KoH Problem – abrupt random events

[Denisold]

Twice now I’ve been playing reasonably long games on Hard (say invested about 10 hours game time in each) when AI triggers, in a millisecond, and without any warning, a random game event. The event creates nearly impossible game conditions that makes the game essentially non-playable (ie no point in continuing), and as a result causes me to stop playing.

1st time – had perhaps 20 provinces – strong cites, wealth, and marshals, max kingdom power - king dies – my kingdom instantly collapses to less than half due to previous marriage of kin to very weak prince on opposite edge of map. Invested 10 hours to get this far – I have no interest in spending a few more hours regaining the losses so I stop playing.

2nd time – again perhaps 20 provinces – strong cites, wealth and 5 star marshals – instantly, without warning, and for no apparent reason, all of my marshals have decided to become rebels and they all attack my cities – I create new inexperienced marshals to fight it out with the experienced marshals – then all provinces become red – the AI senses my weakness and all surrounding kingdoms attack – an impossible situation so I stop playing.

Both random events happened instantly, and really have nothing to do with strategic play (no warning with a chance to compensate, no after-the-fact negotiation, and the damage so severe that games were essentially over). After a few curse words directed at BSS, I was left with no desire to continue playing (not a good thing for reputation of KoH).

Possible Solution in KoH2

Random game events are needed throughout the game - they create interest and break the repetition (=boredom?) that becomes apparent later in long games – but their overall impact should be moderate in effect (ie they shouldn’t cause players to stop playing).

Perhaps after the AI determines that a random event will happen – then the AI delays (say 20 turns ahead). The player can be alerted before the event happens, and some game play options presented - ie for the ‘marshals as rebels’ event the player is advised that the marshals are becoming restless – you can pay them off in cash, or give each some small territory, or….etc, - or if you have a court spy (the more experienced the better the info) he can pinpoint the main culprit and you can dispose of him – or do nothing and deal with the problem after the event The repercussions of the event could be gradually applied (say for the next 20 turns the repercussions build, and then disappear – but future game play is never destroyed!)

Frujin - the important point here is to ensure that each random event is structured to not make continuing game play impossible. Of course each event requires considerable thought by your game designers.

Any thoughts out there on this?

[Frujin]

Denisold, I see most of your points. Can you please, draw me a scenario of an Empire collapse as you see it "being fine"?

By the way, there are no "random" events in KoH of such scale. Being wrong marriage, or foreign spy getting into a position to incite rebellion .. it all comes down to a possibilities that you can easily take care off earlier.

[Doux]

1st time – had perhaps 20 provinces – strong cites, wealth, and marshals, max kingdom power - king dies – my kingdom instantly collapses to less than half due to previous marriage of kin to very weak prince on opposite edge of map. Invested 10 hours to get this far – I have no interest in spending a few more hours regaining the losses so I stop playing.That's the price you pay when marrying - you could of course refuse to let anyone inherit your late King's land. Half the kingdom sounds like a bad deal to me as well.

2nd time – again perhaps 20 provinces – strong cites, wealth and 5 star marshals – instantly, without warning, and for no apparent reason, all of my marshals have decided to become rebels and they all attack my cities – I create new inexperienced marshals to fight it out with the experienced marshals – then all provinces become red – the AI senses my weakness and all surrounding kingdoms attack – an impossible situation so I stop playing.Congratulations! You had just been targeted by an enemy spy, who succesfully started a rebellion by your marhalls. Sounds like an awefully good game, actually - why the surrounding kingdoms went red, I do not know, though.

[Frankoman]

With the first one, that is harsh.

2nd time – again perhaps 20 provinces – strong cites, wealth and 5 star marshals – instantly, without warning, and for no apparent reason, all of my marshals have decided to become rebels and they all attack my cities – I create new inexperienced marshals to fight it out with the experienced marshals – then all provinces become red – the AI senses my weakness and all surrounding kingdoms attack – an impossible situation so I stop playing.

That is quite realistic if you dig through Medieval history.
One of your neighbors most likely had a feud for some reason, or thought you a good target for conquest, and sent a spy to you. He sucsessfully caused an uprising, and your men turned on you (In England, the very same happened. Then Wales and Scottland attacked).
Then the fun part, that neighbor attacks, and pays the others around you to attack. Now your burning through gold and sending inexperienced marshals out to do battle. Your getting pushed back... Can you stop this trickle, or will it become a flood, causing you to have to fall back and buildd again.

What faction were you? This sounds mad fun!

If this were me as say, France, and western Europe, the Iberians and England attcked me and my marshals turned to rebel, and I couldn't fix the problem, I'd take my armies and go to Norway, and rebuild up there. Then as my empire falls to ruin, I rebuild in the North... When the time comes, I reclaim my lands in an epic attack, sending all my marshals the entire span of the Northern coast of western Europe and southern England and take the power back!

[NikeBG]

1st time – had perhaps 20 provinces – strong cites, wealth, and marshals, max kingdom power - king dies – my kingdom instantly collapses to less than half due to previous marriage of kin to very weak prince on opposite edge of map. Invested 10 hours to get this far – I have no interest in spending a few more hours regaining the losses so I stop playing.
Did you have an heir to the throne? Because if you didn't, it's a very normal behaviour of the game that your provinces, especially ones with higher unrest, would separate and then the neighbours would get use of your weakened position. The problem, which sucks in this situation, is not the separatist results, but the fact that if your king is destined to die heirless, there's nothing you can do about it (f.e. adopt, declare as successor someone from the nearest branch of the family tree (brother, nephew) etc.)

[Mephistopheles]

Denisold, I see most of your points. Can you please, draw me a scenario of an Empire collapse as you see it "being fine"? I can draw my opinion on this:
a) Especially new players need to be warned about impending doom. But even experienced players would enjoy an advisor, if he isn't a paperclip. ( :cool: )
I may be a little biased here, but I think the innerpolitical goals I talked about in various threads now would be able to achieve that. While the concept was originally intended to cause the player trouble with the endless querries and demands of the local nobility I think you could also be asked to declare a successor if the ruling class of your country is worried about the royal family's bloodline. That could serve as a warning about likely problems, but wouldn't introduce a magic floating advisor that pops up on your screen.
b) The game needs to communicate events better.
The game needs to explain to the player why certain things happened. Most importantly, the game has to transfer that what he saw on screen actually had a reason and wasn't random at all. In KoH many AI decisions can appear to be completely random and idiotic, but if you think about it for a while you can come up with reasons why the AI decided to take that specific action. If the game was able to transfer some deeper sense to the player, even if the decision actually was random, he'd remain under the impression that the game-world makes sense. That is important, because it reassures the player that he can apply sense to the game, which really is the essence of athmospheric gameplay.
In KoH the rumors could deliver that information. They'd need a new, more prominant place on the GUI though.

[Denisold]

Denisold, I see most of your points. Can you please, draw me a scenario of an Empire collapse as you see it "being fine"?

Will do - might take a few days

[Denisold]

Denisold, I see most of your points. Can you please, draw me a scenario of an Empire collapse as you see it "being fine"? .

Hey Frujin – this is pretty difficult request that you have put forward (I’m glad I don’t have your job).

Firstly let me rephrase where I am having difficulty with KoH – my game play problem isn’t in losing my Empire to unusual events (loss of provinces to marital claims, marshals becoming rebels, etc) – the problem for me is:


the abruptness (without warning) of an event’s trigger, and
the short duration (after the trigger) before its obvious that my Empire is doomed


The request to “Can you please, draw me a scenario of an Empire collapse as you see it "being fine"?” is far too complicated for me to attempt (and likely anything I might suggest is already in your sophisticated game design of KoH – I am just not experienced enough as a player to really know and understand what is already in KoH). But I will give a try at my 2 problems noted above.

Some assumptions before starting:


Events will occur throughout the game – more so in the 2nd half of game
Events will be introduced periodically (say every 30 minutes of game play), and last perhaps 10-20 minutes for an average player
Events will vary in severity (ie most have moderate impact, some difficult, a few very severe)
Events about to happen are made aware to the player – some form of warning (see Mephistopheles’ comments in his last post)
Events will not cause the player to feel that his play is doomed – there are always methods (some slow easy ones, some hard and fast) to counter the setback of an event


Example of Spy in Court

Using example of ‘spies - marshals becoming rebels – very high rebellion risk - attacks by neighbor kingdoms’.

A hidden spy enters your court – initially he has slight effect on some court persons – they start to behave slightly abnormally. Say trade patterns for all merchant’s change, or all marshals don’t move as fast, or all the builders won’t build like they used to, or..…etc (this presumes that all court members are as important to game play, throughout the game, as the marshal – and all court members can be influenced by spy). The player might notice, or he may not. If not the abnormal behavior increases. If the player still doesn’t notice a massage appears on GUI left side stating that something up in his court.

Now to determine whom the spy is. Perhaps each court member can be individually interrogated (say in a special prison slot – not a court slot). Sometimes the spy breaks, sometimes not (depends on spy experience or skill). If identified you disposes of him, if not game continues to event trigger.

If the spy is a marshal, after the event trigger some marshals become rebels (mostly just one marshal converts, in the extreme perhaps 3 – but never all). The risk of rebellion is limited to province of rebellion. Neighboring kingdoms that sense your weakness are limited to attacking after a 15-minute delay (after event trigger) – and then only one can attack at a time.

Conclusion

Each event can be essentially a mini game within the overall game – and continuously appearing would make game more interesting in late stage play.

Game events can be numerous (famines, plagues, pope problems, heirs, rebels,………etc, etc. – there are likely many many dozens of events). If all game events were developed as above and overlaid on existing game play of KoH then IMO the game would be improved.

[Frujin]

Thank you Denisold, I will get back on this topic (as we also see it one important direction for Koh improvement a bit later).

[NikeBG]

Neighboring kingdoms that sense your weakness are limited to attacking after a 15-minute delay (after event trigger) – and then only one can attack at a time.

IMO, 15 minutes is a hell of A LOT of time and limiting a kingdom from attacking another kingdom would make the game... well, pretty not-so-good... Not to mention that, realistically speaking, it's logically expected to be attacked exactly when you fall in a difficult situation.

As for the spy suggestions - it sounds good, but it means a completely new way of using spies in the game. But there's one thing I really liked about your idea here - spy actions don't happen instantaneously, but would need some time, in which measures could be taken against them. F.e. by developing Denisold's idea a bit into another practical example, you have a spy hired as marshal in the province of Tuscany. With time he starts to decrease the morale of all other marshals (the effect being stronger on the geographically closer ones) more and more, which also increases his chances for more successful actions. This means that no longer would a "spy blitzkrieg" be able to work (i.e. sending a spy, who turns all enemy armies into rebels the first second he is hired), but every spy would need some time to "befriend" the other knights, create some ties etc., which would give him better chances for action. Now, let's say about two minutes have passed since a foreign spy was hired in your court and he decides to start a rebellion or some other action. Since he hasn't had a lot of time to create some better connections, the time he needs for performing his actions would be longer. And as soon as you sense a disturbance among your marshals (this could be improved if you have counter-spies in your court f.e.), a report comes and you can then act - f.e. you've had a suspicion about one of your marshals, so you imprison and interrogate him. In this case, you might be wrong and the rebellion starts in the meantime. Or you could be right and you discover the spy. Then comes the question what to do with him - execute him (besides the current consequences, another one might be that he serves as a warning to all other knights), release him (which keeps the morale of other knights, who were influenced by him, a bit lower) or something else. I think there can be quite more things, which can be further developed from this (and, yeah, I just love the espionage in this game)...

[Alecterum]

I agree with Denisold that there should be a bit more warning for when events happen suddenly and abruptly.

I especially like the idea of spies slowly degrading your empire bit by bit as that's realistic rather than something abrupt.

Although I can understand that something abrupt happening if a spy becomes King.

I had that happen once:

Norway had a spy in my court that became King so as soon as I brought that Spy to my throne room Norway had annexed my entire empire (which was all of Western Europe from Ireland to Bucharest) and that's no small Empire. What Norway hadn't counted on was that even though all but one of my territories were lost was that I had four fully trained Marshals (these marshals were an army unto themselves) and I slowly reconquered my lost empire (one province at a time) and in the end not only did I regain my empire but Scandanavia as well.

It was fun and I found it to be fairly realistic too.

Also to help stop other nations from claiming inheritance you can not marry off your princesses at all and let your princes (once they become King) to take a noblewoman for a Queen.

Just my thoughts.

Cheers,
~Alecterum~

[Frankoman]

Those are very great points, and I agree, but there is one, major, problem with this.

In knights of honor, if you have good hands and a mouse, in about 20 seconds, you can get a full alliance and give someone a plot of land, break an alliance then declare war, offer a marriage with one of your kin to another, and demand money from someone. Knights of Honor has instant action with Diplomacy, which nearly rules the game. Also, when upgrading a knight in your court (giving him a star), he instantly learns. When recruiting, soldiers are instantly trained, marshals and merchants are imediately ready to do your bidding...

So it makes sense for spies to also have this instant action. To remove that could cause some negative comments or demands for the rest of the game to be slowed down, which would either make me ask for the game to be able to get patched down or just get me mad, and put Kinghts of Honor in the closet.

So really, it is a great idea, but the action of Knights of Honor is instant, and it adds a sense of thrill, shock and fear. If all your marshals suddenly change, you'll have to rush to try and stop them, and have to recruit weak armies. You'd then have to lead these armies to stop them, instead of autoing, you'd have to do a lot of managing and fighting, which makes Knights of Honor so fun (for me).

Just my oppinion on this..