Market

[The Dark Lord]

Remember I'm not talking about going mass coal and then trade everything, I'm talking about normal iron/gold productions and then trade some resources for food while you set up your food chains.

I can't see what you mean. Most people - including me - setup their weapons production first then go to food, and I don't use the market if not on emergencies, and still I don't starve. On maps where i can, i normally make 1 fisherman's hut early game to make a little food just in case, but i normally finish food production with a few barrels of wine left when i don't
The iron production is ready by 30 mins (people get hungry about 33 minutes i have noticed). I like to make one farm and fields about 25 min far in the game, for the corn takes long to grow, and if i make it later i might not have time before my units starve.
So i make troops (you did that also on the game we played, and you didn't use your market) and i do not starve, as with most people i think.

Unless you mean really mass weapon productions.

Actually I DID use the market. Not much, I traded a few sausages. I'm sure I'd have survived without, but it would have been close. Obviously I really mean mass weapon productions. What we had in our game wasn't that massive.

My next map will have low starting food.

I was thinking about that too, but I don't want to force the players to produce food immediately. But it's good to have a map like that anyway.

[batoonike]

GWB I hope there will be warning for the low food. Like name the map "Starvation" I think many people rarely check the starting resources at the beginning of game.

[GreatWhiteBear]

Ehhh, nope.
Though I said that starting FOOD is low, you will start with corn!

[batoonike]

Expanding that, maybe start with pigs and preplaced wine fields ? (whatever the 1 square wine patch was called)

[krisdw]

Well, I join up with Czacki and The Dark Lord on the whole marketplace issue. I brought it up before but my argumentation wasn't too strong and I was persuaded to drop it .

Still, my opinion remains that the marketplace destroys the basic idea of Knights and Merchants. As said before, if it exists only to serve in case of emergencies, I don't mind its presence in the game.

The issue I had when I last discussed the marketplace was that my enemy overwhelmed me with knights solely by making military buildings. His base was not what a base in the KAM we know should look like: wood and stone production, iron production, gold production, and weapons production, and a highly busy marketplace - that was all he had! Where is the typical KAM in that?

I don't care if he's going to be at an economic disadvantage after 90 minutes of playing, the fact that he still managed to make an entire military without ever building the core buildings, those that are so iconic to KAM, is a flaw.
No, I have to agree with TDL and Czacki, the way the marketplace functions right now is not the right way.

I still like to think Lewin wants this remake to resemble the original KAM as closely as possible. It's his project, and I have no say in it whatsoever, but if his goal remains as such, then the current marketplace is not the way to achieve that goal.

[batoonike]

" wood and stone production, iron production, gold production, and weapons production, and a highly busy marketplace - that was all he had! Where is the typical KAM in that?"

The iconic farms, butchers and other funky buildings belong to single player or late-game multiplayer. Making early food in multiplayer is mistake and I guess it has always been a mistake, even in originl KaM 1 hour no rush games. The single player missions allow you to be outrageously slow with producing first army and thats the only reason why people got used to having bakeries before weapon smiths in the first place.

[krisdw]

" wood and stone production, iron production, gold production, and weapons production, and a highly busy marketplace - that was all he had! Where is the typical KAM in that?"

The iconic farms, butchers and other funky buildings belong to single player or late-game multiplayer. Making early food in multiplayer is mistake and I guess it has always been a mistake, even in originl KaM 1 hour no rush games. The single player missions allow you to be outrageously slow with producing first army and thats the only reason why people got used to having bakeries before weapon smiths in the first place.

Agree to disagree
My personal opinion: you should not be able to succesfully play this game by completely ignoring core production facilities.

[batoonike]

Well you could in KaM and TPR multiplayer. As you stated you hope the goal is to be similar to the original game. The two goals are conflicting

[Lewin]

@krisdw: I see your point, the marketplace does mean you can skip a lot of the economy and take shortcuts. But I also see batoonike's point, that is also a fun way to play the game. Both points are valid, the game is fun with or without the marketplace. What do you think about an option in the lobby to disable the marketplace? That way you can play a traditional KaM game or a modern version with the marketplace. You can make a lobby with the marketplace disabled, batoonike can start one with the marketplace enabled. I would personally be happy to play in either game, I don't feel strongly either way and I think most players will be happy to play in either.

I was also thinking of an option to completely disable iron (including trading any iron resource) because it's fun to play without iron too. We could also add other variations for fun such as no archers, no towers, etc. (maybe that's going too far though)
I think it would add variation to the game to have a few different options like this. In the campaign you often can't make iron or towers (at the start anyway) so playing with some parts of the economy unavailable is just part of KaM.

I still like to think Lewin wants this remake to resemble the original KAM as closely as possible. It's his project, and I have no say in it whatsoever, but if his goal remains as such, then the current marketplace is not the way to achieve that goal.

I just wanted to say that it's not my project, it's Krom's project too. He started it, and we've probably done about 50% of the code each by now. (and other work) Krom is less active on this forum because he also uses the Russian KaM forum.

[Krom]

I think maybe we could add an option to the lobby to set market prices Low/High, so that Market is still usable as last-surviving option to get 2-3 gold to train metallurgists and sell extra pigskins.

[batoonike]

@Lewin I must have written in a very unclear way. My point was that people going mass iron only has nothing to do with marketplace. Even if one would eliminate marketplace complitely, people would still go mass iron.

And I generally think that market trade should be less effective in order to serve as "last resort" and not "first choice".

[Lewin]

@Lewin I must have written in a very unclear way. My point was that people going mass iron only has nothing to do with marketplace. Even if one would eliminate marketplace complitely, people would still go mass iron.

The marketplace makes it easier to mass iron because you can get a small amount of food to survive while you don't build any food buildings. However, I think you might be right, players would probably still mostly ignore food and mass iron in order to have a bigger army. When they run out of food they can retrain citizens that die. Although citizens stop working while they are hungry (before they die and you train a new one) so it would slow your economy down a lot and force players to make some food buildings.

[batoonike]

Idno, my little practice shows that: spamm iron/militia untill 50 minutes. Then spamm wineyards and other food. At some point people are starving a little bit but almost nobody dies. The superiour iron army wins the game anyway at 1:05 mark. The suicidal iron massing is not meant for a long game, it's about bringing your strength out fast, and if opponent doesn't match, end the game fast. And also about being afraid that the opponent is doing same strategy.