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

[WhiskeyWolf]

Dude, their there...

God, how I hate this mistake.

 

[JrK]

I know why your food supply was falling: you were counting on those wineries to supply you. But these only give 1/8th or so of a full health bar to all workers. Your troops use wine just fine but others need other foods (and combinations of them).

I made that mistake once... When it is too late it is too late... You'd better rely on a 50/50 bread/sausage division on a lot of farms, which give you plenty of hides to make armors as well.

 

[catfood]

I was under the impression that it didn't matter wether a worker ate just 1 loaf of bread or all 4 varriants of food, that they'd always get full health.

 

[RandomLurker]

It would be "extremely useful" if not for the wait... let''s not forget that your units also get hungry.

True. But you don't have to feed them right when they get hungry, you can do that at any time. So just resupply them in such a moment that they will be about 80% full when the tower operators leave for lunch.

And yeah, you need diverse food. Different kinds of food give different amounts of fullness to civilians - I think it's something like:
1/2 - sausage
1/3 - bread
1/6 - wine

This way pretty much the only way to get a starving worker to 100% is to give him all of the above. If you try to rely on wine don't be surprised that the efficiency suffers (many more trips to the inn are necessary for your civilians - both to "eat" and replenish the stocks) and that it can quickly disappear.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Mission 5

I wanted to do more screens after I finish the next mission (6th) but the saves vanished again so I couldn’t return to the 5th, oh joy! This happens when you save to fast (intervals between saves are less then 30sec or something like that).

Bla, bla, bla… deeper!

As the mission starts we are almost immediately attacked from 3 different directions.

To make long story short – we have enough forces to repel the attack and thanks to dividing our large Archer squad we manage to soften our losses in the friendly army.

That’s right we captured Baron von Lauenburg and because he sucked our cock so much that it almost fell of, we let him on the cake. His forces are now fighting along ours. Did I say fight? I meant we must defend them. Oh yes, there village is a non-productive one… thanks a lot Baron. People in this country are a bit too naive – no wonder we are in this whole mess.

My forces after the battle to the west.

This was the situation in the east before I pwnd them with my Lancers.

Joint-operations – north.

I went to check how are their defenses to the south. Umm, not too many of them but they have good positions.

If I could beat them there still is the problem of breaking through the village. It would take to much time.

While going north I met another attacking group…

…and got kicked in the butt.

From what intel I gathered this will be our plan.

1. We will concentrate all our forces to the north and hope the enemy doesn’t attack from the west.
2. We will repel another two waves of Cavalry.
3. I got in the Armoury enough equipment to train 9 Lancers, after that those troops will join the rest of our Army heading north.

Our Great Army.

Next phase. At point 2 I did the „Robin Hood” on two Cavalry squads.

Then I advanced slowly. I encountered 2 massive AxeA groups enforced with a small Archer squad. My 20 Archers managed to beat the enemy into submission.

I must manage to destroy as much as possible before the forces from the south come after me.

Again this 2-village bullshit.

To late, they almost destroyed all my melee forces and I had to pulled back my Archers (hunger).

But I felt I could do better… so I took another try.

Good positions give us the victory.

Some finishing touches.

There was still a few left.

There wasn’t even a reason to building anything.

I killed the last of their soldiers.

This is what was left from the Barons forces.

The non-productive village is the last target for our brave warriors.

End result is quite good.

Next time we will again have a “Fight” mission. After that, mission 7 – my favorite.

 

[Brother None]

Well done, WW, you pwned 'em good.

The non-productive village is the last target for our brave warriors.

Wait what? You razed the baron's village?

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

The non-productive village is the last target for our brave warriors.

Wait what? You razed the baron's village?

No, the enemy had two villages - blue: productive, purple: non-productive. Look at the flags, the Baron is Yellow.

Next update, still today.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Carry on, soldat.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Mission 6

This is the second "Fight" mission.

What can I say more about this mission... I been... I saw... I kicked ass! It took me 3 whole minutes.

This will be (probably) the shortest update ever.

So this time the Baron finally send us some considerable forces (36 Lancers).

Plus my forces 15 AxsA, 15 Archers...

...21 Cavalryman, 15 Archers and finally 12 Axes.

I will describe the progress of the battle in a way that the people in US can fully understand:
- Hey bitch! You stepped on my shoe!
- The fuck did you say?
...
*Two minutes of heavy fighting*
...
- Why were we fighting again?

What was left from my and the Baron forces.

Some more of my forces.

Victory bitches!

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*!

I accept... sounds like more masochistic fun :twisted:

Done. Wasn't as masochistic as I thought it would be.

 

[RandomLurker]

24 minutes? Pretty impressive. I didn't know/remember you could just attack with your initial forces in that mission and win, so I didn't and it took me a looong time to build a big enough force to take them on. As for the challenge, good job - my personal record is saving 4 or 5 of them (maybe 6? I dunno, that was just so long ago), but anything more than 0 is usually hard enough to achieve without proper tactics. Now, drop that designated construction palisade bug/exploit bullshit and all will be great. I mean, seriously, using it is completely unnecessary, and it's about as unexploity and fun to watch as designating and aborting constructions for stone free roads - consider it another challenge, if you will.

 

[Brother None]

6 was another one of those fight-don't-build missions? I've always, always hated those in strategy games that otherwise focus on building.

 

[catfood]

6 was another one of those fight-don't-build missions? I've always, always hated those in strategy games that otherwise focus on building.

I belive every 3rd mission is a fighting mission. And in this game you'll be relieved when they come because they are easy compared to the normal ones.


Also nice job on mission 5; I didn't know you could finish it with your (mostly) starting army. Gotta try that sometime.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

24 minutes? Pretty impressive. I didn't know/remember you could just attack with your initial forces in that mission and win, so I didn't and it took me a looong time to build a big enough force to take them on. As for the challenge, good job - my personal record is saving 4 or 5 of them (maybe 6? I dunno, that was just so long ago), but anything more than 0 is usually hard enough to achieve without proper tactics. Now, drop that designated construction palisade bug/exploit bullshit and all will be great. I mean, seriously, using it is completely unnecessary, and it's about as unexploity and fun to watch as designating and aborting constructions for stone free roads - consider it another challenge, if you will.

Here, I managed to save 3 to show you that I'm a hard working person. Now stop whining.

 

[RandomLurker]

Here, I managed to save 3 to show you that I'm a hard working person.

Like I said, great. Having even one alive is good already.

Now stop whining.

This is the internet, and this is the codex, so NEVER!

Or at least not until you accept my other "challenge". I like everything else here and I think it's great that you're doing an LP of KaM, just please don't use such obvious exploits and pretend they're "tactics" or that you need them in order to win. It spoils the fun of watching you pwn the enemy, like you did in the last two missions.

Also, how are you taking the screenshots? If it's a simple screen grabbing, may I recommend recording your games and choosing screenshots out of that? You could show more pictures of the big battles without being distracted, and that's always good.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Mission 7 - Part 1

So there I was… totally drunk… I posted the first screen I could find and…

Whooops, wrong fairy tale.

So back to our LP… the fuck are we going? Is the Captain drunk? Nevermind..


Battle Plan

This time we will have help. A village (not the Barons) located a bit to the north that actually produces units and sends them to battle. FUCK YEAH! Of course they produce only Axes but still better then nothing.

1. The enemy will attack as soon as we show our ugly mug on the map. So we defend.
2. If we survive the onslaught we will counter-attack with some cool tactics and with the help of our allies.
3. After we destroy the first village (productive) we will try to take "Monte Casino" (non-productive).

As you can see our friends also have thier problems, but they will manage with share numbers.

Their (our allies) village is of medium size.

Fight on comrades. Have in mind that I'm too far away and won't make it before the end of the battle.

What did I tell you.

Home sweet home.

Two mines a bit north - they give us ore from with we produce armors, swords... etc.

Battle station Lads!

Notice there is another Storage with our flag but not connected to any other building.

If we would manage to reach it we would get (mainly) 100 units of coal, but as someone in this thread already mentioned it would totally fuck up our economy because of the distance the Helpers would have to travel... so no, thank you, we will not us it.

Here they come.

Easy picking.

OH SHI-

Notice some new units:
- Crossbows > Archer
- Knights > AxeAs > Axes
- Halberd > Lancers

You get the idea who is stronger in this game.

The Lancers went to try their luck somewhere else... good for me.

I really had a hard time trying not to get my Cavalry in range of the Halberd unit. When a Halberd faces a mounted unit he is a real monster.

I think I did good.

Building shit.

A few allies made a trip to my village to check if I had trouble. How thoughtful of them.

So we start our offensive right away by pulling away one Halberd squad.

Fortunately/Unfortunately a second squad got caught up too.

My Cavalry is there for a reason.

I steered them right into my (heavy in numbers) allies.

So this is how the back of their village looks like.

When the earlier screen-shot was taking place my Cavalry used the breach that appeared after the Halberds left there position.

Of course four of them got killed by the Guard-tower.

So basically what I'm trying to do here is to cut off there dick (destroy the School).

Oh fuck. I failed before the mission even started. I didn't notice that my mounted troops were low on fat.

Besides that. I noticed that the enemy AI is a lot more persistent then I remember it. LOAD!!!

By this time I noticed that my last save was before the end of the defensive battle. FUCK! No the result changed a bit - instead of 6 Cav. and 1 AxeAs I now have 4 Cav. and 3 AxeAs.

This time only one squad came out.

In the earlier scenario my Archers were standing in a safe distance from the battlefield. To get better results and help out our allies we will fuse them together.

Worked like a charm.

Only one Cavalry unit made it behind enemy lines. This time the Halberds are chasing it (of course if I won't attack anything they won't chase me, but this is no my objective, is it).

I managed to hide in a ditch and shake them off.

This is also a good place to hide.

The road to the top that you see here leads to "Monte Casino".

What you see here is basically that now the Crossbows are chasing me... why? Because I "Robin Hooded" the Knights and the Halberds into my allies.

Now this is something strange. The crossbow are range units, they shouldn't have any CQC attacks (nor they have any animation showing it). I should win, even if I'm so heavily outnumbered, right? What happened is that I killed a few but somehow they killed me (I wasn't exactly looking at him that moment but still). LOAD!

After all those fights the 1st Joint Task Force is a bit beat up but nothing serious.

So I do a few rounds around the enemy village to give the Crossbows something to do...

(Pro tip: While the melee units can be shaken off quite easily the range units are a real bitch, they stick to you like glue.)

...while my Archers finish off the two Guard-towers.

So the only thing left to do is pull out there remaining units...

(Notice one Knight - a minute ago he was a Recruit that was manning the Guard-tower.)

...and whack them good.

Now the time has come.

The right soundtrack - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvqoF-uhQnQ

*...it's evolution baby!*

More troops for our benefit.

Burning the village so our allies won't have to.

Getting low on fat.

Pulled away the Archers for feeding. We still have that one Cavalry unit.

Next time, "Monte Casino".

 

[RandomLurker]

Nice. I had no idea the first village could be razed just with your initial forces.

Now this is something strange. The crossbow are range units, they shouldn't have any CQC attacks (nor they have any animation showing it). I should win, even if I'm so heavily outnumbered, right? What happened is that I killed a few but somehow they killed me (I wasn't exactly looking at him that moment but still). LOAD!

What probably happened was that the AI somehow managed to get one of those crossbowmen into position to fire on you. They don't need much, even 3 tiles distance may be enough for that, and since melee units are static while attacking they didn't need many shots to kill that light cavalryman.

 

[Durwyn]

Great LP. It deserves my stamp of approval

:approved:

Also, great painting skills with the maps. Polish Army needs you

 

[vendetta]

jesus! how long are you going to make us wait for!

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Mission 7 - Part 2

So we are back… somehow. This is the road to their Stronghold. As you can see our “Lone Rider”…

…he just died trying to lure in the enemy arrows. When the allied village reaches a certain number of troops it attacks. Usually gets slaughtered in the process. I tried to protect them as long as possible from the arrows so they could kill at least some Crossbows.

As you can see (or not) there is a Knight squad, 2x Crossbows squads and a Heavy Cav. Squad. Besides 3 Guard-towers (…and one is missing a Recruit, not he isn’t out to grab some chow).

My heavy industry is still in diapers.

1,2,3… 12 Helpers… what would happen if I killed all of them? Let’s give it a shot. To accomplish this I need to draw out a hungry squad so that the Helpers would run after them. Of course this is harder then I thought.

So the offensive of my allies broke down and my Archers have to run… fast. Back at the village there are still some friendly units (they don’t attack in full force, only with 1/3 of there straight)

Hmmm, I didn’t plan to do it now but apparently I’m pulling behind myself 9 of their Helpers. First I have to lose the chase entirely because even our Joint Task Force won’t stand a chance.

So I somehow did it but only 6 Helpers remained, this may be not enough. So I ordered one of my Archers squads (there are 2 – 6 people in each) to assassinate them.

As soon as the first arrow hits the Helper their entaier force is behind me. So we run again.

The Crossbows are in front… this is good.

The Knights lost interest, how fortunate for us because…

…Crossbows run straight into our arms. Although my plan is different I will not say “no” to this battle. Remember when I said that Crossbows are a bitch when trying to run away from them? Now you can see that this can be used against them.

(Note: as you may noticed sometimes when you attack the enemy only the attacked squad reacts, but sometimes the whole goddamn village is behind you. I assume they are put into groups by the programmers. This doesn’t work when the distances is too big, like in this case – nobody gives a shit about the Crossbows.

So here I wanted to kill the other two Helpers that were besides their base. I somehow failed and one squad got whipped out.

The other is running to our allies with Crossbows in hot pursuit.

But those bitches changed their mind right before our noses.

The Helper with the „?” was the second one that I wanted to kill.

I’m not satisfied with the result so I reloaded and killed those two. Run!

So here we have… well… umm… well I really don’t know… attacking?

To tell you the truth this session was a real clusterfuck, a lot of loading and stuff… some screenshots are just out of place (I managed to hide that)… but look, there is a wolf.

Well back to the action. Killing 7 Helpers was not enough, those other 5 managed easily to supply 32 unit.

So my plan is as following.
1. Pull out all there forces to the allied village
2. The 2nd Squad is hidden in a corner near the bridge (north)… now that I think about it, I should have hidden them in that ditch (south).
3. After the enemy forces pass my hidden Archers, attack there Helpers in their base and hope the joint forces buy enough time. Even if all my troops die in the process I still win.

WTF? Why are they attacking them? This doesn’t make any fucking sense (believe me, I gave it a shot earlier and it worked how it should have).

Ach just fuck it, I will wait until I have more troops (as we speak I’m producing hardware for 15 Knights).

Because of me waiting the allied village attacked again and with quite good result. Because the Crossbows that were protecting them from the side are now no more.

Final result: Enemy has been left with 2 range units.

My Archers besides the Armoury, waiting for the Knights.

By this time I thought that the victory was certain. Because my allies would keep attacking on and on… it’s only a matter of time before they stronghold will fall… of course KAM had something else for me in store.

Oh, what do you know, shortages of food again, destroyed a few of my buildings (2x quarries, 2x lumberman huts) so the Helpers had less work with them (besides, I had enough stone and wood in the Storage).

So everything started going according to plan but… something wasn’t right. When I last checked the allied village it had two Axes… well it still has two. I’m not even 2 hours into the mission. Conclusion – the friendly AI broke. More work for me.

So I finally made those 15 Knights and went out to battle, at this point I still had doubts if I can win this with the forces I have. You can say it was 50/50.

This is the breaking point Lads!

Somehow I managed to kill those two Crossbows by closing in on them and nullifying the difference of the terrain level… of course while they were shooting at me. Still, if I wouldn’t do that this battle would be as good as lost.

It’s over. Was a close one but somehow it worked out.

I love this part, I don’t think there is a game in history besides KAM that feels so rewarding when it comes to destroying the enemy base.

One shall stand, one shall fall.

Victory! The Polish flag on the rubble of Monte Casino.

(No, I didn’t steal this pic/idea from Cassidy)

Up next everybody’s favorite “mission #8”.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

jesus! how long are you going to make us wait for!

Take a wild fucking guess.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I ordered one of my Archers squads (there are 2 – 6 people in each) to assassinate them.

Lithuanian Hitmen?

And this game really looks pretty racist given the fact that the enemy has access to a lot more advanced troops.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

And this game really looks pretty racist given the fact that the enemy has access to a lot more advanced troops.

At the start... yes. But now that I have my heavy industries I can build pretty much everything the enemy has. Well, the weapon workshop is still locked but this doesn't really change much.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Mission 8 (OH GOD!) Part 1

So we head up north to (get)kill(ed) (by) the „Naked Chest Barbarians”. Super!

Our situation: we are fucked

Our forces consist of three squads: AxeA x15, AxeA x12, Archers x15

Some more detail about the enemy:
- Fags
- Shitheads
- Dorks

Fags:
- medium village (productive)
- three entry gates
- estimated number of units: 60 (NCB & Archers)… of course there probably is more

Shitheads:
- large village (productive)
- two entry gates
- estimated number of units: unknown (as in too many to count), at least twice the size as the Fags forces

Dorks:
- no village (no food supply)
- estimated number of units: 80 (NCB)

8 minutes after we start the mission there will be an attack on our base. Position #1 (white) will be our starting defense line for the #1 (black) attack. #2 (white) will be our second defense line for the next waves (we will also have a large number of Guard-towers on that line)… assuming that we will survive the first one.

Those two screen-shots are the recon data showing the Dorks forces. With no village it’s clear that they will be the first attacking wave.

Well KAM still managed to pull a fast one on me. One of the two villages also send some troops. Just great. Load.

Ok, time for some defensive tactics. I can build Guard-towers straight away as you can see (Sorry for the earlier false info, the Guard-towers actually have space for 5 stones).

Remember those piss poor missions where the first attack almost whipped out your entire forces… well, enough of those easy tasks. Now it’s time for some of those mission where you get anal raped almost all the time with no lubrication. Have fun.

Darth Roxor, man I fell you ass-pain regarding the tanks.

It’s over for now.

One important thing I should mention – “NCB” unit that you see here in this missions doesn’t look very impressive, does it? Well your totally fucking wrong! This here unit is the strongest in the game. Comparison:
- AxeA (Att:2 Def:1)
- Knight (Att:3 Def:2)
- NCB (Att:4 Def:1)
This is a unit I can’t build. In TPR it can be recruited for 5 chests of gold.


Right now instead of dread I feel a slight arousal… this game may look simple to some people but in reality it’s very deep when it come to outmaneuvering you enemy, oh god so many tactics… I got to go to the bathroom.

 

[RandomLurker]

Oh, what do you know, shortages of food again, destroyed a few of my buildings (2x quarries, 2x lumberman huts) so the Helpers had less work with them (besides, I had enough stone and wood in the Storage).

You did what? Couldn't you just have disabled collecting timber and stone in the storehouse and transporting timber into the carpenter's workshops? Otherwise, good show.

Oh, and for the eighth mission, it's useful to know that the AI seems kind of broken. Don't provoke the forces in the north west and most of them should die of hunger before attacking you (then again they may not - they always did when I played, but it's definitely a bug, so it's not a sure thing. They will always send at least one wave from what I've seen). Also, from what I remember you don't need to have any watchtowers to survive the first few attacks - you can try using that mountain with iron and coal to the west to make sure they don't swarm you, and you should be able to repell them with minimal losses. That is unless they decide to ignore your forces and go straight for the town, of course - in which case the "annoy them with one archer" tactic should help.

And also, thanks to the AI quirkiness, the next mission should be winable with just your initial forces! That should make you feel better after the buttrape you've just received .

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Sorry for the recent lack of updates but I got entangled with Morrowind and it's mods. Well, Morrowind is the least of my problems right now. For the last 4 WHOLE DAYS (have in mind that I'm jobless) I'm playing NON-STOP this certain TB Strategy and I can't fucking stop, I'm addicted (I don't even remember when was the last time I put so much time into gaming) ... by Saturday I hope it will release me... then maybe you will get another update.