King Arthur: The playing Wargame

Kadongy

This game seems to be barely known. It's surprisingly good! The combat system is total war style. I think people tend to dismiss it as a cheap knock-off of total war games. It's not, though it borrows heavily from them.

It's on a much smaller scale than recent total war games - something I personally prefer. Units can cast spells and have numerous special abilities.

It is very much a role-playing game. Very great focus is given to developing your characters and your units. There are a lot of quests and an alignment system, and choices that influence the progression of the game. The game progresses by completing quests, rather than just conquering all the territories.

Just thought I'd start a thread on it because it seems to be barely known at all, dispite being on steam and often being very cheap too.

Jelle1880

It's brilliant.
Been a long time since I played it but it's easily one of the best strategy games I've played (Or is it an RPG game ? )

Definitely would recommend it to anyone.

ionapaul

I actually bought it in an earlier Steam sale (either last Christmas or the previous summer sale) but haven't had time to start it yet - and given that I plan to start Portal 2, Mass Effect 2 and Shogun 2 in the run-up to Skyrim coming out, I'm guessing King Arthur won't get a look in until next year at the earliest! Really want to give it a go though, it seems to have received pretty good reviews.

Kiith

Bought it in the Steam sale as well, and actually enjoyed it for the brief time i played it for. It kind of just got pushed aside with the many big releases in the last few months.

Blowfish

The sequel to it is actually due out sometime at the start of next year, here's total Biscuit's take on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Gj-1bInEs

TomCo

The tutorial drained the life out of me before I got into the game propper. I'll probably go back to it at some stage - along will all of my other impulse buy steam games.

Branoic

Just saw this is on sale on Steam at the moment - 75% off!!

4.99 for the core game, down from 19.99

or

7.49 for game plus all DLC, down from 29.99

This one slipped past me on release, so I'm well chuffed at this timely sale! Downloading now.

Stev_o

The games clunkieness really lets it down. Tbh it's campaign map is 10x better then any TW one but when it comes to the actual Real Time section it falls flat on it's face.

Patser

Got it on a cheap Steam deal earlier on in the year and loved it at first.

But when the Armies of Samhain and Random Christian Armies (I went the Old religion route) start appearing all over the place, while you have only limited armies numbers (and it takes so long to repair them) - while also facing more and more Super Duper Enemy units, I just lost interest.

In other words the learning curve has a cliff face.

Spunge

This game better be freaking epic guys.

Spunge

holy awkward camera batman

Branoic

Spunge wrote: »

holy awkward camera batman

haven't played it yet - still downloading. What's your verdict?

Spunge

Branoic wrote: »

haven't played it yet - still downloading. What's your verdict?

Still just doing the tutorial bits, so havent seen everything, all the RPG stuff seems good and pretty deep the only major thing annoying me is in the battles, mainly moving the camera around. I like the combat itself, i just approach it like the total war games, but spinning the camera around and trying to good a good view of the battlefield is really awkward.

Kadongy

There's a new standalone expansion available in the last few days which focuses on three specific heroes from different factions. It appears to focus more on the rpg aspect and the battles appear to be all set pieces. It appears to deal with the orkney properly [I was disappointed that these never came into the original game beyond the odd random quest really].

I finished the original game. I still think it is very good.

A few things that I didn't cop onto right away:

Very important to get is that you win when the enemy morale meter runs out, and the morale meters drain/refill according to

who controls more victory locations, regardless of how the batle is going otherwise. I thought there was a bug when I lost a battle from this where I had hundreds of men left tand teh enemy less than 20, before I realised this happens.

Your army's morale is penalised if you have christians, seelie or unseelie mixed with each other in the non-hero units.

Orkney can mix with anything without penalty. I dont know if there is a penalty for mixing righteous and tyrannical units.

Kingdom management is done during winter mainly and you can build things in your strongholds.

You can have more heroes than 12 - extra ones will be put into the "in waiting" slot in your round table. They cannot lead armies or be leveled up but they can act as normal heroes in battles and cast spells they already know etc.

There are three types of heroes: Combat-oriented champions, magic-oriented sages and warlords which give bonuses to the whole army if they are the leader, and are decent in combat also. In my game I only had two warlord characters, and about an even mix of the other types.

You can select any hero in an army to do an adventure quest - not only the leader. The attributes that might be needed to complete the quest are indicated by the symbols in the description (pentagram for arcane skill etc).

Heroes dont die in battles if you win, even if they run out of hitpoints. They are just injured for a few turns.

While rebellions are obviously linked to loyalty, I think the brigand/giants type quests that appear are linked to public safety, and the religious ones probably linked to religion levels.

You can recruit some very strong units from the former, such as giants and fomorians - These are probably the strongest infantry units in the game, and if you acquire some early they will be much much stronger than the rest of the units you have available.

The computer's rating of an army strength is very simplistic and appears diluted by the presence of heroes, which it underrates. Also some enemy armies have very unintelligent composition, even if strong on paper.

Thoughts on the game after finishing it:

Difficulty curve is broken, though gameplay is still mixed and fun, though it peaks before the end. The ending is bad and easy. The unlocking of new spells and units makes the combat mixed and interesting throughout the game - even if the AI is not able to make good use of certain key ones, which makes it too easy...:

The game was never really hard on normal, but playing old faith means you get the ability to teleport your heroes, then your archers and your whole army. This makes it very easy especially when combinedw ith strong archers which you unlock with old faith, and strong offensive spells. Also the AI doesn't make much use of the teleportation spells. I regularly fought forces that were as strong or 25% or so stronger by the computer's assessment and came out with no casualties, or a handful of casualties, while wiping out hundreds. At the same time this was more fun than it sounds, and there were occasional battles that were more challnging and I would lose some maxed out units in them - even if losing the battle seemed unlikely. The hardest oppononents were easily the ghosts; and I toolk serious losses fighting them. They are killed off by the end of the third book though. In the final book the unseelie were the main enemy and they had a bizarre tendency to build armies consisting entirely of infantry. While strong on paper, it is easy to slaughter armies like that if you have strong archers, and spells that slow the enemy - and the sunshine spell since they did try to use weather effect spells to debuff my troops and buff their own. The final battle consisted of such a force disappointingly - and bizarrely was on a standard map showing plains and a Christian Cathdral - dispite being deep in the magic forest place and at the unseelie main base. another thing that spoilt immersion a bit was the way the seelie told me I mightbe able to build springborn and summerborn if I got on with them well enough in the final book - dispite the fact I could build them both for a long time already.

Kadongy

Spunge wrote: »

Still just doing the tutorial bits, so havent seen everything, all the RPG stuff seems good and pretty deep the only major thing annoying me is in the battles, mainly moving the camera around. I like the combat itself, i just approach it like the total war games, but spinning the camera around and trying to good a good view of the battlefield is really awkward.

You can change the camera settings in the options.

Kadongy

Patser wrote: »

Got it on a cheap Steam deal earlier on in the year and loved it at first.

But when the Armies of Samhain and Random Christian Armies (I went the Old religion route) start appearing all over the place, while you have only limited armies numbers (and it takes so long to repair them) - while also facing more and more Super Duper Enemy units, I just lost interest.

In other words the learning curve has a cliff face.

I ignored the armies of samhain after a bit, since they dont actually attack cities or units - just penalise the province they're in. Waited until I'd cleared the map of other objectives pretty much and then mopped up the five or six that were marching around. They pretty much obliterated Kent and Logales - population was near zero in both - but you can use resettlement to build them up pretty quick. The game gets a LOT easier after you deal with them unfortunately - they are easily the hardest encounters in the game.

Spunge

Kadongy wrote: »

You can change the camera settings in the options.

I messed around with them and it seems each of them has their own problems