Things I really, really, REALLY do not want to see in King Arthur II

[Tuidjy]

To make this a truly passive-aggressive rant, let me start by saying that I have not enjoyed an RTS this much since Shadow of the Horned Rat/Dark Omen. Awesome job, keep the DLCs coming, and I'll be the second in line, after my nephew, for the sequel... Yada, yada, yada...

That said, there are a few things that I would love not to see in the new release:

:o Different amounts of experience awarded, depending on how I win the fight.
If I win by breaking the enemy morale, I should not be penalized. Divide the experience of the enemy survivors, and split in among my troops. It sucks to wait for five minutes on speed x4 for the enemy to collect enough victory locations so that I do not get a quick win and ♥♥♥♥ty experience by blasting his heroes into oblivion.

:o Unskippable camera sweeps.
Unlike the intro sweep, the victory sweep can't be canceled. I do not want to watch the troops that never fired a shot celebrate their victory, especially when I will be looking at a loading screen next. My annoyance may have to do with the fact that the victory sweep is the only place where King Arthur has crashed on me.

:o Enemy heroes that ignore their best spells.
If my enemy has 'Hold' in his repertoire, have him use it. Especially if I have a single unit without magic resistance, and he can win the fight with one move.

:o Enemy heroes that are too afraid to waste a spell.
Here I am, facing a bunch of enemies with whirlwind. What do I have? An understrength unit of scout cavalry with 20% magic resistance. But such a humble unit is not worth losing such a powerful spell, so the enemy loses the fight instead.

:o Silly archers.
Brigands with short bows firing at heavily armoured infantry should be a distraction at best. Quadruply so if the infantry has shields and is dispersed in a thick forest. I'm OK with otherworldly Sidhe with magical bows being crazy awesome, but human troops with mundane equipment should meet realistic expectations.

:o Half a dozen, barely different spells that mostly do the same thing.
Fog, storm, night. They all mostly hide the enemy and reduce archery range. And Dragon's Eye negates them about the same. One can do much better. A storm should spook horses much more than fog, and mess archery up no matter how well the archer can see. It could also empower thunder strikes, or reduce their cost.

:o Soldiers in combat who are so intent on restoring formation that they forget to fight.
It's great that soldiers try to keep formation, but it is frustrating to zoom in on your hero, and watch him try to get to where he thinks he should be, while five enemies are poking him in the kidneys. Sometimes the whole unit is affected. I've had an unit stuck in 'move' mode when ordered to attack an enemy unit, and they got killed to a man without switching to fighting, getting a 'retreat' button, or accepting new commands.

:o Enemies just released from jail who attack a full stack with three footmen as bodyguards.

:o Unexplained casualties.
I'm not quite sure why this happens; I suspect it's due to Masterful Strategy on the enemy hero. But sometimes, I win a curb stomp victory, in which the enemy morale is wiped out in the first ten seconds. Some enemies survive, and all of my troops lose 2-4 men... without even coming under attack. These casualties may be worth 20K in gold.

Heh, my break's over, and it's time to go do something productive. All that said, it's a great game, and I can't wait to get back to it.

[samtheauburnfan]

I agree with the combat suggestions. I wish I had the problem of enemy heroes wasting spells, my most vulnerable units (archers) constantly get wasted by Curse of Shadows. But then again I don't remember that happening early in the game so I don't know how far along you are.

[Tuidjy]

I agree with the combat suggestions. I wish I had the problem of enemy heroes wasting spells, my most vulnerable units (archers) constantly get wasted by Curse of Shadows.

Oh, the enemy heroes are fine when it comes to using spells against strong units that represent a threat, like your archers. The problem is that that the AI sometimes judges a knight led unit to be too weak to be worth an expensive spell. So despite that unit being all that I have, and despite the fact that the knight that leads it will eventually win the battle all by himself, the enemy saves his spells for who knows what.

[Grunt7684]

I second all your suggestions, they are well thought-out IMO.

[Linda_Neocore]

Thank you for your suggestions, constructive criticism is always very useful for us. As you know, our new game is still under development but I try to share with you as much as I can.

The AI will be more improved, you can see it through the army and unit movement and the new magic and spell casting system. A great novelty, that you won’t fight against simply one general AI, the enemy rulers will have different, special tactics, so it means more various and unpredictable battles.

In King Arthur 2 the magic system will be more sofisticated and more balanced and before the grandiose and lethal spells you will be warned and have a short time to react, which means that you will have more protection opportunities. In King Arthur 2 we are introducing a lot of new and more special spells and a lot of new visual effects for the spells.

We know that in King Arthur archers are very strong at the beginning of the game, we got a lot of criticism because of that and I can tell you that they will be more balanced in the sequel.

Soon we will start a Developer Blog for King Arthur II, until then you can get some up-to-date information on the game’s official forum:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?587-King-Arthur-2

[Cube3214]

:o Enemies just released from jail who attack a full stack with three footmen as bodyguards.

This AI behaviour also opens up to a kind of loyalty & artefact exploit: Beat the enemy down to a single building, which cannot be used to recruit new soldiers from. Place a full hero army nearby. Now release all the enemy heroes from prison. This will boost the loyalty of your own non-tyrant heroes. End the turn. Now the enemy AI heroes will attack your nearby hero army and you will easily auto-battle them and recapture them. This gives you artefacts.

You can continue to gain loyalty and artefacts this way until all the enemy heroes have died in prison and can no longer be released. By that time all your non-tyrant heroes have max loyalty and you have a hefty collection of artefacts.

[Vile Lasagna]

Battles in King Arthur just seem too massive.

There are hundreds of units walking and fighting about. I know for a fact that your artists have done a really nice job on those models as zooming in they are very very shiny but the truth is that you simply don't. All the time you're completely zoomed out and even that feels as not zoomed out enough at times so that every unit is just a blob and heroes are a very helpful pillar of light. You just go by colour code really "Okay, blue so these are the lionhearts and few yellow blobs... they're bringing seelie warriors in... hehe, nubs..."

It brings into question how far the Level of Detail ranges on these units. If all those very nice models are being drawn fully even when they're blobs, that would be one of the reasons for King Arthur's performance (it runs at frame rates much lower than expected).

The scale also makes battles slow and one random thing that I just remembered there NEEDS to be an option to "disable walking" on units. Walking, instead of running is just never an option and its existence only serves to annoy the player, it feels, when you realise your Marauders are calmly strolling towards the location on the edge of the map instead of rushing there first as its their job.

[Grunt7684]

Battles in King Arthur just seem too massive.

There are hundreds of units walking and fighting about. I know for a fact that your artists have done a really nice job on those models as zooming in they are very very shiny but the truth is that you simply don't. All the time you're completely zoomed out and even that feels as not zoomed out enough at times so that every unit is just a blob and heroes are a very helpful pillar of light. You just go by colour code really "Okay, blue so these are the lionhearts and few yellow blobs... they're bringing seelie warriors in... hehe, nubs..."

It brings into question how far the Level of Detail ranges on these units. If all those very nice models are being drawn fully even when they're blobs, that would be one of the reasons for King Arthur's performance (it runs at frame rates much lower than expected).

The scale also makes battles slow and one random thing that I just remembered there NEEDS to be an option to "disable walking" on units. Walking, instead of running is just never an option and its existence only serves to annoy the player, it feels, when you realise your Marauders are calmly strolling towards the location on the edge of the map instead of rushing there first as its their job.

I disagree with the battles being too massive, but I agree about the rest. Did you also try zooming IN to, say, the cities? The detail is astonishing. It's beautiful. And useless. Same for the battlefield, where the villages are just detailed to no end, only you never see that unless you pause and go sight-seeing. And I do feel that there is no LOD switching at all, which as you say explains the performance and the dev's silence about how to improve performance. I have asked repeatedly.

I suggest something here: a camera control similar to the first Dragon Age or like Mount & Blade: Warband. A button (or key) to use mouse movements to rotate the map, cursor keys to move the view around, and the wheel for zooming. The camera in KA is just awkward.

[samtheauburnfan]

The camera could use some work....

[SolSeptem]

Walking, instead of running is just never an option and its existence only serves to annoy the player, it feels, when you realise your Marauders are calmly strolling towards the location on the edge of the map instead of rushing there first as its their job.

I don't agree with that one. Running wastes valuable stamina, especially for heavily armored units who already have precious little stamina to begin with. If you can get away with casually strolling towards the enemy, saving your strenght, while the opposing unit is charging at you already from a mile away, you will have an advantage.

[Noon]

I have no problem with camera control, except on the edge of maps. I'm also very pleased by the units and landscapes details, and i love to zoom in when my army is moving without any danger or during the main battle, please keep this level detail.

[Grunt7684]

I have no problem with camera control, except on the edge of maps. I'm also very pleased by the units and landscapes details, and i love to zoom in when my army is moving without any danger or during the main battle, please keep this level detail.

The level of detail is fine, there just doesn't seem to be any level of detail INCREMENTS. That is, when something is seen from afar, the LOD is decreased because you will not see it anyway, and when you get closer in, the LOD increases but of course only a small part of the map gets rendered.