King Arthur - The Role-playing Wargame

King Arthur - The Role-playing Wargame

Army morale/victory points seem to favor the enemy AI's weaknesses. :\
So, I just gave up on this game, because the following happened:

I lost a battle with my favorite knight, not because I screwed up and left my flanks exposed or something like in Total War, but because of the whole "morale goes down when the opponent has more victory points" mechanic, which is fine for a low-attention-span, non-strategic game like Call of Duty, or Chivalry, where you're controlling one guy each, and the only way to break a deadlock is to have a second method of victory.

It's NOT okay when there's a close battle between equally-matched armies going on, and one army manages to completely tear apart the other by using their units correctly. I had a few more survivors than the enemy army, which seemed to mean absolutely nothing, because when I reached the post-battle overview of the composed armies, ALL of my units were completely destroyed, and my knight was taken prisoner.

Okay, fine. I gave the game the benefit of the doubt, ransomed King Mark out, then built him a new army. I composed an army out of all three knights that I had, along with some pretty good troops. The enemy army's strength was 61% or so, and mine was 72%, or something similar. I didn't want to leave that to chance, so I fought the battle.

Right away, I saw two cavalry units from the enemy army just circling the map, capturing the victory points. Whatever, that just left their troops with less support. I approached cautiously, and prepared for a good line battle. The enemy army was positioning, and left a hole in their lines, so I sent a knight and his unit in, had some cavalry go in from behind, and started just tearing them to pieces. The battle was going heavily in my favor, I had one small enemy unit practically covered in my units, surrounded on all sides, and one of my knights was chasing around a fleeing archer unit. Easy victory, right?

NOPE. Got a notification about low morale, and, knowing EXACTLY what happens when you neglect the victory points in favor of just out-thinking the AI and beating them in a fair, Total War-style battle, I sent a unit off to try to capture the one victory point that the battle was raging near. Didn't get to it in time, and I'm not kidding, I had the following stats after the battle:

Survivors, my army: 302
Survivors, enemy army: 1

I had captured all of their knights, and was literally a few seconds from victory when the morale gauge on my side hit zero, thanks to the cavalry unit that later joined the battle and got stomped circling around at the start, while I set up a strategy that absolutely decimated my opponent. I was already pretty annoyed, and figured, "Well, they're probably going to disband from having one guy left, and I can just head home with my survivors and replenish them."

WRONG. All of my 302 survivors were somehow killed, and all three of my knights were taken prisoner. Because of how this game "works," they all gave up on The Once And Future King, and I lost the game.

What the /hell/ happened? I had more than 300 troops to their one guy, and...all of my guys SURRENDERED to him, then stood in line for execution? ♥♥♥♥ that, ♥♥♥♥ the victory point mechanic, and ♥♥♥♥ the mechanic that makes all of my surviving units die, no matter how few enemy survivors there are. I could understand if the enemy survivors outnumbered mine by a fair margin, but 302 men should not just disappear because ONE enemy soldier survived, thanks to a crappy objective system that apparently overrides any tactics you use in the actual fight.

Sure, you can say that the AI out-smarted me by taking the victory points, or that I'm an idiot for not just going to take them once I started stomping them, but...why the /hell/ should I have to go capture the points, when I'm clearly winning the fight itself, and more importantly, why the hell will my army just keep losing morale, to the point of /giving up/ and either deserting en masse or accepting execution/imprisonment, when they not only outnumber the enemy, but are crushing them decisively? Because the enemy controlled more little spots on the map? They had nobody /there/. The only soldiers left were being thrashed by my guys, and my guys /knew/ that there weren't any enemies, because I, the commander, knew and had them fighting what little resistance was left.

If there's a mod or something that just gets rid of or fixes this ridiculous mechanic, I'd love to know about it. If not, I'll just get a King Arthur mod for one of the Total War games. I love the tale of King Arthur, but I can't stand bad game design.
< >
Visualizzazione di 1-12 commenti su 12
Easy solution. Capture the victory points yourself. It is part of the game. Just send a light calvary unit to capture them and use the mechanic to your advantage.
Oh man, I forgot I'd made this thread. I've played again since this post, and started abusing the victory point system. The AI just can't keep up once you start rushing victory points better than they can, because you have stronger, faster horse units. XD
Messaggio originale di Metal Izanagi:
Oh man, I forgot I'd made this thread. I've played again since this post, and started abusing the victory point system. The AI just can't keep up once you start rushing victory points better than they can, because you have stronger, faster horse units. XD

:-)
Sadly this is a good example of why the KA series failed.

People wanted Total War and didn't get it. Shame too...
Ultima modifica da Method4DMad; 21 apr 2013, ore 18:26
Messaggio originale di entertheratking:
Sadly this is a good example of why the KA series failed.

People wanted Total War and didn't get it. Shame too...

Honestly, if the devs had just made this a near-carbon-copy of a Total War game, with the RPG elements and magic added, it probably would have done /really/ well, especially among Total War fans. The legend of The Once and Future King is a good one, and as much as this game gets a lot right, it falls flat in the areas that Total War has never gotten wrong. The game looks like Total War, controls like Total War, but completely misses a huge portion of what makes Total War fun.
I don't mind bad battles. Just rush the victory points and win. The story and the atmosphere of the game easily make up for weak battles.
If you were to compare this to KA 2, i'm glad they removed the victory point system, because until i realized that VP affected Morale(I think?), i lost almost EVERY single battle, but of course abusing the VP system with light cav is way to easy, which is why i,m glad they removed VP in KA 2 and jsut stuck to winning the battle( It being only possible in KA 2 by killing all enemy heroes, which is way easier then killing a whole army)
Im sad they didnt remove the mechanic in KA. I really want to buy this game, and i'm going to this evening, but the fact that KA2 is better but dosnt have anything to do with the famous tale kinda bugger me off. I hope there's a mod that removes the VP system.
The victory point's also have other uses. Some of them grant spells or other advantages, so even if you are trying to win through brute force, its still a good idea to capture them for the tactical advantage.
Well, usually the game is unfair about the victorypoitns anyways. The AI either gets VP close to them with spells like Cloud of Arrow, Tactical Mastery, Sanctum, or Even just a village right behind where they can set up the Frontline. Not to mention the decent starting position to easily capture one more VP than the player before you have to fight.

So yeah, how to ensure victory now ? Archers, Archers, Light cavalry to catch VP and a mixed Frontline. Spearmen are completly unneeded as cavalry sucks hardcore in fights. Just shoot them down with Archers before they are even able to reach you.
Ultima modifica da Kurosawa0; 7 mag 2014, ore 10:32
This is why the Old Religion is OP. My armies are mostly Sidhe troops with Sidhe Path and heroes with Sidhe Path. I usually have all the VPs either deadlocked or under my control within the first minute. Do yourself a favor and save money for the Sidhe Lord events so you can get some Sidhe units on the cheap. I can only imagine that being a Christian in this game is brutally hard.
Messaggio originale di verum.amo:
This is why the Old Religion is OP. My armies are mostly Sidhe troops with Sidhe Path and heroes with Sidhe Path. I usually have all the VPs either deadlocked or under my control within the first minute. Do yourself a favor and save money for the Sidhe Lord events so you can get some Sidhe units on the cheap. I can only imagine that being a Christian in this game is brutally hard.
Christians get good cavalry troops that can capture victory points quickly without Sidhe Paths. Old Faith players have to get their cavalry from either the quest that gives you Saxon units later on, or researching troop trees.

However the only real playthrough I've done of this game is an Unseelie one, and admittedly I didn't find it very hard even with a lack of cavalry. Archers in this game are more OP than cavalry are.
< >
Visualizzazione di 1-12 commenti su 12
Per pagina: 1530 50