Wow, this game is so badly balanced.

[Kapitan]

I loved this game and I still do, but playing it 10 years later actually made me obvious of all the flaws )

1. [TSK] Most units are useless

Milita? What for? Iron units? too much fuss. Cavalry? why, to make swordmen that are susceptible to lances/pikes?

It's all about archers (or crossbowmen if you really want to, albeit I found that pointless as archers are pretty much similary effective and can be produced with resources that never deplete) with some meat shields in front of it. Axemen preferably, it doesn't really matter how much damage they do or how fast they die (to certain extent - milita dies too fast), they are only meant to shield archers.

2. [TPR] Almost all units are useless

... thanks to warmachines which are completely broken, doing so much damage that archers and crossbowmen join the "useless" crowd. With traditional axemen for tanking, 10 warmachines and you can rape even colossal armies. Well, at least iron is good for something, finally.

3. [TSK & TPR] The AI is H_O_R_R_I_B_L_E

Just rightclicks at your storehouse and lets those archers and crossbow dudes walk right across your unit field to be raped.
A single archer to draw them from perfect position to horrible works every damn time.
Also, AI sends troops in long lines so that you can kill the units one after another instead of walking in some sort of formation.

4. [TSK & TPR] The battle interface is horrible.

Units are hard to manouver, they constantly break formation after attacking, they break change direction they face after turning around in combat often & ALWAYS change it after halt command, they are stupid and pathfinding is horrible Also I find it retarded that you can't just order troops to stop fighting... cavalry is so useless because of that. No hit and run possible, once they start fighting, you may as well load the game if you planned to raid the enemy from the flank. Flanking is impossible because AI has no formation and relies only on numbers being 100x bigger then yours, a scenario where you pretty much HAVE to depend on AI idiocy and cheap tricks to win anything because your troops are outnumbered ten to one. Unless you find it fun to play for 10 hours to make those 100 archers 50 axes to match enemy numbers. But that wouldn't be actually too fun... @_@


This game would be so much better if the military part was removed from the game, lol. Or made a simple RTS instead of this garbage formation stuff that doesn't work.

Anybody else feels the most fascinating thing about this game is making a town and watching it work?

[The Dark Lord]

Militia aren't useless at all. Of course, if you have enough time, everyone would prefer other units. But if you run out of leather and the enemy is attacking you, you may consider training militia to defend your archers or watchtowers. That is what they are for, as in 1 vs 1 battles they would lose versus any other unit (although I recall one of my militia defeated a lance carrier in multiplayer 1 vs 1). You can also train them quite fast at the start of a game, in multiplayer often to annoy or even defeat your enemy quickly.
I do agree that every army relies on archers.
Cavalry is useful to outflank hostile archers or other soldiers, and that also applies to the AI. At least I manage to do that sometimes.

[Danjb]

KaM just wouldn't be KaM without the quirky battle interface. It's a lot more tactical, it means you have to plan where to put your units before the battle.

Sure, it drives me crazy sometimes but I still love it

[Ben]

I agree with most of this, actually. It is sad how the combat is.,,well as you call it, "Flawed" but I think "incomplete" is a better way of putting it
It's the AI mostly. If they would also use bowmen, then you would need to make cavalry and flank more often, etc.

The combat is good and it offers good tactics, but its nothing compared to games like Age of Kings....