Knights and Merchants.net Forum

I used to play this game at a friends house around 8-10 years ago in Russia and never knew what it was called. Thought it was the best game ever but lost contact with my friend and thus the game. Just found this and cant believe people still play this and it seems there is even a small competitive scene? Super excited to play this so soon il be seeing some of you guys online. Any advice on reading material and game breakdown? I played this when i was around 12 and i remember getting fat traffic jams at my storage castle and everyone starving. Was the best.....

Hey,

The game is pretty active and is played competitively PvP this and almost any other moment - check out http://www.kamremake.com/servers charts!

If you need any advice - feel free to post new posts

Hi there

Here's some reading material: http://www.knightsandmerchants.net/foru ... f=4&t=2657

And here're some useful videos about MP:
http://www.knightsandmerchants.net/foru ... =25&t=2525

http://www.knightsandmerchants.net/foru ... =25&t=1023

Enjoy and have fun!

the traffic jams here are waaaaaaaay less.

Since our super awesome devs made the game from the ground up, remaking it like the real game, offcourse they couldn't copy everything.
The result is actually a better performing game, with super good resolutions, and the job queue handeling is better.

the only thing you have to account for is that if any servant / builder / other minion is going to pick a job, then it will be the closest by job available.

if there is a watch tower far away in need of stone, and if there is a school next to the servant in need of gold, it will get gold for the school.
off course with enough servants all jobs get done.

there are some real building artists that build a city and then delete the storehouse. and the city will run forever without problems.

Welcome to the forum, UrbanAchiever.

I would like to start off with I love the world. If you haven't seen this short KaM comedy video yet, you're missing out!

I first will note that I've been called the best single player of this game (and I am humbly starting to believe it). I also note that I have never played multiplayer (MP). However, I have been a member here for about two years and have asked questions, read around, and so forth, and thus I probably can at least point you in the right direction regarding "studying" for multiplayer. However, if I miss anything important, I'm sure others who actual play (or have played) MP will help out if you have questions.

There are three main branches of the KaM remake:

• Single Player
• Multiplayer
• Co-op

I'll give my two cents for each. Of course there are also these six sub-skills.

• Building
• Fighting
• Planning
• Trading (i.e., the Market, which is a new building in the remake): primarily for MP
• Being a team player (for MP)
• Playing ethically (for MP, although some condemn "abusing the AI")

To start off with, if you remember TSK 20 mission at all, here's a video replay showing me beat it in 5 minutes and 58 seconds in the current release (where the AI has been deemed to be at its best in the history of the remake). This is probably a shock for you and anyone who hasn't followed my work since I've been on these forums, but I provide a link (in my videos description) to the thread on these forums with the replay (proof that I did win it this quickly) in addition to the details of how I did it.

That is, besides just playing "the regular way", there are additional cool things you can do in single player. Often, you can do a combination of them.

• beating single player missions quickly
• losing very few (or zero) troops (e.g. here's a video of my first 0 loss win, and I have replays for KaM remake r5503 in my signature)
• winning missions with your initial army
• beating missions without ranged (bows and xbows)
• winning missions with leather units only (or militia only, for that matter)
• beating coop maps alone (playing maps designed for multiple human players/playing KaM at a higher level)
• etc.

There are several good single player maps now which are not TSK and TPR campaign missions. You will also notice that there are other campaigns available now as well in KaM remake r6720. Many maps have been made, but only a subset of them have been included in the remake. The same certainly is true for multiplayer maps and possibly entire single player campaigns.
Coop (cooperative) maps are maps/scenarios designed for two or more human players which fight against a stronger AI rather than against themselves. They are usually maps from the TSK and TPR campaign missions "on steroids". These are generally intense maps, but more intense coop maps are those like Invasion and Northern Islands I (see the links in my signature: I played these maps alone) and "The Maze".

For example, at this point in the map/scenario called "Invasion", it's very unlikely an average player can survive. (If you are curious to see how I beat this particular map, I have a live game play recording here.) To date, I'm the only one who has beaten this mission. In addition, I have not heard of any team of four human players beating it either.
Regarding town building for the remake, here's a good discussion. Dicsoupcan has made a building tutorial video which might be a good refresher and educational. He then made a town efficiency tutorial. Also, please see Complete Remake multiplayer building tutorial.
In addition to the content discussed in the first thread linked to above under "Town Building", Dicsoupcan has a video about the market. Of course, in the thread above, we discussed the market, distribution of wares, store house usage, etc.

Here are what are called "shoutcast" videos of multiplayer games. (Replays of actual multiplayer games with good commentary from Ben, our most active member of this forum.) In addition, here are some more shoutcasts on sado's YouTube channel.

Besides these, you can also see replays on Teamspeak. I started a thread asking about who are the best players, and it started a good discussion about how someone who is single player can become better acquainted with multiplayer.

Here are some threads which contain detailed writeups of multiplayer strategy.
Peacetime and Strategies in the Remake
New tactics in KaM???

!	MODBREAK: Be nice!

Why is there a peace time in multiplayer maps? It seems weird compared to other multiplayer strategy games. I would think that if there was no peace time both players would be forced to rush to get some troops in the beginning to defend themselves. This would slow down the "teching" of your city and it would take longer to get to a serious scale of iron troop production. You would need to spend more resources in wooden weapons and gold on recruits. Explain to me why this is wrong?

Do you guys play with FoW? Do people scout in multiplayer or is there no point with a 60min PT?

I dont know if any of you guys have a starcraft background but this seems like everyone agrees to max out their supply and attack each other at that point

You're right, with no PT players would rush to get military units and the fastest unit you can get is Militia. Problem is that it's easily spammed, so that in most no PT games the first who gets more militia usually wins.

Also every player has different skill. In no PT games player with higher skill in building has greater advantage and thus game could end too quickly.

Most maps are designed for at least 60 PT, cause within that time you can make both stable economy to keep your city alive and make decent amount of warriors to make nice battles (like 30 sword fighters+30 bowmen with some knights and lances for example). Also, such a PT kind of equalizes skills - you have enough time to prepare yourself to battle, to make towers to defend your city.

There is one player that I know, that plays without PT sometimes - it's vovets1. When meeting him you can be sure, that game will be fair. 30 PT is a compromise, although it's not that popular.

About FOW, it is enabled all the time, so scouting is really important.

Well what if the starting resources were low enough that if you spammed militia too early you would probably starve. So instead of having a PT make it so that before a certain amount of time if you commit to attacking you will probably run out of resources at home. Maybe make starting gold/food/resources lower so that you cant build your base up at an incredible speed?

@Krom I have never seen anyone say hey i am the best player in the world but i only play scripted scenarios. Multiplayer is how you become good not gimics and taking advantage of AI

That probably won't work, it would just slow things down. In KaM you need a chain of production to get units better than Militia. To get Bowmen, you need Armory Workshop, that needs Leather from Tannery, which need skins from Pig Farm, which needs corn from Farm, and Farm needs time to grow fields. Also, all those units need to eat, so you need some kind of food production for them. To make crossbowmen, you need Armor Smithy, which need Iron bars from Iron Smithy, which needs iron ore from Iron Mine, and also there's a need for coal for those buildings. Also, all these buildings need resources (wood and stone), to be made. So, to make competetive armies, you need to go through all these chains. As for KaM it seems that PT idea is working well.

However, as far as I know, Knights Province (Krom's new project and Krom is one of KaM Remake developers) is trying to achieve something like that, to have KaM's focus on economy but without need of PT, so that you can have some weaker, yet competetive units earlier. But it's still in alpha stage, so long road's ahead

Welcome to the forum and game...



my message..

Well well well, so much fun we have here. And I'm missing out?!

Oh well. UrbanAchiever, welcome to the forum.
I play SC2 too (or actually, I used to play it) so I understand your reasoning. But I think we must accept that KaM is not designed for fast-paced gameplay. We could change it so that it is possible to play it without peace time... but then it wouldn't be KaM anymore.