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King Arthur - The Role Playing Wargame

Darth Roxor

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GlobalExplorer said:
I made it no secret that I am still at the beginning. But what do you mean? There was clearly no morale modelled in the first battles, and armies always fought until they were annihilated. Does it change later in the game?

Yes, for example there's the 'master of defence' ability that makes you achieve victory by getting 10%/level less victory points. There's also another one that makes the enemy need 10%/level more to win, and another one that decreases the enemy's starting morale by 10%/level. As I said, the victory locations also end battles sooner.

Does the game use a different setup in the later parts of the game or how does the change come about? Specifically: do units rout when morale gets low? do armies retreat from the battlefield?

Lower morale decreases your units' general fighting ability afaik, but they don't rout. As for retreats, well, that's a funny thing, because I think there's no way to retreat when you are on the actual battlefield, but quite often I observed that when you're attacked by overwhelming odds but use the 'autobattle' feature, there are casualties on both sides, but no army goes down completely, and your hero is pushed back on the overland map.
 

Sovard

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Darth Roxor said:
The battle against Balan in the demo whooped my ass. I only have Kay, and I wasn't able to reinforce prior as I did it before the Lady mission.The Gryphons can survive 3 heavy infantry/3 spearmen/4 foot? conscripts? and the wasteland folk in melee. Even with flanking...

The gryphons are high-end heavy infantry, they're pretty much untouchable by your beginning melee units.

But that's why you get Balin to join you in the battle - he has the Dragon's Breath spell which can decimate squads of high armour/hp regiments. And whoever survives you just take out with the archers.

You know, I figured out my problem... Balin wasn't coming in as the leader of the wasteland brigade. That'll do it.
 

Darth Roxor

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Sovard said:
You know, I figured out my problem... Balin wasn't coming in as the leader of the wasteland brigade. That'll do it.

It's a bug, I had the same once. The battle kinda went out of my control: Balin died, the wasteland warriors got decimated etc so I hit 'restart', and the funny thing was, each time I restarted, the warriors would appear without Balin amongst them. I had to reload and approach the whole battle from the overland map again.
 

JarlFrank

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Playing it and liking it so far, although the battlefield controls take some time to adjust to. I prefer the Total War way of scrolling through the battlefield. Battles themselves are quite good, though. I like the importance of terrain. Still prefer TW battles, mostly because of the battlefield navigation, but it's a thoroughly enjoyable game so far, even though archers are incredibly overpowered (although that might change when more magic comes into play).
 

Wyrmlord

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I really want to play this game so much.

I am going to get it the moment I see it in stores.
 

Malakal

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So I played this game for a bit and must say its currently hardly playable at all. Battle controls are, as have been said, bad at best. Game lacks any kind of unit balance where archers can kill entire squads of elite heavy infantry and play chasing game across the entire battlefield. Morale doesn't matter, terrain doesn't matter, you just get max ammount of archer squads and pwn everything. And yes, spells are very powerful. I enjoyed text adventures and role playing part of this, but as a wargame it fails so hard.
I'd give it 5/10.
 

Darth Roxor

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Malakal said:
you just get max ammount of archer squads and pwn everything

Durp, bullshit. With such an army, you'll be pretty raped when fighting undead, sidhe, followers of the old faith, lots of elite cavalry, on maps with lots of forests and generally during sucky weather conditions (i.e. every battle from the middle to the end of the game).
 

Malakal

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Good to hear, still since I can't really finish early game without fighting those fucking OP archers... I mean, seriously, archers pwning light cavalry/heavy infantry? Archers kiling everything in forests? WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
 

Darth Roxor

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Malakal said:
Archers kiling everything in forests?

Then you're obviously doing something ronk. Charging the archers is completely pointless, either you sit around hidden in forests and wait for the AI to charge or you counter the archers with your own or rape them all with spells - a single curse of shadows makes an archer squad completely useless, and curse of shadows is available rather fast since Sir Gareth has it. Not to mention using other funky spells like storm of avalon, that completely disables archery iirc.
 

Malakal

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Darth Roxor said:
Malakal said:
Archers kiling everything in forests?

Then you're obviously doing something ronk. Charging the archers is completely pointless, either you sit around hidden in forests and wait for the AI to charge or you counter the archers with your own or rape them all with spells - a single curse of shadows makes an archer squad completely useless, and curse of shadows is available rather fast since Sir Gareth has it. Not to mention using other funky spells like storm of avalon, that completely disables archery iirc.

Allow me to explain by showing you an example:
My army has just defeated one of AIs heroes in Wales. I end the turn and get attacked by another one. He has 4 archer squads, 2 hero squads with heavy infantry (caster and mage), 2 light cavalry squads and some light infantry (one squad) and heavy pikeman. It is a defensive battle with forested mountain with sidhe tower in the middle of the map. I have 2 heroes (strategist and warrior-defender) with golden gryphons 4 stars elite infantry and 4 stars heavy infantry everything spent on defensive stats, one squad of light infantry, one squad of longbowmen and one Giant squad with 5 stars promoted with haste.
My Giants easily crush one cavalry squad and one enemy hero. My heroes kill second hero and second cavalry squad. Light infantry/archers secure vls. After that AI goes after me with its archers protected by one lightheavy infantry squads. And I cant do anything. My heavy, promoted, heroic infantry dies. Giants cant even reach them. I cant defend because enemy gets all vls and I lose anyway.
How is that good design?
 

Darth Roxor

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I'm not denying that archers ARE overpowered, but there are so many ways of getting rid of them, it is somewhat balanced, mainly because they're fragile and rely on weather too much.

First of all: your army itself doesn't have almost ANY way of countering archers. You don't have a sage hero with AoE spells and you have only one squad of longbowmen, which is pathetic.

But here's what you could do: I suspect the 'strategist' hero you have is Kay, and you say the map has lots of forests - so the moment you see archers advancing, you pull back and hide everyone in the forests - when you're hidden, archers can't shoot you. If the enemy stops his archers behind the forest, and keeps advancing with infantry to locate your troops, you use fog of avalon the moment you are detected, which will make enemy archers lose half of their shooting range and accuracy. This will allow you to quickly dispatch the light infantry, and close in on the archers without as many losses, especially if you advance first with either cannon fodder (light infantry) or something very tough to take all the blows, while cavalry or the hasted giants go in and rally the enemy archers. Even if there's no forest to hide in, fog of avalon (and other weather spells for that matter) do wonders when fighting against mobs of archers.
 

Malakal

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Well it may seem like a good strategy until you realize there is no way my forces can close in to the archers. My light infantry/giants wont reach before getting killed (and fog doesn't help, believe me I tried) and my heavy infantry will have to fight enemy meatshields.

BTW in forests archers can outrun my army.

I stopped using cavalry after I tried charging enemy archers and they got killed before even reaching them. And its early game I don't have heavy cavalry.

My main problem with this game is: archers are simply way too fast and deal too much damage, units can't charge (like in TW games) and armor doesn't help much. Maybe it gets better, I'll reload earlier save and move my second army to help/don't attack first enemy.
 

Darth Roxor

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Archers move as fast as all other units, they're probably just in horde formation which gives a slight speed boost.

Oh and BTW, I take it you're very early in the game, so note that attacking Wales too fast is pretty much one of the worst decisions you can do.
 

Sovard

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So I bought the game and fired it up, checked the settings and what do I see? [] Weaker Archers. Haha.

It now looks something like this [X] Weaker Archers
 

Malakal

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Sovard said:
So I bought the game and fired it up, checked the settings and what do I see? [] Weaker Archers. Haha.

It now looks something like this [X] Weaker Archers

EXCELLENT CHOICE my friend. When I was starting I thought: 'meh, how bad could they be? Surely they wont use armor piercing depleted uranium arrows now that would be silly!'. Damn, was I wrong.

And I moved on with campaign. All I needed was to move my mages into armies and cast that shadow cloud spell. KIA 2 squads of archers per cast. Sweet. (and OP)
 

Zed

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This game is deal of the day or whateverthefuck on steam. Still too expensive though. Just letting any dumbfuck who might buy it know.
 

Malakal

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I have, at last, finished this game. And I must say it was quite good. While ending dissapointed me a little (I expected one last glorious boss battle) and enemies weren't really fleshed out I enjoyed it.

That having said I preferred text adventures over battles. Don't know why but 3-4 battles in one session was more than enough for me.

Also is it me or aren't christian units so much better than pagan? OTOH pagans get better mages.
 

YourConscience

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It must be just you. With a bunch of seelie archers and and the rest seelie warriors I usually wipe those crusader army stacks without any losses.

Edit: The sidhe roads skill of the leveled-up seelie archers makes the chase game so much more fun for the archers. Those knights got too close? Got surrounded? just teleport on top of that hill over there...
 

Malakal

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Duuh you are fighting AI. Try that against sangreal knights on plains. But seriously hit and run is all nice until you have to hold your ground or leave forests.
 

YourConscience

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In that case the only thing that changes is the loss ratio: It won't be 0% to 100% anymore. But simply putting those warriors as stoppers between the archers and the knights suffices. Even though friendly fire will eat up some of them, by the time the knights are through the initial arrow volleys, *and* the warriors, the archers will have retreated again and can begin decimating them again. So, in the worst case, I'd loose all the warriors, but will have defeated the entire sangreal army. And that was not including the effect of the seelie mages with their 400 or more manapoints and lvl 4 soul mirror (to counter the christian priests) in that stage of the game.

Mind you, I'm not saying that the seelies are soo much better than the christians. I'm just saying that when playing against the AI, for both sides there are plenty of cheesy tactics to beat the crap out of the other side. I think we couldn't agree more here, right? :)
 

Darth Roxor

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Malakal said:
Also is it me or aren't christian units so much better than pagan? OTOH pagans get better mages.

Would say 'no' to both. While old faith has such wacky spells like crystal shards, curse of shadows or venomous curse, rightful christian has one thing that kicks the shit out of all of them: bonds of magic (target hero can't cast for 60 sec per level). Get it on two heroes in your army, and enemy mages won't do shit to you. The area damage spells like blast and celestial radiance are also pretty neat.

And units: christians get sangreal knights, true, but I thought max level unseelie warriors were more effective than max level knights. As christian, you can also get brigands pretty quickly, and they're very good archers for the time you get them, same with marauders. Crusaders also make great cannon fodder that can actually pack a punch. Marksmen are awesome when dealing with undead, although they tend to produce helluva friendly fire, and actually score more kills of allies than enemies, since their bolts go in a straight line and not in an arc. On the other hand, old faith has (un)seelie archers, who are the best asskicking archers in game, and spring/summerborn and autumn/winterbreed are rather good all around light/heavy infantry with magic resistance thrown for good measure that you also can get pretty quickly.

I'd actually say that the morality and religion axes with their ups and downs are the only thing that's properly balanced in this game.
 

Malakal

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Well my reasoning is simple. The most powerful units in the game are heroes. So the most powerful non hero units are those which can add much to your knights of the round table. Thus heavy cavalry is the best: it provides lots of hp to shield heroes, it grants them mobility and awesome charges.

Seelie archers are the best archers, true. But they wont be able to stop cavalry 1on1, even in forests cavalry will catch up to them and slaughter. And seelie warriors dont stand a chance against charge. Even small one with momentum skill. Archers are simply that, archers, warriors serve as asassins.

Of course pagan units are much more effective in forests. Unfortunately for them all victory locations stand in clearings thus granting advantage to heavy infantry/cavalry. Weather is also a very important factor, in night/storm seelie units are simply better because they are more mobile.
 

Darth Roxor

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Malakal said:
And seelie warriors dont stand a chance against charge.

Or do they :smug:

You know the christian armies that appear late in the game when you're pagan? They usually have like 4 squads of elite sangreal knights.

I had max level unseelie warriors with Sir Balin attached with fighting maxed out. They were attacked. By all 4 cavalry units at once. None of the cavalry survived, and Balin's squad lost a total of 2 warriors.

As for cavalry being the most advantageous for heroes, I disagree. Let them run into good spearmen like huscarls or royal guards (or hell, even elite infantry like raven guards or golden gryphons) in diamond formation and they're very much fucked. Also, as it was previously said, (un)seelie warriors have the Sidhe paths ability which can launch your heroes straight into the enemy and wreak havoc before they know what hit them, not to mention that they're not affected by negative weather like night/fog, which slows down cavalry enormously. IIRC, (un)seelie archers also don't lose their shooting range when in fog/night/etc, and actually, I remember them decimating cavalry rather neatly (but then again, I didn't play with weaker archers :lol: ).

But in the end, this:

Mind you, I'm not saying that the seelies are soo much better than the christians. I'm just saying that when playing against the AI, for both sides there are plenty of cheesy tactics to beat the crap out of the other side.
 

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