Knights and Merchants.net Forum

I know this might be debatable among those who play MP, but can someone make a list of the best multiplayer gamers in KaM remake so far in its history? In addition, please put a link to a game replay (preferably more than one replay) which illustrates their skills (also, please mention which version of the remake I have to download to watch it). Lastly, please list the best first (if you think they tie in rank, mention that).

I'm just curious to see at what level the best players play at, as Ben got me interested in his latest shoutcast.

(Who knows, maybe I'll play MP one day, but for now I just mainly want to see what the community defines as playing well in MP.)

Thanks!

Hehe this might indeed cause some debating.
Anyway, I think Romek and Bludmaster are the best players. Good players come by now and then but also disappear again. Some people gain skill, others lose it. But Romek and Bludmaster are/have always been good.
I don't really have any replays (and I'm too lazy to upload them anyway), maybe you should join TeamSpeak and download some from there.

I'm not going to make a list with tons of players on it; I don't play often enough to have a clear view of everyone's skill. I'll leave that job to others.

I'm not gonna upload replays either, because that's quite a huge task, to give enough replays for each player to a) convince you that they are the best b) show more than 1 building style (styles vary on player's daily form, location, etc.). The best way to do that would be to sit on Teamspeak and ask people for a) new replays, b) ask supposedly best players for their old replays that they are proud of.

Also, another thing is, spamming troops is only 30% of the success in this game. Commanding skills are very important, not only micro but also macro - moving troops between fronts, having a plan for the game with your team, coordinating attacks, knowing when and where to attack (if at all) etc.

List of players that are most active nowadays: Romek, Bludmaster/czechnoob, Destah, Mexicans (T and boobs), Bo_co, Mulberry, koczis12. (I may have forgotten someone) They all build on a quite similar level, but the daily form usually decides whether a team can lose or win. Three first players are probably best "on paper", because it is very rare to see them screw up their builds.

cmowla, maybe you should join one of MP games with top TS players* as a spectator? Of course if they agree . After some games you would have informations you're interested in.

*Top TS players as sado wrote and in my opinion also David (Rathdowhun) and The Raging Bullet, also The Dark Lord and Pawel95 when it comes to battle maps, which are different than building maps. About battle skills, you can search for replays from 1st International Battle Tournament (played on r5503) and watch current Tournament games played on r6378 nightly.

I don't think that fighting micro is as important as macro, and you will not see macro in fighting maps. Micro is like "fighting basics", for example flanking, shooting and going back, using horses well (mainly against ranged) etc. Macro on the other hand, is teamwork, executing a plan, moving troops between fronts, etc. While micro is something you will learn relatively quickly, generally people don't learn efficient macro that fast.

Yes sado, macro is most important on building maps, but even if you have good macro and bad micro, it's gonna be a lot harder to win. I noticed, that in many eco games I have advantage because of my good micro, even if my macro was really bad. Also, now MP it's not only building maps. There're also special maps, where even macro is not that important as micro (The Maze, Castle Defenders, maybe even Town Merchants - but that's whole different story ).

You're totally right, learning macro is hard and takes long time... You can tell a player is good, if he has both macro and micro at high level.

However, watching how others play, on both building and fighting maps, might be a good starting point, if someone wants to begin his Great MP Journey .

Spamming is more than 30% of the succes

My friends. I think this topic will explode soon

Cmowla,it´s hard to name the "best" mp gamers. Sure you can name like 20 players that are for sure one of the best economy mp players. However there are many aspects.

Like Sado said Spamming is not everything. You also need to use them wisely. There is also a difference in gametime. Some players might win most games with rushing the other team with some horses (2vs2 for example). This fact doesn´t make them to very good players. However if you think about your strategy in every game and you´re trying to do new things, this shows already that you are little bit of "skilled".
Also note that there are different gamemodes. If one player lost nearly all 1vs1 vs other players, that doesn´t mean that he will be a bad player in a 4vs4. I guess you mean 60 Min PT Games with x1/x1 Speed, because I´m pretty sure that those "Pro players" have a nearly perfect strategy for their economy, so it works best as possible in 60 Min PT. If these players start play 90 Min PT Instead, they would need some time to improve their economy. Sado just listed a random lists of players that are playing really often, but it has nothing to do with their actual skills.
Also a skilled players isn´t someone who has 50 prebuilds on his pc saved and plays Richland, GoldenCliffs,Across the Desert all the time and is good on these maps. There are even players playing all the time on one location and don´t want to test another one. A good player is someone who could also make a decent army on a map that he has played once (without watching the mapeditor (even while the game is running) for 20 min )

About Tiank. Well when I had a "good time" I never had great armies, but still I had in many of the (3vs3/4vs4) games most killed units just by the micro feature. So this could be also your advantage in your "first games" cmowla . On the other side you can be the best micro-man on the world, but if you have a really bad army and a "pro player" rushes you with his big army, you have no chance, even when you us your whole brain and can micro best on the earth

To the discussion about micro and macro. Well, if the enemy attacks you or your teammate in an economy map you have to react as fast as possible. You have to thing what the enemey could have behind the fog of war in a few seconds. Then you have to micro your troops, go back, or fight. With this feature alone you won´t win a single game, you really need to communicate with your team. Even if you haven´t a microphone and you are not writing in a chat, you have to ping somewhere, so your allies are warned.



So to your main question Join Teamspeak, I guess there are still some active KaMPlayers that are playing this game online like every day You can ask them to watch a game, you can skip the Peacetime, if you wanna see first what armies they will have and how the "NOT-AI" players are fighting

To your point, to name some good players: Best way to find best players, is to see how they play in a tournamnet for example. However there aren´t many economy tournaments where all players from ts played and really no tournament, that didn´t fail XDD
There are also some lists of "the best players", but I don´t think they were actualy serious at any time

If you don´t want to watch livegames, like you mentioned with your replays, the best would be also if you join the teamspeak servers and watch there for Replays in the downloadarchive.
This is the biggest Topic in this forum that have replays from good players: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=832
However the first Posts are already 3 years old, so it isn´t worth to download them, because you would have to download an old remake version AND the balance of the game has changed massively (Market/armybalance/Cornbalance..)

oh not not another of these topics... :C

Thank you all for your honest and kind responses.

I will join Teamspeak and look at their archive, but I will also watch more replays (played in r5503 and onward) in that big thread pawel95 mentioned (I've watched a few replays from there in the past).

I appreciate the thought and time you guys put in your posts (especially pawel95), and I will try to make use of everything you all posted, even though there was disagreement on some details...this disagreement actually describes the situation even better, as I interpret it to be saying that there is an exception to every rule.

There's one question I have, however. Several of you mentioned "spamming troops". What does this mean exactly?

EDIT:
dicsoupcan, this wasn't meant to be "another one of those threads". I plan to make something of what these fine people have told me, not to start a "political" debate.

EDIT2:
Thanks dicsoupcan for your explanation of spamming troops. I guess that term is just a negative synonym to early mass raiding?

with spamming troops people mean producing a large amount of soldiers before and after pt, but it is succesfully finding weak spots in the enemy lines and exploiting those to win. romek and bludmaster seem to have a good eye for that which is why they are always very solid top players.

No. Spamming simply means having many troops on peacetime. (Hm, I guess that kinda means yes? xD) But it is not a term which is negative as is. Many players are spammers (as in, their armies on peacetime are good or even very good) but they lack fighting skills (macro or even micro), so they lose their initial army quick enough.) Term "spammer" isn't usually used to indicate, for example, a player who has lots of troops of one type - we use the word "rush" for it. For example, "horse rush" - knights only. Militia rush - loads of militia. Iron rush (now obsolete, even if I saw that Romek used it a few days ago, and Mulberry did sth similar a while ago too) - lots of iron and barely any leather. Et cetera. Just see previous similar topics about best players lists and you'll understand dicso's response

Unless the definition used by TS-players has changed recently, Sado is wrong about 'spam'.

As far as I know, it is used to refer to the ability to recruit large amounts of troops after peacetime. "I will have large/great spam" means your economy is powerful enough to facilitate recruitment of large quantities of additional troops. It has nothing to do with peace time army and doesn't say anything about your fighting strategy (attack/camp) either.

Maybe we should make a KaM dictionary.

True. To "spam" just means, to make most possible troops in shortest time possible(End of peacetime).

However the "TS"guys doesn´t use this definition 1by1. If you have like 50 milita, that might be a spam, because the quantity is high. However it´s nothing against 20 swordmen and 4 xbows for example. So "to spam" should really be used when you have a good number of QUALITY Soldiers or 200 militas at PT

spam by general is defined by how many soldiers you can get equipped in a certain time. that is why i mentioned before and after pt, because people often make a difference between before pt spam and after pt spam. but basically it means how many soldiers you can produce.