether its wise to declare war or not.
So you would then know that you need certain amount of troops to stave off Germany, England, Aragon, and the HRE. If you don't have them, don't declare war :)
Anyways, in terms of the actual war planner, if you have decided to mount an invasion, and as you say you have your army plundering in Catalonia (which you should have told to come back probably before you declared war, but using as an example), you need to recall them. So you ask your advisors how long it would take to send either a bird or fast rider to send a message for the army to do a fast march and get back to Burgundy. You would be given (under the time idea) a ETA (estimated time of arrival) and ETAs of how far any English armies are from your cities (based on scouting reports, which can be faulty). The time should be slowed down in the game at this point to see events unfold.
In terms of offense, although its Aragon, I think its unlikely that you would be sending only one marshal (it certainly was in those times). Therefore, advantages of the planner are that you can get ETAs so you can plan the two marshals to get to the city at the same time, or ask allies to meet at the same time, plan the route of the two marshals, get scout reports on the strength of the enemy, and reports from the marshal themselves about their chances, morale, training, numbers, food supply, etc. Makes it a lot more realistic in my opinion.
That was basically what I said. In terms of your second idea, which I can see you were running out of time on, I had a similar idea pop up this morning, which I logged on to post (before the post was lost :bash: )
I'm talking about this part
Also your trade is not far from the trade as I imagine it, just that I think that generaly the economy should be somehow "tied" in a "city system" - to build something in a city, you have to open a city window as it is now in KoH, but can influence if it is inside or outside city walls... but I don't have time to write more now
The first part, economy being "tied" to the city system, I don't really understand, unless what you mean is how I meant it, villages, which in those times were formed almost exclusively under three conditions: placement on a trade route, access to a resource, or in defense. So, how I tied settlements to the economy was with my trade route idea.
The second part is what I logged in to post. I'm not sure if what you mean by inside and outside city walls is towns and villages or literally directly inside or outside city walls, but my idea concerned the latter, and I explained my idea for the former in my original post. So, what I thought is that, like in RoN, I don't know if you've played that game (Rise of Nations) they have the concept of districts. I think that would be a useful thing for KoH to add to their game. Obviously, it would be more specific for the medieval era. You would have I suppose either merchant, court, farming, industry, housing, port, or military which gives you bonuses and weaknesses and you can place either inside or outside city walls.
The last part I wanted to post is an idea I forgot about in my original post, which I kinda assumed. But, elaborating, what I meant is that there should be different types of settlements which you can create, aka a fort to protect a area and gift to a knight so he becomes a duke of a certain area of influence (clever how these ideas tie in).
Long post, though not quite as long as the old one (curses :mad: )
Ah, but I don't that like RON's economy. That is only for small scales, can't be the same as in KoH. The computer will be mad and thrown itself out of your window if you try to make 147 Kingdoms in RON and try to play all that in one map...
tomilis
11 Feb 2008, 12:28
Ah, but I don't that like RON's economy. That is only for small scales, can't be the same as in KoH. The computer will be mad and thrown itself out of your window if you try to make 147 Kingdoms in RON and try to play all that in one map...
What do you mean? I don't mean the whole of RoN's economic system, just the districts... surely it wouldn't be that hard to program in when the AI should build a district in a city?
Districs? Towns? I don't like a hell of them...
Even thought, the moving borders is a very good idea!
tomilis
11 Feb 2008, 13:44
Districs? Towns? I don't like a hell of them...
Even thought, the moving borders is a very good idea!
?
Why not, exactly?
I don't like the moving borders idea, really. Half the fun of KoH is taking provinces from other kingdoms... Provinces just wouldn't be of much use if you only needed one to take over like half of the British Isles or something.
I wouldn't mind if they kept everything as it was, but just did the 2D graphics in better detail and maybe added some more provinces and units, and maybe a couple of new time periods.
Mephistopheles
11 Feb 2008, 21:09
1. I'm with Elvain regarding province borders. I think we already discussed this a lot earlier on this thread.
2. I'd like to add to the thread that I hope KoH2 communicates more with the player. Especially the AI needs to rectify it's decisions a lot because the player always suspects that the AI is acting like that out of stupidity, not because it had good reason to do so.
E.g. when an AI kingdom declares war it should *exactly* point out the reason why it did so. Internally even KoH1 calculated a reason, but it didn't tell the player why the Ai did it which makes the AI look stupid. There is a big difference between an inferior AI declaring war on me with a generic declaration of war just to be humiliated by me and an Ai telling me that even though it's chances of success are dim, my cruel reign over a province that's culturally attached to them can not be tolerated. The first situation is considered a bug, the second a feature, even though the only thing that changed was the text in the message-pop-up.
That concept should be applied as much as possible. It's important to reassure the player that the AI, and the whole game in general, uses *sense*.
tomilis
12 Feb 2008, 00:46
Concerning the borders I think there should be something like "districts" or small counties that would be mergable into smaller or larger provinces.
The centre of a county would stil be a city, which would be built in more-or-less the same way as it is now.. but about that later.
I don't really like fixed provinces, the map should be more interactive, give the player the possibility to develop smaller settlements into larger ones - villages into towns and cities and make them centres of new provinces and then merge them with other provinces according to move of trade routes, wars and economic changes in th eregion.
I agree.
Bern, you misunderstood what is meant by changeable borders. Provinces would still exist, but they would be changeable (as in theres not only national borders, but also regions specifically based on the closest city and settlements in its radius). Provinces shouldn't be big enough to consume half the British Isles.
That to me is no fun at all. It just adds an unneeded complication in and would just be silly, really. It's better with keeping the provinces seperate rather than merging them back and forth and splitting provinces into smaller counties and merging the counties, blah blah blah.
It's actually kinda pointless in my eyes.
tomilis
12 Feb 2008, 11:51
I know that this is not what you meant, but once you have very large empire I think you should have the possibility to merge all english counties to - say - one province of England. But at the same time, when some of your enemies conqueres the capital city of the province and you still have garrisons in smaller cities and castles, the province is still yours, just the city goes to the conqueror.
I'm with Bern on this one. The way it really should work is since a city (the fortified center) is taken, the whole province goes with it. In those days, towns and villages were under the same ruler as the city (a earl or duke), hence once he's defeated then the whole province is taken. Taking cities in my opinion is too much like Civ and I didn't like how that worked.
Don't get me wrong though. There are still national borders, but those are defined by the provinces. All together it would still be England, but inside of England there would be the province of York, Wessex, etc.
If you have garrisons in smaller cities and castles, thats just stupid because if an enemy is attacking your city first without handling the castles, they're very stupid (because they would be expected to get hit in the rear by that garrison). Nobody in those days allows conquerors to simply walk through their province, they are usually met with as much resistance as they can put up, so your scenario is unrealistic.
If for some reason you decided not to, you would become a occupant of that city or castle (which I repeat is stupid because the enemy should attack castles first, as they pave the way for the province to fall) and you can hold it or attack the city.
I know that this is not what you meant, but once you have very large empire I think you should have the possibility to merge all english counties to - say - one province of England. But at the same time, when some of your enemies conqueres the capital city of the province and you still have garrisons in smaller cities and castles, the province is still yours, just the city goes to the conqueror.
As I've said before, that seems like the ultimately best option, at least for me. Especially since it can very well be combined with other ideas like actual feudalism (your nobles), local forces (the idea for the local "marshals" who can set out to fight rebels etc. in their own province). It adds so many options for a versatile gameplay in nearly all aspects of the game (military, administrative, economical etc.)! :)
EDIT: Tomilis, people are stupid (ok, some people). Computers (AI) can be pretty stupid too.
Well, the city is very small, that's why I don't like them :( .
Ah, I agree with that. But the Player should not have to buy units for the 'local marshal'
It should generated by : Money invested to that province and province's tech, to define it's weapons. Morale and men count from the happiness. There must be some factor with the invading troops too (eg. If there are some ties, like curtularry, or because the propaganda of some spies, the local army could switch allegiance to the invader) but there must be also for the ruler.
That is realistic, as it is better to be loved ruler than benevolent dictator (because they will revolt, some time)
tomilis
12 Feb 2008, 14:52
As I've said before, that seems like the ultimately best option, at least for me. Especially since it can very well be combined with other ideas like actual feudalism (your nobles), local forces (the idea for the local "marshals" who can set out to fight rebels etc. in their own province). It adds so many options for a versatile gameplay in nearly all aspects of the game (military, administrative, economical etc.)! :)
EDIT: Tomilis, people are stupid (ok, some people). Computers (AI) can be pretty stupid too.
Not necessarily stupid, but not in keeping with the honor code of the time.
Not necessarily stupid, but not in keeping with the honor code of the time.
Honour code? What the hell is that? The game might be "Knights of honor", but that doesn't mean it should be about a knightly fairytale (otherwise I do demand my fair princess and the dragon units). And even the Western knights didn't follow the knightly "honour code" all so zealously. Not to mention for the non-feudalistic and non-Catholic societies (Orthodox, Pagan, Muslim people), which (AFAIK) would still be in the game.
tomilis
12 Feb 2008, 17:51
Well, it still sort of holds today (although we don't really have a example this century)
Just the idea that if you're being invaded you use all available resources to stop it. You're not going to leave an army in the territory thats being invaded idle.
Just for your information, honour code extended beyond the knightly system. There was a manner of operation during those times that makes it fun to play but limited progress from blind war for a long time in Europe.
I would know this because I study Medieval history at University, so I'm not making this up.
This is all so pointless, really. I like the provinces the way they are. They set boundaries boundaries that don't conflict with the game.
Moveable borders isn't something we really need. I don't like the idea of 'Capitals' either. The whole game would just become a 'Capital Rush' thing.
Elvain explained pretty well the strategical reasons I had in mind.
Just for your information, honour code extended beyond the knightly system. There was a manner of operation during those times that makes it fun to play but limited progress from blind war for a long time in Europe.
Then you, as a history student, should know that "manners of operation" are subjective (dependant of the subject in charge), generalized (and statistically generalizations have a lot of exceptions from the general rule) and dependant on many and various factors. And all this in the field of one "operational manner" (f.e. of Western Roman-Catholic Europe), while the "manner of operation" f.e. of the Steppe nations is *extremely* different than that of the HRE f.e. And while there might be some unwritten rules (be they common for all humans or f.e. for Catholic and Orthodox Christians), rules always had exceptions, which broke them and there are enough examples in history about it. And excluding the possibility for such exceptions would IMHO be a mistake, which would limit the versatility of the game.
the problem is, you can be ignorant to the system I propose. T the beggining there is some set of provinces that is accurate t the chosen period and you can just stict to the provinces as someone painted them for you and if you want you can influence the map.
At the same time thyís system anebles to have diferent maps for diferent periods, it adds many things to all - economy, warfare, diplomacy and administration but if you don't like it, you can ignore it and stick to the map as it looks at the start.
It adds a lot and I saw many people demanding better maps, but if you find it pointless, it is pointless waste of time explaining it to you, am I right?
PS: you were never bored by the fact that once your kingdom is large you have to scroll down through over 100 provinces to find the one you want? I was and I hated it, so it really adds much while it is not a complication to those who are not interested in it, like you, got it?
Whoa, ugh, calm down a little?
Also, how would changing provinces' borders and making them smaller and stuff make finding them any easier?
It was explained a number of times over and over - sub-province unifications into bigger provinces (and vice versa, of course). So if you have, let's say, the city of Adrianople and the fortress of Tsurulon as independent provinces, you can decide to unite them into one (f.e. Adrianople). If you wish, you could then unite that new one with Constantinople etc. I know that we've already came up with such a huge ammount of ideas only in this thread (not counting those already forgotten ones from the old Sunflowers forum) that it's inevitable both for duplications or contradictions to appear, but still I would suggest to people to check out the previous pages of debates and suggestions.
Btw, perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea for somebody to gather all the ideas here and put them shortly in one post? Any volunteers, preferably with lots of spare time (thus conveniently excluding myself :p)?
I'd like the idea of being able to merge smaller provinces into larger ones which actually historically happened. Kinda like the Unification events you get KoH, but better.
Still, it doesn't matter if we don't want to, if it's still an option in the game then the AI will be spamming it in every direction from here to the Moon. And if the AI can't use it, then it would be highly unbalanced.
I would like it if the big provinces were split into smaller ones, and getting all of those unifies it into the main, bigger one. Merging several big provinces is a silly idea to me. I'm actually trying to point something out here, but you keep batting it away: It would overcomplicate things!
tomilis
13 Feb 2008, 00:10
Elvain explained pretty well the strategical reasons I had in mind.
Then you, as a history student, should know that "manners of operation" are subjective (dependant of the subject in charge), generalized (and statistically generalizations have a lot of exceptions from the general rule) and dependant on many and various factors. And all this in the field of one "operational manner" (f.e. of Western Roman-Catholic Europe), while the "manner of operation" f.e. of the Steppe nations is *extremely* different than that of the HRE f.e. And while there might be some unwritten rules (be they common for all humans or f.e. for Catholic and Orthodox Christians), rules always had exceptions, which broke them and there are enough examples in history about it. And excluding the possibility for such exceptions would IMHO be a mistake, which would limit the versatility of the game.
No PC game will ever be perfect. Nobody can reflect the human ability to create cultures, and replicate generically hundreds of thousands of tiny minute details to offer the possibility of finding ways to win battles or raise armies or convince a king to do something with human ingenuity.
Yes, of course the rules were broken, and they are generalized. Nobody is assuming that everybody held true to these tacit 'rules'. But in the case of a PC game, with the limitations stated above, its a moot point that has been taken out of context on to a broader discussion, which does not suit the implicit necessity for games to reflect this strict honour, reputation code in its internal workings as they cannot expect a player (whose riches, armies, reputation, and life are not at stake) to adhere to, and restrict them to, this binding set of regulations which, as you say, limits the versatility of the game.
So, in terms of provinces, elvain, not every town and village has a garrison worthy of loyalty beyond its own town. The ones big enough would usually have a garrison that would be summoned by the ruler to fight against the invader.
However, concerning the limitations I pointed out above, the player should not be forced to do this (btw, where did this idea of having garrisons for towns and villages other than the province city come from? is it a extension to my fort/castle idea (in which case does not apply to towns, but perhaps cities (fortified towns included)?).
I do not believe taking cities is the best way. One of the major stumbling points for me is then how do you take the villages, towns, etc. around it? military conquest (which would take ages)? or do you wait for your city to assimilate them (which is outrageous when a nation is invading and at war)?
Therefore, to propose my way around this, by when taking the home of the duke (province 'capital') and eliminating the forts/castles, other fortified cities in the area (assuming your integrating this in the discussion, and then the order of conquest generally should be forts then cities, then capital) taking control of the province... Towns and villages, in control of even smaller territories, as you say, would be under the control of earls/counts, but those would be subject to a duke.
So when the city is taken and the province exchanges hand, the earls/counts would have the 'choice' of either submitting to the new ruler or remaining loyal to their original banner.
Could that possibly work?
*EDIT* In general, I'm in favour of shifting borders because it allows the player to create their own history genuinely, the idea of territories, towns, cities, villages falling under the cultural, genetic, political, and military sphere of a nation is one that was important. In those times, borders were constantly changing, so it doesn't really make sense to reduce the game to the simple exchanging of set territory which can just as easily be taken back the same way.
I also don't understand what you mean Bern by bigger provinces. They will probably be smaller and more numerous based on more cities!
to be honest now you contradict your last posts. You said you didin't like the idea of changing provinces and that they shuold remain as they are in KoH1, just have more of them
I'm not contradicting myself. If you stopped trying to be the 'School Yard Bully' for one moment and take a minute to chill, you might be able to put yourself on an even standing with me. I mean... What, you're hitting below the belt now? This has nothing to do with the discussion, so get it back on track. Just because I dislike one of your ideas doesn't mean I don't like another.
I said I didn't like the thought of splitting provinces up and expanding borders. I just said I liked the idea of having a province like Rome split into maybe a couple of smaller provinces, and then if you had control of the two provinces they automatically merged to become Rome, and it would just be Rome from then on in.
There was a proposal/demand of several people for changable borders and you said "I just don't like it, I find it pointless!" so I and Nike tried to explain it eventhough we already did several pages above. so who is batting what?
you were batting away something you didn't fully understand and afterall want it?
And last: the proposal I made - and agreed with Nike's ideas - is made that a player who doesn't want to use it can simply ignore it so it adds no complexity to him, just he would see that some AI kingdoms change provincial borders during his game, nothing else
No, that's different. I didn't say I didn't understand it, I said I didn't like it. :rolleyes: And a Player would be forced to use it then, if he had any hopes of wanting to compete with the AI. What would the limit be to the amount of provinces you could merge, and how far could you push a merging boundary? After all, it wouldn't make sense to have the whole of Russia, Germany, France, Spain and Italy all merged together.
Well, tomilis, as far as I see, your view fits more or less with the sub-provinces idea, just accenting more on the loyalty factor (which fits with the "noble-governors" idea).
Bern, of course there should be predefined limits for maximum size of a province. After all, eventhough one kingdom could be viewed as one huge province (and according to the "manners of operation", when the capital is conquered and the ruler is taken captive, then the whole country is taken (according to the conqueror, of course, not necessarily to all the rest)), it would still be stupid to actually have your whole kingdom, spanning from the Caucasus to the Alps as one single game-province. My personal view to such a limit would be from a maximum size of around 2-3 current (in KoH1) provinces to around 5 (maximum). And my personal view is one current KoH1 province to otherwise have let's say 3 or 4 settlements (be they fortresses, towns or cities).
And just to make clear how I envision it: I'm currently playing Battle for Middle Earth 2 and there you have the map of Middle Earth divided on provinces. Now, besides having provinces, which you conquer one by one (or 3 by 3, actually, since you can move three offensive armies per turn), there are also regions - Gondor, Mordor, Rhun, Rhovanion, Eriador and Arnor. So any single province on that map is a part of that bigger region, which includes several other provinces as well. And when you capture all provinces of Rhovanion, it gives you a certain bonus, but all those provinces still remain separate administrative units, although they're a part of the bigger region of Rhovanion. Of course, in BfME2 there is no actual capital of Rhovanion (I think), which automatically conquers all other non-conquered provinces in the region, but this can easily be understood in KoH-terms. And speaking of KoH, another example: you're playing as Byzantium and have the province of Thrace, which includes the Great City of Constantinople, the city of Adrianople, the fortress of Tsurulon and the fortress of Galipoli (f.e.). You, however, think that the resources of Adrianople and Constantinople would be better managed separately, so you take Adrianople and Tsurulon and separate them into the province of Adrianople, maybe even giving it under the management of some of your nobles (hopefully very pleased now). However, you look up north and see that the Pechenegs have invaded thema Paristrion and just when strategos Ioan Dukas has taken most of the army from Paristrion to go fight against the Magyars, leaving only the militia of the theme's capital of Durostolum and just a few units at Varna, Tarnovo and Bdin. However, since the Pechenegs are Steppe warriors and apparently know that Paristrion is largely with scattered defenses, they use the dispersal tactics and have besieged the capital of Durostorum with some Slavic infantry they've brought, while keeping their horsemen in the plains. Of course, you send reinforcements from other themes, but they may not arrive in time. The other option is to try and gather your troops from the other towns in Paristrion, but that would mean going out into the plains, where the Pechenegs have a clear advantage and thus you'd risk losing both the capital of the province, as well as the remaining troops in its other towns. Of course, if you're strong enough, you can just gather your forces and smash those Pechenegs back to their huts beyond the Istros, but if you're not, you may wish to keep your other towns, prolonging the fight, while the incoming reinforcements finally arrive. Of course, in the meantime Durostorum might fall in Pecheneg hands, which might be a tactical defeat, but in the long run would become a strategical victory if you play your cards well. I hope that explains my view on the possibilities that the sub-provinces give! Of course, if it seems too complicated to somebody, we might say that the sub-provinces would fit for the "detailed gameplay" option (selectable before the start of the individual game), while the "simple gameplay" could be with the old few and large, predefined and unchangeable set of provinces from KoH1.
P.S. I admit that one of the main reasons why I'd like to see sub-provinces is because I'm tired of seeing such Europe-conquest games, where one single province (with one single city) spans accross teritories, which cover so many villages, towns, fortresses and cities that in real history rulers often fought for decades to take control of even only half of those lands, fighting from one fortress to another and then a third and so on. Of course, large military campaigns also saw large territories being taken in a rather short time, but that does require exactly a large military campaign where you can concentrate all your power on one target. And few nations are so lucky to be surrounded by allies, allowing them to focus on single enemies...
tomilis
13 Feb 2008, 09:12
I'm trying to extend current KoH systems to becloser to reality. I don't think that every village should have garrison of its own. Only castles and cities (fortified places)
The castle garrisons are part of my own "castle concept" since its beggining (what would be the purpouse of castles if they wouldn't protect their vicinity and wouldn't have garrison?) but it absorbed great ideas from elswhere too, of course. But Villages should IMO remain almost as they are in KoH1, be just a zone that produces goods and population for towns - how often were kings bothered by small villages?
As I said above, according to my proposal, all villages and unfortified/ungarrisoned* places authomatically follow the city/"provincial capital" in matters of ownership. IMO it is logical, because there is no tool of resistance for the former owner - he has no force there to back his interests.
So when you conquere a city with wide political and economical influence (large unprotected province), you have big economic outcome from this conquest - much better than from conquest of small castles on your way there.
* means without loyal garrison
I agree exactly. This is basically what I am saying.
Obviously not every village should have a lord, thats not what I meant at all. Most of them of course did, but they were very insignificant compared to their earls/counts and much more so to the dukes. I agree villages should stay exactly as they are, except they can grow (or die), and they develop along trade routes, resources, or defensible positions.
We're basically saying the same thing about castles. Obviously villages and towns don't have garrisons worthy of loyalty beyond their own borders which is what I said before.
I think what made me confused is your idea of castles. But I agree totally. Thats what I was saying in my post. Castles need to be taken before the capital of the province. There shouldn't be too many major forts per province so it shouldn't be hard to integrate that. Its not like the War of the Roses, where each house and fiefdom had its own castles and adjoining land.
tomilis
13 Feb 2008, 13:12
Wow, thats a lot of provinces...
I think that may be too much for me. I'd rather have bigger provinces with more detail. The game would take way too long to play with even 200 provinces. I mean, KoH1 must have something like 60-70 max so thats a big increase.
As I was saying before, I'd like them to do serious research and map out terrain, resources, cities, towns, castles, and villages (meaning there will be more of them). If there are 1500 provinces, hardly any of them will have castles worthy of the name anyways. The population of Europe, especially in the earlier ages was very very small.
But wasn't RoME has some lands in Asia and Africa as well?
Well, I supports the Elvain's ideas! It's good!
tomilis
13 Feb 2008, 23:53
OK, thanks for clearing that up. Makes a lot more sense now. So, that many districts, rather than provinces? and you don't have to take over each district individually unless there is a castle? makes a lot more sense...
The range on the KoH1 map is the 'agreed upon' map by medieval scholars concerning medieval Europe, but I think its good to expand, with my ideas with trade it can be interesting...
although at a personal level I would like to see India included at that stage (also important for resources)
Mephistopheles
16 Feb 2008, 13:32
Your ideas about propvinces are very similar to my thoughts, but I wonder wether the player should really have to interact with all of that. In usual business you always want as many villages as you have fertile lands and population. It's a simple "If the requirements are met, found a new village" without further strategic depth, I think. With that in mind the governors should automatically found villages if possible.
The player can then focus on strategically more important stuff, like funding a program to attract more villagers to the province (e.g. with free hunting rights, etc.) or rather deciding to give town rights to a large village which will attract a lot of commerce that can be taxed.
That's already going into a lot of detail, but I wanted to raise the thought of making the less strategically important stuff automatic so the player has less buttons to operate. I always dislike clicking on buttons and looking at charts in games.
Emm... Good Ideas...
But this idea used computer memory and power?
Do I need to upgrade my computer again to play KoH 2???
by 2012 \f.e\ you'll upgrade it be sure ;)
By 2012, I'd gone to a college :bash:
zlobber
20 Feb 2008, 13:04
* Without reading all 20 pages
elvain, your ideas are really good and in-depth but I have some concerns about them.
Looking at the map there seems to be alot more provinces in Europe than Africa and Asia witch means alot more to govern if you play in Europe.
- Now, for example if I play in Germany and control 20 provinces I would control alot less territory in square kilometers than a ruler in Iraq. This means that the ruler in Iraq would have alot more territory to create settlements than me.
- Also the travel time for an army for me would be alot less that the Iraq ruler witch means I would travel faster to counter enemy movements. If a rebellion or an enemy army is to
travel in Iraq it would have alot more time (and more villages) to plunder and destroy.
To prevent this, the provinces should be relatively the same size.
- How important micro management should be? If a player can control 20 provinces all by himself better than the computer, how well can he manage 40 provinces? If the AI is not good enough, a full conquest of the known world would be impossible because of the volume of management you should make.
- Controlling alot of provinces means alot is going on in your country and you would receive alot of reports. For example if a village becomes a town you receive report and it will give you new options to chose from. Witch means you have to spend time making decisions. In a large country of 20 provinces the amount of time you spend on micro managing would be like 90% of your play time. In a country with 40 provinces you micro manage it 99% of your play time.
- Even if the AI is good enough, how important should be reports about improvements? If you turn of all improvement reports you would not know what is going on in your country and ultimately would not know that you have met the requirements for a certain improvement/new unit type/building. Can you trust that the AI would make this special building (witch costs money) for you?
The only way to to prevent too much reports is to develop a province to the fullest and stop caring about it. I personally think that this is a low point for KoH1. In late-game (especially on easy) every country is fully developed and you spend 0 time managing provinces you conquer. If you manage your economy and civics right even rebellions are non-existent. This creates the sense that nothing happens in old provinces and lessens the sense of achievement in the game.
zlobber
26 Feb 2008, 11:21
* Haven't checked if this is proposed already
- Religion should be more important, the possibility to receive a quest. For example:
quests - rewards/punishment
* Build a Cathedral/Mosque - Traveling monks with holy artifacts can boost tax and religion / Loose favor to all countries
* Convert country to Christianity/Ortodox etc.. - Boost trade routes with countries with this religion/Stop trade routes with all countries with that religion or Permanent war with all countries with that religion.
* Take over province and convert it - Gain favor with countries/Lose favor
* Pay bigger tax to the Pope - More traveling monks to your provinces/ Stop trade routes
* Retrieve some holy artifact - More traveling monks to your provinces and bigger religion tax/ No punishment?
**** even more quests
* Priest should be able to operate on foreign (friendly) land.
- The ability to assign quests to other countries and more complex diplomacy.
quests - rewards/punishment
* Take province X and give it to me - Pay money before or after the completion of the quest. An option to steal the money to the other country cosing a war.
* Build building X in province X - Boost trade/Lose trade
* Give general for specific time - The ability to use others more trained generals for some time. Generals specialization should be more complex.
* Give province X for specific time - When you beat an enemy army you can make peace using this option.
* Give holy artifact - When you beat an enemy army you can make peace using this option. Also you should be able to make war for this purpose.
-- many more coming, but i have work right now :)))
Good idea for the quests.
And there must be a multiplier for :
Relationship between Shi'a and Sunnis, Orthodox and Catholic, and Pagans and the rests of the world.
zlobber
26 Feb 2008, 13:27
I believe that "holy artifacts" should be featured in the next game. In the middle ages it was craziness about those artifacts returned by the crusaders. I know of at least 2-3 cases when Cathedrals were build because of them.
Also for what I know from history, rich countries were always trying to do things better and bigger than the existing one. The biggest Cathedral, The biggest castle, The biggest garden...etc. This would probably be a nice addition to the mid-late game.
Palaces - If you remember in Civilization 1 & 2 there were palaces build by making your citizens happy. It was automatic and you get a picture with a Castle and over time towers, gardens and other buildings were added. I would like to see something like this in KoH2 - automatic (should be hard to achieve and should be a victory condition) or made by the player (for the late game, highly expensive and should give global bonuses)
I didnt read all the pages so i my repeat somones idea .
Mashals gains expirience and skills for every battle they enter that makes alot of sence but those guys are imortal they dont die from old age like the king and that always disturbed me greatly.On the other hand if generals,traders ,clerics did die that would criple the experience system .So the game needs something more realistic and good for the gameplay at the same time.
My sugestion:
No "heros" exept the royal family or maybe from time to time some extraordinary individuals (folk hero,rebel,saint) those canot gain levels but have atributes that help armies ,trade,religion depending on there specialization .They are mortal just like the king and the royal family and after let say 40 years your "hero" dies from old age.
But thats not all for every great feat you accomplish you gain difrent experience points depending on the feat there can be spy,army,religion experience points.Those experience points you can infest in some of your town for example : uprade Jerusalem so every unit you bild there has +2 morale against a diferent religion,uprade venice so the trade gives you extra income,vatican has more influental clerics and so one .
...On the other hand if generals,traders ,clerics did die that would criple the experience system...
Not absolutely necessary - they could have something like "apprentices", which would inherit them after they die and eventually keep some part of their experience...
Mephistopheles
29 Feb 2008, 00:41
Smart military leaders also have smart successors, at least in a normal medieval system, because so many duties are deligated that the only way to manage an army well is to have smart officers, who will eventually be available to be appointed generals themselves.
Thus in conclusion: When you have very experienced knights at your court you should get more experienced nobles to choose from when you want to hire another knight.
Apprentices are a good option.But again dying knights take with them some of the hard earned expirience.My sugestion to "upgrade" provinces in a way is close to apprentices idea.When you perform a great feat let say
example1: a shipyard bilds 100 ships you gain knowledge in that field people that bild those ship start a tradition of shipbilding in that province .you can bild ships faster,and the ships are better (you gain more from sea traiding).
example2: A noble wins 5 great battles he is now a vetran general .He starts a military tradition in his family . All soldiers from his home province have morale bonus
The same thing from another viev :A veteran soldier returns home after years of battles .He starts a tradion of archery in his village .All archers gain 10% dmg bonus.
example3:A kindom bilds many catedrals & monasterys .Clerics in you kindom(or a specific province) are more influentual .You may convert more easely people to you religion .
There may be a hybrid solution if you have provinves with military,bilding,trade,religion traditions you may have acsess to more expirience knights when you want to recruit .
Apprentices are a good option.But again dying knights take with them some of the hard earned expirience.My sugestion to "upgrade" provinces in a way is close to apprentices idea.When you perform a great feat let say
example1: a shipyard bilds 100 ships you gain knowledge in that field people that bild those ship start a tradition of shipbilding in that province .you can bild ships faster,and the ships are better (you gain more from sea traiding).
example2: A noble wins 5 great battles he is now a vetran general .He starts a military tradition in his family . All soldiers from his home province have morale bonus
The same thing from another viev :A veteran soldier returns home after years of battles .He starts a tradion of archery in his village .All archers gain 10% dmg bonus.
example3:A kindom bilds many catedrals & monasterys .Clerics in you kindom(or a specific province) are more influentual .You may convert more easely people to you religion .
There may be a hybrid solution if you have provinves with military,bilding,trade,religion traditions you may have acsess to more expirience knights when you want to recruit .
Very good ideas.
I think the next step for Black Sea Studios for KoH2 if there ever is one is to go deeper into the medieval subset culture, most notably on the parish and rural level which was prominent at that time.
Denisold
5 Mar 2008, 18:04
Apprentices are a good option.But again dying knights take with them some of the hard earned expirience.My sugestion to "upgrade" provinces in a way is close to apprentices idea.When you perform a great feat let say
example1: a shipyard bilds 100 ships you gain knowledge in that field people that bild those ship start a tradition of shipbilding in that province .you can bild ships faster,and the ships are better (you gain more from sea traiding).
example2: A noble wins 5 great battles he is now a vetran general .He starts a military tradition in his family . All soldiers from his home province have morale bonus
The same thing from another viev :A veteran soldier returns home after years of battles .He starts a tradion of archery in his village .All archers gain 10% dmg bonus.
example3:A kindom bilds many catedrals & monasterys .Clerics in you kindom(or a specific province) are more influentual .You may convert more easely people to you religion .
There may be a hybrid solution if you have provinves with military,bilding,trade,religion traditions you may have acsess to more expirience knights when you want to recruit .
Hi Voland – very good suggestion re apprenticeship
Bringing in a form of apprenticeship for all the ‘characters’ (ie builders, landlords, merchants, clerics, spies, etc) in the Royal Court will greatly enhance KoH2. This will put all characters on an equal footing in game play with what now exists for the marshals in KoH (ie marshals are already in an ‘apprenticeship’ mode – their skills get upgraded as they progress through their battles).
For me the main problem in KoH has been the dominance that marshals have over game play – by the second half of a game the main theme of game play seems to mostly gravitate to warmongering via powerful marshals. IMO putting all Royal Court ‘characters’ on an equal footing for the duration of a game would be an improvement for KoH2 – some form of apprenticeship would likely be helpful.
Denisold
10 Mar 2008, 00:40
what about to have fewer knight professions, but that compensated with skills not only for marshalls?
Yes that could be workable – 3 primary knight ‘professions’ with other ‘sub- professions’ that have various levels of skills.
But I like the way KoH is set up with each ‘professions’ selected by the player using one of the limited slots in the Royal Court – this really forces the player to determine how he plans to play the game. If you want to play the warrior load up on marshals slots, if you want play wealth load up on merchant slots, if you want to build load up on builder slots, ……….etc. This a great feature in the current game (it is simple, and effective re setting the tone of your game). I hope this will be included and improved in KoH2 (ie your need for builders, landlords…..etc. may vary at different points in the game, but their roles need to be as important at the end-game as they are in start-game – their importance to game play shouldn’t disappear as you play into the 2nd half of the game)
With respect to apprenticeship – all ‘professions’ in the game need a progressive structure that allows them to acquire greater skills. For example, a builder needs to build skills by initially serving time with the guilds, then with educators, then with a skilled mentor - at each skill level he can build more advanced buildings - at the end he would become a 'master' and only then could he build the magnificent buildings such as the mosques, cathedrals, castles, palaces that were created in the period that the game depicts. Of course he will eventually die, and unless you have been apprenticing a replacement your building capability will be reduced.
Maybe there is a need to add an educator as another 'profession' for the game?
Also what about "refugees"? F.e. you conquer an enemy territory, but its governor and his army is still alive, so he flees with his men either to his home-country or (if the country "seems" lost) to another country, possibly one in bad relations with you (the attacker). F.e. I'm reading the Heimskringla now and there are many examples where a jarl or his successors flee from their invading enemies (be it other jarls or not) f.e. to Denmark, England, Poland etc., usually gain a position there (because of their "great strength, beauty" etc.) and eventually return to Norway to fight for their land. This way there's also a possibility that if your "enemy country" has invaded a neighbour, its surviving nobles etc. might come to you, promising vassalage if you help them free their country, or simply stay in your country, gaining some power and giving you their skills and men.
Yes, that sounds like a great idea. I mean, it could happen in reality that a high-skilled marshal flees to another country rather than stop fighting just because his homeland and capital were conquered :) Also, that option is good for players who get defeated (this happened with me ones when I played with Jerusalem and both Fatimids and Abbasids were in war with me at the very start :eek: ) and then to reconquer their lands.
Also, a good idea is there to be an advisor , who , of course, gives you advises how to rule your kingdom. Plus, it may be a valuable position to have your spy as an advisor to your neibourgh and he tells him to move away the armies away from the border because you're not a threat - and you're doing just the opposite thing :D . Voila - a province taken without much losses.
I have 1-2 other ideas but they are too complicated to achieve in a computer game (for now at least :confused: )
nikolahjk
15 Mar 2008, 15:52
maybe real history of Balkan region
saneeel
15 Mar 2008, 17:35
kingdom of bosnia was strong heretical kingdom until the turks arrived and made it part of their empire.for some period it was small as it was in the koh1 in the early period,but later it fought succesfull wars with serbia,bulgaria and bizantine empire. the king of bosnia was later king of bosnia,srbia and hum,and was the strongest king in the balkans.but he was a heretical,and a hungary king led two crusades againts him,..but without succes.in bosnia were three dominant religions,catholic,orthodox,heretic(bogomil).with the arrival of the turks the heretics accepted islam.in 19 century those catholics and orthodox declared them for serbs and croats even if they have nothing with serbia and croatia and are bosnians but other religion.
...but later it fought succesfull wars with serbia,bulgaria and bizantine empire...
Uhm, just to note that Bulgaria has never been in a war with Bosnia, I believe the same was with Byzantium too... Though that indeed doesn't matter for this thread!
And for nikolahjk's post - I presume he either meant more accurate borders, geography, names, units etc.* (which is valid for all the map, IMHO) or a Balkan-specific campaign (something like the British Isles campaign in M1TW Viking Invasion). If it's the first - I fully support all efforts for improving the geography, province borders etc! :)
*Also, another thing might be that while the "starting dates" were "rounded" (f.e. 1200), the respective maps weren't for the exact time-period (like the Latin Empire in the 1200 campaign) - i.e. the "starting dates" were pretty abstract.
saneeel
16 Mar 2008, 22:28
hmm,i think that bosnia was in war with bulgaria but nothing seriously only few skirmishes. with bizantine empire they defintly were,because i know from reading historical articles,that kulin ban slashed bizantine empire so hard,that his helmet entered his chin. i write it earlier, that koh2 needs to have more accurate history map and historical events.it would be also good that you could have the real hiers that ruled in that time.
anguille
20 Mar 2008, 17:30
I just had an idea yesterday.
What if we can choose what kind of Civilian Villages we want in the province....like Farms, Monasteries etc...
i think there are lots of things to say about improving units, the way things are handled, etc...
prob. a lot of that has been said, since we all have points in common, so one thing that above all i'd really like to have is: the option of playing as a rebel.
and, for instance, stay inside a kingdom(almost like a spy) and wait for yourself to be hired or whatnot until u feel is the appropriate time to make a revolt and do it!
maybe u could be a nationalist, or an idealist of sorts...whatever, endless possibilities here.
maybe your a roman loyal trying to restablish roman rule in italy in an italian family's hand o.O. why not? :D
anything can happen, i think that ought to be the way of koh2, we all(or most of us, in some form and way, anyways) know very well what happened in the past, now... how can we play with that ?:)
so anything along these general lines i think would make my day, game-wise. and also would be pretty interesting in multiplayer matches(you dont know if one of the players online is a rebel in your court, or in one of your provinces, etc.. =.= maybe he is somewhere else...mabe not...).
so thats my cheers for everyone, fell free to add any coments to it.
laters all :go: .
and gogo koh2.
medieval nationalist? wow!
Not impossible, nationalities did exist back then, although far from the modern concept of nationality (on Bulgarian one thing is "nacia", another thing is "narod", English sadly doesn't make such an important difference)!
And I really like the idea to be able to play as a rebel, though that indeed might be a bit complicated to be implemented, as Elvain said. I was thinking more perhaps not as starting the game as a rebel, but as a chance of becoming a rebel if you lose your country, but still have some troops (and marshals/princes/king) remaining. Something like my idea somewhere above about governors fleeing to their homeland or acting as mercenaries for neighbours, if they survive.
stefansilni
30 Mar 2008, 02:32
Hi to everyone, i'm from Serbia (always playing with serbia off course :D), and this is my first post. I have many ides so...
1. There should be ethnic groups of people (Slavic,Germanic,Romanic,Saxon...)
f.e Serbia,Croatia,Bulgaria... are Slavic ethnic group
2. Family tree in royal dynasty, f.e. your king has 3 sons and only 1 of them is inheritant, but if he's a sterile, maybe his brothers are still alive or they have children so they can inherit the throne so we can have one dynasty. This was real in medieval.
3. It should be some screen that shows nobles in your country, and that you can marry some girls from your country
4. Polygamy for some religions (pagans, Islam (they have harem)
5. I support the idea in which you can start as a rebel or nobleman
6. Knights tournaments, in which you can carry your king through knight fights (with horses and spears, arrows controlling speed of horse and mouse is aiming with the spear, very simple controls), and become more popular and conquer the heart of some lady
7. Option to show your city, all the buildings that are built, just like in Civilization.
8. Option to design your own flag and uniform
9. While playing as Serbia I have conquered Constantinople and Nicaea and certainly i was the best orthodox nation, but Byzantium was still it's leader.
10. Centers of Trade routes (f.e Venice, Thrace, Alexandria... for different parts of the world) and ability to establish monopoly there
11. More complex relationship with nations which have married prince and princes.
12. More people on battlefield
13. If king has no sons, he should put crown on someone else in his kingdom
14. Sea battles zoomed
Sorry for my bad English, i hope you understand this.
Mephistopheles
30 Mar 2008, 16:14
Welcome to the forum!
Your english is fine. :) Most of us aren't natural english speakers so it's perfectly okay to have slight deficiencies.
I like most of your ideas, but I have a question: How exactly do you imagin the implementation of ethnic groups?
I thought about that matter myself, but I can only come up with systems that would require the user to click through rather boring screens and leave him to interact with uninspiring buttons and charts instead of actually doing something fun.
So due to a lack of better ideas my opinion is that the KoH1-approach of "Nostalgia" is pretty much okay. Perhaps it could be enhanced with the ability to launch a settlement-program in a province where you want to supress seperatistic movements, and similar things, but generally I think it's a good approach that doesn't need many changes.
Ethnic groups (or cultures, as I like to call them) can easily be implemented within a population function, but even if there isn't such a population function (I mean it as number of peoples, not simply some peasant figures above the towns ;) ), it could be made somewhat like in Europa Universalis - f.e. in the provinces of w, 75% of the people are x, 15 are y and 10 are z. Which can also be great for an Area of Recruitment system. ;)
Mephistopheles
30 Mar 2008, 17:13
I tried to come up with automated systems similar to the culture-approach of KoH1 (which determined the name-style of your knights), just enhanced with automatically changing figures depending on what actions you undertake, but the effects and mechanisms are just so complex that I can see no way of bringing that across to the player in a sensible manner.
I'd like a system that can be understood without tooltips and only with easily understandable icons on screen or perhaps 2 or 3 lines of text, but it's just a very complex topic.
I think as a player I'd rather spend my time on something more visually entertaining than culture-percentages, to be honest.
That's of course just my opinion. I just don't like too complex game-rules.
stefansilni
30 Mar 2008, 17:16
Different ethnic groups have different behaviour, some are more aggressive, some are not etc.
When you conquer a nation which belongs to your ethnic group, civilians in conquered cities should be more friendly and easier to convert.
Useful would be also possibility of making a new country, by reuniting all nations of one ethnic groups. For example Yugoslavia(Tzardom of Southern Slavics), or Germania ...
more provinces, more strategic-map options , more diplomatic contact to other kingdoms,
more ways to win
Swift Voyager
31 Mar 2008, 18:34
Smaller maps with fewer provinces so that people can play shorter games sometimes.
Storyline campaigns with narrative guidance and cut-scenes, especially for an extended tutorial.
When a Royal family member is being used for a job and he dies, offer an option to replace him in that role with another knight, so that armies and towns don't get left without a leader.
continuing my rebel post and answers...
personally i woudnt mind waiting 20 min, i think teh 'rebel' game play is a more deeply strategic concept and therefore requires a more thought out analysis.
i think rebels are a must have for the game, and yeah something on the lines of multi complex fief structures would be nice and fit right into that(though not a requirement for the idea as i see it).
anyways and also, by nationalists i meant something closer to what nikebg said.
like for instance, there where people in italy that wanted the 'barbarians' out of italy for quite some time, its the same thing that happens in normal koh when u conquer a province and they revolt on you. -"oh we want the glory of 'blablah' back!- etc...
well i supose it woudnt depend on the game, besides u could be hired as a wahtever and do other things in teh mean time.
my saying lies in that sinc eu choose a rebel, u choose the possibility of having to wait for the appropriate time... not that you would hAvE to but... you dont exactly have a kinngdom, so its a risky bit, essentially you would only get one shot.
so its a style fo gaming more for those that like mind games then action related... thus the fact that waiting shoudnt be a burden.
though i see what u mean... if there actually is a sub-level socia/mornaquical and etc... setting establish, i supose there would be ample room for intrigues. though i believe the rebel game is mroe about waiting until teh kingdom is appropriate and until u have gathered enough supporters(underground), by doing whatnot, then stricking.
perhaps the supporters would come naturally as the kingdom gets unhappy, and beyond that i guess the rebel should work as an independant spy(kinda o'like you appointed).
but overall it doesnt matter, i guess blacksea can decide it anyways they understand it. my point was making the suggestion and leaving it be, and im glad some other folks actually like.
cheers mateys
Hmm, thinking about it, I start to see even more possibilities for fun in starting the game as a rebel. F.e. you can start as a "rebel rebel" (not a "loyalist rebel") and plunder some villages around, gather a better army etc. till the time comes that you capture and keep your own castle/town/province. In such a case, even a new unit would be useful - bandits (or brigands etc.), since you'd hardly find peasants to plunder and burn their own farms in the beginning. ;) And perhaps the province you choose to finally conquer could be also one, which a certain kingdom has paid you to attack (i.e. a province of their enemy).
And about the cultures - I don't think it needs to be too deep. I don't think it even needs "culture specialties", except maybe in the vaguest level (i.e. not "the people of the country ... have specialty in horsemanship", but generally the Steppe people). I was thinking more of a pretty simple, though indeed mostly militaristic, part - cultures affecting the units available for recruitment (i.e. the AoR). Of course, the system of the Area of Recruitment with mobile cultures itself might be a bit complicated to implement and use. And these cultures shouldn't be easy to be assimilated either, especially if they're larger ones (you can't assimilate 100 000 Byzantines with 50 000 Slavs) and are different from your culture (you can't easily assimilate 50 000 Byzantines with 100 000 Turks). Of course, I see that in such a case it can indeed become quite complicated (with changing cultures all around), so I stick mostly with my first view, which is more KoH-like - every province has a fixed and unchangeable culture or percentage of cultures, from which you can get different local units/knights - something like in KoH, but a bit more developed.
i think your beginning to get the idea of where i am headed, after all, the 'kind' of rebel u are is up to... you. :)
so basically when u add up everything i guess what we all are saying is we want a deeper game with more social inner workings, and i believe its possible to acomplesiish that without having to cross the line into the world of the complicated.
just diverse.
besides... not everyone has to know how the 'inner workings' of the game go... just that its fun to play, retaining a simplicity in way(gameplay) on top of a complex establishment.
its like final fantasy tactics, if u calculate everything that runs in the background in that game to optimise everything... man! ull go crasy. but, you dont have too, you can play fine without doing that and its fun and simple.
cheers
:go:
About the rebel thing, it's extremely easy to understand, actually - you start with your knight and a few rather crappy units, go plunder, gain more money, get better units (either by "fame" (followers) or by money (mercenaries)) and finally take over a province when you have enough good units (or die trying, at least). Of course, starting as a loyalist rebel might be quite more complicated, since it's illogical loyalists to plunder their own land (i.e. if you should be able to play as a loyalist, you'd have to either fight/ambush enemy forces and gain money/fame or directly start with a good army and attack a province (which is more or less useless)).
As for the culture, you're showing even more possibilities yourself. And I wouldn't prefer a fixed culture over a mobile one, but, as you yourself said, a mobile one would be more complicated. But, otherwise, isn't it stranger (not to say mind-blowingly shocking) if there is absolutely no difference whatsoever f.e. between an Egyptian province and a Norse one, except only a few basic units (and you could recruit Vikings in Egypt)?
JarlFrank
2 Apr 2008, 23:07
ok, now I can understand it better, but it still doesn't answer my question. I'm just worried that it might be even more boring than start of games with one province kingdoms...
Oh, I found that pretty exciting actually, starting with a one-province kingdom. You can build up your economy, Machtposition [what was it called in the English version? Position of power or something similar] for much cheaper than a big country, and you could take the challenge to take on a much larger foe - or forge good diplomatic relations.
Found it overall more fun than starting with a big country.
Well, if you're playing as a rebel, you only have one rebel, so you can eventually be forced to lead the plundering and not just sit on the stratmap and wait for the bar to fill up. Of course, that would require to either fight a local garrison during plundering or have plundering-"battles" as an option to be led. But I think that wouldn't be so hard, especially the first... ;)
As for the cultures - yeah, I guess I'm getting a bit off into my dreams for the perfect game (Frank, know what I mean? ;) ), which is a bit more complex indeed, especially in the making... :rolleyes:
lets not forget also about the possibility of playing a girl character(queen or empress,etc..) this is something that many female players have asked and that i believe could be nice.
there could even be +'s and -'s to it ^.^.
JarlFrank
6 Apr 2008, 12:35
As for the cultures - yeah, I guess I'm getting a bit off into my dreams for the perfect game (Frank, know what I mean? ;) ), which is a bit more complex indeed, especially in the making... :rolleyes:
Yeah, the one that is almost as complex as my dream for the perfect game:p ;)
But the way how it works in Victoria would be quite nice. But I dunno if it's worth it, pretty complex, and for a game like KoH it might not be necessary...
Well, mine and Frank's dreams are way too complex and would require technologies from at least a decade from now (not to mention groups of scientists from nearly every science available), so don't worry, I just got off a bit into surreality! ;)
if you construct really good paved roads,merchants and armies crossing your teritory should pay you(something like paytoll today) some money. merchants and armies will more likely to travel cross your land because of better roads and achiving their goal faster.
JarlFrank
7 Apr 2008, 17:46
eh? what? give examples please, if they are as dreamy as mine :D
Oh, well, they're a bit too dreamy, actually, and it would go off-topic, but...
My dream Strategy game would be more of a "history simulator" which accurately simulates historic events, but still allows for the player to change history. And it would be damn realistic.
It would have several different levels, from a world-view similar to the Paradox Games down to a detailed view like in Stronghold or Settlers. Gameplay would be a combination of Total War [battles], Stronghold [siege battles and castle building], Victoria [historical events and complex diplomacy] and several of my own ideas. As said, it would be way too complex to make with current technology [would probably lag like hell on any normal PC, and take longer to produce than Duke Nukem Forever] and it would be off-topic to tell more details:D :p
Denisold
7 Apr 2008, 18:10
It would have several different levels, from a world-view similar to the Paradox Games down to a detailed view like in Stronghold or Settlers. Gameplay would be a combination of Total War [battles], Stronghold [siege battles and castle building], Victoria [historical events and complex diplomacy] and several of my own ideas. As said, it would be way too complex to make with current technology [would probably lag like hell on any normal PC, and take longer to produce than Duke Nukem Forever] and it would be off-topic to tell more details:D :p
hi JarlFrank - that would be quite a game!
But I notice in the above that you didn't include anything about the features that exist in KoH - do you see much from KoH that could be included in your list?
For me I see BSS's 'simulation' of the historical aspects of the 3 periods portrayed in their game as a very strong feature - are there any games to date that have undertaken the historical challenge and done it so well?
Paradox games, though they're waaaaaay too complex for me to play indeed!
Otherwise, Frank summed it up rather well, though my ideas are more for a complete "reality simulator", with full reality of all kinds of physics and most of all - absolutely real psychology for every single "unit" (which means a perfect and logical (as much as a human can be logical, that is) AI, which is different for everyone) and it's not only a strategy. But that's off-topic indeed!
As for KoH2 - I support Elvain - one of the things I most want is a various style of gameplay (the aforementioned "simple and detailed" styles), so you can play for a free light-headed fun in the simple, or delve deeper into the details once you've mastered the simple one and want to have more options available. :)
if you construct really good paved roads,merchants and armies crossing your teritory should pay you(something like paytoll today) some money. merchants and armies will more likely to travel cross your land because of better roads and achiving their goal faster.
build, paved roads? huh? is this the classical era or middle ages?
As far as I know, medieval Europe used Roman roads and didn't build anything close to them.
Oh, well, they're a bit too dreamy, actually, and it would go off-topic, but...
My dream Strategy game would be more of a "history simulator" which accurately simulates historic events, but still allows for the player to change history. And it would be damn realistic.
It would have several different levels, from a world-view similar to the Paradox Games down to a detailed view like in Stronghold or Settlers. Gameplay would be a combination of Total War [battles], Stronghold [siege battles and castle building], Victoria [historical events and complex diplomacy] and several of my own ideas. As said, it would be way too complex to make with current technology [would probably lag like hell on any normal PC, and take longer to produce than Duke Nukem Forever] and it would be off-topic to tell more details:D :p
Hmm, My perfect medieval era game would be one with an improved EUII world map and improved history simulation, Crusader king's character system, Victorias's pop system plus a similar economical(a more realistic one)/political system that resembles the mid ages, Koh's knights (though Ck's char system would take care of it to some extend), HOI's military system(worked to match medieval warfare)and Total Wars detailed battlefields.
The problem is, that few would like such a complex game, seeing as most gamers only care about eye candy and fast, simplistic gameplay.
I like the idea, but not literaly. Paved roads were really a rare relic from ancient Rome, but bridges and other buildings could boost your passive trade income (from merchants travelling through your lands). Not that if you build Hostel or Market you automatically recieve gold bonus, but if you have market, it attracts merchants to enter your city(when merchant enters city with Market he earns money aswell - he automatically choses the most developed cities where he earns best money) and if merchant enters your city, you recieve gold.
Also, I'm not sure if there was such in the whole of Europe, but at least in some places and some times there were taxes collected by governors etc. for the crossing of a bridge f.e. So the construction of a bridge might eventually give some small gold bonus too (especially if the governor is a harsher man, who "only wonders" how to get more money from his people :p ).
it was originaly your idea, wasn't it? or our common?
Not that it matters much, the important is for the idea to be good, not so much who came up with it. ;)
Oh, and "I told you so!" (about the over-dreaminess)! :D
Mephistopheles
8 Apr 2008, 17:40
Regarding collecting taxes from travelling merchants:
I always liked the idea of building "taxation castles". Small fortifications with the main purpose of hosting the necessary forces to collect taxes.
At least in germany you can see dozens of them when you visit the right places. It seemed to have been a popular investment back then. :)
By the way, I consider castles basically the same thing as towns. A castle simply is a town with many military structures (citadell, walls, baracks, etc.) but no civil structures. If the player decided to have many civil structures erected at the castle peasants would start to inhabit it until eventually you'd rather call it a town than a castle because it receives it's main revenue from taxing the inhabitants while the military role falls back behind.
The main thought is that essentially monasteries, castles and towns are really the same thing. We just call it different names depending on the specialization.
JarlFrank
8 Apr 2008, 19:13
Regarding Nike's post about the realistic AI [which would be in my dream game too, of course:p ], I just had another nice idea for KoH2. More complex than the normal morale system, but not *as* complex as a psychological simulator.
Much rather, more should have other effects than just determine if the unit fights heartily or flees. There should be situations in which your soldiers react maybe with a desperate final attack, not caring about their own lives and just trying to take as many enemies with them as possible. See it as some kind of berserker frenzy [Vikings should get that one pretty often:p Also, did I mention I love Vikings? Tee hee:p ]. So, low morale should not only make units flee, but maybe also make them do desperate attacks, depending on situation [and unit type, probably... religious units like Templar Knights should be more usually doing desperate attacks, while milita and peasants flee]
Also, what's *really* needed and is absolutely missing in *every* grand strategy game I played so far is the option of making a tactical retreat. Not just letting your units run away like chicken, but make them retreat in an orderly fashion, walking backwards and still facing the enemy. It's so annoying when in the Total War games I order my weakened units to retreat - and they turn their backs toward the enemy, ready to be hit by arrows or run down by cavalry!
Also, what's *really* needed and is absolutely missing in *every* grand strategy game I played so far is the option of making a tactical retreat. Not just letting your units run away like chicken, but make them retreat in an orderly fashion, walking backwards and still facing the enemy. It's so annoying when in the Total War games I order my weakened units to retreat - and they turn their backs toward the enemy, ready to be hit by arrows or run down by cavalry!
Which is btw pretty stupid with the "fleeing" in all such games I've seen (mainly TW and KoH) - if you're so desperate and wish not to fight anymore, you either surrender or if you flee, you either flee together with your comrades, but still engage the enemy if they catch you (and not simply keep running away with your backs exposed, making it so easy to lose your life (which you're supposedly trying to prevent by fleeing)), or "flee" independently by hiding and using the terrain (i.e. again no senseless running like a total fool). But I don't know if there's a way to code such a kind of retreat, so IMO the best option would be to try to surrender (and, of course, if the enemy doesn't accept this, then you either keep fighting or if you're further from the enemy and demoralized - then you could flee).
Mephistopheles
8 Apr 2008, 19:42
I'm pretty sure that the poor peasants that are being crushed by seemingly inviceable forces don't occupy themselves with such strategic thoughts but rather drop everything they carry and run for the hell of it in the direction that appears the furthest away from enemies.
We're not talking about trained soldiers. And even if we were, even in modern combat people do incredibly stupid things when faced with impending defeat. In WWII a siren mounted to dive-bombers proved to be a more effective weapon than the bombs they carried. That is not logical.
When you're likely to be trampled to death by horses within the next 30 seconds you don't think logically. You just panic. That's the whole point of infantry warfare, to make the enemy panic before your troops do so you can shoot them in the back while they run.
Mephistopheles
8 Apr 2008, 21:25
How exactly do you picture the use of castles?
My idea behind the "Castles are the same as towns"-concept is that you only have to teach the player how to deal with one type and he automatically knows how to deal with monasteries, castles, small forts, bulwarks, villages and taxation outposts too because they are all the same thing and share the same menus. They are all normal settlements with varying structures, decrees and rights to them.
I like that because it reduces the amount of rules and buttons the player has to play with a lot. However it may require some interface-voodoo to make it feasable.
Mephistopheles
8 Apr 2008, 23:13
To me "rights" work just like buildings do in KoH1. The only difference is that the icon isn't a building but some scroll with a wax seal or something like that.
It's really analogous:
Select the town, click the "Decree" button, choose between the tabs "Civil buildings" "Military buildings" and "Rights" and issue anything you want, e.g. grant the town taxation rights or allow the governor to raise his own army or whatever you feel like.
Afterwards the decree appears in the menu in the same place as it did in KoH1.
Actually I implemented "rights" in KoH1, but I found the scripts too restrictive to release it.
well, I meant, what they add to gameplay, what are they good for?
concerning 'organized retreat' I am 100% with you, but also i would make it possible only to elite units.
Oh, of course, most definitely only for elite units in some societies. But also for nearly all units in other ones. As you probably know, the "organized retreat" was one of the main weapons which helped the Steppe people to rule the battlefield. And, as surprisingly as it is for a tactic used for at least a millenium, it worked awesome (though in game-terms it wouldn't, because it would require absolutely HUGE battle maps, where the "retreating" cavalry can manoeuvre). So, while it might work only for better trained and elite units (i.e. specifically trained units, not simple conscripted peasants taken from the field) in the more settled (mainly Western) societies, historically speaking, it should be available for quite more units for the more "warlike" societies (especially "the equestrian people").
The same logic can be valid to some extent for Frank's "desperate charge" - while in less warlike societies normal soldiers (farmers and other people not used so much to war) would be less prone for a "final stand" and more likely to surrender or flee for their lives (excluding the more elite units as knights etc., of course), in more warlike societies even the common soldiers would be more used to war and thus less likely to flee and more likely to "fight to the death" (especially in societies where heroism in battle is glorified by common culture, f.e. the Steppe people and Norsemen). So, basically, this can rather simply be done depending on the morale - if a Norse army (or especially a Viking one - after all, Vikings lived from war (and, no, they're not a separate culture, they're just Norse raiders - I think all here know it, but just in case)), so, if a Norse/Viking army starts getting bad or very bad changes for the battle (I think the counter in KoH would be rather perfect for this), instead of fleeing, they could have f.e. a 50% chance that they charge with a limited increased vigor instead (and either get killed or break through). While an army from a less warlike society could have f.e. a 25% chance. I think that can work rather simple and in the same time it's historically accurate (I believe everyone here can name examples of such last stands in history).
Of course, this would bring the question "Which societies would be in the "warlike" category and which - not?" And, also, "Wouldn't that overpower the warlike societies over the non-warlike ones?" The answer to the latter is also simple - while warlike ones could have such "battle bonuses" (f.e. morale), non-warlike ones, who are usually more settled and developed, could have other bonuses, be they economical, political or whatnot. As for the first one - it depends, since all societies change in time and if f.e. Bulgaria in the beginning of the 8th century would be a warlike one, in the beginning of the 13th (or maybe even the 11th) it would be a settled non-warlike one. Or at least low-warlike (we're speaking about Eastern Europe and the Balkans in this case, after all, which had to deal with all kinds of military threats). Of course, determining whether a society is warlike in a certain period or not would be quite more subjective than f.e. determining a culture or religion, but that can also be improved a bit with having levels of this "warlikeness/non-warlikeness" (i.e. 0 is "neutral", -1,2,3 is level of warlikeness, +1, 2, 3 is level of non-warlikeness, kinda like the KP). Now, this might sound a bit more complex, and since I don't think it should be changeable during the game (since it would be indeed complex, just like the cultures), I think the player shouldn't even necessary know about it. It would be kinda like the religion bonuses in KoH1, but in this case it would be specific for each faction. This is just a quick and rough idea, of course, and if anybody likes it and can polish it further - great! ;)
Hmm, I didn't think about changing warlikeness, because it would add more complexity (i.e. you can change religion, you can change government types, and now you can also change warlikeness/culture - it would be a bit much). But if it's combined with the already changeable government types, it can work out pretty great indeed AND add even more diversity between the different types! :go:
Mephistopheles
9 Apr 2008, 13:50
well, I meant, what they add to gameplay, what are they good for?In KoH1 I always wanted to interact with my provinces in ways that weren't possible with buildings. I would've liked to enforce a farming-land giveaway to immigrants to boost immigration into the province, of I'd have liked to grant the villages more autonomy by establishing local principals to lower rebellion risk in a province with a lot of nostalgia, I would have liked to enforce my nation's religion as the only allowed religion in the province to eventually convert the province at the cost of high rebellion risk, etc. etc.
So I wondered about how that could be implemented and found that these "decrees" can be incorporated into the buildings structure of KoH1 so they are part of the same menu, are issued the same way but allow more freedom.
I always imagined that for KoH2 it would be smart to reduce the number of buildings you can have erected because honestly, do you think the emperor of the HRE really bothered with the amount of hunting huts in bavaria? These "decrees" would replace many of the buildings and allow more freedom since buildings are rather restricted in their effects while a decree can cause just about anything to happen without any logical issues.
I like the system because it can be explored by the player just like buildings are in KoH1. The tutorial didn't tell you what the buildings did, but during the game you read the tooltips and it all fell into place after a couple of hours of playing.
My opinion regarding government types is that I never really wondered about them in KoH1. I've never felt the urge to receive different sorts of bonuses as Byzantia than as Golden Horde. I thought it worked just fine as it was.
Mephistopheles
9 Apr 2008, 15:46
oh, that would be VERY interesting :go:
so you grant right of hunting to province of Bavaria and then it is up to local autonomous administrator to build all buildings it needs... the same with University right, right of free trade, but also right to found new castles/cities etc. right?
that's awsome!Yes, very much like that. :)
The management of rights can also serve to denote the difference between a centralistic government and a decentralized one. For that it has to work together with a new approach to governors:
In my concept each character in the game (king, earl, governor, marshall, everone!) has a relationship to you. Each time you tell someone to do something you "ask" them. E.g. you "ask" a marshall to go to a position by right-clicking on the map or you "ask" a governor to enlist 500 swordsmen for your army by clicking on the recruit icon. If everything is in order the issue is completed without a problem and you get your swordsmen. If you broadly neglected the needs of the province lately and the governor has a very bad relationship to you he will insist that he won't fulfill your querry until you give him something in return additional to the money, e.g. the right to own his very own army. This works identically to the diplomatic discussions in KoH1. You want 500 swordsmen, the governor wants the right to have his own army, you make a counter-offer, etc. until the issue is eventually settled.
If you are in a good position you can come out of such quarrely with good results. E.g. you pay money and get the swordsmen. If you don't have the money you have to give other things, like villages, rights, daughters, titles, etc.
In economically troublesome times you will slowly but steadily be stripped of your own rights because you had to give them to your nobles one by one to make them follow your orders, which simulates the move from centralistic monarchies to decentralized monarchies nicely. If you manage to regain financial means or other means of power you can start to slowly demand back those rights and regain direct control.
However that would require some more re-arrangement of the interface. But the general idea is rather straight-forward, I hope. You make decisions and if your relations to your nobles are good they are exerted, otherwise you have to pacify them with other goods, most notably rights until you eventually run out of rights to grant and are the owner of a crown without any power.
[Edit]
That works together with the demands-system I talked about a couple of pages ago. That's why I liked it so much.
Regarding rights I specifically like how the move from centralized to decentralized is simulated because there are no tables of bonuses you have to read and there is no extra menu for it. The terms centralized and decentralized never appear on screen, they're just a description of a specific state the player gets himself into. You never have to introduce him to these concepts, he works with them without knowing only by applying logic to the game ("If I give that governor rights to raise an army he might use it against me when he declares independance! I shouldn't do that, but I need those 500 swordsmen in the war against France!").
Mephistopheles
9 Apr 2008, 16:18
Regarding CPU power, we're talking about a release date sometime around 2010 and by now we already have about 4 times the processing power we had at the release time of KoH1 and KoH1 was a very resource-saving game even at the time of it's release.
I admit that the game will become annoying when you gave away all your political power and your nobles are really more powerful than you are. That's usually a position where your empire breaks to pieces and you are likely to suffer defeat.
In a normal situation you should barely meet any resistance from your nobles. You will however have to keep the relationship bars of your governors in check. But I think that was one of the major tasks of a medieval ruler and I'd appreciate it if you'd also have to spend some thought on it in the game.
True, I agree, but if you have to negotiate the loyalty of every single noble, it can become really tiring (one of the things I really hated in Crusader Kings). On the other hand, this would turn the game from the "extrovert" perspective KoH1 had (i.e. the struggles are mainly outside your borders, to conquer the other kingdoms) to an "introvert" perspective (i.e. most of your struggles would be within your own borders and the expansions outwards would be more limited with the more nobles you have). And while that would be historically very correct, it would also be pretty tiring for the casual gamers, most of which would rather steamroll over the neighbours than over themselves. Though, if the simple/detailed modes are implemented, that wouldn't be too much of a problem - steamrollers don't deal or deal only minimally with noble's demands etc. in the simple mode, while others can proudly consider it an immense feat if they manage to conquer the whole map on the detailed mode, while having to deal with all kinds of problems (besides, the more power a noble has, the bigger demands he'd have, right).
JarlFrank
9 Apr 2008, 18:27
Hmm, what about making something optional for the "inner affairs"?
For example, you could grant land to some of your nobles and have them as something like vassals, only a lot closer and more controlled by you, or you could just manage it all by yourself as you did in KoH1. This would actually be a nice alternative to assigning governors the way it was done in KoH1. When you assigned your cleric as governor of a city, for example, he just sat in there, you could let him convert the population, that's it. Everything else is still managed by you. Now, it would be pretty interesting when you give that city to one of your nobles, and he gets some minor control over it, deciding what to build, how to set taxes... things like that. It would reduce micromanagement, and add another fun gameplay option, especially when you add some kind of relation-system, so the noble might change his opinion on you and maybe even start to rebel one day.
EDIT:
Nike, you should've told me that you guys already had this idea 5 pages earlier, now I posted it all in vain :p
Uhm... Frank, when we speak about nobles etc., we already mean it that way. It was formulated pretty well by Elvain maybe some 5 or 10 pages ago... ;)
Mephistopheles
10 Apr 2008, 18:34
I leave the actual fleshing out of the interface to the developers. In my mind you'd recruit units very similarly to KoH1. Select province, click recruit, select a couple of units you want and hit OK. In just about every situation you get what you want for the prospected price, only if you failed to meet the governors edpectations you get a menu telling you the noble would like some more in return.
But that's too detailed for an ideas thread, in my opinion.
I agree with you, about the huge kingdoms but I've got a idea-why don't BSS make KOH winning condition like in Total war:
===============================
F.I. playing as Bulgaria - Conditions: conquere/rule 30 (or more) provinces including:
* Thrace
* Epiros
* Panonia
And don't lose:
* Moesia
==============================
About the gunpowder- I guess than that there will be time period about 14/15 century, which means that Ottomans will be rulling balkans, I think that it will "kill the fish" \which mean will be verry interestingly \ to be able to start as a REBEL NATION \Byzantia, Bulgaria, Serbia...\
The goal - to restablish Bulgaria:
you'll have to capture Bdin, Moesia, Dobrudja \something like in KoH1 \
================================
One more question will it be possible to give money to a rebel:
Playing f.i. with Bulgaria and in serbia there is a Rebel- I give him 5000$ so he can buy more army and capture Raska
Or to give him money to stop plundering my city :rolleyes:
Edit- will there be more massive battles, with huge armys and more generals slots? I mean f.i. at least a General to be abble to have 1000 soldiers ( 2 vs 2 generals= 4000 soldiers)
Yes, it seems my hopes for playing as a rebel fit with Gogo's. Though, of course, it would require a bit specially designed mode for playing, so it would be among the later additional extras (i.e. if they have time etc. after they finish the main game). But still I think it would be very interesting to be able to recreate the story f.e. of Momchil voivoda, who started exactly as a rebel/bandit leader, then became a mercenary leader, served under different sides (Andronicus III, Stefan Dushan, Ioan Cantacuzenus etc.), until he gained an army of about 5000 men and created his own state in the Rhodopes. So this could give the player not only a bit more different game-style (either just keep fighting as a rebel, plundering money and getting better units (bandits or mercs) or becoming a mercenary and doing missions for different states, which could pay back with money, units or even giving you a province (and you'd be their vassal, of course)) and it would also give the player the chance to start from the bottom and eventually reach the very top - something, which, I presume, everyone would like. But that would still be more of an extra for the finishing touches and I also prefer some other more important ideas to be realized first... :)
I think it could be part of a "Missions mode". In the Main Menu the player could decide to play:
1) Singleplayer
- A) Grand map campaign (5-6 entering points: Dark Ages-800, End of Invasions-950, Crusader ages 1100, Mongol Era 1220, Black Death - 1340, End of Knights - 1450)
- B) Battle mode (not sure if necessary if there are other 3 modes - but it's just my personal preference)
- C) Missions mode (you pick a kingdom* on a grand map and get a quest - there could be one or two available? - and have limited amount of time to achieve it. Here, perhaps, the year (which should somehow be counted even in Grand campaign, but not evidently visible) would be displayed, so your mission as duke of Normandy could be to conquer England by 1066 etc. – some of these be more, some less historicaly accurate – it could be great field for modders to create new missions)
- D) Rebel mode - player starts as a rebel or small local noble with just one castle or village. the player could chose inside which kingdom (maybe even in which province) he wants to start and if he preferes to be a noble or a rebel. This could also enable to create nations that didn't exist in middle ages, such as Romania, Albania, Estonia etc. It also could be more personal mode where the player could name his characters (royal family members) what would be great feature for many who want to personalize their historical games
* in this mode possibly not all kingdoms could be playable as it would require exhausting and nearly impossible research from the developers, something that could be nicely done by modders
2) Multiplayer (http://forums.blackseastudios.com/showthread.php?p=8279#post8279)
- A) Grand map multiplayer
- B) Regional maps multiplayer
- C) Battle maps/Historical battles
- D) Equivalent of the missions mode
i disagree i believe u should choose the time(era) first, then the game style, or u wont be able to play multiplayer with, rebels, normal kingdoms, etc...(which si where all teh fun is at with playign rebels, for em anyways.)
also, maybe "mission mode" should be on special quest maps, or it may get redundant...
same for battlemode of course.
my views.
I think it could be part of a "Missions mode". In the Main Menu the player could decide to play:
1) Singleplayer
- A) Grand map campaign (5-6 entering points: Dark Ages-800, End of Invasions-950, Crusader ages 1100, Mongol Era 1220, Black Death - 1340, End of Knights - 1450)
- B) Battle mode (not sure if necessary if there are other 3 modes - but it's just my personal preference)
- C) Missions mode (you pick a kingdom* on a grand map and get a quest - there could be one or two available? - and have limited amount of time to achieve it. Here, perhaps, the year (which should somehow be counted even in Grand campaign, but not evidently visible) would be displayed, so your mission as duke of Normandy could be to conquer England by 1066 etc. – some of these be more, some less historicaly accurate – it could be great field for modders to create new missions)
- D) Rebel mode - player starts as a rebel or small local noble with just one castle or village. the player could chose inside which kingdom (maybe even in which province) he wants to start and if he preferes to be a noble or a rebel. This could also enable to create nations that didn't exist in middle ages, such as Romania, Albania, Estonia etc. It also could be more personal mode where the player could name his characters (royal family members) what would be great feature for many who want to personalize their historical games
* in this mode possibly not all kingdoms could be playable as it would require exhausting and nearly impossible research from the developers, something that could be nicely done by modders
2) Multiplayer (http://forums.blackseastudios.com/showthread.php?p=8279#post8279)
- A) Grand map multiplayer
- B) Regional maps multiplayer
- C) Battle maps/Historical battles
- D) Equivalent of the missions mode
This could work out pretty great indeed, but what will happen once the player fulfills his missions - win the mission game and quit or just receive some kind of a reward and continue playing a normal game?
Plus, I hope that all strategic types of games will have "quests" and events like the ones, which were planned (and somewhat implemented) in KoH1! Searching for Holy Relics sounds great, especially since it was a huge source of prestige (and to some extent - wealth, from the pilgrims) in the Middle Ages! ;)
Sultan Osman I
11 Apr 2008, 21:11
We should get game points that we can spend for special prizes like new soldier types or new nations and 1 era could be buyed with this points, or you can´t play this era. That would be nice and would moralize the player for a longer time.
saneeel
13 Apr 2008, 13:08
recruiment time.something like time to build building.better the unit is,more time it needs to recruit.
about the "own culture" I didn't mean that- I said that it will be cool to play as Georgi Voiteh f.e. and rebuild Bulgaria from a rebel faction to large Empire :)
And I don't think that BSS will make that because KoH is/was based on Bulgarian History, and I'm sure of that couse I've seen Frujin's post in a Bulgarian game dev. forum- a Topic with name- "Is it possible to make a great game based on BG history" posted by Frujin in 2003 or 2004 year, not sure, but before KoH was published :)
I didn't want to be the first one to say this, but...
this is actually an AWSOME idea, Sultan Osman I :go:
especialy new era as special bonus for faithfull or good players
-----------EDIT------------
idea for military part:
- morale of units should correspond with happiness of province. So in a province with high rebellion risk the player would either train army with very low morale or should not be able to train any army at all there. So if there is a rebellion in some province, it should not be possible that the same province gives recruits to rebels and at the same time also to player's army, or at least the (player's) army should have very low morale, especialy against the rebels (very probably their own families)
I hope KoH 2 will not be based only on 1 country's history. Be it whatever country.
PS: Who is Georgi Voiteh?
He is a Rebel and noble from XI century when Bulgaria was part of Byzantine Empire ;)
Nike can describe it best couse my English isn't verry good :D
Btw I love your idea for military part !!!
idea for military part:
- morale of units should correspond with happiness of province. So in a province with high rebellion risk the player would either train army with very low morale or should not be able to train any army at all there. So if there is a rebellion in some province, it should not be possible that the same province gives recruits to rebels and at the same time also to player's army, or at least the (player's) army should have very low morale, especialy against the rebels (very probably their own families)
I hope KoH 2 will not be based only on 1 country's history. Be it whatever country.
PS: Who is Georgi Voiteh?
Hmm, I'm not so sure about that, speaking from a historically logical perspective - as in nearly every community, larger masses of people never fully agree on anything. And this is valid for province populations too - even if we consider the Balkan region and Eastern Europe to have been more "nationalistic" back then (which it was, though I have to make the difference between the modern notion of "nation" and the Bulgarian word "narod", roughly translated as "people"), we can see from history examples that when f.e. Basil II conquered the country, some people and nobles kept resisting, while some agreed to serve the Byzantines. The same happened with the Ottoman invasion too. Or in the abovementioned Voiteh's rebellion - yeah, most Bulgarians supported it, but not all, especially when political games between the nobles come in. So if a province has a high rebellion risk, I don't think that should mean no units can be recruited or they should necessarily be with low morale - there would certainly always be local people, who support the current government for one reason or another. Not to mention that some people wouldn't mind serving as mercenaries, even if 75% of the people are discontented. So, I think that with high rebellion risk, maybe only peasant conscripts should be mostly unavailable (or, considering indiviualds might be separately forced to join the army, then they'd have extremely low morale (probably a chance to desert before battles?) and paid/regular troops should suffer only a small part of this rebellion-risk effect. Though, of course, it might be good if there's a clearer indicator for rebellious population and if it reaches, let's say, 90% or so, then it should be extremely hard to hire any local troops (though still possible - maybe just a couple of mercs or high-ranking (noble's) troops).
P.S. About Georgi Voiteh - he was a Bulgarian noble, from "the house of the kavhans" (i.e. the second person in the First Bulgarian Tsardom, after the ruler), who initiated a rebellion against the Byzantines in 1072, invited Constantine Bodin (a great-great-grandson of the old tsar Samuil) to come from Serbia to tema Bulgaria, the latter was crowned as tsar Petar III, but he split his forces, they were defeated and both Georgi Voiteh and Petar III were captured by the Romeans. The former died from torment on the way to Constantinople, the latter was imprisoned for six years, then rescued by some Venetians and later became a king of Serbia. ;)
Hummm I've got an Idea-when King dies you will have to resign your peace agreement f.e.
and I think that TIME is all that KoH needs- years.... f.e. you can sign a 20 years peace with someone just to prepare for war and when the 20 years past you can resign or attack:evil: :cheers:
We should get game points that we can spend for special prizes like new soldier types or new nations and 1 era could be buyed with this points, or you can´t play this era. That would be nice and would moralize the player for a longer time.
great idea!
they could add somtehing like this:
In the beginning you can only chose between 1-3 province nations and the more points you gain or you reach a specific level the more countries you are able to play with
This way could be used to learn players how to manage and develop their nations/provinces becaus bigger nations with more provinces are a lot harder to play with than small ones
Also, how harder the difficulty the more points you gain.
Or the points could be used to make a kingdom special unit playable only the player can create,....
there are many ways to make use of it
something i would like to see is that units experience has more use than is has now.
1) For every experience-star gained the units morale should go up with 1 or 2, or their damage points increase with +5.
this would mean that your veteran units are more willing to fight till the last men and do more damage than your rookies.
It would make the experience units have more usefull to me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
whilst typing the above, i came on another idea for it:
i read somwhere inhere the idea to upgrade units if the buildings needed for it where available.
my idea would be that when a unit has 3-stars it is upgradeble to a better unit
for example: 3-star spearman should get better armour and a shield and be more like the town guard unit, and you have to pay the price for it offcourse
It was probably mentioned before, but it might be good for the variety of the game that a town loses a random amount of buildings when it is conquered. Perhaps it should apply more to the player conquering towns or it will be another weak point of an always-warring AI. The effect of losing some buildings is also that the population of the town is reduced, which represents the casualties of a siege.
I encountered it in another game (Alpha Centauri), that's why I post it now.
My ideas:
1) battle
a) active pause - you put pause and calm give orders
b) player should have possibility to put his army in some formation before battle starts (especially if he attacks, if he is in defence - maybe not)
c) generally formations of army sholud be avaible (even something simple)
d) number of soldiers - I think in KoH2 this could be solved like in Lords of the Realm 2. If there is a limit that on battle map can be only 100 units it can be possible that army is 1 000 or even 10 000. It would be calculation that 1 unit on battle map is = 16 or 32 soldiers of army. In that way we could resign from the KoH1 solution that general can have only 9 units.
e) fortyfied camp - no more army in tents! :)
2) province
a) map of province - i think it would be great that if we double click on city woud poup up a screen which would present the whole province (like in EU Crusader Kings, or I suposed in Heroes of Might and Magic 2 ;) ) or only city (like in Lord of the Realm 2) where we can see what was build and can manage the developement , where we can see how the castle is change and so on
b) microeconomy - (like in LotR 2 ;P ) some basic resources like stone, wood, iron which is needed to build more advance buildings or for production weapons (let say there is the screen od city. we double click on smith and we can chose the actual production of weapons; )
c) size of army depending on population and production of weapons
3) general
There is a lot of ideas that can be taken from the Lords of the Realm 2 and I recommend do that. :] (but do not use LotR3!)
I hope on the main interface there will be a slide bar to give AI bonus in many ways. I would like to see how much AIs can enjoy their advantages over me such as more food&money, faster building, units training faster, higher morale, autospawn units when town under player's seige. All boil down to "Please let AI cheat!"
I want to begin to game as a rebeler, a soldier, a marshall, a spion or a prince. Than I want to rebelling against my king and I want to install my personal kingdom.
Riverstar
4 Jun 2008, 10:43
So, being me, I always prefer diplomacy and using spies, merchants and so on to make my empire. Granted, I will admit that I'm not foreign to the idea of taking two armies and going through the whole of Europe and completely taking the title of ruler of Europe by force either. It makes the time go by faster.
Anyway, I have my own ideas as well and if someone has already mentioned these, I'm sorry for being repetitive. I did read the thread through but I might have forgotten what everyone has mentioned (because I'm forgetful like that.)
Idea one: Divorce and Death
My idea is basically that queens can age and die and also, you can divorce them. If your king fails to sire a son on his wife and you want to believe it's not his fault, divorce his wife and get him a new one (a younger one, if the age thing can actually happen). Divorce wasn't too common back in the Medieval era, I realize, but it did happen. I think the divorce can add something as well in advantage and disadvantage. I think the simple way to do it would be that there would be an X by the queen's portrait. Click it and a message will pop up saying, "The pope has declined your divorce/annulment request" or, if you've led a crusade and contributed to the papacy some, "The pope has granted your divorce/annulment request."
Also, I think it would be amazing if the queen could age as well so that it's obvious that she's not going to have kids anytime soon. (I'll be honest: my king was married since he was juvenile and had been married to this princess before that when he was still a prince as well. By the time he was venerable and she was STILL giving birth, I was wondering how she was managing that one.)
Advantage: if your king failed to have children with his first wife, he can obviously try with the second one as well as obtain the bonuses of a better relationship with his second wife's country, perhaps an ally in war and so on. Really, the main bonus is no civil war that happens over and over and over again when you go through one of those infertility loops.
Disadvantage: if you divorce your wife, the country she is from has a drop in the relationship with you. Maybe they discard a few of your treaties as well such as the alliance or the trading agreement. Also, you might have the bribe the papacy to give you the annulment or divorce.
Idea Two: Kinship
So, I admit I was kinda miffed when my prince became king and was married to the princess of France. Her father died and her brother, who was married to my princess, took the throne. My thought was, (this was when I JUST started playing), "Oh good. Our relationship probably didn't suffer." Wrong. It dropped from harmonious to friendly and I thought, "Whoa...that brother and sister did NOT get along."
I was thinking that in such a case, the relationship does NOT drop. Perhaps, if you're married to their princess and your princess married their king, the relationship stays the same. They can't hate you that much, after all, you're family! However, if your king is married to their princess and your princess simply marries the prince that doesn't inheirit, the relationship drops a tad from harmonious to something like united. After all, their sister is still your queen.
After the first generation of this marriage going through (as in, by the time your king's children get to have their stab at a crown and a throne), the relationship can drop again to friendly since you're not so close in family to each other anymore.
Does that make sense?
Idea Three: Queens
Being a woman, of course I would bring this up.
Basically, queens did happen in the west. Not so much in the east (since women couldn't really become all that powerful and actually hold a crown or throne by themselves to my knowledge in the medieval era. Granted, there was Mehrunnisa and Jahangir but she was the power BEHIND the throne so that doesn't count because she wasn't ruling by herself completely.) However, as mostly queens happen in the later times of Medieval Europe, perhaps you just give the ability for a woman to rule by herself in the Late period to coincide with reality. Also, there would be disadvantages and advantages. The princess could also only inheirit the throne if there were no other children (of the male variety).
Disadvantage: Since women ruling without being aided by a man were frowned on back then, the relationship with other countries would take a hit. Perhaps a hundred point hit. Also, the queen isn't allowed to lead as a marshall or anything of that sort (she is a woman, after all, so it's not like someone's going to hand her a sword and tell her to get in the thick of battle.) Also, more rebellions if the ruler is a queen? Not everyone wants a woman to rule, after all.
Advantage: If there is another queen ruler, the relationship points go up by a hundred. Women stick together, after all. Or at least, most of us do. Also, perhaps she gets a special advantage since she can't be a marshall or anything of that sort. Perhaps the economy flourishes or more books are produced?
When she marries, I don't know what would happen, since you're not exactly able to marry nobility. Perhaps her husband drops any claim to whatever country he's from, such as if he's the prince of Croatia and he marries her, he has to just become a nobleman (this happens to queens/princesses when you deny the opportunity to take their land when their father's die. It's basically that, but without the option of denying the opportunity to take the land.) Or, should she marry a king, you can join the two kingdoms and play as the king? I'm unsure how that part would work out.
Anyway, that's my two cents. Take it or leave it. I realize it's not as in depth as the maps and such or nearly as complex but still my opinion. Right, so, voila! Questions? Comments? Concerns? Answers to life's deepest questions?
First, hello and welcome to the forums, Riverstar!
Second, I like your ideas, especially about the divorce and the queens. And queens weren't that rare either - there were several Byzantine empresses (ironically, mostly in the earlier periods, IIRC) and I think there was a Russian princess/queen as well (the mother of Svyatoslav, IIRC). And divorces for the nobility and the royal houses weren't that rare too - everybody would immediately think of Henry VIII, I can also add several Bulgarian ones when the old queen was f.e. sent to a monastery or just returned to her own country.
Third, I'd like to enhance a bit some of those ideas with one additional thing - regency. It was also often enough that a monarch dies with a heir, but the latter has still not come of age. So instead of just losing the dynasty, as it is in KoH1 now, the infant can have regents (either his mother and/or some nobles from the court) to rule in his name until he grows up. I think that would also be a pretty nice addition to secure the stability of the dynasties (though, of course, it can be complicated even more, by having other people with claims to the crown or nobles simply seizing the power for themselves, one way or another). ;)
Riverstar
4 Jun 2008, 23:25
Thank you for the welcome and I agree with the idea of regency. It frustrates me to no end when a civil war pops up just because a prince didn't grow up in time. Perhaps, if the king had brothers, give the brother the regency? Also, maybe instead of having some random general get chosen to be the new king have someone that is in the royal court that is connected to the family (i.e. a brother, uncle, what have you) take it instead. It makes more sense to me than a random person on the royal court panel getting it when the king's brother is up there as a general, merchant or spy.
I forgot about the Byzantine Empresses (which is weird because I was just reading about them in one of my books). The practice stopped in the day of Alexius Comnenus, right? Anna Comnena and her mother, Irene, led a rebellion then to reclaim the throne for Anna but instead Anna was given to a monastary where she composed the Alexiad. Her brother, Michael, went on to rule instead. So yes, I suppose the queen idea would have to not just be in the late period but also throughout all the periods. Good point.
hi there and welcome river. nice to see a lady for a change :)
----id like to expand on what you said...----
Koh completely ignores one of the most important things in old European history, or at leas through the middle ages and about: Family!
see, its all about families really, for instance... -guys back at old Britain where rather close with some old barbarian-would-bes originally from the SE-E(also called normans).
one day their luck turns ill and they flee to this old barb's kingdom, beyond good friends and all its no problem.(-they 'like family ya know!) they had even been there previously, etc..
eventually... this guys goes over to dear old Britain to become the first, true, English king.
so you see... families do influence a lot over what ends up happening, and also kingdoms do NOT end when u conquer the realm... if the family is alive and specially if there still is support... you got trouble.
its part of the reason to why for instance the ~central-central-south is so much more Italian(as in, old roman), then the rest of Italy. Even after the invasion and, even after Rome was just a myth, people stayed, nobles stay too.(maybe some changed their ways and names... but stayed). Thus, provided that Mediterraneans are deep in-rooted people. that makes it so that much of what Rome(old Italy) was, lived and lives through them.
in fact you could say thats one place in the world where people are still unhappy with the way things go today... but thats something else.
----Anyways...---
My point with all of that is=> people matter! more then realms and knights they make all the difference. so i think families should be made more of an important part of the game(like i said, they can flee and come back with armies, or even visit friends to improve relations and establish trades or whatnot).
--a side note--
Also, dear lady, its not a fact that she wouldn't be able to marry nobility. there are quite a few cases of 'realities' when queens where to marry kings and etc(and the queen ruled a country). hey when people want it, it happens. perhaps liberty in orchestrating various marriage deals would be required for that to be in-game able. but of course the only reason why that marriage would happen(that i see) is... love, can u compute that into the game?
-or at least i only remember seeing it happen for love-reasons in history(or similar).
And, if you don't mind em saying, i don't believe your, 'traditionally woman would stick together', would stand factually. you see, when they where rulers it was all about 'business'(of the time), so i really wouldn't see that happening(and i don't recall it ever occurring). Most of these would-bes(as in man stick with man, woman with woman) are valid more to the lower population, in the ranks of the monarchy(aristocracy) if you manage to stand yourself as a ruler... dang! your the ruler! nm whatever u got in those long, long, pieces of cloth.
so would it matter? yes, to some extent. but i believe tracing it to a more cliche point of man-man, woman-woman, would deny the reality of it.
also, i would bear in mind that in the middle ages, if that came to pass it was only because woman where cornered in it(forced into being with other woman only, most of the time); yet, there are many records of good lasting friendships between man-woman, even of different countries. Where as today, if that separation takes place, its only because, perhaps, we live i a much more sexist world then ever before.(the walls are no longer there to stop people ^^)b
--finishing up---
i guess if u add a complex 'relations' algorithm establishment to the back of all of that, then u can have things like: people can marry anyone, and depending on their choices in that they gain/lose prestige, respect, etc...
so much for the linear, current, koh model. :D
i guess, summing it up, one thing that KoH could improve on is bringing the people up! to the interface(making them more relevant ;) ).
Oh, and just to reiterate... Historically and beyond, i love queens. :go:
thanks for reading if you have, and hope we see some KoH again, on the horizon, anytime soon. ;) cheers.
thought of another thig today, not sure its been suggested, but... it would be nice if you could customize your castle. not just choose what type of defenses u have but... for instance: round towers,4 of them. distributed in square shape. or... a hexagon with round towers up front and square ones all around, etc... be creative here.
also, that would be nice if u could choose where to attack form, front, sides, back.
if you want a VERY simple example of, some degree of customization and its possibles + and -'s check a game called 'lords of the realm 2', still to me a master example of medieval games. anyhow its old, but maybe it will give everyone ideas.
cheers folks.:go:
Woah, this is a massive thread. Lots of ideas and it gets quite complicated. I flicked through and read a few but it would take all night to read them all. Above all, I find KoH great the way it is. However there are a few issues and problems that make the game-play unrealistic and limited.
I believe someone in a different thread wanted to select a particular province in his empire and give it independence, make it a vassal etc. but it was not possible. I think this would be a great way of adding depth to the internal possibilities of any kingdom or empire. I wanted to achieve something similar in my own game, except I wanted to split my empire up into three or so powerful factions, like the successor states of Alexander the Great. One should be able to do this; it would prolong game-play and deepen the realism. Including these sorts of internal possibilities would also solve the problem of managing a giant empire, and sometimes, making an ally out of a kingdom is better than conquering it, because you can use them as pawns. It was necessary for the Roman Empire to have a Western and Eastern emperor three hundred years before it declined, because no emperor however great can successfully manage Europe on his own.
I completely agree with the Regent possibility. It makes perfect sense, and through the course of history, mothers, uncles, even advisors and cardinals have taken the reins of power as Regents. This is a logical inclusion to make the game better. Some good ideas there Riverstar, I like the pope declining/allowing thing because this was a major pain for some kings so it should be for us too! It makes me think of interdicts. Not as powerful as excommunication, but just stops all piety and drops happiness way down.
Oh, while we are on the subject, how about introducing a choice that an heirless country can offer its crown to a prestigious king of another kingdom? If their relations are good, same religion, maybe already kin, etc.? This would sometimes happen in history, particularly if the heirless kingdom was in a bad condition. Perhaps this can lead to the rightful heir, if he is unpopular with the people or just underage, to revolt and maybe some provinces declare allegiance to him, maybe not, but he marches on the capitol to seize the throne. It should be rare, though, and I’m by no means suggesting Germany offer its crown to France, but perhaps a small principality in the backward wilds of Russia?
today i was thinking about that(what azeus said), take a look at crusader kings and you'll get some ideas of how things can work. though i dnt think that game is a nice example of it.
also, the ability to built/design your own castle, with varying prices based on the amount of resources you used would be nice(like in lords of the realm 3), also... i always thought that the unit recruitment should be different, maybe more depth into it. or mroe detail into troops in the overall.
this kind of goes into thing like, no more immortal knights, and the event that when your knight(general) dies, and apprentice takes over and depending on his favorite types of armies/his skills, the apprentice may take some of the skills or not.
but thats just some of it. i was thinking that maybe the whole recruitment process, as a whole could be upgraded.
but anyways, im off now. just some thoughts on the table, for today.
keep the posts coming. ;)
Riverstar
13 Jun 2008, 05:57
Also, dear lady, its not a fact that she wouldn't be able to marry nobility. there are quite a few cases of 'realities' when queens where to marry kings and etc(and the queen ruled a country). hey when people want it, it happens. perhaps liberty in orchestrating various marriage deals would be required for that to be in-game able. but of course the only reason why that marriage would happen(that i see) is... love, can u compute that into the game?
-or at least i only remember seeing it happen for love-reasons in history(or similar).
I meant that she wouldn't be able to marry nobility simply because the game, as it is at the moment, makes sure that your kings can't even marry nobility. It's not a thing with realism at all because I realize that did happen back then. I realize that in the real world a queen would marry a nobleman if she wanted to (or really anyone, provided she wasn't going to get shoved off her throne right after she did it). It's a game thing. Your generals/priests/landowners/merchants, for example, can't marry your princesses and your king's queen only gets "demoted" to noblewoman when you say that you don't want to claim any part of her land as kin. Unless KoH2 made it so that you could marry your daughters to a member of the court (or a queen to member of the court), the queen would be unable to marry a nobleman for that reason. Not because of the realistics in the world, but because of what happens in the game itself and how the game is run is what I meant.
oh i see, thought u meant nobility in general(king included). ;P
anyways, yes! KoH2 should indeed expand the 'realm'(as in... now we get nobles into the mix).
but i believe there was a whole chatter about this a few posts back, if i recall even elvan wrote a few lines on it.
-thank for clearing that up. :)
cheers
and keep brainstorming.:cool:
Hey all, I have just beaten the campaign on KoH, and was wondering if a new one was ever going to come out so i googled this site and saw this forum and got all exited :p
a lot of these suggestions are great and i dont have time to read all like 16 pages of suggestions so if somone already suggested this, srry.
So, I thought of a cool idea. (well to me its cool)
A suggestion would be to expand the time period and mabye have more than 1 campaign map.
Like, for example, a crusader map where the map is from byzantia, present time turkey, down to where egypt ends, so you could be byzantia, the turks, antioch, jerusalem, or another muslim faction whatever you name it down by egypt.
It would also be cool if you were Antioch or Jerusalem if you could call for another crusade with the pope's approval for more soldiers or if you are losing a lot of land, etc.
Or a later time period map with the italian states like venice, florence, genoa, etc.
or a dark age map where you can be the remaining roman empire or famous barbarian tribes like the saxons, huns, celts, and more and you can just tear through europe and ransack like hell!
Just a few suggestions i thought was cool.
Thanks,
Masta
Hey all,
I got the idea of more intelligent rebels and refugees.
When a province is about to be captured a kingdom there should be some people (kind of sympathisants) who flee (maybe one can click a button like in a usual battle) from that town into a neighbouring province which is ruled by the king they had before. In both following cases the amount of workers in this city would decrease.
They could be either just people walking to that other city,
or they can be an army with their own marshall. Maybe they would just be peasants or other bad units. But they will be able to fight. People from the villages will join them. They can either be controlled by the owner before (or the country they are supporters for), or they are independent rebels.
They probably can go into another city (if their sympathisants of this country) or they can either attack the castle directly or they go through to province and exploit the villages (which is not logical if they're sympathisants and not rebels because they're belonging to the same country).
The sympathisants could also leave this province to attack a neighbouring one like when the Huns conquered parts of europe and all those tribes attacked the roman empire then.
If there is a possible uprising in the province (about 10 or 20%) probably there will be also refugees who are leaving the city and joining other cities around, which has not to be in the same kingdom.
I hope it's clear what I meant.
whats going on with worldshif (sales)?
will bss make enough to start working on koh2?
has anyone suggested the possibility of building your own castles?
and not in a live way like stronghold, but rather in a static way, like in lords3 where you design your castle outside, then you can use it in game.
with that we could have in the box, standard castle modules to replace the many fortification types of the current game, so for instance. -> small keep, grand castle, royal castle, etc...
all with ever greater requirements to be build(specially in terms of costs), and the price of your castle would also vary depending on size, fortifications used, etc. in order to be equivalent. its not that hard to implement and would be a great addition.
Another thing... a few posts back we discussed the idea of playing a rebel, to me this goes into the 'other modes' modes of play, another idea in that 'other minor modes' section is that perhaps we could also play a general.(its like being on the other side).
and in this mode, your ai king would send you to do tasks, and if you performed them right, you would get exp and maybe cash too.(possibly more depending on the situation- like in a crusade where if you conquer a territory its yours and u become a vassal).
beyond the obvious, to me thats great for one situations:
maybe your friends are going to go play an online match, and you cant really play now, BUT you will be able to in a few mins... maybe after you finish something.
this mode gives you the opportunity of starting the game, and be playing a minor role at first, so you dont have to worry about many things for a while and can sit back. then after your free you can grab your general and maybe...revolt? take the kingdom for yourself, maybe even some of the other generals will join you(if you got enough prestige amongst them) or maybe go on a crusade like i said, or conquer any other territory and then, officially, start playing.
this can also make into some interesting mode like dual play, someone controls the provinces and the other controls the marshals, since certainly you wont be able to pause in an online game, it can be great co-op and also fun for those out there that are battle junkies. i can think of a few other scenarios, overall i think its a very nice, and unique approach to the game. hope that BSS grabs the idea. :D