King Arthur the Role Playing Wargame: How do I keep up?

[Crichton]

So I picked this thing up on steam back when it was $15 and I'm really captivated by the combination of Total War and BioRPG (also the fantasy world and art direction); but I'm having a lot of trouble building an army next-gen enough to fight it out with some of the shit the AI comes up with.

Some background:

This is my 2nd playthrough; on my first playthrough I missed a bunch of opportunities because I didn't wait for quest scripts to fire or for money to stack up so now I'm playing it really cautiously. I've moved slowly, acquired provinces through events, saved up cash, etc. My only major war has been with some pagan 2-province dipshit to the east of Wales. He still had me outnumbered by ~50% (the AI must get a lot of free money) and had some pretty mean heroes but the AI is pretty slow on the uptake so I was able to deal with that pretty handily.

Current example of the problem:

I'm doing a quest entitled "The Vision" and at the end of it I'm faced with an army of "unseelie" superfucks. My army consists of rougly 50% longshields, 1 Hcav, 1 Lcav, 3 units of super light infantry led by heroes (Sentinels) and 1 unit of super heavy infantry led by a hero (Golden Gryphons). I just flat out can't win this battle right now and the word on the forums is that it's time sensitive.

Assuming that there's a way out of that mess, there's a generic "rebel army of unhappy nobles" in one of my provinces that has five heroes, some "Maurader" super cav, longbowmen and aflja;dlfkja;dlfkja;sdklfja;sdflj!L!JK:L!JK:!LJK!:LKJ

What the fuck!

I can't build any of this shit and won't be able to for years at my current rate of technological progress. How do I forstall all these mega assholes from spawning until I can tech up?

 

[Grunker]

I ran into that exact problem. I tried it from many different angles before simply giving up. My conclusion was that I was simply to bad at the game - or had too little will to go on - but it's the first game I've given up on in my adult life because of difficulty issues.

I refuse to crank the difficulty to easy, because I'm a stubborn asshole like that. But I just couldn't get past that point - probably the same as you.

A related note is that it's my first and only wargame of the type, so I didn't really have experience on my side, but still.

 

[Topher]

I've been wondering if I should check this game out. Can anybody give me a good run down of the game?

 

[Raghar]

I refuse to crank the difficulty to easy, because I'm a stubborn asshole like that. But I just couldn't get past that point - probably the same as you.

I had the same problem with king of the dragon pass. Everything worked somehow fine until they came to blackmail me.

 

[Mortmal]

Its easy to beat it, archers are absurdly overpowered, even if you check the option to weaken them in settings.
Your army must have two light calvary to go capture , most of your troops archers you will place on hills off course. Heroes with shock melee troops in front of them , spell casting heroes with dragon eye spell, and various area of effects nukes some with huge ranges. Let them come! nuke them and shoot them from the hills.Harvest artefacts on the strategic map, make only 2 powerful armies.

 

[Crichton]

Well, I have the money to buy a few archers, but I really don't think that's going to solve either of these problems. The "unseelie" are very fast and resiliant, even "curse of shadows" doesn't bang "unseelie archers" up much. Re: unhappy nobles, they have "longbowmen" which severely outclass my plain "bowmen". Heck, I stopped using archers on my primary army because even the "bandits" I kept encountering could outshoot them.

In short, both of these armies have a lot more firepower than I can buy unless I can tech up to better archers. What I really need is shock troops that can stand up to evil ghosts or "marauder" cav, the best stuff I can buy (longshields) get raped pretty quickly.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Has this shit never been fixed? One would expect them to fix the gameplay expecially since it's a fairly linear game.

 

[Darth Roxor]

What I really need is shock troops that can stand up to evil ghosts

Well, let's me just tell you this: There's no point in engaging ghosts in melee. Or at least, it should be done only when there is no other thing to do and with the heaviest of the heavy cavalry/infantry. This is because the ghosts have a really fucking overpowered life stealing aura. Engaging them at a distance first is a MUST, ghost wolves die fast from archer fire, light infantry can also be taken out like that, although it takes some more time. Heavy infantry, however, should preferably be taken out by 'instakill' spells such as dragon's breath or crystal shards. IIRC, attacking any ghost units in melee with squads that have lower stats than 15/15 is absolutely pointless.

As for your first question: you need archers. And you need a lot of them. Preferably three or four squads. Bowmen might seem heavily inferior to brigands or longbowmen or anything else, but manuevering them is key. Also, bashing enemy archers with curse of shadows/lightning as soon as possible so that your archers are not under fire is also key. Buff archers further with the thing that makes them shoot 2-4 additional arrows and dragon's eye. At the same time, fuck up enemy archers with storm of avalon. Unseelie archers/warriors have lots of hp, so while curse of shadows might not work that well, again, dragon's breath/crystal shards should.

Do you have Sir Gareth? If not, that's one of the biggest mistakes you could make. He's the first and very decent 'mage' type of knight, and I think he even starts with curse of shadows, dragon's breath and dragon's eye. You can quickly level him to some pretty good amounts of power.

Another important thing is to have all sorts of anti-magic measures on your heroes. High level prot from magic, bonds of magic, the thing that burns enemy mana reserves, another that makes a single squad invulnerable for a few seconds and some others that prevent enemies from firing their artillery are some of THE most important skills to have in this game, since in the future areas you'll often be fighting armies with up to 4 heroes, each being a high-level mage with all sorts of retarded overpowered magic that can rip your squads to shreds.

 

[Grunker]

Problem is, Roxor and Mortmal, I can win the first one or two fights at that point (using 4 longbowmen squads), but this costs me nearly all troops I have (not due to enemy units, but to Curse of Shadows from enemy heroes). This means I get analy raped after that point.

 

[Darth Roxor]

(not due to enemy units, but to Curse of Shadows from enemy heroes)

Learn to manuever and protect, sucker. Give Kay max level protection from magic (you can get that fairly quickly) and keep him close to the archers (curse of shadows almost ALWAYS flies towards the archers). Activate it the moment the enemy activates CoS, spread your archers to keep casualties to a minimum, run away the moment CoS is activated. At the start of the battle, take light cavalry and run to the enemy to provoke spellcasting and make them waste mana. Gets even easier once you get access to more powerful spell denial/resistance abilities later on.

 

[Grunker]

Thread is making me want to pick it up again. I'll fucking not forgive myself if I take another shot at it, without completing it.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Yeah, makes me want to play it too. Maybe I'll play a tyrant Christian motherfucker this time. Should be fun

 

[Darth Roxor]

Oh yeah, I forgot about the most important tip concerning the provoking of spellcasting: Hide all troops in woods, so that they're invisible. When you are in firing range of enemy spells, keep taking out various cannon fodder from the forest. Press the assault once enemies are all out of mana.


Also: a new game by the King Arthur devs is supposed to come out in October. And since it's gonna be a 'historical' setting (the crusades), I suppose it won't feature any horribly broken magic, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for it.

 

[Grunker]

Oh yeah, I forgot about the most important tip concerning the provoking of spellcasting: Hide all troops in woods, so that they're invisible. When you are in firing range of enemy spells, keep taking out various cannon fodder from the forest. Press the assault once enemies are all out of mana.


Also: a new game by the King Arthur devs is supposed to come out in October. And since it's gonna be a 'historical' setting (the crusades), I suppose it won't feature any horribly broken magic, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for it.

The best portion of King Arthur was easily the stuff you did on the overland map, so if it's more of that and with tighter combat, color me interested!

 

[Zeus]

King Arthur - The Role-Playing Wargame

That's actually the title?

Rolls right off the tongue, but it leaves entirely too much to the imagination.

They should have named it,

King Arthur, the Legendary Briton Leader Who, According To Medieval Histories and Romances, Led the Defence of Britain Against Saxon Invaders in The Early Sixth Century - The Role Playing, That is to Say a Broad Family Of Games in Which Players Assume the Roles of Characters in a Fictional Setting or a Recreation of a Setting Derived From Reality, and not Sexual Role-Playing, a Form of Role-Playing in Which Partners Take Parts in a Drama With a Strong Sexual Theme, Wargame, a Subgenre of Strategy Game That Emphasizes Strategic or Tactical Warfare on A Map, Not to Be Confused With Military Simulations, Also Known Informally as War Games, Simulations in Which Theories of Warfare Can Be Tested and Refined Without the Need For Actual Hostilities.

 

[Mortmal]

Problem is, Roxor and Mortmal, I can win the first one or two fights at that point (using 4 longbowmen squads), but this costs me nearly all troops I have (not due to enemy units, but to Curse of Shadows from enemy heroes). This means I get analy raped after that point.

Then only way is to space them a bit and manoeuver, also when they level up you can choose the magic immunity.you will end up with veteran archers who will survive the fights, just rebuild a bit after.

I dont know if the enw crusade game features no magic, imagine the evil arabs could use djinns

 

[Malakal]

Magic is all You need. I won the game without using archers after the first few battles. Curse of Shadows for large but weak units, dragon breath/crystal shards for small and elite forces. Also get those skills giving mana for kills and enter close combat.

 

[Humppaleka]

So, I didn't bother to make a thread when this one had lots of good stuff in it, so if someone still plays this game just post here (?)

Anyway, I really have a hard time with this game, partly because of archers (after a few battles decided to tick the weaker archers option, the archers are just medieval howitzers like they should be, but game balance -wise it is horribly broken, that's some stupid shit mang) and partly because of the shitty engine. Really, did they test this at all, as the framerate is constantly stupidly low and the game feels incredibly sluggish.

Other than that, I this game, it has everything in it. I try to play on hard though I am really bad in this, requires a lot of thinking and especially positioning.

As to the question, does anyone have any ideas or tweaks for the bloody graphics, as it feels choppy even on lowest settings?

 

[Topher]

I still play, well I was a few months ago anyway, but I've never gotten any farther than the OP did. There just comes a point where everything, even enemy archers, were just vastly superior to even my heaviest melee units. Still I really like the game, never played the DLC/expansion stuff, and plan on giving it another go soon.

 

[Darth Roxor]

After playing the game many times over since the last time I commented in this thread, I have only two things to say:

Archers are overrated. Seriously. If you are playing pagans, as soon as you get two or so squads with that retardedly overpowered Sidhe Paths ability, archers are no longer relevant. And if you are playing Christian, you just crush them beneath your 983687346 sangreal knights.

And magic? Fuck magic. All pagan units have natural resistance (+ later game stuff like seelie/deepwood archers, because archers usually eat up spells, are really beefy), not to mention the sidhe paths again that you can use to hit'n'run mages, while Christians have so many magic mitigation abilities, enemy sages are laughable (seriously, I remember starting loads of battles just by taking Sir Tegyr with max level sangreal knights, using bonds of magic on enemy caster, killing him and running the fuck away from the entire enemy army in an ultimate hit'n'run).


You all know shit about infantry tactics


Also, a very important hint: don't rush main quests if you don't want to get overwhelmed.

 

[Livonya]

Archers might seem important in the beginning, but by the mid to late game they aren't important.

If you go as Pagan then you will have teleport spells and archers are just free experience. If you go as christian then archers are a bit harder but with weather spells and lots of cavalry you can crush these archers.

I have never used archers past the 1st chapter since there are far better troops.

Also, this game isn't as linear as you might think.

If you want to make the game harder then pursue the main quest... get a stronghold ASAP. The game will quickly become very challenging.

If you want to make the game a bit easier then don't pursue the main quests too quickly, and by all means don't rush to get a stronghold. Conquer a bit more territory before you go for a stronghold.

I loved this game. Was fun and interesting.

Also, if you can't finish a battle/quest/mission then so what. There were a few play through were I went too fast and simply couldn't win some battles due to inferior forces (mostly due to not having enough resources to train multiple large armies).

And for Ghosts I recommend just using a strong hero with cleave.... or use guardian angel... Ghosts need to be dealt with via heroes skills/abilities.

 

[Majestic47]

My King Arthur Old Faith LP

I've tried Christian LP and had to abandon it after migrating to Win 7 and did not export my save game. But yes, Archers are nearly redundant at mid game.

I say nearly, because the archers can be used as bait and provoke enemies into the charge. That's when your Knights pop out from the flanks and crush!

 

[Forest Dweller]

So will this game give me a boner or what?

 

[Phelot]

So will this game give me a boner or what?

Well, there are some tasty looking men in it. :D





Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all night!

 

[hydd]

They're having a temporary price cut on steam for King Arthur until December 8th @ 4:00pm Pacific Time.

With 75% off, it comes out to a whopping $4.99.

Enjoy.