empire building vs. battle simulation

[Moorkh]

Playing MTW, I felt the game was very much split into a battle and an empire building part. While the seams between the two showed a little much (I'm confident KoH will do better there), I really found it very nice how the game allowed you to choose how much of either you wanted to have. You could even skip one part at all using either autocombat in your campaign or by just playing battle scenarios.

Personally, I've played out only a single battle in countless campaigns of MTW - I found them simply tedious. However, some people here seem to be very much into the battle thing, judging the game solely by the number of different units and the max number of units in a battle. I find that silly but to each his own...

So, to clear this up a bit, can you tell us how much of either (in percent, maybe?) KoH will have? I know you can do battle scenarios in MP, but do you think they would be interesting enough for a battle enthusiast who didn't care for the empire building part to buy this game (I believe that was the case with MTW)? And what about empire builders like me who hate fiddling with individual soldiers in rts battles - is there an autocombat feature?

[Jerome]

to be honest; i hope KoH is gonna bring the best of both RTS battle and empirebuilding together :angel:

But maybe you're right and there should be an 'autobattle' possible for those that cant be bothered with battles ;)

(like in Lords2; where u could 'autocalculate' the outcome of a battle)

[Frank Fay]

Let me point out some philosophical differences before I try to answer.

KoH is ONE whole game, means battles start seamlessly without any delay for loading, switching screen resolution etc.

KoH is played completely realtime.

KoH is neither a classical RTS or an empire building game. It is an Empire Conquering Simulation.

In KoH you do not need to battle at all, you could leave this to the AI. You also can ignore the Diplomacy or Espionage. So it depends what you like you can do more and less of the others. But it is really up to your personal strategy what you play more.

But I am sure while in the beginning you will maybe lead all your battles, but when are becomming bigger you have to deal with other things and may want to lead only the important battles. Imagine a Kingdom of 30 - 60 realms? Imagine that you can have more than one battle at a time? Imagine further that you can have different type of battles and you conquer and re-conquer territory.

[Frujin]

Yes! My friend and colleague Frank told it very right I'd like to add that we had to re-shape and to re-define all of so called "typical RTS mechanics" to be able to make KoH. It is truly unique game. I can assure you never saw something like that before. Economy, diplomacy, espionage, battle system, game world mechanics ... all is pretty hard to compare to this or that game from the past.

I know you all have already favorite games and perhaps you all have already perception for what KoH is going to be. Perhaps you hope that KoH will be more like your favorite game "but much better". I'd like to point that perhaps your perception more or less is wrong. KoH is really unique. Someone from the industry told me once, that "you can't avoid the trap of being compared with others. Because when you make new game with ball, whatever rules you invent, the ball is always a ball. And there will be always people telling you that this is yet-another-football-game." So, yes, we have units, castles and map. Yes, the game is Real Time Game. Yes, we have the ball included :)

The purpose of this forum and KoH offcial page is not to give you empty hopes or to inflict misunderstanding. The main goal for us is to communicate what KoH will be, to explain the game rules and mechanics to you, so you can make up your mind. And after this happens you can help us a lot to polish the game and make it really strong and entertaining. Because we, at Black Sea Studios, are all slaves of the gameplay. That's what we think is most important in games. Do you remeber these gameplay monsters from early 90ies? :)

So, expect very soon, detailed articles about game mechanics, screenshots, gameplay movies, music samples, etc, etc, etc ...

[Jerome]

that is a very clear explanation...

perhaps it is not fair to compare KoH with games from the past, but so far; its the only reference we have ;)

i look forward to experiencing the unique KoH for myself...:angel:

[Moorkh]

Thanks, guys - great answer. This sounds very promising, and should clear things up for a lot of people, here, a bit. :)

Just one other thing - I understand it that battles, economy, diplomacy, everything is happening at the same time on the same map. Does this mean when you've switched a province's defense to an AI 'governor' you might be improving the output of your farms or checking on the happiness of your population when an opponent attacks your province and your 'governor' starts placing his soldiers in battle formation about your village?
In other words, are battles seamless extensions of the activity that is going on in each of your provinces all the time?