Let's Play: Knights And Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom

[WhiskeyWolf]

So in the latest fashion of "LP's" I decided to take on my arch-nemesis of video games "Knights And Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom" - Polish version patched to 1.3... Have in mind that this is the orginal version of the game, the "Enchanted Version" under the name "KAM: The Peasants Rebellion" has some additional misssions and stuff that you won't see in "TSK" (like a fucking Pause button that would help when trying to make screen shots). I'm using "Screenshot Captor" to take screens of this game, this is the only free program capable of doing this... I dare you to prove me wrong.

Why I'm playing the "inferior" version? Because I prefer the shortest route through hell... this game is the wet masochistic dream of a RTS fan... at least this is what I remember from the two last attempts (TSK and then TPS) at tackling this game.

Both failed, even when I useded a cheat code for resources.

This time I won't use any cheats but I will use every possible exploit I can find. The Polish fanebase is still alive and kicking ( http://www.knights.sztab.com/home.html ), their walkthrough should provide useful. In my first post there will be a lot of explaing so bare with me.

Now that I think about it, I should beat this game... it can't really be that hard...

They don't make box-art like those nowadays.

Menu screen... like you never seen one of those in your life.

So here's the story so far... in some random kingdom there was a coup. We are the a loyal Captain that was on some crusade and just got back... just in time because the last loyal stronghold is about to fall.

Rape and Pillage™

My red Axes are fighting there Lancers and a few Axe-Armour(leather).

*The fire on the buildings indicates how much damage they have taken.

I moved my remaning troops up north behind the bridge.

Some basic stuff you should know, those three buildings:
- that small castle with a small flame is - the Storage
- the bulding below the Storage that looks like a church is - the School
- on the left from those both building is - the Cafeteria... where the peasant eat.
These three are vital.

On the far left you can see I'm rebuilding the Bakery and the Farm (the wheat grows there). But on the economy I will tell you in some other mission that I will have to do some serious digging in.

This is the enemy holding the pass to there village - 8 Archers and 8 Lancers... och, yes behind the mountains to the east there are at least 16 more Lancers waiting.

My forces - 40 Axes and 5 Aax-Armours(leather). Yes, I have the numbers but if I would attack head-on the Lancers would stop me and give the Archers enough time to make strainers out of my troops. So no, thank you.

So what do we do?

Sorry, I forgot to make a screenshot here, basicly what I did, I trained 9 Archers. Two screens earlier you can see on the left a half of a castle - don't be fooled - it's only an armory, nothing more. Luckily the armory had in stock: 20-Armours(leather) and 9-Bows. So I orderd the School to educate 9 recruits (9 chests of gold). Those 9 people will then run straight to the armory and await orders. A few seconds later they are on the battlefield.

Now this will be the most used tactic in the game, basicly - we send one Archer to lure thoes 8 Lancers in the range of my remaning other Archers and defending them melee troops.

The hidden Lancers take there place. So we do the same.

And again.

Again no screens of my troops slaughtering the remaining enemy Archers, this game is really a bitch when it comes to taking screenshots.

But don't worry, I meet some more on the way to there village. Kill them!

Here we are... all you can rape... By now you probably noticed that some of my warriors have "think bubbles" above there heads. The "fork and a knief" mean that they are hungry, the "totenkopf" means that they are starving and will die in a minute or two.

So why won't we feed them? Well we can't do that... look at the next screen.

A lot of them... they are the "Helpers" they are the blood of the village, transporting everything we make, but why are there so many? How do we actually feed our troops. For one soldier we need one unit of food, a Helper takes one unit form Cafeteria and then transports it to the soldier. Remember how many Heplers we have and how many troops there are (not to mention the distance), a troop that large could use up all the food in a medium village not to mention our newly rebuild community.

Now I'm building the winery so the peasents will STFU, actually wine is the most efficent of all the foods (bread, sausage, fish, wine).

Genocide... oh, four more people died from starvation, dang.

So we move to west as quickly as we can, here we meet the blue troops, also our enemy... but a bit different, there village is "non-productive" - they only have a Storage and a Cafeteria - they have a determent number of soldiers and peasents. They won't attack until you get near.

Ok, we place the Archers on the hill behind the water (evaluation of the terrain is important in this game) and attack... ok a bit messy but I'm in a hurry.

First wave has been taken care of, charge on the last troops.

Slaughter!!!

So this is my remaining soldiers. Those 10 Axe-Armour(leather) are the last enemy soldiers that were stationed to the south of the base that we just destroyed, if we kill them we win.

As you may noticed the Blue Boys are hungry, if I let them be they will die in the next 5-10min. Starvation is probably the most awesome weapon of this game. I will try to show you later in the missions how awesome it can be.

Building more shit... absolutely unnecessary at this point by what the hell not.

So I didn't want to wait and attacked...

5 Archers left, victory.

One question you want the map at the begining or can it stay at the end of the post, whitout the red lines?

Mission summary:

Lost troops: 64
Killed troops: 168

Lost building: 2
Destroyed buildings 8
Build buildings: 3

Traind troops: 19 (peasants included)

Produced weapons: 15
Warriors equip: 9

Time: 00:25

I promise more screens next time, one more thing, I uploaded the pic to my wordpress account, report trouble.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Why I'm playing the "inferior" version? Because I prefer the shortest route through hell... this game is the wet masochistic dream of a RTS fan... at least this is what I remember from the two last attempts (TSK and then TPS) at tackling this game.

Both failed, even when I useded a cheat code for resources.

:D

This has potential. The sheer fact that you need to feed your friggin troops in an RTS shows that this game is probably racist as fuck.

Oraj pole and do please continue.

 

[Kraszu]

The problem I had with this game is while like that you have to feed your troops the way it was done made a compete mess in your army, they didn't pass food but peasant with food had to walk to each personally. It could get little annoying with bigger formations.

 

[someone else]

What? So you can starve out the enemy? Do they have supply lines you can cut?

 

[Panthera]

What? So you can starve out the enemy? Do they have supply lines you can cut?

Yep. If you cut them off from the peasants bringing them food, it pretty much forces them to attack. Food lasts for quite a while, though, if I remember.

The trick was to keep troops close to town unless actively sending them out for war, because keeping an army far from town fed was expensive labor-wise and unreliable.

 

[catfood]

Man, this game brings back memories. Terrible, terible memories. Of atrocious pathfinding, devious cheating AI and generally shitty mechanics. But damn did I play this game a lot, though to tell the truth I never got past the 8th mission (the ones with the barbarians). You, sir, must truly be a hardcore strategy gamer if you have taken up this challenge.

I actually have a friend who beat this game, along with several other difficult titles of the late 90's such as Netstorm, HoMM 3, Ancient Conquest and Urban Assault. Perhaps if I played them again today I would be able to finish them

Also I can't wait for you to post pics of the 7th mission, the one with the allies. In one of my playthroughs they made this gigantic indian line of militiamen that stretched from their base, AROUND THE FUCKING MOUNTAINS and straight into my base, thus screwing my economy over. Good times, good times....

What? So you can starve out the enemy? Do they have supply lines you can cut?

I'm pretty sure they have an infinite number of resources in the storhouse. The AI is a cheating bastard like you've never seen before, let me tell you. However you can destroy their storehouse and inn, thus effectively cutting them off from their foodsource.


Looking forward to more of this LP.


EDIT: you can tell from the screenshots he posted that this game is hardcore to the bone: THE FIRST THING YOU SEE IN THE FIRST MISSION OF THE FUCKING GAME is you town being attacked and nearly destroyed. It just doesen't get more hardcore than this.

 

[Elwro]

I got horribly raped by this game many years ago. Please avenge me!

 

[BearBomber]

I couldn't f finish the demo and I hate this game.

 

[thesheeep]

Played this game soon after release. I could barely finish any missions, so I kind of agree with all others here

 

[skyway]

True lost gem, this one.
Gets pretty boring and tedious in the later missions.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I just re-bought this game a few days ago from GOG. It's an awesome but flawed gem. My biggest beef is the shitty path finding and how hard it is to keep your army organized and in line. The troops always get messed up.

 

[Luzur]

i also got to mission 8 and failed miserably, even with cheats.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

First thing I wanted to say is this:

i also got to mission 8 and failed miserably, even with cheats.

I wanted to correct something what catfood said. Actually the enemy AI doesn't cheat like let's say "Sudden Strike" - you are reconing the map and then suddenly 20 enemy tanks roll from behind the map, this is a cheating AI.

The problem is that the AI starts by default with a horrendous amount of resources and troops - it doesn't cheat when building soldiers. The time to train a peasent is the same as ours, there troops must eat the same way as our troops.

Besides there is one point in which we have the advantage - the AI can't build or rebuild.

Oh yes, the troop movement is really broke.

 

[catfood]

Yea, I probably exaggerated when I said "infinite". Still, like you say they get a shit load of resources that won't run out any time soon.

Also one more thing regarding troop movement for people who don't know: troops are kept in formations like Total War, and when they enter combat you completely lose control over them. What happens is that due to the shitty pathfinding some soldiers will end up in places on the map where you don't want to and if they engage the enemy and you lose control of not only that unit, but of the whole squad as well unitl that lost unit dies.

Basically once a formation enters combat it either wins or loses, there is no retreating in this game. It's kind of a shame really because if they had given the design a bit more thought, and gave units better pathfinding combat could have actually been good. In most missions you are outnumbered and careful troop selection, formations and terrain can make you a victor in situations where you are grossly outnumbered and out gunned (or sworded)


PS: WhiskeyWolf are you sure you want to do this LP?

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Also one more thing regarding troop movement for people who don't know: troops are kept in formations like Total War, and when they enter combat you completely lose control over them. What happens is that due to the shitty pathfinding some soldiers will end up in places on the map where you don't want to and if they engage the enemy and you lose control of not only that unit, but of the whole squad as well unitl that lost unit dies.

Basically once a formation enters combat it either wins or loses, there is no retreating in this game. It's kind of a shame really because if they had given the design a bit more thought, and gave units better pathfinding combat could have actually been good. In most missions you are outnumbered and careful troop selection, formations and terrain can make you a victor in situations where you are grossly outnumbered and out gunned (or sworded)

Thank you, I forgot to mention that, you saved me some trouble.

PS: WhiskeyWolf are you sure you want to do this LP?

I'm feeling quite masochistic right now.

 

[Brother None]

LPs on hard games are always the most fun. MOAR.

Also your spelling is a bit off, bit hard on the eyes. Polish please.

 

[MetalCraze]

Heh I remember some of the teachers back at college were going crazy about this game (though for some retarded reason the title was translated as "War and Peace"). I remember I didn't like it back then, mostly because it felt like the game didn't know what it wanted to be - a RTS or more economical strategy.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Mission #2

We head north.

Our base and forces:
- 8 Axe-Amours
- 6 Archers
- 12 Axes

- 6 Helpers
- 5 Builders

Battle plan.

The walkthrough says that are two ways to tackle the enemy in this mission: The slow and the fast way… and by god, believe me… your better be picking the fast way… this is how I’m going to do it.

We.

Some more of „we”.

They (of course not all of them). To get this pic I send one of my brave warriors to die… of course a quick “load” got him back from the jaws of hell.

I’m going to use the so-called “nut crusher” tactic. One of my Archers will lure one squad so they start attacking the Axe-Armour, then the Axes start an anal-attack (self explanatory).

I started building my own stuff – School then the Cafeteria… at this point I should mention that if the School is not build the Cafeteria will stay locked in the building menu. The same goes for other structures. Example:

Farm (wheat) >>> Mill >>> Bakery

As you can see on this pic there are two Builders, what are they doing? Well this is my own self-developed tactic (not read anywhere), I ordered to build two Storages (can be any other building), Builders went to the place appointed and started leveling the terrain so the structure can be build… but it never will – why? Because there is no stone foot-path leading from my main Storage to the building site. My point is? Continue reading.

I started building the place for the grape-vine. Of course there is a hidden purpose besides “food”.

To get my two Builders out the danger zone I had to find them something to work. In KAM I just can’t order the peasants where to go… they will go where work is. I will show you one more example later.

The enemy will soon attack. Fortunately I will be the first to make a move.

Now you can see for what I made those building sites, the enemy can’t cross it and usually doesn’t attack it. This tactic stretches there lines and buys me some time – shitty path finding? Use it to your advantage!

Easy. Those guys are Axe-Armour-Hours (AAH), there advantage is there speed… fortunately there speed doesn’t mean anything right now.

I made two squads to be more flexible.

More shit incoming.

My tactic is flaw less.

Look at the command buttons on the left. The buttons went black – my unit is in combat and can’t be assed to respond.

Another wave.

From the walkthrough this should be the last squad.

Well no, there is one more. I’m not sure… is it because I lost time when building the “obstacles”? The AI had enough time to make 8 of Axe-Armour? Well, it is possible.

Do you see my 10 Axes? Well time for some offensive play.

According to plan, when the enemy is engaging my Combo (Archers+Axe-Armours) my Axe’s are moving across the bridge to attack the enemy Archers. Good plan.

Good plan but I failed nonetheless… I don’t have a screen from this because I was to busy cursing. What happened? One enemy Axe came out (was probably just produced) and attacked my advancing troops, those bloody few seconds decided about my defeat.

This is all what left from my raiding party. 1 Axe against 7 Archers… wo-pe-fucking-do. Of course there was still a chance. My Combo eliminated the attacking forces and was advancing full speed to help but was decimated by the arrows of the remaining Archers (this is how important they are).

Final result.

FUCK!!! LOAD!

Once more.

Now we are talking. What I did was that I moved a little bit earlier so that one enemy Axe reached us after we attacked the Archers (Archers don’t fight at close range but still those standing further away can shoot arrows at you).

Again, my remaining 3 Axe-Armour and 6 Archers managed to reach the battle and win it.

So I managed to catch the enemy with there pants down and there dick on the chopping board.

Target = School

Once I destroy it there unit production is zero.

I still didn’t build anything producing food, only wood. Time to change that.

I killed all the Helpers besides one, you see him?

*Insert Benny Hill chase music*

Got the bastard – now the victory is only a matter of time. Eliminate the School and the helpers = Certain WIN. I will show you in another mission how to do this without assaulting there troops. It’s hard and can be done only in one (I think, I didn't finish the game you know) mission.

One more thing. See how many enemy peasants are hungry? Look at the Cafeteria. Full isn’t it?

Not anymore – two barrels remaining.

I managed to retreat my 5 remaining Archers and one Axe back to the village, two Axe-Armours died from starvation.

Feeding.

Still not ready… probably the most enjoyable stuff in this game is watching how stuff is being built – I’m serious.

Not many people… and there will be less.

*The funny thing is that (in the right left corner) the baker has 5 breads but can’t eat them if they are not in the Cafeteria.

One ready, one to go. No worry, I have enough food in the Storage.

Work, work, work.

5 people left, well 6… one behind a tree. Can you find him?

That building on the far left is the weapon workshop, they make from wood thing like axes, lances, bows.

One Armoury coming right up…

…and a Farm…

…and a Mill.

Oh, look here. There were still some recruits in the Armoury… hungry? Well fuck you.

I got bored… time for some blood.

By this time I thought I killed everybody so I waited for the end of the mission… but no.

So I attacked the Storage. Still no ending. The fuck?

The fuck is this shit, there is still more? How? They should be long dead by now. They aren’t even hungry… wait… remember the two last wine barrels in the Cafeteria? Bingo.

You can’t kill the residents of a building unless you destroy the building. Tedious, I know.

You bitch, the building is no more but that guy just run away into another one.

This is what I was talking about when I meant “finding work”. That guy is the “Breeder” – he takes care of pigs and horses. When the pigsty was no more he just went to the empty
Stud Farm.

I killed all the people but still nothing… you know what finally triggered the end of the mission? Destruction of the Armoury.


Some of you may wonder why I’m playing this “game”. Many people are saying it has a lot of bad things… true… but it also has a lot of charm.

What can I say more about this game – Odi et Amo.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Also your spelling is a bit off, bit hard on the eyes. Polish please.

Like I care about that.

 

[Alfgart]

I love this game, one of the first RTS I played. Great LP, please continue.

 

[Ryuken]

Yup, pretty cool for its time. The RTS mechanics weren't too deep, pathfinding was awful but it's one of the cutest games ever. Not a surprise that the guy who programmed the whole thing (by himself) worked on Settlers II as well.

Some day I hope someone tries to make a sequel for this, flesh out the economy, castle structures, terrain physics, food supply routes and such. This could be so much more, games like Stronghold, Age of Empires II or Settlers VI just don't cut it in terms of charm like K&M does.

Nice reports, I'd love to see you reach the giant axe barbarians.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Now you can see for what I made those building sites, the enemy can’t cross it and usually doesn’t attack it. This tactic stretches there lines and buys me some time – shitty path finding? Use it to your advantage!

This reminds me of the uberold Polish RTS Polanie - you could surround your whole village with a palisade, and you were pretty much invincible, because the AI was too stupid to either deconstruct it with its woodcutters or burn it down with priests. In later missions it was crucial to build the palisade as fast as possible, because the enemy would storm very fast and with overwhelming odds. And when you had the palisade, all you needed to do was gather milk (the game's only resource) and massively train spearmen (advanced ranged units) to take out the enemy idiots who kept running along the other side of the palisade. But you had to be careful to not lure a priest accidentally, since they'd drop fireballs at your units and one of them might burn your defences and allow the enemy warriors to horribly raep your village.

Good times.

 

[Brother None]

Also your spelling is a bit off, bit hard on the eyes. Polish please.

Like I care about that.

Why wouldn't you? You're making an LP to entertain, and it'd be more entertaining if you stop typing "there" when you mean "their" and if you please explain what the hell "reaming" is, because it sounds like a deviant sexual act to me.

Great LP otherwise.

 

[Elwro]

Polanie... the atmosphere was great but I lost interest when I realised that in some places enemy units were just spawned, nobody trained them.

 

[RandomLurker]

Okay, that thing with the storages - not very sporting to exploit the game like that, is it? Well, here's a little challenge for you: when you get to that mission where you fight that big battle alongside the yellow pikemen try to win it with as many of them alive as possible - at least one has to survive though. It's doable, and FUN*!



*for us in the audience, anyway