Knights and Merchants.net Forum

@Krom,
I know that most of these AI adjustments are probably difficult to implement: the reason I suspected that at least some of them might be "easy" to implement was because I wasn't sure how you coded the AI. But, you're welcome. I just recall that either you or Lewin asked me for a list of AI fixes, so this was my list that I recently came up with by winning the missions quickly (Ben was correct, winning the missions quickly does help find loopholes, although my 11m31s TSK20 v1.4 win was very difficult to do with the current AI...it's very well programmed in many ways...much better than the original game's AI, in my opinion).

@cmowla: Let's see what Lewin says

These rally points for the barracks are truly fantastic. It makes training troops and fighting much more manageable. However, I think it would be nice to add on the feature. If the barracks is selected, then it'd be great if I could see on the minimap exactly where my rally point is. Perhaps this could be shown by a colored line starting from the barracks to the rally point, or perhaps even a simple symbol.
Thoughts?

A lighting barracks sybbol (crossed swords), like the beacon symbol, would fit perfectly into it, i guess.

I do not agree, as that would look too much like the "under attack" warning.

First about the Barracks's rally point: It would be good that units have same direction when they go out... like everyone looking towards South (normal when they go out).
At the current state, some arrive to ubication looking south, north, or random diagonal positions.
The best would be that you can "choose direction destination" like the troops have it when you click to move... the "8 petals iron flower".

Symbol for minimap? It could be a mini "8 petals iron flower" -> the way the cursor changes when picking an orientation for soldiers.
Anyway, it would appear only when you select barracks, so won't bother you when fighting.

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The real post idea I was going to make today... was about MapEditor.
When you have to choose the "Tiles Size" before creating the map... the feature the menu is still missing, is picking an "Overall Elevation" for the ground surface.

I currently find uncomfortable that 30% standard elevation[. I also notice that mountains aren't the same as before (maps from past editor versions).
Do you notice the bottom dark lines/shadows in iron/gold mountains from Coastal Expedition (Ben's)?
It's a clear map started with 30% elevation. Giving shape to mountains gives more work... and still look unnatural.

For standard elevation, my suggestion is 15%. Still would be better to choose this feature, before creating the new map.

About the rally Point, I disagree what you wrote Jeronimo. It should be a help for the player, but it shouldn´t be "that complicated" or have that many functions. I don´t remember anyother game, where the rally point has setable settings, because a rallypoint should just have a single task to do, with the right click mousebutton

However the bigger problem is, that when you send some waves out of your barracks, they don´t connect up. That was, what I already posted here somwhere else. When you don´t move your bowmen for example any tile away from the rally point and you make some more bowmen, those 2 bowmengroups (Standing bowmen at the rally point + New bowmen from barracks) should connect to one group(Same with other trooptypes), becaause sometiems you have like 20 single swordmen, and you have to connect them 19 times up

I don't see how "8 petals iron flower" is complicated for player. In fact it's very obvious and really helpful. It is a good idea to somehow change that random facing if possible. Maybe it's not needed in any other game, but in Knights and Merchants units' direction is really important.

About connecting like that - it's not that needed I think. If you want to avoid 19 single units, just wait until you have 19 recruits in Barracks and then train them. Autoconnect works fine when units are close to Barracks and that's enough.

In my opinion, the rally point is just a help, to not click on every single unit group and send it to Position x,y.
So you just click on the "make soldier" button and your army is moving automaticly to the position. I don´t think, the direction should be automaticly set, that´s the job of the Player.
As an example, you are being under attack from two sides. You just send troops to one side via the rally point, the troops are automaticly under correct position and correct formation
Don´t you think, that´s a bit too easy?

About connecting, I disagree. After PT in many games there is a "cold war" before one of the players really decide to attack the other one. So you HAVE to permanently bring new soldiers to the frontline. After the Game you can be angry on yourself, because you lost just because of 4-5 missing Swordfighters. So mostly you have to send everything possible, fast as avaible. Waiting for like you said 9-10 swords and send them at once, isn´t really a good idea in many cases.

I intended to give them these, as you call them, "dark lines." There were various reasons for it, but I believe the general result was quite pretty.

Anyway, if you want a lower map elevation, just lower it yourself. Should take less than a minute.

actually i find it annoying to elevate everytime, especially when you want to change the size at the start and have to do it all over again.
anywayi fixed it by elevating to 0 and saving the map as seperate copy.

Yes, that's the easy way if you want Flat Start... but if someone prefers 10%, 20%, or even 60% height start (and make special holes features).
Is not possible to make a perfect 20 or 40% height elevation... besides you have no indicator of it.

If there is no indicator of what the elevation percent is, then why do you worry so much about what it is?

@cmowla: Thanks for your AI suggestions, I think at least some of them will be possible to implement in the future.

I don't think you need to be able to set a direction for the barracks rally point since if you train multiple groups (e.g. bowmen and swordfighters) they are going to stand at the same place anyway, so it doesn't provide a way to make your soldiers form sensibly. Lets keep it simple.

I also don't think the rally point should cause new units to automatically link to groups in that area. I think automatic linking is designed for when you train 10 soldiers at once they should all be joined, I don't think it should link to groups where the rally point is. It could also be quite annoying since it might choose the wrong group near the rally point, or it might even link to a group that is already fighting meaning you can't control the newly trained units.

About the map elevation starting at 30%: If you start a map with the elevation at 0% it can end up very flat with some mountains poking up from the flatness (most of the maps in the KaM Remake are like this unfortunately). Experienced map makers will have very few flat areas on their maps, some parts will be higher, some parts will be lower. Starting with 30% allows you to lower the terrain below the default, hopefully making it easier to produce a less flat map. If people care about it so much then we can add an option to set the starting elevation.

Did I miss something? Perhaps someone else mentioned this, but my idea was merely to add some sort of "marker" on the minimap so I can see where my rally point currently is